Director and Founder
Sarah Mears is Programme Manager for Libraries Connected, Knowsley, a national development organisation supporting public libraries. She is a member of the Society of Chief Librarians’ National Executive, and is a past Chair of ASCEL (The Association of Senior Children’s and Education Librarians).
Her work in children’s libraries has long convinced her of the power of stories to change children’s lives. In 2018, she was awarded an MBE for services to Children and Young People. Her rich experience (nationally and locally) of innovating to engage reluctant readers is vital to our work.
Twitter – @sarahmears10
Email – [email protected]
Director and Founder
Miranda is a social justice entrepreneur who has spent 35 years turning kitchen table ideas into nationwide campaigns, culminating in founding The Reading Agency, a national charity, in 2002. The charity’s Summer Reading Challenge now involves 800,000 children every year.
Having “retired” to go trekking, she became fascinated by the building body of research showing that reading builds empathy. This has led to her founding EmpathyLab.
Twitter – @MirandaMcK
Email – [email protected]
Director and Founder
Caroline Scott has 40 years’ experience as a teacher and latterly as an Assistant Head for 15 years. With a remit for inclusion and behaviour and a responsibility for coordinating the Pastoral and Community agendas. Her remit included line managing 3 specialist SEND teams for Visual impairment, Behaviour and Specific learning difficulties.
During her career she was also one of the initiators and key members of the County Schools Inclusion Partnership, an initiative involving 7 secondary schools and their attendant feeders which worked successfully to reduce exclusions from mainstream schools. She is one of the five Founders of Empathylab and she has a continuing and passionate belief in the next generation.
Director and Founder
Managing Director
Imogen joined EmpathyLab in 2024, after a role developing the impact and reach of the Royal Opera House National Schools Programme. Originally trained as a theatre director, and specialising in creating interactive theatre for young audiences, Imogen’s work has often placed empathy, curiosity and creativity at its heart. For 15 years she worked at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond as Education and Participation Director, up until the pandemic which prompted a step into being a school librarian to feed her love of children’s literature. Imogen now lives in Rotherham, South Yorkshire (where she grew up) with Panda the cat.
Schools Team
As a teacher Mari spends as much of her time as possible talking books! If there is a book to go with a lesson, then she will find it!
Mari has the privilege of still being in the classroom on a part-time basis and working for the EmpathyLab school’s team spreading the empathy message to schools across the country. She has experienced first hand as a teacher the power of an empathy text whether that is with children recognising themselves within a character, developing the vocabulary to express themselves freely and confidently or by simply enjoying a class read aloud together.
Mari says:
“Being part of this team fills me with a great sense of pride as schools develop a passion and love of books to help them on their empathy journey.”
Operations and Impact Manager
Lilly joined EmpathyLab after an inspiring role as a coach and practitioner, working with individuals facing systemic barriers. She later went on to develop and facilitate training, growing a network of community-based practitioners dedicated to challenging systemic inequality and adopting a strengths-based approach to supporting individuals and their communities.
Lilly provides operational support across all of EmpathyLab’s programmes and campaigns and works closely with the team to capture the organisation’s impact and reach.
As a parent, Lilly has firsthand experience of the important role books play in children’s development.
[email protected]
Empathy Day Lead
Kirsten is a freelance brand, comms and marketing consultant. She is the former Director of World Book Day (2011-2020), leading the world’s biggest celebration of reading for pleasure.
Previously, Kirsten spent 15 years at Penguin Books, latterly as Puffin Marketing and Campaigns Director, spearheading and delivering campaigns for some of the biggest brands in children’s books including Roald Dahl, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Puffin’s 70th anniversary.
Schools Team
Paul is a former secondary teacher who joined the Empathylab team in 2019 after ten years serving as Head of Drama at a school in Lancashire. He currently works within the schools team to deliver training to teachers across our Affiliate Schools Programme as well as with the wider team to deliver Author Masterclasses and other corporate training.
Paul is passionate about writing and performance, working as a children’s poet in schools across the UK alongside his EmpathyLab role. He also has a strong interest in building a cohesive society for all, working as a volunteer in community radio since 2018.
Schools Programme manager
Helen first joined EmpathyLab as Deputy Head of one of the Pioneer Schools in 2017. With a background in and passion for leading literacy, reading for pleasure, drama and social and emotional learning, she embraced the role of Empathy Lead in school. Since then, around having a young family, she has worked with EmpathyLab as a consultant helping to develop the schools programme, write core materials, support training and report on the impact of EmpathyLab’s work. She now works part time as our Schools Programme Manager. As well as working for EmpathyLab, Helen works with children and families as a mindset and wellbeing coach. When not working, she enjoys spending time with her partner and children, spending time outdoors including cold-water swimming and eating (a bit too much) dark chocolate!
University of Sussex
Robin Banerjee is Professor of Developmental Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex. He directs the CRESS (Children’s Relationships, Emotions, and Social Skills) research lab, which investigates children’s social and emotional development, and involves close working partnerships with practitioners and policymakers in the areas of education and mental health.
