Advisory Group
We lead a collaborative process requiring the formation of agile teams and collaborative partnerships. Our advisory group continues to expand as the learning ecosystem develops.
Anne Bamford
Professor Anne Bamford OBE is Strategic Director of the Education and Skills for the City of London. Anne has been recognized internationally for her research in creativity, lifelong learning and technology. She instigated the term, ‘fusion skills’ to describe the competencies needed for flourishing now and into the future. Through her research, she has pursued issues of innovation, social impact and equality and diversity.
A world scholar for UNESCOs, Anne has conducted major national impact and evaluation studies for the governments of Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Iceland, Hong Kong, Ireland and Norway. Amongst her numerous articles and book chapters, Anne is author of the “Wow Factor: Global research compendium on the impact of the arts in education” which has been published in five languages and distributed in more than 40 countries.
Dr Cath Bishop is an Olympian, former diplomat, business coach and consultant, and author of ‘The Long Win’, listed in the FT’s Top 10 Business Books 2020.
She competed in rowing at 3 Olympic Games, winning World Championships gold in 2003 and Olympic silver in Athens 2004. As a diplomat for the British Foreign Office for 12 years, Cath specialized in policy and negotiations on conflict issues, with postings to Bosnia and Iraq.
Cath now works as a leadership consultant, executive coach, facilitator and author, and teaches on Executive Education programmes at the Judge Business School, Cambridge University as well as a regular speaker at Imperial College Business School and a Visiting Professor at Surrey Business School. She teaches on leadership topics including resilience, high performing teams, culture change and inclusion. She is also an advisor and advocate of ‘The True Athlete Project’, a non-profit organisation working to create sporting environments that enable athletes to thrive and is Chair of ‘Love Rowing’, British Rowing’s Charitable Foundation aiming to bring rowing to more communities around the UK.
Cath speaks at events globally on topics of leadership, learning and cultural change. Her first book ‘The Long Win: the search for a better way to succeed’ was described by the Financial Times as ‘a deep and rewarding exploration of human motivation in sport, politics, business and our personal lives’.
Alex has 20 years of experience in the education industry. She has enjoyed a diverse career, which includes teaching in the U.K. State System, plus International Schools in Japan, Bahrain and Hungary. She has worked as a freelance curriculum designer in the United States, designing and innovating content for education providers as well as ISTE and NASA.
Alex has a keen interest in building a sustainable future, which began early on in her career. She holds a MSc in Sustainable Development and is a LEED Green Associate. Alex believes that an integrated, connected and experiential approach to education is essential to support students to become thoughtful, resilient and thriving citizens. Alex is an examiner for the IB in TOK, Extended Essays and IB Biology. In Bahrain she coordinated the TOK program and is a DofE Award Leader. She initiated a mentorship program to train Year 12 students to design and deliver Philosophy for Children within the school. She currently works at the British International School of Budapest where she is developing a Changemaker Ambassador Program, designed to empower students to address the Sustainable Development Goals through local community action.
Amanda is a highly experienced, passionate educator who has been involved in education for over 25 years. Starting out as a teacher, Amanda has worn many educator hats during her career including Principal, Advisor, Inspector, Regional Director (Middle East.)
Amanda spent over 13 years in the Middle East working on education reform and has experience of delivering on transformative nationwide professional development programs.
Amanda’s passion has always been about people development, at all stages of life.
She is happy supporting individuals or rolling out capacity building large scale programs as long as the impact is positive and developmental. She wrote and delivered the first Graduate Teacher Program (Independent Schools) to be delivered in Wales and remains a close friend of that program recipient to today.
She is a Chartered member of CIPD, a qualified Brain Based Coach and is certified by the British Psychological Society to administer both Ability and Personality Assessments.
Amanda now uses her experience and qualifications working independently for a variety of clients, in a number of sectors, but all focused-on people and organisational development.
Richard Dunne has 30 years teaching experience and was Headteacher of an Ofsted graded Outstanding School for 18 years. His work in redesigning a curriculum around Nature’s principles of Harmony has already begun inspiring the next generation of teachers and children, with the approach to learning already in place in several schools across the UK.
