Grace Simpson

Director

Grace is an experienced consultant and public policy professional who holds a Master of Public Policy with distinction.

She has significant experience in English higher education policy, specialising in access and student success. As a consultant, she has delivered wide-ranging projects in the UK and Australia in education, justice and government and has a track record of successfully managing strategy development and evaluations. Grace has a strong research background with experience engaging with varied and hard-to-reach stakeholders.

Influential work

Developed an access and student success strategy for a large Russell Group university to reduce barriers for underrepresented undergraduate and postgraduate students
Supported a large research-intensive Australian university to develop its long-term strategy, developing provocations to support the senior leadership team to develop a more distinctive and ambitious vision
Managed a review of access and participation regulation reforms for the Office for Students (OfS) to assess the extent to which they it supported opportunity equality for students from underrepresented groups
Managed the impact and operational evaluations for a program aimed at widening access to higher education in England, delivering workshops and recommending actions to improve performance and outcomes
Managed the evaluation and supported the implementation of a program to support people with complex barriers to employment in England.

Outside of Nous

Before joining Nous, Grace was a senior consultant for a UK research consultancy, where she managed impact and operational evaluations relating to education and employment. Before this she worked for several years as a policy advisor for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) specialising in higher education policy. Latterly she led on policy relating to disabled students and postgraduate taught education.

Grace holds a Master of Science in Public Policy with distinction from the University of Bristol and a Bachelor of Sociology from the University of Manchester.

In her spare time...

Grace loves to travel and spent her first six months with Nous at our Melbourne office before returning to London. She runs a book club in her local area and has recently rediscovered a love of sewing, making shirts from recycled fabrics.