Johnny Rich has a number of roles including Chief Executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council, Chief Executive of the award-winning outreach organisation Push, and a consultant in higher education policy and communications. His past clients include the European Commission, HEPI, Youth Sight and a host of recruiters, education bodies and media organisations.

The Engineering Professors’ Council is the voice of engineering in UK higher education. Under Johnny’s stewardship since 2016, its membership has grown to over 8,000 academics in 85 universities and the EPC has become an influential force in national policy in HE, skills and industrial strategy.

Since founding Push in 1992, Johnny has built it into an influential award-winning non-profit organization support social mobility and providing information, advice and research about universities, careers and employability. Push runs an award-winning programme of outreach and training events that visits nearly 400 schools and colleges each year.

He is also Co-Chair of the Fair Access Coalition, a group of third sector organisations supporting disadvantaged young people; a board member of the Centre for Engineering Education; and a former director of the Higher Education Academy.

Johnny is widely regarded as an expert on HE access, student choice, information and opportunity, and on employability. As a contributor to various think tanks and strategy bodies, Johnny speaks and writes widely on policy debates in education, careers, wider participation and social mobility. He has recently spearheaded projects on school-leaver recruitment, work-related learning and social mobility.

With degrees from the Universities of Durham and East Anglia, his background also includes jobs in journalism, publishing, media relations, television production and web development. For eight years, he was a director of the Higher Education Academy. He appears regularly on television and radio and is author of the highly acclaimed novel The Human Script.