Dr. Asiya Foster is an early childhood practitioner with experience in teacher training, curriculum development, policy, and systems planning. She is currently the Chief Innovations Officer for EarlystART, where she works on early childhood workforce development and advocacy issues. Dr. Foster is the Vice President of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP) US National Committee. As a member of OMEP, she participates in the UN NGO Committee on Migration and the Subcommittee on Children in Migration. Her interests include global child development issues with a specialized focus on very young refugee and migrant children and their families. Dr. Foster has previously worked in federal universities in the Republic of Maldives and the United Arab Emirates. She holds an EdD in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and is currently pursuing a master’s in Global Development Practice.

Dr. Carol R. Rodgers is a full professor of education at the University at Albany, State University of New York.  Her work has focused on reflective practice, the educational philosophy of John Dewey, presence in teaching, the theory and practice of a humanizing pedagogy, the history of progressive teacher education and language teaching. Her publications include the 2020 book The Art of Reflective Teaching: Practicing Presence and numerous articles including  “Defining Reflection: Another Look at John Dewey and Reflective Thinking,” Teachers College Press (2002), which was given the AERA Award for Exemplary Research in 2004; “Seeing Student Learning: Teacher Change and the Role of Reflection,” Harvard Educational Review (2002); “Development of the Personal Self and Professional Identity in Learning to Teach” (2008),; and “A Humanizing Pedagogy: Getting Beneath the Rhetoric,”(2012), . She has taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Senegal, West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, been a master teacher in EFL in the refugee camps of Southeast Asia (Indonesia), and consulted in Pakistan, Japan, Thailand, and the United States in EFL and ESL teacher education and teacher professional development. In the 2011 academic year she was a Fulbright Scholar at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. In the summer of 2014 she was named a noted scholar by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Dr. Celia Reddick holds a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor of Education and International Development in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the Florida State University College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences and in the Learning Systems Institute.

Dr. Reddick’s research focuses on education in settings of conflict and forced migration. Through a comparative lens, she examines the work of teachers, families, and international organizations in navigating educational opportunity for young people experiencing conflict and displacement. Her research is shaped by nearly 20 years of experience as a teacher, teacher-trainer, and international education consultant across contexts. Her research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, among others, and has received multiple awards, including the Bridging the Gap Policy Outreach Award from American University. Dr. Reddick’s work is published in a variety of venues including the Comparative Education Review and the Journal of Refugee Studies. She earned her PhD in Education from Harvard University, where she also earned a master’s degree in International Education Policy.

Dr. Diana D. Woolis, Learning Agenda.org, is equal parts practitioner, researcher, and learning theorist. Her experience led her to construct the Sustainable Learning Framework in 2017, an evidence-based set of practices that ensures that learners and education systems are resilient, adaptive, and inclusive.

She was the founding Director of the Center for Learning in Practice at the Carey Institute for Global Good and led the development of the Refugee Educator Academy. Diana co-founded Knowledge in the Public Interest, a social learning design consultancy. She has led education, government, and both non- and for-profit organizations. An innovator in ed tech, Diana was the lead architect of the only platform designed specifically for faculty professional development, which is now owned and used by Lumen Learning.

She has authored numerous articles, including Making the Case for Sustainable Learning: Action for Teachers of Teachers of Refugees, book chapters, Education Leadership for a Networked World, and is co-author of the book Pedagogy Matters: Taking College Teaching Seriously. She is a globally recognized learning strategy, design, and implementation expert focused on underserved and marginalized populations in formal and non-formal settings.

My name is James Monxhwedey. I am from Liberia. I have been living in the US since 1991 after I fled the civil war in my country. I taught in the New York City Public School System before relocating to the District of Columbia. I am a paraprofessional in DC Public Schools. My background is in secondary special education.  

Since 2016, I have been managing a nonprofit, Gbawin Literacy Project (GLPC), that promotes literacy in a village school in one of the remote areas of Liberia. Through the generous efforts of our donors and supporters, we  carry out supply distribution, literacy activities, and PD for students and  teachers at the school. There are more than 250 girls and boys at the school with only 9 teachers, out of which only 4 are trained. These are students and teachers who lack every school supply you can think about, including text books, pencils, pens, composition notebooks, chalk and blackboards. Our nonprofit aims at giving these less fortunate children literacy opportunities to make better futures for themselves and their community.

