Susanna Lawson

Judge

Susanna started her career as a psychology graduate from the University of Manchester and went on to work with adults with learning difficulties. Susanna then had to complete an NVQ in care to demonstrate her practical competencies – and her involvement in vocational training began. After completing her NVQ levels 2 and 3, she soon moved up the ranks, and was appointed the National Contract Manager for an independent training provider, overseeing 1,000 apprentices across the UK. Throughout her journey she witnessed huge inefficiencies at every stage of the sector, and together with her partner decided to build a solution: OneFile. OneFile is now the leading eportfolio software in the educational sector and was awarded the Queen’s Award for Innovation in 2017 and 2022 for innovation in the apprenticeship sector. Susanna and her partner exited OneFile in October 2021, selling to Harris Computers, part of the Constellation Software group, the 2nd largest tech company in Canada. Susanna remains an ambassador for OneFile – promoting apprenticeships as well as being a non-exec director and advising start up and scale up businesses in the education and technology sector including Metaverse Learning and Notebook EPAO.