01 / AboutThe short version

A practitioner, not a deck.

Twenty years inside higher education — now spent helping other leaders drive real change.

I have led at school, university and sector levels: Leadership roles in Business schools including Associate Dean at Salford Business School, Director roles in Advance HE, and now Director at HE Perform building financial modelling tools for the English sector.

Along the way I have turned around underperforming schools, contributed to national leadership programmes, run portfolio reviews at Russell Group and post-92 universities, and advised governments and ministries from MENA to APAC on TNE, EdTech and assessment.

The work is practical. The deliverable is change you can see in the numbers and in the room.

02 / PracticeWhat I do

Tailored, practical, measurable.

→ 01
Strategy & portfolio design
Portfolio reviews, reconfiguration, micro-credentials.
→ 02
Performance & process
Turnaround and assessment at scale.
→ 03
Digital & innovation
Learning analytics, AI in assessment, EdTech strategy.
→ 04
Enterprise & international
TNE, partnerships in MENA, APAC and Central Asia.
03 / Exec SimsBespoke for senior leaders

Decisions under pressure, in a room you control.

Beyond the public scenarios, I design and facilitate bespoke executive simulations for vice-chancellors, executive teams and governing bodies.

The simulations on this site are deliberate tasters — short, single-player scenarios you can run in a browser. The work I do with senior leaders is something else: a multi-strand, facilitated exercise built around your institution, your committees and your live decisions.

The point isn't to find the right answer. It's to surface how this team actually decides under pressure — where the friction is, where governance holds, and where it bends.

Read more about Executive Simulations ↗

04 / ContactSay hello

Let's talk.

Tell me what you're working on.

— Email charles@charlesknight.co.uk ↗ — LinkedIn /in/dr-charles-knight ↗ — Bluesky @charlesknight.bsky.social ↗