Jihae Cha is an Assistant Professor of International Education at the George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Her research interests examine the intersection of education quality, sense of belonging, gender, and psychosocial well-being, and the ways in which they influence students’ academic motivation, persistence, and transition in forced displacement caused by armed conflicts and natural disasters. Jihae’s recent research project uses narrative inquiry and participatory action research in navigating a sense of identity/self and belonging among populations with refugee backgrounds in the United States. For the past decade, Jihae has been actively involved in multiple research projects that examined urban refugee education, teacher professional development, accelerated education, and early childhood education with the focus on East African countries. Moving away from deficit discourses that emphasize the vulnerability, passivity, and powerlessness of displaced populations, Jihae research focuses on taking a balanced approach that explores both challenges and opportunities that exist in education for students with refugee backgrounds.

Jill Koyama, a cultural anthropologist, serves as Vice Dean of the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation in Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. She previously held the positions of Professor and Director in Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Arizona’s College of Education and also served as Director of UA’s Education Policy Center and the Institute for LGBT Studies. Jill’s leadership practice, and her research, are informed by her commitment to equity, inclusion, anti-racism, and social justice. Her research is situated across several integrated strands of inquiry: the productive social assemblage of policy; the controversies of globalizing educational policy; and the politics of immigrant and refugee education. It centers on how, even under dire circumstances and inhospitable politics, displaced people access and create resource-rich networks, make learning-centered spaces for themselves and their families, and take civic action in the United States.

Making Failure Pay: High-Stakes Testing, For-Profit Tutoring, and Public Schools, Jill’s 2010 book, was published by The University of Chicago Press and her 2014 co-edited volume, US Education in a World of Migration: Implications for Policy and Practice was released by Routledge Press. Her scholarship appears in several journals, including American Journal of Education, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Educational Policy, and Educational Researcher. She is the Editor of Anthropology and Education Quarterly and has served as Associate Editor and board member on several journals. Jill has received multiple awards for her research, teaching, and leadership. Most recently, she was honored with the 2020 Lydia Kennedy LGBTQ+ Leadership Award from University of Arizona Health Services and the 2024 Faculty Mentor Award, Division G: Social Context, American Educational Research Association.

Josh Schachter is an educator, visual storyteller and social ecologist. He is currently the Founder & Executive Director of CommunityShare, a nonprofit that engages students and educators in real-world learning experiences through community partnerships. For 25+ years he has facilitated community-based media projects with youth, teachers, and nonprofit organizations in places ranging from New Delhi to Nigeria. He co-founded VOICES Inc., a nonprofit organization that hired low-income youth to work as journalists to tell the stories of their lives and communities. He co-founded Finding Voice to support the literacy, multimedia storytelling and civic leadership skills of refugee and immigrant students. As a visual storyteller, he has photographed issues ranging from urban revitalization to food security, and his work has been published in venues ranging from the New York Times to the Navajo Times. He earned his master’s degree in environmental management from the Yale School of the Environment, where he explored the role of youth-produced media in supporting personal and community transformation. You can learn more about Josh’s work at  www.communityshare.org, www.creativenarratives.net and  www.joshphotos.com.

Dr. Mario Echeverria (he/him/él) was born in El Salvador and immigrated to Los Angeles in 1985. He has over 21 years of experience of working in the juvenile incarceration system, mental health, education, and nonprofit/for-profit sector. Throughout his career, he has founded his own middle school through the KIPP network, started his own consulting company focusing on leadership coaching, and completed his Ph.D. in Education for Social Justice. His dissertation and research focuses on Latinx educators, supporting their retention, progression, and deconstructing their identities to support being their most authentic selves. Most recently, he worked as the Director of Engagements for the Equity Lab, which focuses on organizational and leadership change through Race, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion frameworks, content, and co-constructed experiential learning opportunities. Mario is currently working on research on anti-racism pedagogy, Latino male educator hiring, retention, and promotion strategies, and identity-based coaching focused on liberation. In addition, Mario teaches courses on culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, principalship courses on identity and advocacy, and teacher prep on creation of culture in classrooms. 

Mario enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter, caddying for his daughter’s golf tournaments, adding to the stockpile of unfinished books, watching movies, and always learning.

Marissa Ricamara Winmill was born, raised, and educated in the Quezon Province, Philippines. She spent her first ten years of her career teaching in Catholic schools in Manila. In 2002, she landed a teaching job in La Joya, Texas, as a reading specialist, and three years later, she made a move to Washington, where she now resides. She teachers ELLs at Kent-Meridian High School, one of the most diverse high schools in the nation. The nearly 200 refugee students she serves and teaches, inspire her to continue to advocate for access, social justice, equity, and excellence in her school, district, and state. Marissa holds her National Board Certification in Teaching English as a New Language, and a master’s in educational leadership with principal certification. She is currently working on her doctorate in educational leadership. She serves as a board member for the Washington State Professional Educator Standards Board and as a leader for a network of Teachers of Color in Washington. Marissa led the Refugee Educator Foundations of Practice Washington pilot cohort, which drives her in building an inclusive and dynamic community of refugee teacher practitioners committed to supporting students of refugee backgrounds to not only survive but thrive.

