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About Us

Nexus Education was founded by Damien Challenger and Mike Reardon in 2017 when, as school governors, they realised that schools needed a community of like minded people to share ideas, resources, training and funding.

There were platforms for sharing but these were often pigeon holed into specific areas, such as Edtech or Assessment. Mike and Damien wanted something truly whole market.

Nexus began as a blogging platform for educators to share ideas and tips via the website and social media. This platform grew quickly and, within a year, had over 11,000 schools enjoying the content.

As school governors, with a background in events and publishing, Damien and Mike sought to build upon existing events available to schools and make them more relevant to issues schools are facing within their locality.

NeXworking was born in June 2018 – a speed networking format that turned the typical events model on its head. Nexus would run bespoke 90 minute sessions for groups of schools that were completely driven by their current needs. NeXworking is SOLUTION driven – if schools have a problem, we will be able to present the solution.

Not only did we want to provide the schools with the solutions, we wanted to give them the means to actually invest so we committed to donating £100k to school NeXworking with us over the next 3 years.

Nexus is now a vibrant online and events community comprising of 1,000 schools per year NeXworking, 750+ blogs, 300,000 monthly social media impressions, 5,000+ monthly website visitors and over 450 solution providers – and this is just the start!

Meet Our Team

Damien Challenger – Co-Founder

Damien’s experience in helping over 10,000 schools discover the best solutions coupled with helping over 1,500 suppliers find the most pertinent routes to market, he has been ideally placed to witness the education landscape from a middle ground. This middle ground has enabled Damien to build relationships built on trust and common obectives.

Outside of work, Damien is a dad to two, Vice Chair of Governors at his local school, a Local Councillor, and a huge Liverpool fan.

Mike Reardon – Co-Founder

Bringing over 10 years of experience working in his local primary school, having developed from being an active volunteer to Chair of the governing body, Mike has experienced firsthand the challenges schools, children and teachers face. With a wealth of experience in financial and performance management in his school, in addition to engagement on topics such as academisation, Mike is keen to learn more and share what he can with others in an easy and quickly digestible format.

Outside of work, Mike is a dad to a little boy. He is also an on-call Firefighter and keen athlete, regularly taking part in Ironmans and Triathlons.

Rhiannon Challenger – Community & Social Media Manager

With a degree in English from Chester University and a keen interest in teaching and social media, Rhiannon heads up Nexus Education’s school social media engagement.

Liaising with teachers every day, Rhiannon is at the forefront of our efforts to connect teachers to each other enabling them to share their views, increase their profile and ultimately, make a difference in the education sector.

Having two young children entering school age also gives Rhiannon (and Damien!) an added interest in making lives easier for teachers and therefore bettering our children’s futures.

Rhiannon also works supply in local schools which gives her great insight into the issues faced on the ‘front line’.

Jo Reardon – Creative Content Manager

Jo has a degree in Graphic and Communication Design from the University of Leeds and 8 years of experience working in the industry, including separate freelance work.

As well as managing the design elements of the business, she is also passionate about helping schools reach their full potential. Her interest in the education sector stems from when she worked in a Nursery school.

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