Susan Hopgood is both the President of Education International (EI) and the Federal Secretary of the Australian Education Union (AEU). She became President of EI in 2009 and was re-elected in 2011 and 2015. EI is the global federation of education unions which represents 32.5 million teachers and education support staff in 171 countries, and also a Vice President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. Susan is active at national, regional, and international levels in her work. She is committed to the achievement of a fair and socially just world and believes that public education for all is crucial to achieving this.

Born in Ghana, Theo Sowa has lived and worked in many countries in Africa, Europe, and North America. Her work includes advisory roles to African and other international women rights, children’s rights and justice activists and leaders, as well as policy development and advocacy in a range of national and international organisations and agencies.

Currently she is Co-chair of the Equality Fund; member of the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s African Advisory Board; Patron of Evidence for Development; and board member of the UBS Optimus Foundation; the Graça Machel Trust; and OSIWA (Open Society Initiative for West Africa).

See her Tedx talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIQgPb7pQs

Anant Agarwal is the CEO of edX, an online learning destination founded by Harvard and MIT. Anant taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He has served as the director of CSAIL, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He is a successful serial entrepreneur, having co-founded several companies including Tilera Corporation, which created the Tile multicore processor, and Virtual Machine Works.

Anant won the Maurice Wilkes prize for computer architecture, and MIT’s Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He holds a Guinness World Record for the largest microphone array, and is an author of the textbook Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.

Scientific American selected his work on organic computing as one of 10 World-Changing Ideas in 2011, and he was named in Forbes‘ list of top 15 education innovators in 2012. Anant, a pioneer in computer architecture, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.

He hacks on WebSim, an online circuits laboratory, in his spare time. Anant holds a Ph.D. from Stanford and a bachelor’s from IIT Madras.

Carole G. Basile is the Dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University (ASU). Prior to joining ASU, Basile was Dean and Professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri St. Louis (UMSL). Her academic career has included grants and research related to math and science education, teacher education, community engagement, and environmental education with funding from the Department of Education, the National Governor’s Association, the National Science Foundation, the National Education Association, and the National Commission for Teaching and America’s Future. She has published numerous articles, books, book chapters, and technical papers in these areas and has received outstanding teaching awards for her ability to teach using experiential learning techniques. Her community work is also extensive, as she has actively partnered with many urban school districts, informal and nonprofit community education and social service entities, constituents from business and industry, and workforce and economic development. Also to her credit, she has 12 years experience in business and industry in the areas of sales, management, marketing, and corporate training and development.

Carlos Eugenio Beca, a Chilean philosophy teacher, is the executive coordinator of the Technical Secretariat of the Regional Strategy on Teachers, OREALC/UNESCO which is based in the Centre for Comparative Educational Policies of the Diego Portales University in Santiago, Chile. He is an expert in educational policies specializing in teaching profession issues. He collaborates in teacher training programs for school leaders at the Centre for Educational Leadership (CEDLE) of the Diego Portales University and at the Teaching Knowledge Centre of the University of Chile.

He has held several positions in the public and academic fields in the area of education. Between 2000 and 2010, he led the Centre for Teacher Professional Development (CPEIP) of the Ministry of Education. He has done consulting for different international organizations and participated in advisory committees of the Ministry of Education in the areas of teacher education and teacher evaluation. He is also the author of several publications on teacher policies and teacher professional development.

Dr. Beckley is a Sierra Leone educationist and Chair of the Sierra Leone Teaching Service Commission (TSC), since its inception in 2015.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from Durham University and master’s and doctorate degrees in psycho-pedagogy from the University of Ibadan. A qualified and trained teacher, she taught English and French at secondary level and developmental psychology and foreign language pedagogy at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria before returning home in 1981 to head the French Department at the then Milton Margai Teachers’ College (MMTC). She made significant contributions to French teaching in Sierra Leone as President of the Sierra Leone Association of French Teachers (SLAFT) and the Alliance Française of Freetown. She was also Executive Board Member of the International Federation of French teachers (FIPF). Her work in popularizing and improving the teaching of French in Sierra Leone earned her the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques from the Republic of France in 1986.

Dr. Beckley pursued advanced research in Human and Social Development as a United Nations University research fellow at the Universities of Bogota, Colombia and Chicago, Illinois in 1986. On completion of her course, she took up appointment as Deputy Director of the University Research and Development Services (URDS) Bureau at the University of Sierra Leone that same year, where she guided commissioned research projects in Education.

