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Fierté Multi-Academy Trust

FiertéMulti-AcademyTrust

Meet our Team

 

Executive Team

 

Maria Hamblin - Chief Executive Officer 

Maria Hamblin

Maria Hamblin is CEO of the Fierté Multi-Academy Trust. Maria is also a National Leader of Education, supporting school improvement nationwide. Following a career as a Sister in Intensive Care, she started teaching in 2009 and has held leadership roles for over five years including positions of Headteacher and Executive Headteacher. In leading a group of schools, Maria believes passionately in the power of working as one entity; advancing education for the public benefit with a shared moral and legal purpose. Maria continues to work with an external consultancy in supporting schools both at a primary and secondary level and is passionate that the Trust will continue to work with other Trusts in the region and beyond to ensure that Fierte remains an outward facing organisation, maximising every opportunity to collaborate and strengthen partnerships for the benefit of all.

 

Tony Hand - Vice-CEO 

Tony Hand

Tony Hand is the Vice-CEO of the Fierté Multi-Academy Trust and a Trustee.  He has spent over a quarter of a century in education and was formerly a Head Teacher of two schools including a large primary school for fifteen years. In addition, he has held two Executive Headships supporting schools during periods of turbulence and previously carried out the role of Local Leader of Education.  Alongside colleagues, Tony set up the Tamworth Primary Consortium bringing Headteachers together to serve the best interests of children and families in the locality; he has also Chaired this organisation at various intervals.  He fervently believes that school to school support and collaboration presents a unique opportunity to release and maximise the potential of all children whatever their needs or backgrounds.  His desire to inspire all to excellence extends beyond children to include the staff, parents, governors and other stakeholders that form part of the extended Fierté family. 

 

Amanda Prosser-Davies - Chief Finance & Operating Officer
 

Amanda Prosser-Davies

Amanda Prosser-Davies is the Chief Operating Officer of the Fierté Multi-Academy Trust and is responsible for the Central Support Service that supports all Academies within the Trust. She has spent over 30 years working in various roles within Local Government. During her career she has supported and developed links with a wide range of businesses where she has gained extensive knowledge and skills in areas such as Governance, Compliance, HR and Finance. She is passionate about ensuring that individual Academies are supported effectively to allow them to continue to provide an excellent teaching and learning experience to all children within the Trust. 

 


 

 Central Support Team

Rebecca Harris - Trust Intervention Manager for Excellence
 

Rebecca Harris

Rebecca Harris is the Trust Intervention Manager for Excellence, her role within the Fierté Trust is to organise the COVID response for all pupils enabling them to make rapid progress to fill gaps in knowledge and restore learning loss primarily through managing ‘catch-up classes’ for groups of learners and one to one tutoring for individuals outside of the school day. The Fierté Trust  have acknowledged the importance of a positive reaction to schools closing for many of our pupils; despite some wonderful home schooling by our families and quality sessions provided by our different schools, there will inevitably be gaps in learning. The Trust have reacted to this enabling Rebecca to  work with all schools ensuring all interventions are high quality with high impact. Rebecca also works as SENCo and Assistant Head at Heathfields Infant and Wilnecote Junior schools.  She is also on the NICE panel involved in re-drafting 'social and emotional and mental health in Primary and Secondary schools' and is passionate about the wellbeing of all pupils in schools.

Linda Smith - Trust Catering Manager
 

Linda Smith

Linda is the Catering Lead for the Fierté Multi-Academy Trust. Linda’s role plays various parts within our school families, but nothing gives her greater pleasure than seeing our children enjoying the food that our teams create in our social lunch hubs with a real friendly atmosphere, fresh local products and real crockery playing a big part of that.

She is responsible for creating varied menus for our children complying to school nutritional standards and obesity plans whilst incorporating products to fit with allergy requirements, religious requirements and our children’s needs. As far as possible she looks to source local suppliers along with fresh local ingredients. Staff training is another key part of Linda’s role and she endeavours to ensure that we go above and beyond to cover all legal training required along with good staff development.

Linda has worked within the school environment for twelve years and before that had several roles within the hospitality industry, this has given her  a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge to which she now uses every day and the ability from that to be able to think outside the box when developing the catering experience.

Linda Webster - Compliance Officer 

Linda Webster

​​​Linda took up her post initially as the Data Protection Officer in 2017.  Her role has developed to incorporate Trust compliance.  She is responsible for overseeing the implementation of GDPR, monitoring the Trust’s compliance with data protection law, and developing related policies and guidelines where applicable.  

Linda is the first point of contact for individuals to communicate with when requesting personal data from any of our academies.

She has had over 20 years’ experience working in education and prior to starting her own family over 10 years’ experience working in industry.  Working for Fierté Multi-Academy Trust has brought a wonderful opportunity for her to use her experience in education to continue to support children’s learning alongside her colleagues in the Central Team.  Linda is also a school governor.   

