Philip Walters MBE

chair of Impero Software

Philip is Chair of Impero Software, the UK’s leading supplier of network management and monitoring/filtering solutions for schools.

Prior to that he was chair of CABI, the UK-based intergovernmental organisation which supports subsistence and small-holding farmers around the world. He was also chair of EdComs, the UK’s largest communications and marketing agency specialising in education; chair of GL Education, the leading provider of educational tests and assessments; and chair of Rising Stars UK, the second largest primary school publisher in the UK.  Before all that he was chief executive of Hodder Education, a Debating Matters sponsor and one of the top three school publishers in the UK. He was also chair of Book Source, and a director of Nelson Croom, Encyclopaedia Britannica (London), and Yale University Press (London). In the voluntary sector he was chair of Book Aid International, the charity that equips libraries in sub-Saharan African countries with textbooks and readers that would not be affordable otherwise. He has been an associate of the Academy of Ideas for more than 15 years, and was involved in the Debating Matters competition from a very early stage in its development. He was awarded an MBE for services to educational publishing in 2010.