Catherine Hitchen

Cath leads the strategic direction, global delivery, and continuous improvement of Ciarb’s education and training programmes, ensuring they remain world-class, innovative, and accessible. She also oversees faculty development, quality assurance, and the expansion of professional development opportunities for our members.

Cath joined Ciarb in 2024, leading the Education Training Reform (ETR) to align Ciarb’s education and training portfolio with its global mission while ensuring high-quality learning experiences.

Originally an engineer, Cath followed her passion for learning and development into education. Over the past 15 years, she has held senior leadership roles in schools with significant international reach, earned a master’s degree in educational leadership, and led major curriculum and assessment projects worldwide.

Prior to Ciarb, she was Head of Curriculum at a UK-based independent school with franchised partners across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. In that role, Cath acted as a consultant to advise on delivering UK curricula overseas, aligning resources and process to maximise quality and efficiency, and creating commercially attractive, progressive models of curriculum design.