Founder and CEO

Previously an award-winning Advanced Skills Teacher and Harvard author (‘TechnoTeaching’), Nic Ponsford is now an educational and technology thought leader.

Nic believes that technology is the great equaliser for our time. With a successful career in edtech and experienced school improvement coach, Nic had supported schools online and offline with needs analysis frameworks, bespoke coaching and teacher training for two decades. Ever practical, Nic has been working across the edtech industry ever since she qualified as a teacher and has been awarded the status of Apple Teacher, Microsoft Innovator Educator Expert Trainer and has written online courses for a range of clients including Anti-Bullying for FutureLearn, Future of Work for TechPathways, Inclusive Digital Literacy for Microsoft's MEC and a range of digital curriculums and guides for private organisations. She has also been External Subject Advisor for Media (OCR) for over a decade and remains passionate about all students being both media and digitally literate.

On being invited into a EDI Twitter group in late 2017, Nic realised that everyone was looking to someone else to ‘fix’ inclusion. She knew a collective approach was needed and places of learning needed to be educated in intersectional inclusion for staff rooms, classrooms and playgrounds alike. It was out of this frustration Nic sought to do this, but make it also accessible, affordable and impactful. The solution is the Global Equality Collective (GEC) (2020) and the GEC Platform (2022) .

In just three short years, the GEC has built an online community of 15K+, a collective of 300+ DEI subject matter experts and raised over £300K to build the GEC Platform, the “world’s first diversity and inclusion app” for education.

Whilst creating the GEC Platform, Nic was headhunted by the DfE for central roles during the pandemic, Nic is about to co-lead on the DfE Accesstive Technology Project with Microlink and nasen, after a successful pilot with 80 schools last year. Nic is currently a lecturer at Leeds Beckett university, MSc in Digital Pedagogy and Deputy Head of Education at Microlink. She is also studying for a Doctorate (started in 2018) to research how edtech can impact on staff training and inequality in education.

The GEC Platform was launched In the year 2022 and Nic was immediately recognised as one of Europe's top 50 women in tech through the #InspiringFiftyEurope2022 award, and the Rising Stars Award in the Education and Academia category. This year the GEC has already been shortlisted in the Business Cloud Edtech50, Women in IT ‘DEI Platform of the Year’ and was a finalist for the BETT Award for Innovator of the Year (2023).

Nic is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist on champion real change for the most vulnerable and marginalised in our society, #techforgood and #futureofwork,

Nic is passionate about diversity and inclusivity on and offline - and advocates that this will only happen through collaboration, conversation and immediate action.

She believes it’s time to get #SmashingStereotypes; to make ordinary classrooms extraordinary inclusive, for all.

Chief Operations Officer

I’m Gem, I’m Chief Operations Officer - or "the glue that holds it all together".

I've worked in administration in one area or another for the last 20 odd years. Gradually working from a general administrator to Office Manager to PA to Executive PA . Like many women, I found that I had to leave my job after having a baby because the flexibility needed to fulfil an Exec PA role and look after a young child just wasn't there at the time.

I started helping out a neighbour with their baking business, taking over all the admin and customer service for them so they could concentrate on their product and suddenly realised that virtually assisting someone from my own home could actually be a 'thing'. I was making a difference in their business while working around my child's routine.

Nic and I are close friends from school and have known each other for over 30 years. We caught up on the phone one day, me sharing my news of starting my own Virtual PA business and Nic sharing her news of this amazing start-up idea that was going to change the world. It was a real 'meant to be' moment and the timing couldn't have been more perfect for us both.

I truly feel that everything I had learnt over the years had been building to this moment. Now I have two boys of my own, the need for them to be brought up in an inclusive world with equal rights for all is more important than ever. So to be working for the GEC and to achieve our dream - to help break new ground with equality, diversity and inclusion has been one of my proudest achievements to date. Our Collective blow me away on a daily basis and I am so proud to be part of this movement!

Chief Global Strategist

After a decade of working in the education sector, Kimmy Rihal is passionate about speaking out for the underserved and creating opportunities for all. Initially a Virtual School Head at the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea before becoming Assistant VSH at the London Borough of Islington, Kimmy went on to be nominated as the Mayor of London’s Future Leader in Education due to her passion, commitment and impact for young people across the city.

Since then, Kimmy has striven to open doors for others. She is a Trustee of Social Business Trust and an active member of the BAMEd network. Kimmy is also a member of the Impetus Leadership Academy, a youth leadership development programme, supporting UK talent from ethnic minority backgrounds into senior leadership roles.

Kimmy has vast experience of growing high performing teams. Previously, co-founding Equal Education (2012-23), a social enterprise that provides bespoke tutoring for vulnerable and disadvantaged learners - with a focus on Children Looked After, those who are adopted and SEND. In her strategic role, she single-handedly took this organisation, from a small enterprise working in London to a high-growth organisation, with over 1000 children in the UK and has a tutor network of over 1,000 tutors, serving students and schools across the UK.

Kimmy joined the Global Equality Collective as Chief Global Strategist in 2024.

Assistant Head of Operations

Naqeeb was an undergraduate student at the University of Surrey and interned for the GEC on his placement year as an Executive Assistant in 2022. We are delighted that Naqeeb is continuing to work supporting GEC Members and our community.

Naqeeb is passionate about fighting racial inequality within education and the workplace, religious discrimination within the workplace and education.

He wants to educate people on issues regarding systematic racism and how kids of colour are put at a disadvantage from an early age.

Naqeeb was lucky enough to grow up in an area where there’s a lot of multiculturalism and from a young age he got to learn that there’s beauty in all cultures. He wants to teach others about that beauty through his writing and conversations with people from different parts of the UK.

He hopes that by working with the GEC he can play a crucial role in promoting Gender Equality, Racial Equality and Religious Inclusion within places of learning around the country and the world!