Linda can be contacted via email at dpo@fierte.org.

Claire Keay - Trust Lead Practitioner 

Claire Keay

​​​Appointed as Fierte Trust Lead Practitioner in November 2021, Claire Keay’s role is to work across Academies to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Claire is passionate about all children flourishing as confident, knowledgeable, and reflective life-long learners who are never afraid of challenge or making mistakes due to their love of learning which is fostered by their teachers.  Claire started teaching in 1998 and has held wide ranging teaching and leadership roles in Primary schools for over twenty years. Claire has enjoyed phase leader, History, Science and English subject leader responsibilities as well as leading in the role of Assistant Head, Deputy Head and as Headteacher. Throughout, teaching, learning, assessment and curriculum have been at the heart of Claire’s roles due to her expertise in these areas. Previously, Claire has also led the Power of Coaching, Improving and Outstanding Teacher programmes for primary and secondary teachers in her role as an Olevi trained facilitator. Claire believes in the potential of all (children, teachers, leaders, parents). Relationships, belief, trust and care along with the highest of expectations will ensure that self-esteem blossoms, challenge is embraced and thinking, learning and knowledge are deepened and secured minute by minute.  

Sue Marriott - Trust Finance Manager 

Sue Marriott

​​​Sue Marriott works as part of the Central Support Team supporting all schools within the Fierté Multi-Academy Trust. Sue has 18 years’ experience of working in education having worked for the local education authority for a number of years supporting different schools across Staffordshire and more recently as Trust Business Manager at Dosthill Primary Academy in Tamworth. Sue has the CSBM and DSBM qualifications, which she attained as part of the National College development programme some years ago.

Emma Johnson - HR Manager 

Emma Johnson

Emma Johnson is part of the Central Support Team, supporting all academies within the Fierté Multi-Academy Trust. Emma has twenty years’ experience of working within one of the academies, starting firstly as a volunteer and over the years to a full time school administrator.  For the past seven years, the Central Support Team role has evolved and roles and responsibilities include Finance, HR, and Procurement negotiating best practice for the Trust.

Sam Lewis - Trust Wellbeing Lead
 

Sam Lewis

Samantha is Trust Wellbeing Lead for the Fierte Multi-Academy Trust. She has been working in education since 2012 and for the last 2 years working across schools to help co-ordinate the Mental Health needs of pupils and support and deliver Mental Health and Wellbeing interventions. Samantha is educated to degree level and has obtained a CPCAB Level 2 Award in Counselling skills for Working with Children through Place2Be (the leading national children's mental health charity) and CPCAB Level 3 certificate in Counselling studies.

Samantha is passionate about making Mental Health support available to all children and families across the Trust. She is a Hope (Helping Our Pupils Emotions) Mentor and Supervisor and through Hope is able to offer 1:1 support to pupils in addition to support for parents. Working with a team of Wellbeing Champions, she believes in a holistic approach to Mental health giving children the opportunity to develop resilience and receive appropriate support.

Ryan Byrne - Trust Technical Manager
 

Ryan Byrne

Ryan Byrne is the Technical Manager for the Fierté Multi-Academy Trust and has worked in education for over 8 years. In this time, Ryan has developed and deployed a number of IT systems and solutions. He works to ensure our staff are well-equipped with reliable, effective classroom technologies in order to enrich teaching and learning. By combining his technical proficiency with his previous experience as a Teaching Assistant, Ryan strives to always take a learner-centric approach to his responsibilities managing networks as well as advising on, developing and deploying new systems. As a member of the Trust IT Strategy Forum, he also works closely with a number of Academy stakeholders to continually update them on new developments and opportunities whilst also resolving any challenges that arise in a timely manner.

Sharon Shilling - Our Pride, Our Joy - Regional Manager 

Sharon Shilling

​​​Sharon Shilling is the Regional Manager for the Trust’s subsidiary company, Our Pride Our Joy Ltd. She manages the nurseries and care clubs associated with each of the Trust schools. Sharon worked at Dosthill Primary Academy teaching across both early years and Key Stage 1 classes for thirteen years but has worked in a wide range of early years settings throughout her career. She believes that early education should be child-led where, through provision that is safe, welcoming and inspiring, children can explore and discover following their own interests, making choices and developing the innate passion for learning that all children have.

Kacey Gretton - Support Services Officer 

Kacey Gretton

​​​​​​Kacey Gretton works as part of the Central Support Team supporting all schools within the Fierté Multi-Academy Trust. Kacey has 7 years' experience of working within Education sector. Her main role is to assist the HR Manager in day-to-day requirements alongside other financial tasks including managing procurement for the trust. Her area of expertise is training and management of projects. Kacey strives to deliver efficiently and professionally to all requests supporting where she can. Being supportive and a team player are deeply important both professionally and personally.