From 1991 to 2008, she worked with national governments and other development partners to shape education policies and strategies, and guide and monitor practice down to school and community levels as Chief of Education for UNICEF in Nigeria (1991-1995) and Pakistan (1995-2001) and subsequently Regional Chief of Education for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa (2001-2005) and West and Central Africa (2005-2008). After her retirement in 2008, she was engaged as interim Chief of Education for UNICEF in Iraq.

As Chair of the TSC Dr. Beckley is responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of teacher policies and professional standards as well as maintenance of the teacher payroll database.

Teopista Birungi Mayanja is currently the Regional Coordinator of the Africa Network Campaign for Education for All (ANCEFA).

Teopista has taught at the primary, primary teacher college, and university level and served as head teacher and director of Education Services. She is a strong education and human rights advocate. She founded the vibrant Uganda National Teachers’ Union (UNATU) as a means of enlisting all teachers in their rightful role in the transformation of education. She served as its first general secretary from 2001 to 2012.

Teopista has served on various boards including Education International, Pan African Teachers Centre, Women Sports International, National Commission for UNESCO, Forum for Education NGOs, Commonwealth Education Fund, and was given the “Order of Independence 2015” award for public education advocacy. She coordinated the famous “Quality Education Campaign” QPE (2010-11) and rallied civil society and Parliament to support education financing, professionalizing teaching, and mutual accountability.

She informed the discussion “Why teachers MUST be part of the education policy processes” as a panelist at the launch of the Education First Initiative in New York in 2012. She holds diplomas in teacher education and primary education management, a bachelor’s and master’s of education, and a diploma in leading innovations and change from York St. John’s University, UK.

She is married to Aloysius Mayanja, with children and grandchildren.

Jim Campbell is the Director of the Health Workforce Department at the World Health Organization. He oversees the development and implementation of global public goods, evidence, and tools to inform national and international investments in the education, development, and retention of the health and social sector workforce in pursuit of global health security, universal health coverage, and the Sustainable Development Goals. The Department’s recent work includes WHO’s Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030, the report of the High-level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, and the subsequent adoption of the ILO, OECD, WHO five-year action plan on #Working4Health to implement the Commission’s recommendations. He coordinates the Global Health Workforce Network engaging Member States and all relevant partners in WHO’s work. He was previously the Executive Director of the Global Health Workforce Alliance and the founder/director of a research institute in Spain whose publications included A Universal Truth: No Health Without a Workforce (2013) and the State of the World’s Midwifery reports (2011 and 2014).

Kristin Clemet is the leader of Civita, a Norwegian liberal think tank. Clemet has been Member of Parliament for the Norwegian Conservative Party, Minister for Education and Research (2001-2005), and Minister for Labour and Government Administration (1989-1990). She has also been the Deputy Managing Director of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprises (1997-2001).

Rachel Glennerster is the Chief Economist of DFID. From 2004-2017 she was Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research center in the Economics Department at MIT that seeks to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Glennerster’s own research spans governance, education, health, microcredit, community development, and women’s empowerment in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sierra Leone. She is coauthor of Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases, and Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide. Glennerster has held positions at the International Monetary Fund, Her Majesty’s Treasury, and the Harvard Institute for International Development.

Baela Raza Jamil is the Chief Executive Officer for the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), Center for Education and Consciousness (CEC). Baela, a former technical advisor to the Federal Ministry of Education is an activist at heart, leading and associated with many social movements in Pakistan; these include the largest citizen led learning accountability initiative ASER Pakistan, Right to Education and the Children’s/Teachers’ Literature Festival.

She is on the boards of many government, academic and civil society organizations in Pakistan and on the Advisory Boards of the Global Monitoring Report (GMR), Learning Assessment at the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) and Global Business Coalition for Education. Baela is a member of regional and international professional associations such as BAICE, CIES, SAFED, ARNEC & ASBAE.

Sharath Jeevan is the founder and CEO of  STIR Education, which supports education systems to re-ignite the intrinsic motivation of their teachers and officials, through innovative teacher network meetings. STIR is impacting 200,000 teachers and 6 million children, through supporting the national education system in Uganda, and 4 state education systems in India.

Sharath Jeevan preciously served as Founding CEO of Teaching Leaders, an initiative to raise attainment in the UK’s most disadvantaged schools, which is expanding to 700 schools nationally and has attracted over $25m million in scale-up funding. He was also formerly Head of Social Ventures at eBay UK; a Project Leader at international strategy consultants Booz & Co; and a Senior Manager at NGO Action Aid.