Richard believes passionately that the best way for children to be motivated in their learning is when it makes sense to them and when they have a key role to play. Through combining core skills to purposeful enquiries of learning, the children start to develop their own vision of how they want to see their world and just as importantly what they can do to make it happen.
Jules Ellison is known for her conceptual and ideation skills and is committed to finding effective solutions to the systemic challenges that affect our social and ecological wellbeing. For over a decade Julie worked in Bristol’s inner city delivering a diverse portfolio of business support services and consultancy on all aspects of social enterprise development from ideation to creation, implementation and impact. She also led the engagement and coordination of strategic partnerships to create, develop and sustain successful social enterprises and community businesses that improve the lives and environment of communities. With a background in Higher Education, Jules has expertise in entrepreneurial education, digital and social Innovation, career management and skills development.
Jules is currently applying this expertise to inform her work in regenerative practice; finding solutions that accelerate the shift from an extractive to regenerative economy and activate the systemic changes needed to reconnect to a thriving pattern of life. This led Jules to train as a Prosocial Facilitator and explore new organisational models such as Sociocracy applying these skills to enable organisations to increase cooperation within and between teams and build individual awareness.
In her free time Jules supports a number of not-for-profits these include; Catalyse Change CIC where over the last 4 years she has collaborated in the development of an innovative learning and mentoring programme that aims to inspire, empower and skill young female change makers (16-24 yrs); Make It Thrive CIC developing a range of support programmes for people in career transition; and Earth Community Trust developing a strategy for regenerative living.
For the last thirty years she has been exploring the unique qualities of human learning and development, with a particular emphasis on what gives us meaning and purpose. Her studies have taken her from being a specialist in the foundational importance of early learning, to examining natural systems dynamics, our understanding of the word ‘wisdom’ and the importance of family and community life for the creation of sustainable societies and cultures of lifelong learning.
Over the last ten years she has devoted her time to addressing a growing concern about societal values and wellbeing and the importance of safeguarding natural development in the early years. She is the founder and Chief Executive of the Save Childhood Movement www.savechildhood.net, which in 2013 established National Children’s Day UK www.nationalchildrensdayuk.com as a significant platform for raising awareness about child rights and wellbeing. Through the movement, she is currently developing The Children’s Voice site www.thechildrensvoice.net as a significant new platform for children’s participation.
In 2018 she created the Flourish Project www.flourishproject.net as a major new global initiative and in 2019 she joined the Global Council for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (and was co-chair for a year). She is also now leading the development of the UK Spirituality in Education Alliance.
Benjamin is the Co-Founder of Coconut Thinking, an organisation designing innovative experiences based on purposeful thinking and action for positive impact on the welfare of the bio-collective.
Benjamin is the Whole School Leader of Learning and Teaching, Extended Essay Coordinator, CAS Advisor, Grade Level Leader, and IBDP History and MYP Individuals & Society Teacher at Prem Tinsulanonda International School in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Benjamin focuses on the ‘lived’ curriculum: on pedagogy, and what classroom practice looks like. He thinks about how to develop a culture of active learning, where the boundaries of disciplines start to disappear and learners engage projects that are meaningful and have an impact on themselves, others, and the world.
Benjamin was the Academic Coordinator at Misk Schools, which, as the school of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is the most prestigious and high profile school in the kingdom. In 2018-2019, he was also the Head of Upper Primary and Middle School. Along with being responsible for all day-to-day operations and leadership in this role, Benjamin developed a unique curriculum to nurture and develop creativity, competencies, and entrepreneurial spirit in learners. He was responsible for designing authentic and Problem-Based Learning experiences across the school and for developing and implementing Personal Learning Pathways for each learner, to understand their academic and personal needs so that they can best thrive. He also taught Problem-Based Learning and Science (Design) classes. Benjamin also served as the Technology Programs Manager for Misk Academy, like Schools part of Misk Foundation, helping develop a curriculum for a range of high tech courses offered; building the Career Center to enable graduates to find employment; and developing partnerships with private and public organizations.
