Lewisham Governors

Gerard Garvey

Gerard is an experienced College leader with considerable leadership experience in inclusive, high performing Sixth Form Colleges across the country. A career educator, Gerard qualified as a teacher in 2002 and remains committed to providing opportunities for young people to acquire qualifications that open doors and enable social mobility.

He was one of the founding members of staff at Rochdale Sixth Form College and following this led the establishment of the new sixth form college in Barnsley – both initiatives to transform A Level education in towns with poor performance in academic qualifications at Key Stage 5.

Gerard joined NCG as Principal at Newcastle Sixth Form College in 2015, having worked at a number of high performing sixth form and General Further Education colleges. Since January 2022, he has been Interim Principal at Lewisham College in London and now holds the role of Executive Principal, with responsibility for several NCG colleges and strategic areas, particularly focusing on development of people and culture.

Simon Russell

Simon was born and raised in Glasgow. He joined the John Lewis Partnership as a graduate from St Andrews University. His early career focused mainly on the business’ operational management including Managing Director of its Sheffield and Bluewater branches. He led the £22m refurbishment including the introduction of a new Foodhall in 2009 at Bluewater. In January 2010, he became John Lewis’ first Head of Multi-Channel leading the integration of a growing and significant online / digital channel with a successful established Department Store business aiming to give customers a seamless experience regardless how they shop along with leading the online programme to turbo charge online sales. In March 2012, he became Director, Retail Operations Development where he is responsible for the ‘shop of the future’ vision from both a customer experience point of view and a business operating model along with the delivery of all retail programmes including the key IT Omni Channel infrastructure and inherited the omni channel team back. In 2018, he became Director of Operations Development extending his previous role to include Supply Chain and contact centre development, in addition to Retail, giving an end to end strategic, development and central support for all John Lewis Operations and has led a major transformation and change in recent years. After a long and successful time at John Lewis, Simon left to pursue new challenges in February 2020.

Simon has also been an active member of global leadership company Common Purpose since 2003. He was appointed Chairman of Common Purpose Customised and has been a Trustee and Director of Common Purpose UK since 2013.

Lekhnath Pandey

Lekhnath, a Chartered Accountant, is an entrepreneur operating local businesses including accountancy practices, solar energy project, restaurants and a security training institute since 2002. He has gained invaluable experience working with Save the Children HQ as financial consultant for more than 8 years. He had been CEO of a local private college from 2007 to 2011. Prior to that he worked as a Finance Manager in multi-national companies. He holds the role of non-executive Director in a local community interest company (CIC) dealing with representatives from local government and is an advisor for a few local charities and community organisations.

Hilary Moore

Having trained as a lawyer, and then working in Marketing and the International Conference field, Hilary retrained as a teacher and has worked in the FE sector since 1995, in both Sixth Form Colleges and General FE. Hilary currently works at The College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (CONEL) where she is an Assistant Principal and DSL for the college and also DSL for Capital City Colleges Group, of which CONEL is a member. She leads her College E D & I Committee, and the Group’s Women’s’ Forum. Hilary has 5 Schools within her Directorate: ESOL, Teacher Training, TU Education, Vocational Employability, SLDD & Computing and Creative & Media. Hilary became a Councillor in Lewisham in 2014 and was re-elected in 2018 and 2022. Hilary sits on the Safer & Stronger Select Committee, and is currently Chair of the Standards Committee having been Chief Whip 2018-2022 . Since 1998, Hilary has been a governor of a Primary School in her ward, and is the SG link Governor, and was appointed to the Lewisham Southwark College Board in 2015 by the then Mayor, Sir Steve Bullock; the appointment was then confirmed by Mayor Damien Egan in 2018. In addition to this, Hilary has also been a governor trainer for Lewisham and Greenwich, when she was Chair of Governors of primary schools in both boroughs.

Linlin Jin

Linlin has been a qualified accountant for 13 years working in Audit, Corporate Finance and Education Consultancy. She works extensively across risk assurance, financial due diligence, compliance, corporate governance review, strategic planning, and financial budgeting. She holds a BSc in Economics from University of Warwick. She is currently a director at PKF Littlejohn LLP.

In addition to the technical work, Linlin also leads the marketing of her firm in the Far East and oversees the daily management as part of the leadership team. She has experience in business operation, human resource, and coaching and mentoring.

With critical thinking and professional scepticism, Linlin supports both commercial and not-for-profit organizations with independent perspective and constructive suggestions to help them achieve goals and deliver results.

Having lived in Lewisham, Linlin understands the local community, the opportunities and the needs. She believes that education connects people to opportunities that can be life changing; she is passionate about helping people achieve their potential through education whilst growing as an individual.

She hopes to contribute to Lewisham College in the capacity of college governor. She is eager to learn and is fully committed to fulfil the responsibilities and duties of the role.

Phoebe Juggins

As a chartered professional planner, Phoebe has worked for a range of clients (including Universities, land promoters, developers and pension funds) at a large multi-disciplinary consultancy. Previously at the Department for Education within the planning team, Phoebe worked on policy matters across the South East and provided operational advice as well as having a good overview of planning and development in relation to the education sector, as the lead Planner at Thames Water, Phoebe worked on infrastructure and development projects across the Thames Water estate. She now works for the developer Aitch Group, working on mixed-use, residential and student accommodation schemes across London. On a personal basis, Phoebe is passionate about encouraging widening participation in education, having volunteered for a charity undertaking mock university interviews for the last couple of years.

Deavon Bakey-Oxley

Councillor Dr Deavon Rose Baker-Oxley believes that good and outstanding further education providers can give all of their learners the opportunity to achieve and excel in their chosen fields.

She worked in the public sector for over 35 years, including 20 years in Further Education, in several roles and 9 years in education inspection. Previously Deavon worked in the NHS for 10 years. She developed a passion for learning during this time and over the years studied and achieved Registered General Nurse (RGN) and Registered Health Visitor (RHV), a Master’s in Education Management, a Master’s in Business Administration and in 2019 a Doctorate in Education. She has the commitment and interest to be a positive board member.

Nina Mirzaei

Nina first studied at Lewisham College in 1998. Nina chose Lewisham College because it was the best college in South London in her opinion. After completing her course in Advanced English, Nina went on to university and graduated with an LLB hons, in Law in 2008. Since then, Nina has worked as a volunteer, a student support worker and, after completing CELTA in July 2009, as an ESOL teacher in Lewisham College. Since 2015 Nina has been working as a progress coach to ESOL young learners.

Fiona Fraser

Fiona was brought up in the Scottish Highlands and moved to Edinburgh to attend university aged 18. Fiona joined Lewisham college in November 2013, Fiona has worked in the Supported Learning Department since. Currently working as the High Needs Support and Funding Manager. Fiona has mostly worked in social care settings over the last 27 years, such as: social work departments, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and mental health units. She qualified as an Art Therapist in 2002 and decided to take a sabbatical and go travelling. On her travels, amongst other adventures she worked in various jobs paid and unpaid, in: Nigeria, Thailand, New Zealand, Fiji and fulfilling a lifelong dream she also worked as a scuba diving instructor for a year on The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, another passion of hers. Fiona also has a passion to work with and advocate on behalf of and give a voice to, disadvantaged and underrepresented members of our community and society at large.