Meet Cheryl

From Multiple Vantage Points. One Foundation.

Cheryl works where systems begin: education.

Cheryl Lacey is a cross-sector systems advisor with over 30 years’ experience examining how education, as a foundational system, drives workforce capability, regulatory performance, and long-term public trust.

She has led initiatives across schools, education systems, media, publishing, public policy, and entrepreneurship launching ventures from early education services and national curriculum platforms to international media projects.

Her career includes curriculum reform, legal-policy consulting, and senior advisory roles with education leaders across Australia and the U.S.

Cheryl brings a critical but often overlooked lens to school leadership and education system design: how fragmented or misaligned education systems create a ripple effect across entire economies and societies. When vocational training programs fail to align with industry needs, skilled worker shortages follow - driving up infrastructure costs and delaying criticial projects. When foundatational schooling is compromised, there is an undermining of confidence in education itself, reduced civic participation and societal disruption across health, justice, housing, employment, defence, and other critical portfolios.

Her insights directly serve school boards, system leaders and policy advisors who recognise that misjudgments carry financial, legal, and political consequences, far beyond the boundaries of education systems themselves.

For those funding or governing large-scale education systems, her work identifies structural failure points before they escalate into cross-sector crises.

She is the founder of First Principles on Education®, author and a sought after speaker at conferences and workshops. She has developed research-based frameworks for diagnosing where education systems break down and what specific interventions can restore system integrity.

Her approach helps leaders responsible for public, independent, or cross-sector education initiatives secure one of the most undervalued assets in long-horizon reform: sustainable system performance responsible for societal outcomes.