Under the terms of the NCS Charter, appointment of the
Chair and members is made by HM The Queen on the advice of
the Privy Council and on a recommendation from the Prime
Minister.
Brett Wigdortz OBE started his career focused on southeast
Asian policy and business work at the East-West Centre in
Honolulu, HI and the Asia Society in New York City. He then
moved to be a management consultant focused on strategy and
organisational effectiveness at McKinsey & Company in
their Jakarta, Singapore and London offices.
In 2002, he wrote the original business plan for Teach
First and led the organisation for fifteen years, from its
launch until October 2017, helping to build it into one of
the country’s leading movements to tackle education
inequality. Among its achievements are: becoming the UK’s
largest graduate recruiter, running an accredited world
class teacher training program, building a movement of over
10,000 ambassadors focused on ending educational
disadvantage and supporting more than one million children
in classrooms across England and Wales.
Wigdortz is the author of Success Against the Odds, a
candid account of the first ten years of Teach First. He
was awarded an OBE in the 2013 Queen’s New Year’s Honour’s
list for Services to Education. He has also won numerous
awards over the past 15 years, including Charity Times UK
Charity CEO of the Year, Ernst & Young UK Social
Entrepreneur of the Year, the Evening Standards’ 1,000 Most
Influential Londoners for seven years in a row and
Debrett’s 500 Most Influential Britons for six years in a
row. He has Honorary Doctorates from the University of
Warwick and Birmingham City University.
Wigdortz is Co-Founder and a trustee of Teach For All, a
network of more than 45 Teach First partner programs in
countries all over the world. He is a trustee of Teach
First Israel, was the vice chair of the UK Holocaust
Memorial Foundation Education Advisory Group and is a judge
of the Varkey Foundation’s $1 million Global Teacher Prize.
He also helped found and is on the board of the Fair
Education Alliance.
Since stepping down as CEO of Teach First to become Founder
& Honorary President of the charity, Wigdortz has been
working with Jamie Oliver to help him develop a national
alliance to halve youth obesity by 2030. His main focus is
as co-founder and CEO of Tiney.co, a new digital platform
aiming to grow, support and improve the quality of
childminders and small nurseries in the UK.
He is a dual US and UK citizen and lives with his wife and
three young children in London.
The role is remunerated at £400 a day up to a maximum of
£40,000 per annum. This appointment has been made in
accordance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on
Public Appointments. The appointments process is regulated
by the Commissioner for
Public Appointments. Under the Code, any significant
political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last
five years must be declared. This is defined as including
holding office, public speaking, making a recordable
donation, or candidature for election. Brett has declared
no such political activity.
