Peter Clegg

Peter Clegg established the architectural firm Feilden Clegg Bradley with Richard Feilden, Jamie’s father, in 1978. The practice has since become extremely well established, winning the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2008 for Accordia in Cambridge, the first ever residential development to win the award. Peter was educated at Cambridge and Yale and he is a Visiting Professor at the University of Bath. He has 30 years’ experience in low energy architecture and the architecture of schools. Peter has an invaluable understanding of the impact the built and natural environment has on students.

Philip Percival

Philip Percival has 45 years experience of business and finance. On graduating from Oxford he started life as an investment analyst and manager, followed by an MBA degree at INSEAD. He spent the next 9 years as a management consultant with Arthur D. Little, during which time he worked with clients in 11 different countries. Since the mid-80s he has been a private equity investor, dealing with a wide range of businesses from technology start-ups to large buy outs. His jobs have involved much counselling and support of management teams, particularly focusing on the financial issues confronting growing businesses. He is now semi-retired but remains a partner of Syntegra Capital, the firm he helped start in 1998. He has a strong interest in helping to improve the educational opportunities for deprived children.

Dame Sally Coates

Sally Coates was Principal of Burlington Danes Academy, an 11-18 Ark Academy in Hammersmith & Fulham, from 2008 – 2014. The school has 67% pupil premium and mostly serves the very deprived White City Estate. The school results in the last two years have almost doubled. In 2014 the GCSE results including English and Maths were 79% 5A* – C with 46% Ebacc. Burlington Danes was graded ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in November 2013. Sally acted as Executive Principal at Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton until July 2012 and was Executive Principal of Ark Putney and West London Free School until July 2014.

In September 2014 Sally joined United Learning as Director of Academies South. Her book ‘Headstrong: 11 lessons of school leadership’ was published in February 2015.

Sally chaired The Review of the Teaching Standards and most recently chaired the Skills Test Review. Sally is currently chairing a review into Prison Education. The Coates Review will report its findings to the Secretary of State for Justice in early in 2016.

Sally was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2013 New Years Honours List.

Roderick James

Rod qualified as an architect in 1973 and quickly established himself in the world of sustainable architecture as the first Director of the Centre for Alternative Technology, the leading eco-centre in Europe. In 1980, he started out in his own, setting up Roderick James & Company. He also became a Trustee and Director of the Society for Environmental Improvement in the same year and was on the Boat and Shoreworks committee of the RNLI for 10 years. He has established several successful businesses including Roderick James Architects LLP, Carpenter Oak Ltd and Adventure Capital Ltd.

James Westhead

As Executive Director of External Relations at Teach First, James is responsible for building understanding of Teach First and its vision of ending educational inequality, as well as securing the funding need to achieve it. Before joining Teach First in October 2009, James worked for BBC News as its education correspondent. During an 18-year career in broadcasting, James appeared regularly on flagship TV & radio programmes including the Six & Ten O’clock News and the Today programme. As well as helping launch News 24 in 1997, James has held a number of senior posts covering health and social affairs issues and spent two years abroad as one of the BBC’s Washington correspondents. He is also a trustee of several education charities, including Jamie’s Farm.

Sian Parry

Sian is currently Head of FIL Foundations, which support arts/culture, health, education and community development charities in countries where FIL has a business presence. Through taking an investment approach to grant making, the Foundations seek to support strategic initiatives that enable organisations to reach new levels of achievement. A key area of focus is helping the young and disadvantaged achieve their potential.

Sian has held various positions during her 28 year tenure at Fidelity, including roles in strategic planning, systems development, product development, oversight and general business management. She has also served on operating and risk management committees and fulfilled director / supervisory board roles for a number of overseas companies.

She has a keen interest in farming and rural affairs and enjoys coaching and mentoring young people in the early stages of their careers.

Jamie Feilden

Jamie graduated from the University of Edinburgh and taught History at Haling Manor School in Croydon from 2003. He worked in the Teach First office as part of the recruitment team from 2005 to 2008, focusing on the Jamie’s Farm project during his holidays and weekends. Jamie now manages the farming, fundraising and finance functions of the charity, as well as driving our growth strategy. Jamie is committed to ensuring the Jamie’s Farm experience is available to as many children as possible. His leadership has taken the organisation from occasional visits to his mother’s smallholding in Wiltshire, through to being a nationally significant charity, running four residential farms and one city farm. He can often also be found alongside children on the farm that bears his name, delivering lambs and calves and demonstrating that there is nothing wrong with getting your hands dirty in the cause of Farming, Family and Therapy.

