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Advisory Team
Dr. Helen Janc Malone
Chief Strategy and Innovation Office at the Institute for Educational Leadership (USA)
Dr. Helen Janc Malone is Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL). Her work focuses on scaling promising practices through research and data, advancing organizational strategy, innovation, and policy. Her areas of expertise include out-of-school time learning, education policy and leadership, and systems-level change in both national and global contexts. Helen is the Advisory Board Co-Chair for the Global Extended Learning and Youth Development Association (GELYDA), National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Consensus Study Committee Member, and Series Editor of the book series Current Issues on Out-of-School Time (Emerald, formerly IAP). She is currently a participant in the 2024 cohort of the American Express Leadership Academy. She has authored more than 50 publications, facilitated over 100 workshops and webinars, and delivered dozens of speeches domestically and internationally. Her books include, The Growing Out-of-School Time (co-editor, Information Age Publishing, 2018), Future Directions of Educational Change (co-editor, Routledge, 2018), and Leading Educational Change (editor, Teachers College Press, 2013). She has co-founded two special interest groups (SIGs) within the American Educational Research Association (AERA), has served as the Chair of three SIGs (including the Out-of-School Time SIG), and is the founding editor of a long-running series, Lead the Change. She serves as a peer reviewer on several academic journals and has served on editorial boards across out-of-school time, youth development, and education leadership journals. Helen holds Ed.D. in education policy, leadership, and instructional practice from Harvard University.
Dr. Gil Noam
GELYDA Advisory Board Co-Chair; Associate Professor at
Harvard Medical School; Founder PEAR/ISRY (USA)
Dr. Noam is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School focusing on prevention and resilience and leads the Institute for the Study of Resilience in Youth (ISRY) at McLean Hospital. He served as the director of the Risk and Prevention Program and is the founder of the RALLY Prevention Program, a Boston-based intervention that bridges social and academic support in school, afterschool, and community settings.
He has published over 200 papers, articles, and books in the areas of child and adolescent development as well as risk and resiliency in clinical, school, and afterschool settings. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the journal New Directions for Youth Development: Theory, Practice and Research with a strong focus on out-of-school time. Dr. Noam is trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst in both Europe and the United States.
Erika Bienek
GELYDA Advisory Board Member; Chief of Community Relations for Techint Group (Argentina)
Argentinian. Industrial Engineer. Community Relations Director at Techint Group, a leading group of companies with deep roots in the countries where they operate. In this role I lead the non-profit programs implemented in the communities where the companies have industrial operations.
We seek to ensure that the development and sustainability of our industry contribute to the economic, educational and individual growth of the communities where we work and live.
We design, implement and measure education programs in 20 countries. We focus on STEM programs to be implemented in 70 primary schools and technical high-schools. We run our Roberto Rocca Technical Schools and training centers network in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Italy with the objective to equal opportunities and level up technical education.
Dr. Carol Maher
Director of the Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (Australia)
Carol Maher is a Professor of Population Health and the Director of UniSA’s Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition, and Activity (ARENA). Her work focuses on supporting Australian communities to improve their lifestyles to benefit their health and wellbeing. In particular, she works with schools and service providers to develop and deliver scalable, system-level approaches to improve health behaviors and outcomes. A key project, the Activated OSHC program, is a large-scale project aimed at increasing physical activity in children through Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) services. This NHMRC-funded partnership project involved a research total in 196 OSHC services across SA, WA, and NSW, followed by national dissemination and evaluation in 2025. Professor Maher serves as Senior Editor for BMC Public Health and Chief Specialty Editor for Frontiers in Digital Health. She actively engages in professional communities, delivers invited keynotes, and frequently shares her research through mainstream media.
Dr. Bettina Dahl Søndergaard
Associate Professor of problem-based learning (PBL) at the Aalborg UNESCO PBL Centre in Engineering Science and Sustainability at Aalborg University; Professor of mathematics education at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bergen in Norway (Denmark)
Associate Professor at the Aalborg UNESCO PBL Centre at Aalborg University in Denmark and a Professor of mathematics education at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bergen in Norway. She holds a Ph.D. is in mathematics education (Roskilde, 2003), a M.Sc. in Educational Research Methodology (Oxford, 2000) and another M.Sc. in mathematics (Aalborg, 1997).
