Rowena Hackwood

Rowena joined Astrea as Chief Executive Officer in July 2020. She has significant experience in leading high profile organisations across the public, not-for-profit and private sectors. Before joining Astrea, Rowena was CEO at David Ross Education Trust (DRET) where from 2017, she embedded performance improvements, introduced a core knowledge curriculum, and led the trust in providing inspirational opportunities and educational excellence.

Rowena provides strong and visionary leadership to those she works with. She drives energetic change to ensure an organisation is the best it can be.

Rowena is also a passionate advocate of building capacity within the sector and works with the Ambition Institute as a trainer on their Executive Educators Programme, mentoring CEOs of growing academy trusts. She is part of the MAT Review Programme and is an active member on a range of advisory groups, including with the Department for Education. She has also served as a trustee with one of the largest academy trusts in the country.

Prior to joining the education sector, Rowena was the Chief Executive of a not-for-profit start-up in the regeneration sector, where she established and ran a £60 million regeneration project on the national stage.