about us

Collab Group is a UK wide body of FE colleges and college groups. Its member colleges are like-minded, forward-thinking peer organisations that endorse and contribute to our shared ambition.

Collab Group colleges work together to promote and further the interests of the college sector's large providers and provide solutions to the UK's skills and economic growth challenges. Collab Group supports the future of UK wide technical education through four strategic themes:

Education and skills policy: by working together to promote and further the specific interests of large providers in the sector and campaign for their interests.
Sharing of practice: through collective action, we aim to enhance the capacity and capability of our colleges by sharing ideas, insights and people through networks of our college leaders.

Talent and leadership: by bringing on the next generation of talent across our colleges to support individual and collective talent management, retention, and succession planning through targeted leadership programmes.
Joint commercial business: by utilising our combined capacity and expertise to generate profitable joint commercial business in line with our joint commercial strategy.

Janet Gayle

Executive Assistant to CEO

Executive Assistant to the CEO and Office Manager, she joined the team in June 2017. As a legal qualified PA, with over 10 years in administration and office management roles, she has a vast amount of experience in small and large organisation in the private and public sector.

Ian Pretty

Chief Executive

Chief Executive since September 2015, he has had a range of senior roles in a variety of organisations in the public and commercial sector. He deals with a wide range of stakeholders in the development of sustainable technical and professional education to enable a transformation of the productive capacity of the UK economy.

Ash Austin

Commercial Director

Ash joined Collab Group in July 2020, he has a background in identifying, negotiating and winning business across a variety of corporate and public sector organisations. His background working with a variety of tech solutions has helped organisations like Civil Service Faststream digitise their graduate recruitment process and WhiteHat Group innovate their apprenticeship onboarding process.

Jack Havard

Policy Research Officer

Jack joined Collab Group in 2020. Jack leads our Marketing and HR networks and manages Collab Group's talent and leadership theme. He coordinates both of Collab Group's leadership programmes

Cosria Ali

Operations Executive

Cosria joined the Collab Group in April 2021 as Operations Executive, she has held a range of roles in Further Education Colleges as well as Independent Training Providers. She manages the relationship between partner providers and employers across the different apprenticeships.

Martynas Leskevic

Operations Coordinator

Martynas joined Collab Group in 2021. He supports the Commercial team and mainly focuses on coordinating the Corporate & Public contracts. His background working in various operational roles around hospitality and tech industries will allow him to develop and upgrade the existing processes to achieve the success for our partners and colleges

Sakis Kirkiotakis

Account Manager

Sakis joined Collab Group in July 2021. He manages the commercial partnerships. His Marketing Degree along with his background in hospitality managerial roles, allows him to successfully support the commercial team. He also worked as an army officer in the Greek army which taught him discipline and leadership skills.

John Thornhill

Chair (Chief Executive Officer at LTE Group)

Angela Foulkes

(Principal and Chief Executive, The Sheffield College)

Paul Stephen

(Principal and Chief Executive at Newham College London)

Sally Dicketts

(Group Chief Executive at Activate Learning)

Roy O'Shaughnessy

(Chief Executive Officer at Capital City College Group)

Mark Jones

(Chief Executive Officer at Gower College Swansea)

Our partners bring external expertise and insights to assist Collab Group and its members to achieve our strategic ambitions. We collaborate with partners in the skills and employment sector and organisations in higher education, the legal industry, labour market analysts, awarding organisations and more. By leveraging a broad base of expertise, we can fulfil our ambitions to transform the current system of technical and professional education.

What We Do

Meet The Team