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She has done consultancy for the World Bank and is currently an Expert for the European Commission. She is on committees on K10 mathematics education under the Danish Ministry of Education and is vice chairman of the ministerial corps of examiners for mathematics at universities. She was a member of the International Committee (and treasurer) of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (IGPME) and chair of the Out-of-School Time SIG in AERA.
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She has 200+ publications and is also a frequent referee at K12 STEM competitions such as FIRST LEGO League. She is PI or co-PI on several projects on mathematics and vocational education.
Dr. Mohamed El Nagdi
Educator and STEM Expert (Egypt)
Mohamed El Nagdi is a seasoned teacher educator and STEM subject matter expert working across a variety of local and international research programs in Egypt and the United States in both the precollege and university settings for over 20 years. He has extensive experience in STEM curriculum development, organizing teacher professional development and research opportunities, as well as coordinating and assisting in several research projects like EngrTEAMS at the University of Minnesota, the Interdisciplinary Centennial Lab for Innovation and Technology in Education (ICLITE) at AUC, Evaluation of the USAID funded STEM project in Egypt (STESSA). He is founding member of the STEAM Track of the Professional Educator Diploma (PED) at AUC, and an expert in STEM schools in Egypt and the Arab World. He gives consultations to international schools in Egypt on building STEM programs, preparing STEM teachers and STEM curriculum. He has contributed over a dozen research articles on STEM teachers’ identity, STEM equity, STEM education assessment, and technology integration in STEM. His most recent contribution is developing a guide to introduce STEM education to non-STEM schools with the title RIDE in reverse (Explore, Develop, Implement, and Reflect).
Dr. Kirstin Kerr
(England)
Bio coming soon!
Dr. Wolfram Rollett
Full Professor at Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg (Germany)
Wolfram Rollett is a full professor of school pedagogy with a focus on school development at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg.
Previously he worked as a researcher and lecturer in the field of Educational Science and Psychology at Universities in Potsdam, Berlin, Braunschweig, Dortmund and Wuppertal. From 2012 to 2024 he was a full professor of empirical research with a focus on school development at the University of Education Freiburg.
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His research topics and interests include school development processes, all-day schools, quality of extra- and co-curricular activities, evaluation of learning environments, computational thinking, educational effectiveness, effects of class composition, student feedback on teaching and teacher training.
Dr. Madhav Chavan
Board Member and Former CEO of Pratham Education Foundation (India)
Madhav Chavan moved from the field of Chemistry to the field of literacy a few years after his return to India having acquired a Ph. D. in the United States and some post-doctoral experience there. He worked in the field of adult literacy from 1989 to 1994 inspired by the National Literacy Mission launched by late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India. In 1994, Unicef in Mumbai put him in charge of creating a ‘societal mission’ to universalize primary education in the city of Mumbai. As a result he co-founded Pratham that started in 1994-95 as a Mumbai based organization and has now grown to be one of India’s largest NGOs working across the country with millions of children every year with a focus on basic learning outcomes including reading and math. Its flagship programs, Read India and the Annual Status of Education Report have earned the organization a reputation as a pedagogy and advocacy innovator that has influenced policy and practice at the national and international level. He stepped down as CEO of Pratham Education Foundation but continues to be on its Board and actively leading the new experimentation in use of technology for education.
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Madhav has been personally recognized for his work with the WISE Prize and The Skoll Award for social entrepreneurship as his organization has received the Kravis Prize for Leadership and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award for developmental work.
Dr. Yaacov Yablon
Professor and the former Founding Dean of the Faculty of Education at Bar-Ilan University (Israel)
Yaacov B. Yablon is a Professor and the former Founding Dean of the Faculty of Education at Bar-Ilan University. He serves as the academic director of the Center for Simulations in Education at Bar-Ilan University. In previous positions, he has held a variety of leadership roles, including Head of the School of Education, Head of the Department of Teacher Training, Head of the Educational Counseling Program, and Head of the Institute for Community Education and Research at Bar-Ilan University. Yablon's research focuses on affective education and risk prevention, with particular emphasis on how educational institutions can support children facing adversity in school, their home, and community environments. In addition, he develops and investigates simulation-based learning, bridging theoretical learning and practice in developing social-emotional competencies in teacher training.
