Frances Graham, who has died of cancer aged 64, was chief executive of Workbase Training from 1980 until 2015. Set up by Nupe, the National Union of Public Employees, to tackle illiteracy among union members, over those 35 years Workbase trained thousands of low-paid workers for hundreds of employers, and Frances was its driving force.

She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to parents from European immigrant families, Edie and Max Rosengarten, who both worked as shopkeepers. As a teenager, Frances was a leader in Habonim South Africa, a Jewish socialist youth movement. She went to the University of the Witwatersrand, gaining a BA in English and French, and then a teaching qualification. She met Bing Graham there. Both were active in the South Africa Freedom Movement and left South Africa clandestinely in 1974 to live on an Israeli kibbutz to try out socialist life. They married in 1976. In 1978 they moved to London and never left.

In 1979 we were looking for tutors for the Workbase project and by happy accident we found Frances. Within 10 minutes of meeting her we knew she was the right person. We had only three months’ money and could not offer job security but she agreed to take the risk. We won funding from the Inner London Education Authority and more union support.

The project uniquely taught in the workplace, using materials that employees had to use on a daily basis. It proved its benefit to students and employers alike in skills and efficiency at work and spread from the public to the private sector, winning support from both the TUC and CBI. Under Frances’s leadership, it provided the inspiration for Nupe’s Return to Learn and the TUC’s Union Learn.

Frances was a great strategic thinker, reinventing the organisation whenever government changed employment or education policy. She became a leader in Investors in People.

Whenever we celebrated the success of Workbase students, previously illiterate adults read the stories and letters they had written and the world felt like a kinder and less cynical place.

Frances dedicated her life to overcoming illiteracy. She was a kind, gentle person of huge integrity who kept a steady gaze on her goals and had a will that would not be denied.

She is survived by Bing, their three daughters, Lisa, Beth and Manda, and four grandchildren.