Chris has worked in leadership roles in education for over three decades. She has been a headteacher of two large primary schools in inner city Coventry. Between the two substantive headships she worked for Warwickshire County Council as an inspector, supporting primary, secondary and special schools as their school improvement officer and in a specialist role, driving forward improvement across the county in primary schools’ infrastructure for ICT and the use of computing across the curriculum, leading a team of advisory teachers. 

During her last headship, her school became one of the first hundred Teaching Schools. This involved building a network of local schools into a Teaching School Alliance, providing in-service training locally, both for specific curriculum areas, but also providing training for supporting and improving the quality of teaching, the induction of early career teachers and different strands of the NPQ programme in collaboration with the National College. 

Since retirement, as a UKLA Trustee, she has been part of the Book Awards team and co-convenes the Awards committee with Joy Court.