Fulfilling Educational Potential

Mike O'Regan's career has weaved together education and technology, from his co-founding of the educational IT firm Research Machines, which was floated as RM plc in the 1990s, to his involvement in a range of educational charities.

He launched and chairs the Hamilton Trust, which reaches tens of thousands of teachers with its web-based support for school subjects, and also ran an education action zone in peripheral housing estates of Oxford. He also founded the charity PEEP, which supports the parents of pre-school children, and he has been appointed as a trustee of Science Oxford and a governor of both Oxford Brookes University and the Oxford Academy.

Having spent a year teaching in Uganda, he graduated in economics from Cambridge University and taught for two years before going into business. Much of his work today involves creating and financing start-up companies, such as his role as a non-executive director of the four Oxford Technology venture capital trusts he co-founded, and of several private companies.

O'Regan believes that society “underestimates the educational potential of children from areas of socio-economic disadvantage”, and suggests that it is “primarily through education and high expectations that these children can create for themselves the individual life opportunities they deserve”.