Professor Nick Petford, DSc is former Vice Chancellor and CEO of the University of Northampton, stepping down in July 2022 after 12 years at the helm. Nick is a former Royal Society University Research Fellow and Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He has held visiting research appointments at the Universities of Michigan and Vermont and is currently visiting professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, CUC University, Beijing and Durham University, UK and in 2019 was granted Freedom of the City of London.

Nick has extensive experience serving professional bodies at Board level. He was on the Southeast Midlands LEP Board from 2012-2014 where he also chaired the Skills Committee. In 2018 he was elected Chair of Northamptonshire Health and Wellbeing Board, one of a handful of non-political appointments across England. Between 2014 and 2016 he led a national project for Universities UK looking at ways to improve procurement. He is former member of the UnLtd (Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs) investment committee, Universities UK and the Universities and Colleges Employers Association.

In 2018 Northampton introduced a new Learning and Teaching model called Active Blended Learning (ABL) as part of their £350 million campus relocation. Digital Transformation was overseen by Cisco Systems, who installed one of the largest SD WAN infrastructure networks in Europe to support ABL. Other innovations included virtual and augmented reality, and green screen image capture to support innovative, on-line delivery. He is interested in supporting Education Technology (EdTec) start-ups and is a member of Emerge Education Advisory Board, the only European EdTech specialist fund focused on pre-seed and seed projects.

Nick is a graduate of Harvard Business School and consultant to the renewable energy sector with emphasis on decarbonisation of university estates.