Recent studies have examined the social and emotional dimensions of school ethos, factors involved in peer acceptance, rejection, and bullying, the social and cognitive processes involved in childhood social anxiety, the psychosocial development of children in the public care system, and the connections between consumer culture and well-being in school children. A core applied focus of the CRESS lab is the development and evaluation of strategies to support young people’s social and emotional functioning.
Senior Teacher, Primary
Jon Biddle is a senior teacher at one of EmpathyLab’s pioneer schools, with a passion for developing genuine reading cultures.
He is the 2018 winner of the Egmont Reading for Pleasure Experienced teacher award and coordinates the national Patron of Reading initiative, which supports authors and poets in developing relationships with schools.
Jon is a member of the UKLA National Council, a regular contributor to the Open University Reading For Pleasure website and a reviewer for Books for Keeps and Just Imagine Story Centre.
He writes a blog on building reading communities in schools and talks about books at every possible opportunity.
Pembroke Dock Community School
The Open University
Teresa Cremin is Professor of Education (Literacy) at The Open University. Teresa is a Fellow of the English Association and the Academy of Social Sciences, a Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, a Trustee of UKLA and the Society for Educational Studies, a Board Member of Booktrust, co-convenor for the BERA Creativity SIG and a member of the ESRC Peer Review College.
Her socio-cultural research is frequently co-participative, involving teachers as researchers within and beyond the classroom. Her research interests relate to teachers’ literate identities and practices, pedagogies which foster building communities of readers and writers and the role of creativity in teaching and learning.
Teresa has written and edited over 25 books and numerous papers and professional texts, most recently Building Engaged Communities of Readers: Reading for Pleasure(2014, Routledge) Researching Literacy Lives : Building Home School communities (Routledge , 2015) and editing Learning to teach in the Primary School (3rd edition) (Routledge, 2014) and The International Handbook of Research into Children’s Literacy, Learning and Culture (2013, Wiley Blackwell) with colleagues.
University of Cambridge
Dr Helen Demetriou is a chartered psychologist and currently teaches at the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge. Her research here and also at the Institute of Psychiatry in London has covered areas in developmental psychology and education.
She has researched for OFSTED, QCA and DfE and published widely on topics including friendships, pupil consultation, teachers’ professional learning, empathy, and currently, ways of developing creativity in the design and technology classroom. Helen is on the editorial advisory board for journals including Improving Schools, Social Development, and Educational Studies. Her book, Empathy, Emotion and Education (2018) was published by Palgrave Macmillan Press.
Publishing Director
Anne founded Anne McNeil Creative Limited in February 2022 after almost forty years’ experience working in Children’s Publishing – for the last thirty as a Publishing Director at two of the UK’s most prestigious imprints, Hodder Children’s Books, part of Hachette, and Bodley Head Children’s Books, part of PRH.
Known for her unique vision, editorial flair, business insight and commercial awareness, she has developed and led the careers of some of the UK’s most prestigious writers and illustrators.
Author
Entrepreneur
Meeta is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of international experience in Business Strategy Consulting, Operations and Marketing. She co-founded consulting firm MetaValue in 2012 with the vision to be an antidote to austerity by helping more businesses grow and thrive. Since founding, MetaValue has delivered projects across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. The company has been a leading supplier to the Cabinet Office on two flagship programmes that aimed to support the redesign of public services with innovative new models of delivery. MetaValue’s work has been recognised and presented at the Cabinet Office as best practice in the sector.
Meeta is also a well-established business mentor for start-ups and SMEs in the UK. She has worked with Universities, Business Accelerators, Local and Central Governments and the European Regional Development Fund to support over 300 start-up, SMEs and social innovators to bring bold ideas to life and amplify their impact. She has been a specialist advisor at innovation foundations such as Nesta and The Young Foundation to support social innovators addressing some of the most pressing issues of our times.
Meeta is Chairperson of the Advisory Board of award-winning social enterprise – Auticon – that creates employment opportunities for autistic people in the technology sector, placing them on projects with large Fortune 500 companies. Meeta is also on the Board of Money A+E, a non-profit working to support disadvantaged minority communities with money advice and education. Previously she was a Member of the Independent Advisory Panel for the British Army’s Defence College of Logistics, Policing & Administration.
Meeta was one of six women in the UK named Asian Women of Achievement (Entrepreneur) in 2014. She is part of Women of the Future Network – a national forum for high potential women in business.
A believer in the unlimited potential for good in every human, for over 20 years, Meeta has been an active local community volunteer with SGI – an international organisation committed to peace through dialogue, education and culture. She is also an amateur painter with an ambition to ace her game in watercolour.
Headteacher
Sonia is the Head Teacher at St Matthew’s C.E. Primary School, in Nechells, Birmingham: the first winner of the OU/UKLA Whole School Reading for Pleasure School of the Year.
She is passionate about evidence-based reading for pleasure practices and places these at the heart of the school.
