About Samira Sadeghi
Samira is Director of Trust Governance at the Confederation of School Trusts (CST). She has been involved in school governance for over a decade. Prior to joining CST, she served as Head of Governance and Company Secretary at Academies Enterprise Trust (now Lift Schools), a trust with 57 schools. She started her career in governance with Ark Schools, as a regional governance officer, overseeing governance at 17 schools in London. Before she moved to the U.K. with her family in 2010, Samira was a criminal defence attorney in California representing men on death row on their habeas corpus petitions for almost 12 years.
At CST, Samira draws heavily on her firsthand experiences working in trusts, both on company secretarial matters as well as the usual wide range of governance areas including exclusions, complaints, data protection and admissions. While at Lift, she managed a complete overhaul of board and committee processes, as well as putting in place at all 57 schools a new local governance model focused on localism and community partnering. While at Ark, she managed governance across all of Ark's 17 London schools.
Samira is a dynamic speaker, inspiring trust leaders to reimagine governance and pursue a more nuanced approach as stewards to delivering high quality education to our children and young people. She also has a particular expertise in suspensions and exclusions, having been involved in hundreds of cases in various capacities and making use of the knowledge she gained on death row of the impact of trauma and adverse childhood experiences on behaviour. She is also an affiliated member of the Chartered Governance Institute.