His education includes a First Class Economics Degree from Cambridge University, MSt from Oxford University, and an MBA with Distinction from INSEAD. In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Roehampton University for his contribution to the field of Education

Since 2009, Ku-hyun Jung has been Professor Emeritus at Yonsei University and in 2018, he started a new research institute called J Campus. Professor Jung is currently president of the nonprofit Seoul Forum for International Affairs and chairman of the Korea Business Education Accreditation Board. He taught at Yonsei University’s School of Business from 1978 to 2002 and served as its director of the Institute of East and West Studies and the dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration. In 2003, Professor Jung moved to Samsung Group to serve as president and CEO of the Samsung Economic Research Institute and has contributed to the upgrading and internationalization of the Institute. He taught at the College of Business of KAIST from 2011 to 2017 as a visiting professor. He has published several books in recent years, focusing on Korean corporations, the global financial crisis, and the Korean economy. Professor Jung graduated from Seoul National University with a B.A. and completed his graduate studies and a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.

Daniel B. Lafrenière has been a member of Education International’s Executive Board since 2015. He is a member of the Task Force on Educational Support Staff and is actively working to recognize and value the work of these individuals.

Until recently, he held strategic positions as vice-president and then secretary-treasurer within his organization, the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), which represents almost all the teaching, professional, and support staff in education in Quebec (Canada).

As a member of the EI Task Force on Support Staff, he actively contributed to the establishment of the first International Support Staff Day in May 2018.

He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Education and Solidarity Network, a natural ally of EI.

Lucy Lake is Chief Executive of the Campaign for Female Education – Camfed – an organization dedicated to supporting girls through education and young women to step up as leaders in Africa. Camfed’s model has been acclaimed internationally, most recently by the OECD which has recognized Camfed for best practice in taking development innovation to scale. Lucy took up the position of CEO in 2012 having been Camfed’s Director of Programs and Deputy Executive Director over the previous 18 years. During this time, Lucy led Camfed’s development as a transformative model of investment in girls’ education through which its clients – as educated young women – take the reins and join forces with local and national government authorities to lead change for the younger generation of girls. Since taking on the role of CEO, Lucy has led Camfed’s major growth: last year alone, more than 2.5 million children directly benefited from its programs. Lucy has pioneered strategies to improve education provision for marginalized children, which have led to an unprecedented uplift in learning. She is a founding member and former co-chair of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative.

Mary Metcalfe has worked in education since 1974 as a teacher, principal, and lecturer. After working in the field of remedial education, she lectured at the Johannesburg College of Education and the University of the Witwatersrand. From 1994-2004 she served as the Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Education and then for Agriculture, Conservation, Environment and Land Affairs in Gauteng. She was the head of the School of Education at Wits from 2005 to 2009 before joining the Department of Higher Education and Training as director general in 2009. She is currently a senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg. She served on the General Education Advisory Board of the Open Society Foundations from 2005 to 2016 and was chairperson from 2013. She is currently working as the director of Education Change at the Programme to Improve Learning Outcomes (PILO) which piloted at-scale a model for education system improvement in 1,200 schools in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) between 2015-2017 funded by the National Education Collaboration Trust. Learning from this pilot, the model is now being implemented in six districts and half of the 6,400 schools in KZN between 2018 and 2020.

Denis Mizne is the CEO of the Lemann Foundation. Mr. Mizne holds a law degree from University of São Paulo, has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University (1999), a Yale World Fellow at Yale University (2007), and completed the Harvard Business School OPM program (2016). Previously, he was founder and executive director of Instituto Sou da Paz, a leading Brazilian NGO focused on violence prevention. He also sits on the board of several nonprofits focused on education.

Jordan Naidoo is currently the Director, Division of Education 2030 Support and Coordination (based in Paris) leading UNESCO’s global coordination of the SDG4-Education 2030 Agenda. Prior to this, he was a Senior Education Advisor at UNICEF in New York responsible for strategy and research on equity and innovation in education.

Having worked directly on programs in Indonesia, Nepal, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Bolivia and Haití, South Africa, and the US among others, he has extensive experience and expertise in policy analysis, evaluation and monitoring, teaching and learning, decentralization, governance and democratization in education, peacebuilding and education in fragile contexts and education reform.

Dr. Naidoo received his M. Ed. from the University of Natal, South Africa and Doctor of Education (D. Ed.) from Harvard University. Among other publications he was the editor of the Springer publication, Community Schools in Africa – Reaching the Unreached, and author of Educational Decentralization and School Governance in South Africa: From Policy to Practice.

Dr. Evelyn Owusu Oduro is the Executive Secretary of the National Teaching Council. She is a mathematics teacher/educator and holds a doctorate degree from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. She taught mathematics from 1989-1998 at the Holy Child College of Education, Takoradi in the Western Region of Ghana. She graduated from the University of Nottingham in the UK in 1994 and obtained a bachelor’s degree in mathematics education. She has a master’s degree in public sector management from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration in Ghana and a master’s degree in education administration from the University of Cape Coast.

