EPeeps Emma McAllister | Chief Operating Officer

Kia ora! I’m Emma, the Chief Operating Officer at Education Perfect. I am originally from Scotland and made the big move over to Ōtepoti/Dunedin, New Zealand in 2015 with my Kiwi partner, Jack. I studied primary teaching at Aberdeen University with plans to have a long career in teaching. When I moved to Dunedin I picked up a temporary role at Education Perfect, joining in February 2015 as an Enrolments Assistant. This temporary role was only supposed to be until my degree was assessed however fast forward to 2022 and I’m still loving the journey I’m on at EP! It’s been an amazing 7 years, working with an incredibly passionate team of EPeeps.

Outside of work I’m a pretty active person. I get up at 5am each morning and fit in a gym session or run before getting to the office around 7:30am. I enjoy running and usually fit in 3 runs a week.

(Fitting in a morning run on our recent trip to Sydney. It was lovely catching up face to face after over 2 years of no international travel!)

Why do you love working at EP?

The people and the culture! Since I joined EP, we’ve been on a tremendous journey of high growth which has enabled us to grow the team from around 30 when I joined to over 230 today. I love how passionate the team is and how much we celebrate success across the company.

We have a #ka-pai Slack channel where EPeeps can give a shout out to another person. We see a regular stream of shout outs coming through like this one below.

We’ve got such a helpful team who always look out for each other so it’s lovely to see these little moments of recognition.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I love being part of a company that is driven by its mission to humanise technology, focused on improving student learning outcomes. My role is incredibly varied allowing me to work with talented EPeeps from lots of different areas across the company. Our focus on continuous improvement, and working in an operational role, means we’re always looking for creative and innovative ways to improve the way we do things. No two days are ever the same and there’s an endless list of areas to focus on!

What are you most excited about? 

12 months ago I started long distance running, with an aim to run a full marathon by the end of 2021. I completed a half marathon in May 2021 and then had three failed attempts at running a full marathon in the following six months due to postponed and cancelled events. It’s still a life goal for me to complete the 42km!

What is your proudest moment?

I’m incredibly proud of how well the team supported our teacher community during the very first Covid-19 lockdown. As well as transitioning to remote working themselves and a number of EPeeps juggling the challenges of homeschooling their own children, our team rallied together to provide exceptional service and support for the additional 500k students using the EP platform during that period.

The team truly lived out our #oneteam & #supportandcare values and I’m thankful to work with such dedicated team members. We received so much positive feedback from users during this period who really appreciated the prompt and professional support from our team.

(Our first fully remote All Staff meeting. The format worked so well that we adopted it as our new format moving forward.)

Goals for the next 3 months?

I co-lead ‘Te Ohu Tāwharau’, our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion committee at Education Perfect which was formed at the end of 2021. We have ambitious goals focused on: 

  • Rolling out a DEI training calendar across the company
  • Supporting EPeeps who have English as an additional language
  • Evolving our recruitment practices to increase diversity across teams 
  • Acknowledging and celebrating broader cultural celebrations

I’m excited to share our progress and measure the impact this has on our team.

Tell us about your pet(s)!

I have a tabby cat called Mae. She keeps us entertained with her random sleeping positions!

What advice would you pass on to a younger version of yourself?

Get out there and see the world and experience living in another country. I was always incredibly focused on following the ‘traditional’ path of going to study and finding a job straight away. If it wasn’t for my Kiwi partner I’d probably still be living in Scotland working in the same town! Take a chance – everything happens for a reason and it’ll all fall into place!

Where is somewhere you’d like to visit?

I’m very fortunate to have recently been home to visit my family in Scotland for the first time in over 3 years. It was lovely to visit family and experience a winter Christmas again! There’s still lots of places I’d like to visit in Scotland, including the West Coast as I haven’t spent much time there. Next up on the list of places to visit is Dubai. Alex, our Chief Sales & Marketing Officer lives there and it looks incredible!

(Scottish winter – a great time to enjoy ice-cream with my niece and nephew!)

Any last words you would like to share?

If you’d like to hear more about being an EPeep or are keen to join the journey, reach out to me on LinkedIn – here.