Nic Ponsford | Founder & CEO
Global Equality Collective

After working in education for over 20 years as a teacher, school leader, trainer, and coach, Nic wanted to find an accessible means to make ordinary classrooms extraordinarily inclusive.  Nic is passionate about creating a level playing field for everyone in education, but especially those from underserved groups. In 2017, Nic set up the Global Equality Collective (GEC) to address 'one of the biggest issues in education' - diversity and inclusion.   The GEC is a global multi-award-winning grassroots movement of over 13,000 changemakers and a collective of 300-plus DEI subject matter experts.  The GEC also created the world’s first D&I platform for schools and educational organisations, which is a knowledge-based, self-evaluation, framework and benchmarking tool to audit and improve cultural health at scale. Following a leadership-led Self-Assessment process, ‘GEC Platform’ members then access 360°, academically tested surveys for both Staff and Students, capturing their unique perspectives and needs like never before. Analytical results are provided alongside QAed recommendations, for every question and statement, together with an action plan to drive improvement for their very own DE&I ecosystem.  All data quality is assured by the Global Equality Collective.  The GEC Platform is multi-award winning; recently winning 'DEI Platform of the Year’ - Women in IT (UK) - where the judges were blown away by the simplicity and success of the DEI technology.  The GEC Platform has just been listed in the top ten for Business Cloud’s Edtech50 and was highlighted at the BETT Awards 2024 as ‘Highly Commended’ in the ‘Transformational Impact’ category. Nic is dedicated to transforming the lives of underrepresented young people and ‘usualising’ difference.  She is an experienced interviewee and speaker, a Doctorate Researcher #CEMPDOC, a Fellow of both the RSA and IESE for work in education and inclusion, Award-winning ed-tech leader with a demonstrated history both in the classroom and in the e-learning industry. Nic is also a Harvard-published author, frequent keynote speaker and edtech judge.  Nic was headhunted to work on the DfE Edtech Demonstrator Programme onboarding 11k schools to get online during the pandemic lockdown.  Nic has since been headhunted to lead on further Dfe projects based on edtech and inclusion, such as the 2 year long Assistive Technology (AT) Pilot and Programme with nasen and Microlink. Nic is currently supporting Microlink Education, where she is leading the change in advancing AT training and professional development, as part of the transformative ‘Be ThAT Teacher’ initiative.  Back in 2005, Nic won a Pearson Teaching Award for ‘Outstanding New Teacher’. Since this, Nic has been recognised as one of Europe's top 50 women in tech through the #InspiringFiftyEurope award, gained a Rising Star Award (Education and Academia). Recently she has listed ‘Highly Commended’ as a ‘Women in Tech Excellence’ in the category of ‘Role Model of the Year’ 2023 by Computing magazine.   #SmashingStereotypes Top50 Inspiring Women in Tech Europe | Rising Star - Education & Academia Winner | Edtech50 UK | Doctoral Researcher - edtech & DE