By Sarah Dale
19 March 2026
Dr Nichole Munro’s route into education was anything but typical.
In fact, she left school with few qualifications, boarded a plane to Spain and spent her late teens running a motorbike shop and a car rental business. She moved between Spain and Germany, rode motorbikes and as she jokes, “earned the scars to prove it”. It was an unconventional beginning for someone who would go on to lead educational organisations – and eventually become the CEO of Atomix Educational Trust, which comprises Prior Pursglove College in Guisborough, Stockton Sixth Form College, Errington Primary School in Marske, Guisborough Montessori at Prior Pursglove, and Bishopton PRU in Billingham.
But unconventional is exactly what defines her.
Returning to the UK as a young mum, Munro wandered into her local FE college “just to see what there was”. Within 10 minutes, a receptionist had whisked her off to meet staff. By the Monday, she had enrolled – not for the GCSEs she expected, but for A levels in Spanish and German after surprising tutors by switching fluently between both languages.
That moment changed everything.
Encouraged to speak to Professor Roger Wright at the University of Liverpool, she found herself signing up for a combined degree in Hispanic Studies and English. She completed it in three years rather than four, welcomed her second child in the May and graduated in the June – a pace that has become her signature.
“I have never let anything stop me,” she says. “That’s been a hallmark of my life. Sometimes you have to push back against the rules, although rules matter. But if you want something enough, you make it happen.”
It is a mantra she has lived by ever since.
Inspired by the teachers who encouraged her, she decided to go into teaching. After completing a Cert Ed and then a PGCE while raising her daughters Farah and Danisah, Munro gravitated to the hardest places in education: inner-city schools and exclusion units. At the notorious St Thomas Beckett School in Liverpool, she found the environment that shaped her.
“I learned my craft there. I saw everything,” she reflects. “That’s where I realised what giving a damn really meant.
“I found teaching really easy. I loved the data and the planning.”
She still remembers running lunchtime reading groups for 15-year-old boys who were about to leave school unable to read or write. They came because they trusted her. Because they thought she was “cool and alright” and grew up on the Hillside estate in Liverpool like them. Did it change everything? “Maybe not their academic outcomes,” she says, “but it changed their confidence. And sometimes that’s the start.”
This belief – that education must belong to everyone – still underpins her leadership today.
Munro went on to manage inclusion and work-based learning for a local authority, securing a £1m European funding bid to develop an innovative 14–19 programme. She later led English, maths and IT at Southport College, moved into teacher training, published widely, taught at Edge Hill University, and became an Ofsted inspector specialising in MFL, English and teacher education.
Her trajectory was rapid, driven by curiosity and an instinct for strategy.
“I’ve always had a strategic mindset,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to make things better.”
Then came an email that changed everything again: a job in Saudi Arabia. Within weeks she was on a plane, leaving her daughters temporarily with their father and stepping into a world that would shape her profoundly.
In a country still navigating reforms, Munro led curriculum design, helped open some of the first women’s colleges of excellence, mentored new principals, and worked across Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Her reputation soared.
She helped establish one of the first all-girls football teams in Saudi Arabia and introduced driving licence preparation for women two years before they were legally allowed to drive, with a prince’s permission.
“I lived and breathed it,” she says. “Their culture, their homes, their mosques. They embraced me fully.”
These experiences brought with them what she now considers one of Atomix’s greatest assets: a deeply international perspective.
“I believe every young person should have opportunities to experience different countries,” she says. “It creates compassion, understanding and respect.”
When Covid hit and international work stalled, she pivoted again, working with the Education and Training Foundation, and later taking a senior role in Kuwait. But eventually, her second husband, whom she had met in Saudi Arabia, asked her to consider returning to the UK permanently.
A huge believer in lifelong learning, she returned to her studies to complete her doctorate.
In late 2023 she received a quiet suggestion: an education trust in the North East needed turning around. Liverpool born and bred and living in the Midlands, she didn’t know where Guisborough was. Her husband told her to ignore it.
She didn’t.
Two interviews later she became interim CEO of Atomix Educational Trust. She arrived on 10 January 2024 and quickly realised she wasn’t going anywhere.
“What keeps me here is the people,” she says. “I feel deeply connected to them. This is our community. Our families. I have a responsibility to them.
“Building the Trust transcends all of us. We have all got to do our part and do it meaningfully. We have to get it right for these kids.
“Be like water. That’s how I describe myself. If you hit a rock and you’re water, then you move over it, move under it, and wear it down over time. We have got to be like that.”
Ultimately, if Nichole is in your corner, then you have someone who will fight relentlessly for you – and it is this spirit which drives her commitment to her students and staff.
Her leadership style is high-accountability and high-trust, which is “scary for some”, she admits. But it is rooted in empathy.
“If there’s a problem, tell me. We sort it out together. Trust goes both ways.”
Her ambitions for Atomix are bold:
- A journey to excellence and outstanding.
- A Trust built for the next 50–100 years.
- International experiences for students.
- A “golden hour” linking schools with peers worldwide.
- A SEND charter embedded across every setting.
- Meaningful civic duty: paid days for staff to engage in community projects.
- New approaches to attendance and belonging.
- A relentless belief that every child deserves access to high-quality education.
- A new Trust-wide brand and culture rooted in the core values of compassion, equity, community, respect, courage and possibility.
“Everyone in this country can achieve more if they want to,” she says. “The only barriers are the ones we create.”
Away from education, Munro sings and plays guitar in her semi-professional band, The Acoustic Academy.
“It’s one of the only times I switch off completely,” she says. “Food and music. I always say feed the community and feed the soul.”
She reads voraciously too, remembering vividly the moment she first read on her grandmother’s knee at the age of four.
Now 49, what would she tell her 16-year-old self and what does she tell young people?
“I wouldn’t change a single thing because there’s no point planning as life doesn’t work out that way. I have very high standards of myself. I have integrity. I expect the same from everyone around me.
“Don’t plan too tightly. Life won’t follow it. Have a notion of where you want to go and work towards it. Work hard. Say yes to more opportunities. Do the right thing even when no one is watching.”
It is, in many ways, the philosophy that took her from a motorbike shop in Spain to the CEO’s office of a growing educational Trust.
And she’s not finished yet.
What’s next?
“Getting this Trust into a growth mindset. Getting to outstanding. And taking my band to America. I want to play in Knoxville.”
With her record of making things happen, you wouldn’t want to bet against her.
[An edited version of this feature first appeared in Tees Business Spring 2026]
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