Excellence First Enterprise Consultancy · Founded 2006
EFEC was founded in 2006 to support long-term capability building across education, talent development, and international collaboration. We are based in the UK and work with partners across education, research, and industry.
Our work spans three areas
We support leadership capability and institutional development for schools and organisations, drawing on two decades of practice in the UK education sector.
Through CognateUK, we develop structured capability formation programmes for students and emerging professionals at key stages of development — from pre-university through to early career — with a focus on the future life sciences workforce. CognateUK began with work supporting Chinese students transitioning into the UK education system, and has since developed a UK-anchored approach to capability formation. It is currently in its early stages of this developed model.
Visit CognateUK →We support organisations navigating cross-cultural, regulatory, and operational complexity, particularly where trust, preparation, and governance shape outcomes. This includes our work in the UK–China life sciences space through the EFEC UK–China Life Sciences Innovation Hub.
Visit the Hub →Leadership
Paul founded EFEC in 2006. His background is in UK education, including work as a teacher, headteacher, and curriculum developer across schools and educational institutions in the UK, with two decades of partnership work in China through EFEC.
Over two decades, his work has focused on how learning systems develop capability, how educational cultures differ across contexts, and where meaningful collaboration between them becomes possible. That long-term perspective formed the foundation of EFEC's early approach to educational partnership work, and continues to shape the organisation's emphasis on preparation, structure, and sustained capability development.
Lily leads EFEC and is the founder of both CognateUK and the EFEC UK–China Life Sciences Innovation Hub. Her career spans education, international partnership development, and cross-sector collaboration across the public and private sectors in both the UK and China.
Over two decades, her work has centred on the conditions that enable serious long-term collaboration across systems, institutions, and cultures. The governance-first approach that now defines EFEC's work emerged through this experience — shaped by direct observation of what enables serious collaboration to hold, and what causes it to fail.
How we work
Durable collaboration is built through preparation — understanding how a system works, what it values, and what it expects before formal engagement begins.
This approach applies across everything we do — in education, in talent development, and in cross-border ecosystem facilitation.