Angie Hobbs gained a First Class Honours Degree in Classics and a PhD in Ancient Philosophy at New Hall (now Murray Edwards College), University of Cambridge. After a Research Fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge, she moved to the Philosophy Department of the University of Warwick; in 2012 she was appointed Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a position created for her and the first of its kind in the U.K. (and, as far as can be ascertained, the world). Her chief interests are in ancient philosophy and literature, and in ethics and political theory from classical thought to the present, and she has published widely in these areas, including Plato and the Hero (Cambridge University Press).
Her most recent publication for a general audience is Plato’s Republic: a Ladybird Expert Book. She contributes regularly to radio and TV programmes and other media (including 22 appearances on In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg); she lectures and gives talks around the world. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the United States Air Force Training Academy in Colorado. She has been the guest on Desert Island Discs, Private Passions and Test Match Special.
Claire was a teacher for 25 years, 18 of which as a senior leader in 3 schools.
In 2012, Claire joined the UK charity Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) as their Director of Curricula and Teacher Development. As part of her role, she creates classroom content, trains the MiSP training team and also trains teachers to deliver mindfulness-based programmes in school settings for 7–18-year-olds. She has also overseen the teacher training programme for the large-scale MYRIAD research project in collaboration with Oxford University and the Wellcome Trust. This includes the largest ever randomised control trial involving the teaching of mindfulness in school contexts with over 9,000 students taking part in the trial.
Claire is a consultant member for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness and contributed to the Mindful Nation Report UK report.
Claire is also a training partner with the University of Oxford Mindfulness Centre. She has taught mindfulness in a range of settings, including traditional primary and secondary schools, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, pupil referral units (short-stay schools), medical and veterinary schools, the NHS, Multi-Academy Trusts, to educational and clinical psychologists, in universities (University College London, Kings College London) , and on public courses.
Claire also contributes to pieces on student and staff wellbeing in national newspapers, and has spoken at hundreds of conference around the UK and beyond. Claire’s passion is around the link between staff and student wellbeing and how this feed into the ‘weather’ in the classroom, and the broader learning and social culture within the school.
Ethan is a fundraising and charity consultant with extensive experience in the education sector. A US national, Ethan has led fundraising programmes for educational institutions in the US and UK. The first of these roles was as Associate Director of Development & Alumni at The White Mountain School, an Episcopal (Anglican) boarding and day school. He saw the School through the planning and ‘quiet stage’ of a $7 million fundraising campaign as campaign manager, launched the School’s international giving programme, and directed the Annual Fund and alumni programming.
Most recently, Ethan served as the inaugural Director of Development at St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford, where he was tasked with creating a comprehensive fundraising programme for the Hall. This involved a complete audit and rethink of the Hall’s existing programme and the development of a short, mid, and long-term strategy with the assistance of the St Benet’s Trust, the international advisory board, and collegiate and University leadership. Ethan is currently a trustee of his university fraternity’s alumni board and has served as a trustee or fundraising subcommittee member for multiple environmental and art charities. Prior to moving to the UK, he sat on the planning committee for the Independent Schools Association of Northern New England and served on the Governor of New Hampshire’s Advisory Council.
Dr. Joel & Michelle Levey are founders of Wisdom at Work and The International Center for Corporate Culture and Organizational Health at InnerWork Technologies, Inc., a Seattle-based firm dedicated to developing and renewing organizational cultures and communities in which extra-ordinary levels of inspired leadership, cooperation, synergy, collective intelligence, and change resilience can thrive. The Leveys work with organizations and communities around the globe to inspire people to deepen the wisdom, wonder, compassion, resilience, and creativity they bring to life, work, and relationships amidst the myriad changes, challenges, and opportunities of these turbulent and rapidly shifting times.
