Co-opted Governor
Tom was appointed a Co-opted Governor of JTHS in March 2026. Tom is an award-winning nationally recognised computer scientist, community leader, educator, and former academic, with over a decade’s experience working in and around Technology and Higher Education in the West Midlands. In addition to his work founding and leading HackTheMidlands and leading TechMids, Tom also became the youngest ever Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) in 2020 for his work in community engagement and higher education (“HE”) pedagogy and having helped to reform the BCS’ Fellowship process (along with both strategic and grassroots work in the sector) became a Fellow of the BCS (FBCS) in 2022.
Tom still maintains strong ties with HE in the West Midlands, continuing to operate closely with the University of Birmingham as an alumnus, keeping in touch with their Development and Alumni Relations Office (DARO) and senior leadership, and at times as a visiting lecturer. Further work includes advising and collaborating with the Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine (SQMB) in their public outreach (helping to put on a diabetes ‘Health Hackathon’ for school students), and he also sustains relationships with WMG (University of Warwick) as a former Fellow of the Warwick Institute of Engagement (WIE), and Aston University and Birmingham City University through his work on the BCS Birmingham Branch Committee.
Students are immensely proud of their school, and one spoke for many when they described the sixth form as ‘where the magic happens’. (Ofsted, May 2025)