Furukawa Kazu
President of National Institution for Youth Education (NIYE) (Japan)
Furukawa Kazu graduated from the School of Foreign Studies of the Osaka University of Foreign Studies. She also graduated from the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Sophia University.
She founded and engaged in activities with “Teaching Kids to Love the Earth,” a group focused on environmental and science education for children. She established the Action Learning Institute and conducted corporate training programs. She introduced experiential and inquiry-based science education methods from UC Berkley to Japan and founded the NPO, “Taikengata Kagaku Kyoiku Kenkyusho (Institute for Experiential Science Education),” remaining active in this role until 2016.
In 2017, she served as an Executive Consultant at HER Co., Ltd., conducting training programs. She also served as an auditor (part-time) at Tokyo Gakugei University from April 2015 to August 2020. She has been serving as the President of National Institution for Youth Education (NIYE) from April 2021.
Jerry Lengoasa
Consultant and Senior Advisor for the World Bank on Hydrometeorology and Disaster Management (South Africa)
Ratlaleng Desmond Jeremiah (Jerry) Lengoasa, is a consultant and senior advisor for the World Bank on Hydrometeorology and Disaster Management in South Asia and Africa with a focus on Early Warning Systems. With a senior management career spanning academia, private and public sector, he is a former Assistant Secretary General (2005-2010) and Deputy Secretary General (2010-2016) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and former CEO of the South African Weather Service (SAWS) from 2003-2005 and 2017-2019 respectively. Jerry holds Masters degrees in Geography (Synoptic Climatology) and in Public and Development Management both obtained from WITS University in Johannesburg. He is currently a PhD candidate in Disaster Risk Science with the North-West University (NWU) in South Africa.
Aaron Philip Dworkin
CEO of the National Summer Learning Association (USA)
Aaron Philip Dworkin is a national leader in the education, out-of-school time (OST) and youth development fields. He currently serves as CEO of the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA), a national organization based in Washington DC helping 25,000+ programs and leaders provide quality summer learning experiences to all children.
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Prior to NSLA, Aaron served as President of the After-School All-Stars National Network, a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles offering free afterschool and summer programs to 90,000 low-income students in 20 major cities. In addition, he previously founded and directed Hoops & Leaders, an award-winning, mentoring and leadership program for teenage boys in New York City.
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He is a graduate of Tufts University, holds a Masters in Education from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, an MPA from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and serves on the national board of the American Camp Association.
Jan Morrison
Founder and CEO of TIES (Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM) and a globally recognized leader in STEM education (USA)
With over 35 years of experience as a science teacher and principal, Jan has shaped transformative STEM initiatives, including the National STEM Funders Network and STEM Learning Ecosystems Initiative. Her work spans designing STEM schools, such as MC2 STEM High School in Cleveland, and implementing digital fabrication labs worldwide in collaboration with MIT. She has advised the White House, Department of Education, and organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, advancing policies and practices to ensure equitable STEM opportunities. Passionate about education reform, Jan champions "Learn and Earn" models, helping students gain skills with real-world value.
Outside work, she enjoys time with her grandchildren, gourmet cooking, and Cape Cod beaches, driven by her lifelong mission to inspire all children to become STEM-literate and capable.
Arthur Pearson
Former President and Chief executive Officer of Thompson Island Outward Bound (USA)
Arthur Pearson has five decades of experience as an outdoor educator, team builder and organizational leader. He built his leadership and management skills from the bottom up, starting as an instructor, then base camp manager, regional supervisor, chief executive officer, trustee and board chair. In the last decade, he has focused on field building that integrates research, policy, and practice.
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During his 18 years as President and Chief Executive Officer of Thompson Island Outward Bound, the organization earned national recognition for out-of-school time and summer learning. He founded the Outward Bound Professional Learning Lab that made the national Outward Bound network an exemplar for using research and data to drive continuous improvement. He is on the Board of Advisors of Higher Ground Boston, serves as a Field Consultant for the National Summer Learning Association, an Ambassador for the Afterschool Alliance, and Advisor to the Maine Outdoor School for All coalition.