They have served as faculty at: University of Minnesota Medical School; Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad); Mahidol University (Thailand); Antioch University (USA); Institute for Spirituality and Health at University of Texas Medical Center, and the World Business Academy. The Leveys’ pioneering work spans many disciplines and decades. They are respected for being among the very first professionals to introduce the principles and practices of mindfulness and mind-fitness training, interpersonal neurobiology, collective wisdom, deep systems thinking, and contemplative science into mainstream business, medicine, higher education, sports, and government arenas – having begun this work in the 1970s. They have worked with hundreds of organizations including: NASA; World Government Summit; World Bank; Google; British Parliament; International Campaign for Compassionate Cities; U.S. Surgeon General’s Office; U.S. Special Forces; and have authored many books, including Living in Balance and Wisdom at Work. They steward an international learning center and permaculture farm on the Island of Hawaii.
Helen is a taxonomy and semantic modelling consultant, who has been helping clients for over a decade. Her skills include taxonomy development, ontology modelling, tagging initiatives, knowledge graphs, metadata training and content modelling.
Helen’s clients have included the BBC, the UK government, Financial Times, Time Out, RIBA, the Metropolitan Police of London, Pearson and Electronic Arts.
Sean joined the British Youth Council in May 2020 as the Youth Leadership development Manager. Sean has over 10 years of experience in building programmes and networks that have focused on a range of areas from LGBTQ+ leadership, rethinking the way PE and physical activity is done, developing young people’s access to and relationship with reading and literature and now empowering young people to be leaders of today and tomorrow. He is passionate about building platforms for young people and people with the most marginalised voices to be who they are and lead others in their communities.
Dr. Helen Maffini is a Canadian/British international educational consultant and the Director of MindBE Education. She is the co-author of Developing Children’s Emotional Intelligence and creator of the MindBE Preschool Mindfulness Curriculum with participants in 72 countries. Helen leads a series of mindfulness summits online each year attracting global educators with many thought leaders in the field participating. She provides consulting services for a wide range of companies, schools and government bodies. Helen has worked on curriculum development, writing and delivering teacher training programs, leadership training, school inspection, school development, professional development and children’s television consulting.
Jo has devoted her career to education. She is passionate about the transformative power of education. Following 15 years in the classroom, Jo worked as Senior Education Adviser and Senior Project Manager at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change where she designed educational programmes, developed curriculum, trained thousands of teachers and dialogue facilitators. She was privileged to build and develop networks of stakeholders including educators, educational leaders and government officials across 60 plus countries.
Jo’s work was fundamental to the innovation, scaling, embedding, and close-out stages of the pioneering ten-year global education programme, Generation Global. Jo is currently the Education Director for Persona Education supporting curriculum, instructional design, pedagogy and onboarding. Jo enjoys a reputation for consistently meeting challenging targets and delivering quality professional development training and resources focused on long-term impact and sustainability and MEAL.
Andy is Founder Director of the TYF Group, an innovative and visionary social enterprise based in St. Davids, Pembrokeshire. TYF’s mission is to train revolutionaries – giving adults families, business teams and community leaders deep connection to nature and unshakeable confidence in their ability to get their voices heard and actions happening as a scale and speed that matches the challenges restoring resilience to climate, nature and wellbeing. His roles include Founding Partner of the Do Lectures, member of the Innovation Advisory Council for Wales, CEO at Slipstream Impact, partner at NOW Partners and project lead at North Star Transition and give him invaluable connections that span public, private and third sector organisations. Andy is also a B Corp Ambassador and trustee at the One Planet Centre and Earth Protector Communities.
He sparks the flames of transformative change by helping others develop the inspiration, innovation, connections and plans that catalyse practical action on the things that matter. He is a strategic advisor, facilitator, commentator and keynote speaker to business and government audiences drawing on 35 years’ experience in risk, action learning, biomimicry and sustainability.
Andy lives near St.Davids on the west coast of Wales where the landscape, ocean and veg garden provide escape in between meetings, events and workshops.
Rachel Musson is the founder of ThoughtBox and a teacher, trainer, writer and thought-leader on sustainable education and wellbeing in schools.
