24 February 2025
A month into her role as Impetus’ CEO, we sat down with Susannah to talk about her passion for supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, why she chose to leave her previous position as founder of our portfolio partner Action Tutoring to join Impetus, and her vision for leading our organisation going forward.
Action Tutoring is a charity I founded in 2012; it partners with state schools to provide cost-effective, evidence-based tutoring to support pupils facing disadvantage, who are at risk of leaving school without basic qualifications. It aims to close the attainment gap between these pupils and their peers, and ensure every pupil has the opportunity to succeed.
Ensuring young people achieve good qualifications is an essential foundation for future employment. Research shows 29% of young people without level 2 qualifications (GCSE equivalent) by age 18 are not in education, employment or training (NEET) - compared with just 15% of those who do attain these qualifications.
Shortly after I graduated and was working for a charity in London, I began to do some private tutoring on the side. I noticed that many families from the more affluent areas of London were willing to unreservedly invest in tutoring because it made a significant difference to their children’s grades.
At the same time, living in Southeast London, I was involved with local youth work. I became concerned that the children and young people I worked with were no less able or talented than those I tutored from the more affluent backgrounds – they just lacked the access to resources their peers had. Aware of the stark inequality in London and across the country, I began to look for other graduates who might be willing to tutor pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds free of charge.
My research into educational attainment highlighted the importance of achieving a 9-4 grade in core subjects like English and maths at GCSE, inspired me to take my learnings from tutoring into action. I set up and ran a pilot programme in 2011 with local schools in Hackney and Peckham and found it reaped substantial impact for the students who received tutoring.
And so, Action Tutoring was born. The organisation was then registered as an official charity in 2012 and entered the Impetus portfolio in 2014.
Supporting children and young people early in life unlocks incredible potential later. They’re so fun to work with and setting them on the right path early makes all the difference.
I believe Action Tutoring would not be where it is today without Impetus' incredible support. Impetus’ biggest asset is their core, long-term and unrestricted funding. Having a substantial, sustained investment can be transformational for a start-up or growing charity: navigating restrictive funding – where grants are limited to frontline work or confined to specific regions – can be extremely limiting. The funding from Impetus enabled Action Tutoring to hire key roles and strengthen the team.
Impetus stands out as an example of philanthropy done well: it has the potential to influence other funders by demonstrating how strategic, long-term investment can truly empower organisations.
But Impetus provides more than core funding – we offer capacity building and pro bono support through our world-class network. We connect organisations with more than 350 professionals who provide expert guidance in leadership coaching, strategic planning, impact management, finance, and legal issues. Smaller, start-up organisations often lack access to this kind of support.
And then there’s the Impetus Peer Forum, which brings the leaders of all our portfolio partners together to share insights, address challenges and support one another. It’s something truly special.
By equipping organisations with the tools, guidance and community they need, we help them grow sustainably, creating lasting change for young people.
As well as direct investment in our portfolio partners, Impetus does brilliant policy work to create widescale solutions for the issues that our young people face. We’ve helped organisations navigate government-backed policy initiatives, such as the National Tutoring Programme. We bridge the gap between policy work and research that might otherwise sit forgotten in a dusty drawer, bringing it to life, by connecting it to the realities on the ground. That blend of direct delivery and influencing system change to have an impact on thousands more young people, is such an exciting combination.
So, for me, the opportunity to stay in this sector - but on the other side of the fence – is hugely exciting. I’m excited tosupport more organisations on their journey of impact and growth for issues I care passionately about. Alongside this, I get to do systems-changing policy work, building collaborations to work for the good of young people.
There are three big challenges Impetus must address in our work, the first of which is the growing need amongst young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. From the moment they start school, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds face stark inequalities – higher rates of absence and exclusion, and they’re 40% less likely to achieve good GCSEs. By adulthood, they’re twice as likely to be out of education, employment or training than their peers – with qualifications only explaining half of this gap.
How do we ensure they have the opportunities they need and deserve, to succeed in school, work and life?
The second problem is how we can take more impact-led interventions to scale. At Impetus, we work shoulder-to-shoulder with our partner organisations to help them become stronger, bigger and better. We help them to develop additional revenue streams and grow their income, enabling them to work with more young people, while maintaining a focus on the impact brought to young people’s lives.
We have a strong track record of creating impact, as shown by our work with long-standing partners such as Resurgo. They went from reaching 180 young people upon entry into our portfolio in 2010 and left reaching 1,052 young people in 2022/23. And take IntoUniversity, who have grown from a start-up charity in 2007 to reaching 52,000 young people across the country. We need to keep up with this track record, continuing to expand our reach while remembering to keep young people at the heart of everything we do.
The final challenge is how we can make a real dent in the problem at a societal level. To drive systemic change, it’s crucial to produce evidence-based research, build coalitions, and push for policy change - which is not always a smooth or easy process. The key lies in bridging the gap between frontline delivery and policy work, ensuring the incredible efforts happening on the ground are not only recognised, but amplified. By bridging these two sides together more effectively, we can create momentum, drive change, and unlock the full potential of the sector.
I believe Impetus is well equipped to tackle these challenges head-on. For more than two decades, we’ve delivered direct investment to organisations, while thinking about impact at every stage, and championed policy change. There are always lessons to learn but, at its core, our approach works.
And there’s something about “hope” and “mindset” that we must remember to keep at the forefront of our work – for young people to believe in themselves, understand that their situations can change, and know that their backgrounds don’t have to define their futures. Then we can empower them to live their lives to the fullest potential.
I see the CEO's role as like the conductor of an orchestra – bringing everything together to create harmony not just for us as a team but also for the young people we’re serving and ensuring we all “play in time”.
I've worked with Impetus for more than a decade; I still remember meeting the Investment Directors for the first time at Action Tutoring and the Driving Impact workshops they delivered, designed to shape and improve the partner organisation by setting bespoke goals and refining their mission.
Having experienced things from the ground up, I’m excited to continue working towards the same goal of transforming the lives of young people – this time from a different perspective at Impetus. While I’m confident my experience and insights will be valuable, I know I’ll be relying heavily on the wonderfully dedicated and talented Impetus team to create a beautiful harmony in transforming the lives of young people.
