About Ali Durban, MBE
I am the founder of The Single Collective, a relational leadership and culture practice working with MAT CEOs, senior leadership teams and organisations.
I am also the co-founder of Gesher School, three times Ofsted Outstanding and recognised nationally for its pioneering work in SEND education. In 2025, I was awarded an MBE for services to children and young people with SEND. I have raised over £15 million in philanthropic income for inclusive education.
My work sits at the intersection of leadership, culture, inclusion and organisational change. Over the years I have become less interested in strategy on its own and more interested in what allows people to bring it to life together. The difference is rarely the vision, it is the quality of the relationships behind it.
The work
For more than twenty-five years, I have worked across education and the wider social impact sector as a founder, leader, coach and consultant. The question that has followed me throughout that time is why good organisations, with good people and good intentions, still struggle to create lasting change.
Again and again, I have found the same answer.
Organisations invest heavily in clarity, strategy, structures and plans. What often receives less attention is the relational capacity needed to bring those things to life. Culture is shaped by the interaction between the two.
Through The Single Collective, I run Leading from the Inside Out, a ten-month leadership and culture programme for MAT CEOs and senior leadership teams. The programme develops both organisational clarity and relational capacity, helping leaders build the trust, ownership and shared responsibility that allow culture to thrive.
Alongside leadership coaching, I undertake strategic consultancy and research. This includes authoring Changing the Narrative, commissioned by Wohl Legacy, which maps the employment and support ecosystem for young people with SEND, neurodivergence and mental health needs.
Alongside my work with trusts, I remain deeply connected to SEND education through Gesher School. Since opening in 2017, Gesher has become a recognised model of inclusive practice and has been judged Outstanding by Ofsted on three occasions.
Outside the practice
I write and speak about MAT leadership, SEND inclusion, and school culture. Recent appearances include the Festival of Education, Education Business Live, and the FED National Education Summit. I have also written for Schools Week on the SEND system, and regularly for The Bridge, Gesher School’s professional publication.
I co-chair the SEND Council at the Foundation for Education Development. I am a trustee of Bloomsbury Football, which works with over 6,000 children and young people each week. I sit on the Education Council of the Autism Centre of Excellence.
Today, my work sits at the intersection of leadership, culture and inclusion. I work primarily with MAT CEOs, senior leadership teams, charities and funders seeking to create stronger cultures, deeper belonging and greater collective ownership across the systems they lead.
Ali Durban
Director
Culture changes when relationships do. That is as true for the adults leading a school as it is for the children inside it.