Wendy Louisa Piatt (born 17 November 1970) is

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

Gresham College Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in Central London, England. It does not enroll students or award degrees. It was founded in 1596 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, and hosts ove ...

Life

Piatt was born in

Birkenhead Birkenhead (; cy, Penbedw) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England; historically, it was part of Cheshire until 1974. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the south bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liver ...

, in the Wirral, Wendy Piatt: Taking on the world
''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'', 22 February 2007 and went to

convent school Catholic schools are pre-primary, primary and secondary educational institutions administered under the aegis or in association with the Catholic Church. , the Catholic Church operates the world's largest religious, non-governmental school syste ...

there.Wendy Piatt: The vice-chancellors' new velvet glove , Special Reports , EducationGuardian.co.uk
/ref> She was awarded a

first class honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...

BA in English from King's College London before studying for an MPhil in Shakespeare and Renaissance drama and then a D.Phil at Lincoln College, Oxford. Her thesis was entitled "Politics and religion in Renaissance

closet drama A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or sometimes out loud in a large group. The contrast between closet drama and classic "stage" dramas dates back to the late eighteenth century. Al ...

".University of Oxford
Combined library catalogue

Employment

Piatt went on to work for the left-of-centre

think-tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental ...

the

Institute for Public Policy Research The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is a progressive think tank based in London. It was founded in 1988 and is an independent registered charity. IPPR has offices in Newcastle upon Tyne, Manchester, and Edinburgh. Funding comes from ...

, where she was Head of Education. She then joined the

Prime Minister's Strategy Unit The Prime Minister's Strategy Unit (often referred to simply as The Strategy Unit) was a unit based in the UK Cabinet Office between 2002 and 2010 (with its predecessor unit, the Performance and Innovation Unit, dating back to 1999). The Strategy ...

, where she rose to the post of deputy director. In January 2007, she was appointed Director General of the

Russell Group The Russell Group is a self-selected association of twenty-four public research universities in the United Kingdom. The group is headquartered in Cambridge and was established in 1994 to represent its members' interests, principally to governmen ...

. In December 2016 it was announced that she would step down from her position, despite having been cleared after an internal investigation into her travel and expenses. She stepped down on 1 February 2017. She is a board member of the Snowdon Trust, founded by the

Earl of Snowdon Earl of Snowdon is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1961, together with the subsidiary title of Viscount Linley, of Nymans in the County of Sussex, by Queen Elizabeth II for her then brother-in-law, Antony Armstron ...

, which provides grants and scholarships for students with disabilities. In June 2020 she was appointed as the first CEO of

with effect from August 2020.

References

External links

BBC Russell Group's Wendy Piatt on university funding
video of Wendy Piatt
SciTech2010
Speakers biographies with image of Wendy Piatt Living people 1970 births Alumni of King's College London Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford People from Birkenhead {{UK-academic-bio-stub