Evelyn has gained much experience working with the Teacher Education Division in the Ghana Education Service as a Mathematics Specialist Programme Coordinator with the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) developing teaching materials in mathematics for basic and teacher training colleges. Between 2009-2013 she became the National INSET Coordinator and began the harmonization of INSET activities at the district and regional levels. Through her initiative, the Pre-Tertiary Teacher Professional Development and Management (PTPDM) Policy was endorsed. She was the first Municipal Director of Education in a newly created district at La Dade-Kotopon, La, Accra. Under the Secondary School Education Improvement program, Evelyn is the lead of the leadership component, promoting school leadership for high student achievement.

She is a member of the Mathematics Association of Ghana, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the African Teacher Regulatory Association, and the Council of the National Teaching Council. Her research interest is in mathematics education and assessment.

Pasi Sahlberg is a professor of education policy at the Gonski Institute for Education, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is a Finnish educator and author who has worked as schoolteacher, teacher-educator, researcher, and policy advisor in Finland and has studied education systems, analyzed education policies, and advised on education reforms around the world. He is recipient of the 2013 Grawemeyer Award, the 2014 Robert Owen Award, the 2016 Lego Prize, and Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Resident Fellowship in 2017. He chairs the Open Society Foundation’s Global Education Board and is a member of the International Council of Education Advisors (ICEA) for the Scottish First Minister. He has gained working knowledge in over 60 countries around the world and is a former senior specialist at the World Bank in Washington, DC, director general of the Ministry of Education in Finland, and a visiting professor at Harvard University. His most recent books include Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland (2015), FinnishED Leadership: Four big, inexpensive ideas to transform education (2018), and Let the Children Play! Why more play helps schools and children thrive (2019).

Dr. Liesbet Steer is Director of the Education Commission. In this role, she was the director of the Commission’s report The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World. Currently, she oversees the implementation of the Commission’s recommendations, including the design of the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd), the introduction of reform and results-based approaches in Pioneer Countries, a new Education Workforce Initiative, and the development of global accountability measures. She has more than 20 years of experience in international development research and policy.

Before joining the Commission, Liesbet was a Fellow at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and Director of the Overseas Development Institute’s (ODI) flagship program on development progress, financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As a fellow of ODI’s Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure, she also worked on issues of development finance, aid effectiveness, and the production and use of impact evaluations. Between 1997 and 2007, Liesbet lived and worked in Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia. She directed the economic reform program for the Asia Foundation in Indonesia, a technical assistance and research program on local economic development and growth. She also worked with the World Bank and IFC on private sector reform and the design and evaluation of SME development programs in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

Dr. Myo Thein Gyi has served as Union Minister for Education of Myanmar since April 2016. His academic background reflects that he is a mathematician. He earned a Master of Science degree in Mathematics from Yangon University in 1992, and a Doctorate in Natural Sciences degree from the Technical University of Berlin in 1998. He worked as a Mathematics Professor, Prorector, Rector, Deputy Director General of Higher Education, Acting Director General of the No. 1 Department of Basic Education, and Director General of the Department of Myanmar Education Research. He participated in developing the Comprehensive Education Sector Review (CESR) Phase 1: Rapid Assessment and Phase 2: In-depth Analysis and National Education Strategic Plan – NESP (2016-2021). He has been implementing education reforms in collaboration with development partners to achieve the NESP goals: improved teaching and learning, vocational education and training, research and innovation leading to measurable improvement in all schools and educational institutions to improve quality education in Myanmar.

Denise Vaillant is academic director of the Institute of Education at Universidad ORT Uruguay, one of the largest universities in the country. She is also the coordinator of the Technical Committee of the Regional Program for the Development of the Teaching Profession in Latin America and the Caribbean (PREDALC), which offers a window into the world of learning and teaching and a forum for discussing how we can improve teacher training and teaching activities in general.

Denise Vaillant is a university professor of postgraduate studies, consultant to several international organizations, and author of numerous articles and books on the subject of public policies, the teaching profession, and educational change. She has lectured at many top world universities and has been responsible for a series of research projects on educational policies and the teaching profession. She has helped ministries of education across Latin America implement more effective teacher policies and educational reforms.

She has also worked with several university boards, focusing on ways for teacher education and professional development to integrate new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. She has coordinated several teacher education programs in Uruguay and other Latin American countries. She has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Québec in Montreal, Canada, and an M.A. in Educational Planning and Management from the University of Geneva, Switzerland ( http://www.denisevaillant.com/)