Executive team

Greg Watson became Chief Executive of OCR in May 2004. He joined OCR just after its formation in 1998, and spent three years as its first Marketing & Sales Director, before becoming Managing Director and Deputy Chief Executive in 2001.

Greg also sits on the Chief Executives' Forum of the Joint Council for Qualifications, the umbrella organisation for the UK's major awarding bodies.

Greg graduated in Modern and Mediaeval Languages from Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1987. He worked for 10 years in the Shell Group, in a variety of marketing and business development roles across retail and business-to-business sectors. He was also involved there in IT systems development, logistics, quality management and process improvement.

Gerry joined OCR in 1999, first as Marketing Manager and then as Head of Marketing Strategy and Research. He has been the Director of Customer Support Division since January 2006.

Previously, he was Director of Marketing at a business consultancy (The Focus Group) and Director at a London communications agency. Before that he was Head of Marketing at Eastern Arts, a cultural development agency for the East of England. His original career was as a teacher, where he held posts up to acting Deputy Head before leaving to pursue a career in marketing and communications.

He is the chair of a leading cultural institution, Commissions East.

Colin Banks has over 20 years experience with awarding bodies in financial and operational roles.

He joined OCR as Operations Director at its formation in 1998 and was responsible for setting up OCR’s operations with its bases in Cambridge, Coventry and Birmingham.

With the largest Division in OCR, Colin plays a pivotal role not only within the organisation but also externally where he is at the forefront of OCR’s collaboration with regulators and the other awarding bodies on the shared delivery of Diplomas and GCSE/GCE operations.

Jean Marshall spent her career prior to joining OCR in teaching and in senior management roles in a number of schools, Further Education colleges and Higher Education establishments.

Throughout her teaching career she took the opportunity to further her professional development by working as an examiner in differing capacities for a range of awarding bodies.

Jean joined OCR in January 2001 as a senior manager for the Chair of Examiners' team. She was appointed as Director of Quality and Standards Division in October 2003 and as Accountable Officer for OCR in October 2004.

Dave joined OCR as Director of Sales and Marketing in 2001. He has extensive experience in Sales, Marketing and Business Development with both commercial and not for profit organisations operating in complex regulated markets.

Dave strongly believes that regardless of the desired business outcomes and the required measurement of success, achievement of success comes through the understanding and servicing of the customers’ needs.

He has a BSc Hons degree from Manchester University and has undertaken post graduate studies in General Management and Business Leadership at Cranfield University. Dave is also a fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management.

Paul became Director of Stakeholder Relations at OCR in 2005.

The division was created to further develop OCR's relationships with all organisations that have an interest in education and assessment and to work with them to influence the development of policy and regulation around qualifications.

Paul has a long track record of working with qualifications, having joined RSA Examinations Board in 1993.

He is also a founder and executive member of the Federation of Awarding Bodies (FAB).

Clara has been with OCR nearly 3 years - initially as Director of General Assessment - from Oct 2006 as Director of Qualifications Division. Prior to this Clara worked for CfBT delivering the Primary and Key Stage 3 Strategies for the DfES. This involved producing training materials and delivering training to every primary and secondary school in a range of subjects including maths and English.

Clara has five years experience working for BTEC and subsequently Edexcel - initially designing qualifications but then leading the project team that engineered the integration of BTEC and London Examinations. Her teaching experience was in FE and HE where she taught Economics, Management and Business Studies and became head of Faculty for Business and Computing.