Dr. Mary Mendenhall is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the International and Comparative Education Program at the Teachers College of Columbia University. Her current research and program interests include: policies and practices of refugee education across camp, urban and resettlement contexts; teacher support and professional development in crisis settings, including a new project that entails teacher training, peer coaching and mobile mentoring; and the relevance and sustainability of education in emergencies interventions. Dr. Mendenhall currently serves as the Chair of the Teachers in Crisis Contexts Working Group, an inter-agency effort to provide continuous, quality professional development to teachers working in displacement contexts. Previously, Dr. Mendenhall led the partnership between the International Rescue Committee and the University of Nairobi to develop the first-ever graduate program in education in emergencies from 2009 to 2013. She also served as the network coordinator for the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) from 2005 to 2007. More information about Dr. Mendenhall’s work on refugee education at Teachers College can be found here: <a href=”http://www.tc.columbia.edu/refugeeeducation/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>http://www.tc.columbia.edu/refugeeeducation/</a>.

Mona Younes is an independent consultant in the field of ‘Education in Emergencies’. She has been conducting consultancies for international organizations, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, War Child Holland and Plan International in the Middle East and North Africa region. Her passion and specific niche of expertise lies in the area of using EdTech to empower refugee learners. Mona is currently conducting her PhD research at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, aiming to understand the potentials of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based learning in empowering secondary refugee students in Jordan. Mona has a Master degree in Online Education from the University of Southern Queensland. In 2008 she was awarded Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Research Project by the Australian College of Educators for her research on “Perceptions and Attitudes of Arab Learners towards Online Learning.” She has been in the field of teaching, teacher training and curriculum design since 1987 and has worked in Egypt and Qatar.

Nancy White treasures her multiple identities as collaborator, connector, facilitator, learner, graphic recorder, provocateur, chocoholic, grandmother, gardener, etc. Her vocations include online interaction designer, technology steward, facilitator for communities of practice, learning, distributed teams, the generative application of social media and facilitation of online communities. Through her consultancy, Full Circle Associates Nancy helps organizations connect through online and offline strategies.  She has a special interest in the NGO/NPO sector and has worked extensively in international development. Nancy blogs , teaches, presents and writes on online facilitation and interaction, social architecture and social media. She is co-author with Etienne Wenger and John Smith of “Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities.” Prior to her solo career, Nancy helped run an internet start up, worked in maternal and child health, and broadcasting, appreciating the diversity and similarities of all these callings.

Oula Abu-Amsha is the Learning & Development Coordinator at INEE, Switzerland. A former Syrian professor, she completed her Ph.D in Computer Science in 1998. She has significant experience in e-learning technologies and curriculum development. Since her exile in 2012, she started her activities in Education in Emergencies working with the World Bank education team and conducting research in Lebanon. Since 2016, she has been the academic adviser of Mosaik Education. Before joining INEE, Oula served students and facilitators from Guyana to Myanmar as the Chief Academic Officer of Jesuit Worldwide Learning. Oula is a big advocate for teachers, doing her best to serve them in all the open venues.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She leads a research program that focuses on the connections between education and community development, specifically the role that education plays in building peaceful and participatory societies. Her work is situated in conflict and post-conflict settings in sub-Saharan Africa and with African Diaspora communities. She is concerned with the interplay between local experiences of children, families, and teachers and the development and implementation of national and international policy. Her research reflects connections between practice, policy and scholarship, and is strengthened through long-term collaborations with UN agencies, NGOs and communities. Dryden-Peterson’s long-term research on refugee education has played a critical role in shaping global policy on the importance of quality, forward-looking education in all phases of conflict. Her critical review of refugee education formed the basis of the 2012-2016 UNHCR Education Strategy. Her recent research is published in Educational Researcher, Comparative Education Review, and Curriculum Inquiry, and preliminary findings from on-going research appear in a Brookings blog series. Raised in Toronto, Canada, Dryden-Peterson taught primary school in Madagascar, South Africa as well as the United States, and founded education non-profits in South Africa and Uganda.

Dr. Zlata Gromova is a PhD in Psychology, a Learning & Development consultant, and Ukrainian Learning & Development Community Board Member.

She recently led a community of educators and practical psychologists in the building of online courses to support Ukrainian early childhood educators through wartime.

For the past several years, she led research groups assessing various markets and their underserved populations to promote financial inclusion.