Christina Tondevold

Country: United States

Christina Tondevold, known as The Recovering Traditional, is a passionate advocate for transforming math education. Having once taught math through conventional methods that emphasized rote memorization, she now empowers teachers to foster deep mathematical understanding in their students. Through her platform BuildMathMinds.com, Chrina provides professional development resources that promote engaging, student-centered math instruction-offering educators "PD at Your Fingertips."

Faye Berryman AM

Country: Australia

Faye Berryman AM began her teaching career in 1965 as a secondary school teacher. Confronted by the literacy challenges faced by her students, she recognized the need for strong foundational education. In 1976, alongside her husband Philip O'Carroll, she co-founded Fitzroy Community School. Determined to find a more effective way to teach reading, she developed the Fitzroy Readers' Systematic Synthetic Phonics Method, a research-driven approach that has empowered countless children to learn to read and write with confidence.

Swati Popat Vats

Country: India

Swati Popat Vats is a renowned Indian education, parenting mentor, and author with over 38 years of experience in early childhood education. She is the President of the Early Childhood Association (ECA) India, the Association for Primary Education and Research (APER), and the Podar Education Network. Swati is also the founder of Podar Jumbo Kids and Podar Prep.

Her international contributions include serving as the Early Years Consultant and Series Editor for the Cambridge International Early Years Programme in India, as well as being on the advisory board of Cambridge University Press and Assessment South Asia. Swati is a global thought leader in early years education, curriculum design, and brain development, and is the founding expert behind Born Smart, the world's first video-based parenting platform focused on the first 1000 days of a child's life.

Dr. Raj Shah

Country: United States

Dr. Raj Shah is a math education visionary dedicated to making math irresible for children. After earning a Ph.D. in Physics and working at Intel, he founded Math Plus Academy in 2008-an after-school enrichment program that promotes joyful, conceptual learning. He is a founding member of The Global Math Project, which has reached over 7 million students around the world.

A dynamic TEDx speaker and frequent presenter at national and international conferences, Dr. Shah inspires educators to shift from procedural teaching to cultivating number sense and a love for problem-solving.

Gavin McCormack

Country: Australia

Gavin McCormack is an acclaimed Montessori educator, TEDx speaker, and the co-founder of Upschool.co, a global initiative providing free, values-based education to children worldwide. With more than 20 years of teaching experience, Gavin has built schools and teacher training centers across Nepal and authored best-selling educational resources.

Widely recognized as one of the world's most influential educators, Gavin is committed to helping teachers and students become agents of change. His approach integrates Montessori principles with real-world learning, nurturing resilience, empathy, and curiosity in young learners to help shape a better future.

Debbie Hepplewhite, MBE

Country: United Kingdom

Debbie is the author of three 'systematic synthetic phonics' programmes validated by the Department for Education in England. She provides practical advice for parents, teachers, trainers, politicians and publishers, and also provides phonics consultancy services internationally for schools and universities.

Debbie advised the UK parliamentary inquiry 'Teaching Children to Read' (March 2005) and Sir Jim Rose's 'Independent review of the teaching of early reading' (Final Report, Jim Rose, March 2006). She is the founder of the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction. In 2012, Debbie was awarded an MBE in the Queen's New Years Honours L for Services to Education.

Yvonne Dalorto

Country: UK/Spain

Yvonne Dalorto serves as an educational content and training consultant for Jolly Learning UK, where she collaborates extensively with international schools, educators, and trainers. With experience as a teacher in the United Kingdom and a former headteacher at a British school located in southern Spain, Yvonne brings a wealth of expertise to her role.

Her professional responsibilities include developing educational projects aimed at promoting literacy in Africa and Southeast Asia, in partnership with charitable organisations and government minries. Yvonne adopts an anthropological approach to education, emphasizing the cultural dimensions of both informal and formal educational systems.

George Willibrord

Country: India

Willibrord George started and runs a group of low cost affordable private schools near Mumbai and specializes in creating tech-enabled and student-driven high-value, scalable, innovative educational processes and in-school systems that help children from all segments of the socio-economic strata to find their voice and develop agency and get an equal chance at influencing their own futures.

In school, Willibrord has developed various innovative projects. Such as Project Breakthrough (Student-led parents meeting), Project RISE (A real-time teaching improvement system), Project DDA (Daily dose of awesome - a strategic planning tool for school students), Project Worldclass ( A module to have students learn about all the nations of the world - global perspectives), Project SPIRIT (An in school scholastic data tracking and analytics tools led by students to help them focus on academic improvement area. These projects are constantly developed and shared widely with practitioners for contextualization and adoption. Willibrord was also recognized as an innovative school leader nationally by Advaith Foundation and awarded by Mr. Narayana Murthy the co-founder of Infosys.

Michaela Epstein

Country: UK/Spain

Maths TeMichaela Epstein is Founder and Director of Maths Teacher Circles. She has worked with thousands of teachers (K-12) and school leaders globally to increase their impact in maths. Michaela has been awarded by the Australian Council for Educational Research for her work in improving school numeracy outcomes.

Michaela has taught maths and led teams in rural and urban schools, developed state-wide maths leadership programs and designed problems and puzzles used by over 100,000 students. Through her work, her aim is to help teachers reignite their own curiosity and develop strategies to support all students become stronger mathematical thinkers.

Lisa Vitarisi Mathews

Country: United States

Lisa Vitarisi Mathews serves as Publisher of Evan-Moor Educational Publishers. In this role, Mathews oversees the publishing of materials through all stages of development, from conceptualizing and planning to production. Since joining Evan-Moor in 2002, Mathews has represented the company in the United States and abroad, giving workshops and product training, and learning how teachers use Evan-Moor resources.

Her previous experience in working with students in grades K-8 and her keen knowledge of what works in classrooms to enhance both teaching and learning have shaped Evan-Moor's positive contribution to educational publishing.

Mark William Barnett

Country: Thailand

Mark William Barnett is a PhD Researcher, studying how children and adults learn from interacting with AI, and more importantly, what can they learn about themselves while using Artificial Intelligence. Mark lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand and studies at Chiang Mai University in the legacy of Seymour Papert (the founder of Constructionism) on the topic of his thesis "Neural Syntonicity". He spent 20 years in the education industry working at international schools around the world as a Design and Technology teacher and he currently provides consultancy services for makerspaces, design thinking, constructionism, robotics and AI.

For over 20 years, Mark has been a proponent, practitioner and leader in the pedagogical learning theory of constructionism which suggests that learning is most conducive when students have agency and autonomy while learning and that learning is best synthesized.

Christopher Geary

Country: UK / Hong Kong

Chris is a social entrepreneur focused on developing initiatives that reduce inequalities by lowering barriers to accessing the opportunities of the Future of Work. Chris is the CEO of BSD Education and Young Founders School, an MIT LEAP Social Entrepreneurship Fellow and Chairman of the Kennedy School in Hong Kong.