Working for 13 years as a Secondary English teacher, Rachel has taught students and trained teachers in schools across the world including the UK, Tanzania, Nepal, Ireland and Australia. She is the Founding Director of ThoughtBox Education – a social enterprise working to offer schools the space, the skills and the opportunities to foster triple wellbeing by helping young people deepen relationships with themselves, society and the natural world. She is the pioneer behind Changing Climates: a free climate change curriculum currently being used in 1500+ schools across 55 countries.
Rachel is currently working with industry leaders on education reform policy and standing as an international thought leader on climate-change education. She is currently delivering keynote speeches and training across Europe on wellbeing in schools.
Stuart Patton has worked at Director level in various organisations, from SME’s to large international organisations, both in Europe and Asia. Sectors have covered Manufacturing, Telco platforms, Medical Devices, Education and Edtech. He has also established and grown start-up companies based in Finland, HK and Malaysia in the developing Edtech sectors.
For the last 20 yrs he has lived and worked in HK/ China, Indonesia and now Malaysia where he is presently based.
He is presently actively involved with the following organisations:
- Ace Edventure Group as Global CEO (Ecosystem Architect)
- AdaptiveSQ as Founder CEO
- Connections2asia as a Founding Partner
- Octopus online Entrepreneurial education as a Founding Partner
- Education Alliance Finland, concept co-creator
- Board Member FRSA London
Christina Riley is the Director of Curriculum Design for EL Education Inc., managing the nationally renowned EL Education English Language Arts curriculum, which is an all green EdReports’ K-8 ELA curriculum. Before joining EL, Christina served as an Elementary Curriculum Design Specialist for Socratic Arts, designing a STEM curriculum for elementary students, and participated in various curriculum design projects as an independent consultant including creating educational resources for middle school students for a NASA/ISTE project.
Christina began her career in education as an elementary teacher and subject manager at public schools in the UK before teaching at international schools in Japan. Christina holds a Master of Science in education from California State University and is currently studying for a doctorate in leadership in educational equity from CU Denver. Christina lives in Lyons, Colorado.
In 2008 Yasmin founded Cardiff Sixth Form College (CSFC). It quickly rose in the league tables and achieved No 1 ranking for A-level results in the UK within two years. After 7 consecutive years at No 1, in 2016 Yasmin left CSFC to join Dr Mario Peters at Oxford International College (OIC). Under Yasmin and Mario’s academic leadership, OIC climbed the rankings to take over the UK’s No 1 A-level ranking slot in 2019. Yasmin is currently the Chief Education Officer at OIC.
Over the past decade, Yasmin has placed more than 600 pupils at medical schools and G5 universities (Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, and Imperial), with a 100% acceptance rate at Russell Group universities in the UK and at Ivy League universities in the US.
Yasmin has been featured on TEDx and is an adviser to multiple government expert groups. She is an interview panelist for two leading London medical schools, and a team member of the Middle East and Africa Space Design Competition.
Gilda Scarfe is the CEO and Founder of Positive Ed an educational research consultancy. Gilda is trained as a teacher, lawyer and positive psychology practitioner with a Master in Education and Doctorate in the conceptualization and application of mental toughness in education.
Her research interests focus on building mental toughness and executive functioning in students and building a reliable measure to evaluate it.
Gilda has been an invited keynote speaker at numerous conferences, i.e. World Congress in Positive Psychology Melbourne, The European Conference on Positive Psychology Iceland, GESS Dubai, Qudwa, World Global Education Conference, Mumbai, IPEN Global Conference Mexico just to name a few.
Gilda’s contribution to creating change in corporate organisations and the education system has been recognized by receiving several awards.
A member of The American Psychology Association (APA) and International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) global ambassador for the International Positive Education Network (IPEN). Gilda is also the Chair of Trustees for Yagazie Foundation, an NGO in Nigeria, and a Patron of ISNF Foundation in Cyprus.
Zineb Mouhyi and Valentina Raman are an education activist trio and co-organizers of Youth by Youth (YXY). They are committed to co-creating and working on projects that support the transformation of systems to dismantle inequities intersectionally in society, particularly when it comes to education. Their experience spans the breadth of community organizing, co-founding, weaving, research, as well as trustee board support to multiple education and systems change organizations.