We are delighted to introduce the independent judging panel for the GSL Global Goals Competition. Each member of this years panel has been specially selected on the basis of their global experiences and/or a knowledge of sustainable development. They represent a wide range of specialisms and bring a wealth of personal and professional experience to the panel.
Dr Edward Brooks is the Executive Director of the Oxford Character Project at the University of Oxford, where his research focuses on character and leadership. He has designed and delivered character and leadership development programmes for universities and commercial organisations around the world.
My whole career was in education, first as a teacher, then spending over 35 years at the University of Bristol, where I became Director of Sport, Exercise and Health. I coached sport at a high level, and was a staff coach of both the RFU and the MCC. I was on the main committee of the RFU for 21 years, ending as President.
In the past decade, I have focused on leadership in general, and helping young people to understand what it takes to be effective leaders. I set up the charity ‘Foundation for Leadership through Sport’. I have been awarded Honorary doctorates from the Universities of Bristol and Roehampton. I support a number of charities, including ones supporting education and conservation in Africa.
Rebecca Warren is Director of Program Design at Rise. She is a passionate educator and has spent her career in various roles from school leadership to curriculum reform, but always with the guiding principle that every child deserves an excellent education that is holistic and truly honours child and adolescent development.
Natalie Cheung is a TED-Ed public speaker, an award-winning volunteer and civil engineer. After graduating from University of Manchester, Natalie worked as a transportation engineer for a global built environment consultancy. She is passionate about raising young people’s career aspirations and now works to support industry volunteers to inspire the next generation. For her volunteer work and active citizenship, Natalie was awarded the YMCA England and Wales Young Leader of the Year 2018, University of Manchester Medal of Social Responsibility in 2019 and Women’s Engineering Society Amy Johnson Inspiration Award 2019.
Shona McCarthy joined the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society as Chief Executive in December 2015. Shona has championed the Edinburgh Fringe as the world’s leading open access, performing arts festival and founded on the principle of freedom of expression. From 2011-2014 she was Chief Executive of the Culture Company, leading on Derry – Londonderry’s transformational year as UK City of Culture. Prior to that she was Director of the British Council Northern Ireland. She headed up Imagine Belfast to deliver Belfast’s bid to be European Capital of Culture in 2001. Shona has 32 years experience working in senior leadership positions and was awarded a prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship for Innovation in 2014, making her part of a global network of leaders and influencers, and a NESTA cultural leadership award which took her to work with the Seagull Foundation for the Arts in Calcutta India in 2007.
Harrison Wavell is the Schools & Colleges Programme Manager at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity whose mission is to accelerate the transition to a circular economy – a new way to design, make, and use things within the limits of the planet. Harrison works on integrating the circular economy concept into school curricula and creating online and face to face learning for educators and students around this important topic. Harrison has previously taught secondary level English, Creative Writing, Physical Education, and a variety of outdoor education activities. Harrison enjoys writing for children, storytelling, and surfing.
As a sustainability and inclusion professional and a climate and social justice activist at heart, Shana Tufail has been an advocate for the UN Sustainable Development Goals since inception. She founded Model My City and #SDGsforCamden to bring the goals to life for local governance, businesses, and citizens as a pilot for London boroughs and beyond and as a post COVID framework to #buildbackbetter.
Shana is a Climate Reality Leader for Al Gore’s, The Climate Reality Project, and was awarded the Warrior Women Future Leader award in 2020 for leading on normalising neurodiversity and intersectionality in the workplace at The Alan Turing Institute and across the Knowledge Quarter in London. Shana champions leadership for climate, sustainability and inclusion at all levels and is inspired and hopeful for the global youth, women, and education to play a leading role during the UN Decade of Action to help shape the #futureweneed.
Graduating from Bristol University, Mark has practised as a barrister since 1986, specialising in crime, financial crime, professional discipline and sports law. He took Silk in 2006, has sat as a Recorder since 2004, and is a member of the ECB’s Cricket Discipline Commission.
Mark is a Governor of Wellington College, a Governor of Amesbury School, and a Trustee of the Arundel Castle Cricket Foundation, these roles providing him with the good fortune to follow his passions of education and cricket.
d’Arcy Lunn’s dreams and daily life are dedicated to see a world with access and opportunity for everyone, everywhere! For the past 21 years d’Arcy has experienced more than 90 countries, given over 1600 presentations to 140,000+ people and worked with leading development, environmental, social justice and global education organisations and people.
His self-initiated concept and organisation, Teaspoons of Change, focuses on the personal choices, decisions and actions that have a positive impact on people and the planet. d’Arcy is currently the Group Head of Sustainability and Global Citizenship with the Dulwich Group of Schools based in Shanghai, China.
