Paulette’s expertise ranges across non executive director (NED), strategic planning, organisation design, digital transformation, and leadership development. Her industry experience encompasses technology, software architecture design, professional services, engineering, financial services, people management and organisation development.

Born and raised in Newham, Paulette Watson understands the need for quality education for children and young people (CYP) from all backgrounds. From the head of Academy Achievers, she advocates for high-quality support in schools. She spent nearly 12 years working with students from disadvantaged backgrounds as a computer science teacher, Head of E-learning and Director of Information Communication Technology (ICT). The experience has helped her in the role of Managing Director of Academy Achievers and as a Digital Transformation consultant. She understands how to examine the mental inequality in education and is set on developing a digital road map to digitally include children and young people. Using her community projects, she analyses the mental inequality in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and explores the real-life experiences from children and young people’s unfair and bias treatments from the school system (being excluded) and the Police (especially now that facial recognition has severe biases).

Paulette Watson has spent a decade as an educational technologist. She was responsible for all aspects of the company’s communications capabilities that are meant to drive the performance of a business. From these abilities, she focused on Communication and Digital Transformational Strategy, Data Analytics, Gender Diversity, and Recruiting, skills that she has applied in the local community of Academy Achievers. During the years, Paulette Watson has implemented these values in the Academy’s management, so staff, Local community leaders, parents, children and young people would be digitally literate and be able to face the digital world.

Paulette is particularly interested in how lockdown has created a stark digital divide in the UK, with 1.9 million households with no access to the Internet and tens of millions more reliant on pay-as-you-go services to make phone calls or access healthcare, education and benefits online. Her concerns are how the technology is used across different sectors to potentially exclude BME groups.

Paulette received an M.B.A (International Leadership) and Masters (Information Communication Technology) degree from Institute of Education. Paulette also holds a Prince 2 qualification. Paulette has sat on several boards: Equality Team Lewisham as Treasurer and Vice-Chair, and Youth First as Non-Executive Director, a mutual owned and run by professional youth workers and young people. She also served on the Local School Board as a co-opted Governor at Cumberland Trust Secondary school. A recent member of the Newham Governors’ Forum Association (affiliated to the National Governance Association).

 Watson has been Associate Dean at Leysin International School in Switzerland leading on Digital transformation program in partnership with Google. Now she is leading the #BeMe campaign of raising 1 million BME girls' aspirations in Science Technology engineering math related careers. Her passion is aligning the #BeMe goals to the United Nation (UN) sustainable development goals: Education #4 Quality Education: Entrepreneurialism #8 Decent work and economic growth: Innovation #9Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: Social Inclusio#10 Reduced Inequalities