Jake Curtis

Jake studied History at Cambridge University, before returning to his Birmingham roots to teach up the road from where he grew up as part of the Teach First Leadership Development Programme. He has also enjoyed teaching overseas, in Palestine and Ghana, and gained a distinction in his Masters in Educational Leadership from Warwick University.

In his role as Director of Programmes and Operations, Jake works hard to ensure that as many children as possible get as great an impact as possible from our unique provision across all Jamie’s Farms. This involves developing new and effective partnerships with schools across the country, supporting the delivery teams at each location to maintain and improve our approach and ensuring the central machine at Jamie’s Farm is well-run to enable our programme to be effectively delivered. It also includes a spot of river jumping with visiting children at our Hill House Farm HQ, which is unbeatable as a reminder of what the farm is all about.

Tish Feilden

Tish is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist with over 30 years experience of working with children in schools, residential settings, clinical settings and the community. Tish began her career as a mainstream teacher and specialised in supporting children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, using techniques such as art therapy. For the past 25 years she has been a psychotherapist for adolescents and families. Working with the Jamie’s Farm team, Tish coordinates and leads on the therapy of each individual and group.

Wendy Kemp

After graduating from Swansea University with a degree in Modern Languages with Business Studies, Wendy worked in financial PR and in recruitment for a few years, before becoming a Primary School Teacher. Wendy now manages the charity’s office, helping to keep things running smoothly behind the scenes at Jamie’s Farm.

Tina Woodham

Tina looks after Finance at Jamie’s Farm and has been with the charity since the early days, originally working one day a week. As the charity has grown so too has the finance function and she can be found in the office most days ensuring everything is in order in a role that touches upon every aspect of Jamie’s Farm – from school bookings, to livestock sales to fundraising.

Sarah Argyle

Sarah grew up in Wiltshire and graduated with a degree in Geography. She initially trained in marketing whilst working in a marketing and comms role in the corporate sector. After gaining some experience in this area it was corporate social responsibility that she wanted to pursue further. She worked on placements in London, Burkina Faso and Malaysia before working in fundraising and comms for an international NGO. She realised it was the charity side that suited her best, specifically in creative communications and creating business and charity partnerships, which is where she’ll be found at Jamie’s Farm. Outside of work Sarah loves the outdoors spending weekends cycling and hiking coast paths or mountain trails.

Ed Norris

Ed has been with Jamie’s Farm from the early days, when alongside his day job he would volunteer his time every Monday to lend a hand on the farm to Doug our Farm Manager. Ed now works in the finance team, looking after our accounts but can occasionally still be found in a tractor.

Katie Francis

Katie graduated from Oxford University in 2006 with a degree in Geography. She then went on to work in Community Fundraising for various charities including Macmillan Cancer Support and Action Against Hunger. Wanting to pursue her thirst for creating a sustainable and just world, she undertook an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development at UCL in 2011. Since then she has worked for the London Cycling Campaign, Department for International Development and Woodcraft Folk. Katie is very interested in Organic Gardening through Permaculture principles and working outside with young people. In addition, she is responsible for trust fundraising and volunteers at Jamie’s Farm.

Jill Blane

Jill joined Jamie’s Farm in spring 2016 as a volunteer to help raise local awareness. With the support of her wonderful (and voluntary) committee she put together a very successful local fundraising evening. Now Jill works part-time for Jamie’s Farm looking after our events and various other fundraising initiatives for the charity. She lives in Bath with her family.

Robert Duffy

Rob worked in all aspects of Operations within the travel industry for 15 years, latterly specialising in managing Finance and IT projects, including database migration and the integration of direct debit and secure credit card processing. He now manages operations projects and infrastructure for all farms at Jamie’s Farm.

Chloe Thomas

After six years working in public health research and as an independent visitor for looked after children, Chloe decided she wanted to make a difference to the lives of more vulnerable young people by joining the Teach First Leadership Development Programme; becoming a class teacher at a large academy in Bristol. After leaving the classroom in 2017, Chloe joined Jamie’s Farm and is now responsible for measuring the impact of Jamie’s Farm on the young people who visit. Her role is split 50:50 between the office and directly working alongside the children in the programme.

Dom Koole

After graduating with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics, Dominic started his career in the civil service. He worked at the Department for Education on a range of policy areas, including initial teacher training. He then spent six years working at United Learning, an academy sponsor, supporting schools in some of the most deprived areas of the country. His various roles included bringing new schools into the charity and strategy and planning across the organisation.

At Jamie’s Farm, Dominic is responsible for ensuring as many children as possible get to visit our farms. He works across all of our farms and with schools and other organisations to develop new partnerships to benefit pupils across the country.

When not at work, you’ll find Dominic climbing, cycling, surfing or camping in the wilderness somewhere. At our farms, he loves chopping wood and going for a hike with the visiting groups.