Sara has always been curious about sustainability and wants to be able to take actions that influence the wellbeing of people and the protection of the planet. She has been working in the hospitality industry over the last 12 years and currently works as a consultant in London. Originally, from Portugal, Sara loves to travel and to have the opportunity of engaging with other cultures and different backgrounds. Prior to moving to the UK 7 years ago, she also lived in Colombia. Outside of work, she actively volunteers with The Felix Project fighting food waste, loves to cycle and hike around the UK and is always very excited to be in the kitchen making whole food plant based dishes, for her family and friends.
Rajashree is the Co-Founder of Edumenteach, an ed-tech start-up providing learning solutions, course development, training and mentoring services. She has formerly taught and managed adults and school students across the UK, India and Malaysia. Her international teaching experience spans across the primary, secondary, further, higher and adult education sectors. Most recently, she inspired teacher trainees through delivery of high-quality HE Initial teacher education programmes, CPD and 1:1 coaching. She is currently involved in scaling up cMyQual, a career management platform that encourages individuals to track their learning, professional development and manage their careers, while making the planet greener along the way!
Since graduating in English from the University of Cambridge, Briony’s seemingly disparate roles have seen her support and influence decision making and decision makers. After a stint in Jerusalem with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, she spent just under ten years in the British Army’s Intelligence Corps as a Commissioned Officer, during which she spent time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia and various other shorter term global hops as Aide to the Chief of the Defence Staff.
On leaving the military she spent time with Oxfam as a Humanitarian Policy Adviser, principally covering UK lobbying on advocacy issues relating to Africa and Peacekeeping and promoting the rights of people in crisis, before two consecutive Private Secretary roles, firstly for the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Kevin Hyland then with the COO of Ofsted Matthew Coffey. She is currently Head of Corporate Governance & Internal Insight in Ofsted’s Strategy team.
Kinvara believes in the power of education to bring about positive change. Her career began as a teacher through the Teach First programme in a primary school in London. She then taught in Norway and Australia, before moving to Nepal where she implemented a teacher training programme to 500 young women living in rural communities.
As Senior Campaign Manager for World’s Largest Lesson (WLL) Kinvara brings creative resources for teaching and learning about the Global Goals to life. She recently produced World’s Largest Lesson Live, an inaugural YouTube show to inspire youth action for the Goals that featured UN Leaders in conversation with popular teen personalities Millie Bobby Brown and Sofia Carson. Kinvara works alongside WLL’s key partner UNICEF, to ensure all children are able to learn about the Global Goals wherever they live and the programme has now reached over 15 million young people.
I’m Isabel, and I’m known for my social action work for gender diversity and digital education. I have a Fellowship at Code First Girls, where I have taught 20+ women to code and mentor 6 early career professionals, and an advisory role for Microsoft’s TechHer Student community. I have previously led social action projects for 150+ young people in my local area, so look forward to seeing the great ideas of this year’s Global Goals participants.
I am Global Partnerships Manager for World’s Largest Lesson (WLL), working with different partners globally to reach every child and young person with the SDGs. I’m based in Paris, France. I also teach in a school including running SDGs lessons there. My background is in education and media.
Isobel is a consultant at Arup who works within the circular economy and digital cities. She is passionate about sustainable development and supporting young people.
I am a senior manager at The Open University in the UK, with 20 years experience in education leadership. My specialisms include strategy and policy development, operational planning and resourcing, and organisational growth. I have a Masters in Education Management from the University of Warwick and a wide range of professional training.
Gergana has spent her career in the Health Technology sector. She has done a number of roles across sales and marketing, driving new business and solutions for healthcare customers. Gergana has a passion for sustainability and personal development. She has been involved in organising and judging business-style competitions for students for the last 10 years and is very excited for her first year as a Global Goals Competition judge.
Edd Moore is a teacher and Eco Coordinator at Damers First School, Dorchester, Dorset. Edd has built up the eco work at Damers over the last 9 years from a blank canvas to one of the top Eco Schools in the UK embedding the environment into the school’s curriculum. Under his leadership, Damers achieved the Eco Schools Green Flag three times in 2016, 2018, 2020, won Eco Schools Primary Eco School of the Year, Surfers Against Sewage Plastic Free Schools Champion, Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots Best Group in 2019 and Education Business, Environmental Practice Award 2020.
Mara co-founded EduMenTeach, September 2020 and will be launching cMyQual this June, 2021: a place to grow your career for all life long learners. Core to our business is sustainability with a partnership with Sustainable Harvest International and supporting others to continually grow and learn. For every achievement cMyQual will donate to plant a tree: hopefully we will sponsor forests with everyone’s collective achievements. Prior to this launch and for the last 25+ years Mara has been dedicated to teaching and learning. Her career has been centred in schools in underprivileged communities and she has served as a teacher/ founder/ leader and director of several secondary schools in Los Angeles. She has a keen interest in school structure and design and studied the levers to improve student achievement within a school setting. She reformed a teacher training programme in Oxford, UK and engaged with designing future teacher training courses that connect to teaching apprenticeships. She engages on Twitter @mara_Simmons and promotes thinking differently about schooling.
