Sara Newman - Executive Assistant to Directors

Sara has worked in the Education sector as an Assistant for over 12 years, working across Primary, Secondary and Specialist provision as well as the Local Authority.

Sara’s role is to support the Director of Safeguarding, Director of Education and the Director of Finance and Operations. Sara brings a significant understanding of the running of Trusts and Schools and is passionate about ensuring all young people have a fair and equal opportunity to achieve their best possible outcomes.

Sara's degree in Education also provides her with relevant background knowledge to bring to her role at Liberty.

Grace Muirhead - Governance Co-ordinator

Grace joined the trust in 2022 working as a learning mentor at Church Lawton school and whilst in this role she successfully completed the Liberty trust Postgraduate Certificate in Professional education as part of the first cohort. Grace has now joined the Central Team as Governance Coordinator, where she provides administrative support to School Committees ensuring that volunteers can fulfil their roles and enhance the education of pupils in the trust. She is passionate about creating positive education experiences in schools and will be undertaking this part-time role alongside her MSc in Childhood development and wellbeing in practice at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Lisa Thompson - Head of Digital, Data & Technology

Lisa has over 20 years' experience working with data and systems across the commercial, policing and education sectors. Her experience spans, Secondary, Primary and Specialist provision with roles both in School as a Data Manager and working for 2 large Multi Academy Trusts.

She has exceptional insight into the challenges facing Trusts in developing the use of data to support the strategic management of the Trust and has proven experience of using data and systems to drive school improvement at scale. In her last Trust Lisa was responsible for the successful procurement, migration and implementation of a new Management Information System across 27 schools.

Lisa is well known across the sector with peers in other Trusts and the Ed tech Sector and is a member of the CST Data Network. Lisa is also Chair of Governors for a Primary School in another Academy trust working with the school to bring about rapid improvement from requires improvement through to a successful OFSTED achieving good within a year.

Dave Wilson - IT Manager

Dave has over 15 years’ experience working in IT. His experience spans both private and public sector in a progressive, multitude of roles. 

The first half of Dave’s career was in the commercial world providing cutting edge solutions and services to some of the UK’s most well-known organisations. Initially in engineering roles, Dave progressed to head-up the technical division of one of the region’s best IT providers. There, Dave found the challenge of doing ‘more with less’ for their public sector customers highly rewarding and became passionate about schools and students having access to effective & good value, yet professional IT.

Dave then moved over to Head of IT roles for Multi-Academy Trusts. Using his insight from the commercial world to assist in collaboration between schools and support the rapid growth of Trusts.

Having been the Head of IT for one of the UK’s largest (& fastest growing), multi-academy Trusts for the prior 5 years; Dave moved to consultancy roles… where he found Liberty Trust. Then separating from a larger sponsor organisation and wanting the very best for their students & families, Dave provided IT expertise on the transition and was won over by the Trust’s ethos & values – he is now proud to be further involved in Liberty’s journey.

Key Emails

Accounts enquiries email: accountspayable@libertytrust.org.uk
Please send all invoices to: invoices@libertytrust.org.uk quoting the Purchase Order provided to you by your main contact.

Alan Johnson - Accounts Receivable

Alan has experience working across a variety of fields including customer service,  administration and finance. He has various qualifications and his specialism is in finance and accounting and is currently working towards being fully AAT qualified. 

Alan joined our trust in 2022 and is currently based at one of our schools, the Vanguard School.

With his combined passion for education and finance, Alan is a unique but great asset to our trust

Lisa Challiner - Accounts Payment Supervisor

Lisa has worked in the Finance Sector for over 20 years and has a sound understanding of Finance Systems. She has progressed in her career, starting by raising purchase orders in procurement, obtaining the best price for the product, through to GRN’ing and Purchase Ledger.

Lisa has previously carried many different roles in her career including Accounts Payable Manager and Business Analyst.

Lisa is currently the Accounts Payment Supervisor at Liberty Trust and has brought a wealth of knowledge to the Trust due to her previous roles.

Jane Read - Trust Accountant

Jane is an experienced management accountant with over 20 years’ experience.

Jane is responsible for managing the financial operations of the Trust, ensuring accurate and efficient financial reporting.

Jane has a degree in Business Economics and is member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).

 

Andy Richardson - Head of HR

Andy’s role is to work in collaboration with local teams in support of our HR services across our academies, as well as leading on trust-wide HR developments to ensure we have the systems and processes in place to be effective.  This is all aimed at making Liberty Academy Trust a great organisation to work for, which in turn enables us to provide excellent education opportunities for our children and young people.

A chartered member of the CIPD, Andy has spent 25 years providing comprehensive HR services in a range of organisations, particularly in the public and charity sectors; with lots of experience of helping those organisations meet various challenges and develop positive cultures.  He is also Chair of Governors at a large local secondary school.

Lisa Saunders - Operations and Finance Manager

Lisa has worked in the education sector for 19 years and has solely focused on the successful management of the financial and operational side of schools & Trusts.

Lisa is AAT level 4 qualified with an MBA in Education Leadership, a member of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), Qualified Prince 2 Project Manager and certified in all aspects of Health & Safety.