VAL THOMAS - EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Val is a professional senior manager with over thirty years experience in the public, private, voluntary and community sectors. Her background includes strategic management, business planning, project delivery, research, analysis and training. She has a passion for continuous improvement, personal development and a proven ability to initiate, support and manage change..

Parallel threads in her working life have been learning and quality management. Since 1981 she has developed, designed and delivered training courses and seminars on various topics including initial management, counselling, health & safety, industrial relations, leadership and assertiveness.

Alongside these professional elements, Val has been an active citizen. She chaired the South Wales district of the Workers Educational Association for five years. There she taught lay tutors to become trainers, and was a Personal Safety First Tutor for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. For her Masters degree, she undertook research into bullying at work. For six years, she was the Head of DVLA’s Business Support and Training Unit with overall responsibility for the training programmes for its UK wide workforce of 3,500 staff, as well as the provision of efficiency and other management services.

She led the team that undertook the Best Value Review of Training for Lancashire Constabulary. As the Chief Officer of the British Deming Association she was involved with Quality movement worldwide, speaking and organising UK and international conferences as companies and individuals sought improvement through systems thinking and process management.

Val’s joined Foothold from the South West Wales Open College Network, where she built an unstoppable team who together turned the organisation from a failing business to one recognised for its professional approaches to accreditation and quality assurance in education.