Hi, I’m Henry – a co-founder of AimHi, the nature-first, curiosity-powered online school on a mission to make world-class live learning accessible to everyone. I am chair of governors at a school in Tower Hamlets and am passionate about education, surfing and pangolins. At AimHi we have created the world’s leading live-learning experience for understanding the climate and nature crisis, how to talk about it and how to be an agent of positive change. https://www.aimhi.co/earth
I’m a digital consultant with 3 years of experience and an MSc graduate in Sustainable Engineering for International Development. I’ve been passionate about sustainability since I was very young, but after working in the field for 4 weeks in Sierra Leone for my Dissertation, my life has never been the same. I’m trying to integrate sustainability in everything I do at my daily job, from organising workshops with my team, influence projects towards a more sustainable direction or taking part in sustainability courses and listening to climate podcasts in my free time.
I believe young people are our best chance to create a more sustainable future for us and for our planet. Their self-driven interest, energy and passion in fixing what they’re not responsible for is highly admirable and motivational. The best way to invest in our future is to fully support the young generation – and we must do it better than we did with our planet.
Emi is a post-graduate researcher at Northumbria University, working on a PhD which investigates how coral reef islands formed in the Caribbean and the role coral reefs play in island evolution. She is a coral reef and environmental enthusiast; and loves researching the natural world and the ongoing impact that climate change and environmental degradation are having on it.
Outside of academia, Emi is passionate about the arts and providing opportunities for disadvantaged students to reach their full potential in all realms of life. Prior to her PhD, she spent 2 years working for the London Chamber Orchestra. Here, she ran an outreach project (Music Junction) which brought together communities and young people from a wide range of backgrounds, and provided them with opportunities to develop artistic and social skills through shared music making experiences.
I have worked as an actress, TV producer, publisher and author, and have published books on practical things you can do as an individual to contribute towards a sustainable future for our planet. I live in Devon and helped create, and am a trustee of, a small charity in our village which runs a community orchard for the benefit of both the people and the flora and fauna that use it. I worked as commissioning editor for 12 years for a green publisher and came into contact with many wonderful inspirational people who care about the social and ecological issues of our times. The future of our earth is in the hands of the generation coming up behind me and I am very pleased to be part of the GSL team and make a small contribution to some of the wonderful projects participants create.
I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Future Foundations since 2013 – when I first launched my website Poponomics, which was designed with the aim of presenting potentially complicated ideas in the world of business & economics (take, quantitative easing, for example) and presenting them in a relatable and understandable format, through both written pieces and YouTube. Professionally, since completing my Economics degree from the University of Bath, I’ve dabbled in management consulting, and currently find myself at Google, where I support small and medium sized businesses with their digital growth strategy.
Outside of work – I pursue my passions for writing, consumer technology, the automotive industry and my beloved cricket and football. Also as part of the One Young World ambassador community, I co-founded the Bath annual caucus, where students, academics and professionals meet to collaborate and share ideas around how we can play our part to support the UN SDGs.
I have a keen interest in Global education and I am proud to be judging this competition. I am a senior teacher at St George’s School Windsor Castle. I very much look forward to judging your entries.
Jack’s entrepreneurial journey began at 13 years old, offering various marketing services to organisations in order to support himself through the financial hardships in which his family were imbued. As a testament to his nature, Jack has received 16 awards and scholarships over the past 2 years alone.
Moreover, Jack now supports other entrepreneurs through freelance coaching, being an Enterprise Coach for the University of East London and Young Ambassador for Big Ideas Wales, an organisation belonging to the Welsh Government. To further support this, he will be launching a new ecosystem for entrepreneurs in the coming year.
Currently, Devi is Project Manager at a Berlin-based Food Tech start-up working to reduce food waste at scale. While the initiative requires a global presence, the product and service is focused on strengthening local food systems. Devi admires the values embedded in the GSL program whereby youth are inspired to initiate projects in their local communities, which can grow global, contribute to global goals, and reach a global audience. She has some experience in the world of corporate finance and consulting, specifically working on food & ag. sustainability projects. Devi was raised and influenced by her grandmother who is even more passionate about sharing new culinary techniques, food values, and Gujarati recipes to prevent food waste.
Gilda Scarfe is the CEO and Founder of Positive Ed an educational research consultancy. Gilda is trained as a teacher, lawyer and positive psychologist practitioner with a Masters 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’s passion lies in finding effective ways for individuals to become the architects of their own success and wellbeing. She has a special interest in enhancing evidence based knowledge in school interventions.
