Karen Wespieser named a new Chief Executive of Teacher Tapp as Laura McInerney moves into Co-founder position

Teacher Tapp’s CEO Laura McInerney announces she is stepping back into part-time Co-founder role at the daily survey app. She says she will now focus on external communications and sharing insights.

Writing on LinkedIn, McInerney announced that Karen Wespieser will now take over as Chief Executive.

McInerney says: “If you've met Karen you'll already know her efficiency, energy, educational intelligence and all-round capableness. Her experience in education research is extensive - including prior roles at NFER and CfBT. And for the past five years she's already led so much across Teacher Tapp and School Surveys that, frankly, her new title simply makes official much of what she’s already been doing!”

Wespieser has served as Chief Operating Officer at Teacher Tapp since 2020 and was previously Director of Operations at Driver Youth Trust and Managing Director of the Centre for Education Economics.

She has also previously held roles at the National Foundation for Educational Research and BBC Action Media.

Also on LinkedIn, Wespieser adds: “Following today’s announcement from Laura McInerney, I’ll be taking full responsibility for the team, operations and commercial direction. Huge thanks to Laura McInerney, Becky Allen and the whole Teacher Tapp / School Surveys team. It's an honour to take on leadership of such an amazing organisation. What’s next? Keep asking smart questions, build even better products for schools, and deepen our partnerships across the sector. If you’re a school, trust, policymaker or partner who wants to work with us, my inbox is open!”

As well as her new communications role, McInerney also shares that she is considering a return to teaching later this year. 

“To think that it all started as a chance conversation with Becky Allen, eight years ago, and led to us building an app that now serves 12,000+ teachers across 4 countries - and creates stats used by everyone, from the DfE to the BBC to headteachers in morning briefings and teachers in the staffroom at lunch is just amazing. That we had the small matter of a pandemic in the middle is even more befuddling,” McInerney adds.

Founded by two former teachers, Teacher Tapp is a survey app that asks teachers, mainly in England, three questions each day. It has more than 10,000 users and aims to help the government and education businesses better understand teacher views. 

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