Get to know us

Meet the Escentral team

Kind, empathetic, creative, and obsessed with helping you solve your timetabling and space management conundrums. We’re an eclectic mix of minds with a ton of experience, and we’re lucky to be able to say our team are some of the smartest, skilled and helpful people we’ve ever met.
Ben Moreland, Director
As Director of Escentral, Ben's passion is helping the education sector make the very best of the resources it has, to the benefit of both the people who work in it and the students who study within it. He built Escentral around this belief: that the right blend of experience and tools can help institutions take genuine, practical steps forward and see real results, not just recommendations on paper.

With 15 years of sector experience, Ben combines deep sector expertise with a calm, positive approach: building a team and a set of tools designed to give institutions exactly that blend of seasoned know-how paired with practical solutions that actually get used and actually work.

The Consultancy Team

A dedicated team of timetabling and space management heroes, with a ton of experience working as both consultants and within HE institutions.

Dave Beavis, Head of Space Management

With 18 years of strategic space management experience, Dave is able to identify, enhance and communicate complex space data confidently to support institutions make sound data-driven decisions. A keen problem-solver, seeking out the low-cost, high-impact solutions. Founder of HESMG (Higher Education Space Management Group) and inaugural chair of the AUDE SM group, Dave enjoys collaborating and creating innovative solutions to strategic space challenges facing HE, leading on the creation of various tools that are now routinely used by numerous institutions.

Samantha Kouchakji-Allen, Timetabling Consultant

Sam has over a decade of experience in higher education timetabling, with half that decade spent managing a timetabling team. She consults on a wide range of timetabling and space planning projects, with a keen focus on developing strong stakeholder relationships in order to promote best practice and positive change within the timetabling environment. She enjoys problem solving and working collaboratively to create robust timetabling processes.

Amy Wareing, Senior Project Delivery Consultant

Amy has over 15 years' experience in higher education timetabling and exam scheduling and has led multiple change projects at Escentral. Amy project manages many of Escentral's SMART projects, where she oversees delivery from planning through to implementation, ensuring projects run smoothly and clients get clear, practical results. She also enjoys creating straightforward solutions to complex problems, and is keen to share her knowledge and upskill timetabling teams so they're able to manage complex scheduling and problem-solving themselves.

Katharine Hughes, Senior Timetabling Consultant

Katharine has worked with timetablers for over 20 years in the Asia-Pacific, the UK and Europe. She has been involved in over 40 implementations of timetabling software solutions as a business consultant and trainer. Software is only part of the solution: Katharine believes in developing sound policy and communication strategies, working on continuous process improvement and leveraging the value of timetabling data.


Mary Ng, Senior Timetabling Consultant

Mary has over 19 years of timetabling experience across higher education, further education, and apprenticeship provision, helping institutions get the most from complex systems. As a Timetabling Manager at a large London-based HE institution, she managed conflicting estates and student and staffing priorities, improving processes through creative problem-solving. She’s also known for her system integration expertise, driving positive changes forward with structured training programmes, and implementing new practices and solutions.

Louise Smith, Senior Timetabling Consultant

Louise has over 20 years of timetabling experience in higher education, specialising in central timetabling services, complex system migrations, and large-scale change delivery. As Senior Timetabling Consultant, she led transformative timetabling and space management projects, reducing clashes and inefficient bookings through data-led scheduling. She's also known for guiding institutions through software migrations, while building strong stakeholder relationships and upskilling internal teams to embed lasting, sustainable processes.

The Data Team

Alex Savarani
Head of Data, AI & Technology

Alex leads Escentral's data, technology, and AI function, bringing deep expertise in modelling, simulation, and analytics to our services. Alex designs and develops much of Escentral's technical product offering - including analytical models and tools such as SMART - that underpin space and estate planning projects for clients.

Alex also manages the data team, providing technical mentoring and ensuring delivery quality across projects, while supporting client meetings where analytical credibility and clear technical explanation are needed. Alex is well known for turning complex data challenges into practical, repeatable solutions, and for identifying where AI and automation can add real value to our partner institutions.