Gilda has been an invited speaker at numerous conferences, i.e. at the World Congress in Positive Psychology Melbourne, the European Conference on Positive Psychology Iceland, GESS Dubai, World Global Education Conference Mumbai, IPEN Global Conference Mexico etc. She is a member of 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, a NGO in Nigeria and a Patron of ISNF Foundation in Cyprus.
Kate Horsburgh is an expert on holistic wellbeing and health and has lived and worked as an expat in Asia, the Middle east and Europe for 27 years. She currently lives in Maidenhead, UK – with her husband, three teenagers and two Omani rescue dogs.
With over 40 years’ experience of melding Eastern and Western philosophies and therapies Kate set up Caramaya Wellbeing to help people with stress-related conditions find balance to feel happier and healthier.
Life-long learning, sustainability, holistic living and wellbeing are among her many varied interests.
Evan Dutmer (he/him/his) is Instructor in Latin, Ancient Mediterranean Cultures, and Ethics at the Culver Academies, a boarding school in Northern Indiana. Evan’s ethics teaching practice and research are rooted in the aim of empowering young people to grow in virtue step-by-step and flourish as human beings. He received his PhD in Ancient Philosophy from Northwestern University in 2019. His academic work has been accepted for publication in the New England Classical Journal, Journal of Ancient Philosophy, Teaching Classical Languages, The Journal of Classics Teaching, and Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
He is the 2020 Indiana Classical Conference Teacher of the Year, Rising Star, and was one of 60 teachers (of close to 13,000 nominations from 112 countries) shortlisted for the 2021 Cambridge University Press Dedicated Teacher Awards. He is also a volunteer Latin translator for the Slavery, History, Memory, Reconciliation Project of the Jesuits of the USA and Canada and a Worthy Now pen pal for currently incarcerated members of the Unitarian Universalist faith through the Church of the Larger Fellowship, Unitarian Universalist.
Sam leads all of Eden’s work with schools, young people and their teachers and has done so since 2010. She’s been a member of Eden’s Education Team since the project opened in 2001, establishing Eden as a must-go school visit destination for schools across the UK and maintaining a focus on high quality teaching and learning across Eden’s learning programmes. Following a first degree in Natural Science at Jesus College, Cambridge, she qualified as a primary school teacher, with science specialism, in 1997 and worked in schools in Bristol, Cornwall, Pakistan and South Africa.
I live with my wife and three kids in Tacoma, Washington in a neighborhood with a close community of friends. My primary interest is in seeing individuals and communities flourish, and I am an advocate and entrepreneur for better forms of capitalism that promote flourishing. After getting my MBA from Stanford I spent a decade running healthcare operations for DaVita. Currently, I train our executives in culture-building and management processes, and work on various projects help us better serve and develop our employees.
Sopuruchukwu Obiesie is a medical doctor and public health enthusiast from Nigeria, currently working as a research consultant at the Accelerating Achievement for Africa’s Adolescents (Accelerate) Hub. She is passionate about context-relevant ideas that improve the welfare and health outcomes of young persons from vulnerable backgrounds. She earned a degree in medicine from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria and an MSc in International Health from the University of Oxford.
Her career has seen her organising and implementing public health programmes, collaborating with multiple development agencies at a sub-national level and researching effective policies for development. Her favourite pastime involves karaoke-ing or baking with her three kids.
The Managing Director of ABA – a strategy & creative agency releasing organisations into their purpose – Dave spends most of his time helping leaders see the impact they and the companies they lead can have on the world around them. He has previously worked for a number of overseas development charities, including a stint in Cambodia – where he supported local children and youth initiatives in urban areas.
Neil is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Office of Hussle, the UK’s largest consumer fitness marketplace with a mission to increase opportunities for people to engage in a healthy lifestyle through exercise.
Prior to founding Hussle, Neil worked for German engineering giant Siemens where he was the first UK employee to lead their international programme for future leaders under-30. From Siemens, Neil progressed to global consultancy firm Ernst & Young where he worked on a number of high profile mergers and acquisitions across Europe and the Middle East.
At the age of 30, Neil dropped out of the corporate world to create Hussle which was the first fitness marketplace anywhere in the world. Neil has subsequently grown the business to a team of 30 people, partnering with thousands of UK gyms and health clubs, catering for c.1 million registered customers.
2021 will be the second year that Neil has supported the Global Goals competition as a semi-final judge.
Kelsie Dawson is a fifth-year doctoral student in the Educational Psychology program with a concentration in Educational Neuroscience at the University of Alabama. In general, her research focuses on exploring the discrepancy between how people think they will behave morally and how they actually behave in reality. Currently, her work explores how selfhood and moral identity influence how we judge moral issues and how we establish our moral values.
Sarra is CMO at Small Robot Company. Impact has always been at the core of SRCs mission. Sarra has been instrumental in driving the business forward around its purpose, building rapid visibility and early customer traction, as well as strategic industry partnerships.