Frazer Birch
Data Analyst

Frazer comes from a background of mathematical sciences, with experience of data analytics from a mathematical and finance perspective. Pursuing his interest in data to develop his skill set, Frazer provides thorough and detailed consultancy analyses in timetabling and space management projects.

Neha Ingavale
Data Engineer

Neha has a solid foundation in data engineering, developed through hands-on experience with cloud technologies and data workflows. She specializes in building and maintaining data pipelines, ensuring efficient data processing and integration. Neha collaborates with the data team at Escentral to manage cloud data, focusing on streamlining processes and delivering reliable data-driven solutions.
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Dan Stollenwerk
Business Intelligence Developer

Dan draws on his past work as an analyst to design and develop the tools that power our analytics and consultancy. Dan's work modernises Higher Education institutions by supporting more sophisticated analyses on resource demand and supply, and more efficient internal operations such as data collection, activity scheduling and clash resolution.

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The backbone of many of our consultancy and survey projects, our data superstars are expert data crunchers, ruthlessly hunting down themes and patterns and weeding out any anomalies. Your data couldn’t be in safer hands.

The Survey Team

Our survey team are our eyes in the sky and our boots on the ground. Experienced, diligent and discrete, they make sure every survey runs like clockwork.

Jody Ballard, Survey Manager

Before joining Escentral, Jody spent 10 years as a project manager, overseeing the global development of a major retailer. He project manages all the moving parts of our surveys, from route planning and recruitment of survey assistants to being onsite as your lead contact throughout survey weeks.

Survey Supervisors

Our dedicated team of survey supervisors started as survey staff, completing several surveys before becoming supervisors. They set up surveys on site, train staff, and everything else that goes into a smooth running survey.

Survey Assistants

Our survey teams do the walking, counting and data collection. Over the course of a year we have over 100 survey assistants, and every single one is thoroughly trained and carefully briefed so that your survey data is recorded with the utmost accuracy and care.

The Learning and Development Team

To say we are passionate about creating epic training experiences would be an understatement. We work with both our consultants and facilitators to research, develop and run all of our courses and events, and look after our amazing community in the Timetabling Academy. 

Katie Dennison, Partnerships & Community Manager

After seven years in marketing, Katie brings a wealth of client relationship development, communication, organisation, and event management skills to the team. She designs course content, moderates training sessions, looks after members in the Timetabling Academy, and keeps things running smoothly behind the scenes.

The Facilitator Team

Some of the brightest minds in their respective fields, our facilitators are strategic, smart and highly experienced. They’re also brilliant learning facilitators – patient, generous and on hand to make sure you get the best out of your learning. 

Svetlana Khalif

Timetabling Facilitator
Following her 28 years of timetabling and education management experience, Svetlana has a keen interest in creative solutions for complex problems. Acting as a link between the academic community, facilities management and other parts of the university administration, Svetlana is incredible at breaking down stereotypes and silos, and helping people to build positive and respectful working relationships at all levels in an organisation.

Poliana Tavares

Timetabling Facilitator
Poliana has been timetabling for 16 years and has a ton of experience in both training and leading timetabling teams. She is brilliant with handling the complicated world of curriculums. Universities and our learners love Poliana’s ability to explain the impact of different curriculum structures and translate even the trickiest curriculums so that they work with the timetable.

Kirsteen Williams

Space Management Facilitator
With 28 years of experience in the field, 25 of those spent leading a team, Kirsteen is an experienced Timetabler and Space Manager. She is used to working with small space footprints, balancing good utilisation, positive student experience, strategic institutional growth, and happy stakeholders. Kirsteen has successfully led multiple initiatives to centralise timetabling and space ownership. Her expertise also includes space modelling and forecasting to support curriculum development and estates planning. A natural problem solver, she understands the importance of high-quality data in driving informed decisions and sustainable solutions.

Craig Appleton

SPACE MANAGEMENT FACILITATOR
Craig is a senior strategic space planning and development professional. He has worked for over 30 years in the UK, USA and Australia to help strategically plan and manage space within educational and commercial environments. He currently works as Space Planning and Development Manager at Monash University.
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