At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Founder operating in the Education space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Bernhard Niesner
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of busuu
Bernhard Niesner is the CEO and Co-Founder of busuu – the world´s largest social network for language learning with more than 35m users. busuu provides language courses in 12 different languages combined with direct interaction with native speakers from the community. The London-based start-up received several awards and was named “Best Education Start-Up in 2011” by TechCrunch. busuu is backed by renown business angels like Martin Varsavsky and received investment from PRO-Founders Capital. Before founding busuu, Bernhard worked at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. In addition to busuu, he is Associated Professor at IE Business School in the area of online marketing. Bernhard graduated summa cum laude in International Business from the University of Vienna and holds an MBA (with honors) from IE Business School. In 2009 he was awarded “Entrepreneur of the year” in Austria.
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About busuu: busuu is a mobile app for language learning with the goal of breaking down language barriers.
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Brent Hoberman
Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of Founders Factory
Brent Hoberman is chairman and co-founder of Founders Factory, an ambitious corporate backed incubator/accelerator based in London, and also of Founders Forum, a series of intimate annual global events for the leading entrepreneurs of today and the rising stars of tomorrow. Brent is a co-founder and was founding chairman of Smartup, Grip & made.com, a leading European direct-from-factory consumer homewares retailer. Most recently, Brent co-founded Firstminute Capital, a London-based pan-European seed fund, backed by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs. Brent co-founded lastminute.comin April 1998, was CEO from its inception and sold it in 2005 to Sabre for $1.1bn. Technology businesses he has co-founded have raised over $500m. Brent sits on the Advisory board for LetterOne Technology (a $16bn investment fund), the Oxford Foundry and the UK Government Digital Advisory Board. He is a board member of The Economist, a YGL and one of the Prime Minister’s Business Trade Ambassadors. Brent was awarded a CBE for services to entrepreneurship in the 2015 New Year’s Honour’s List.
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About 01 Founders, AccelerateHER, Firstminute Capital, Founders Factory, Founders Forum, Founders Intelligence, Founders Keepers, Founders of the Future, Grip, Karakuri, MADE, SmartUp.io: Founders Factory is a global corporate-backed venture studio and accelerator.
Indu Khemchandani
Founder of Uplatz
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About Uplatz: Uplatz is UK-based leading global training provider with a huge portfolio of courses on cutting-edge technologies, software, cloud and data.
Priya Lakhani
Founder & CEO of CENTURY Tech
Former libel barrister, Priya founded FMCG business Masala Masala in 2008 successfully launching its products into nationwide supermarket chains and independent retailers. The company’s charitable arm has provided over 1 million meals and 35,000 vaccinations to the underprivileged in India and Africa. In 2014 Priya founded CENTURY Tech, which is set to disrupt the education sector by utilising big data and data mining techniques to improve students’ learning outcomes. Priya has been a member of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills’ Entrepreneurs’ Forum, an advisory board member to several educational/skills organisations, including a founding entrepreneur of Gazelle Group Colleges. Priya was awarded Business Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009 and Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2014.
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About CENTURY Tech: CENTURY is the award-winning artificial intelligence teaching and learning platform for schools, colleges and universities.
Mark Szulyovszky
Co-Founder and CRO of Drops
Co-founder and CRO, Drops
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About Drops, Imagegate, Plan B Labs: Drops is a game-based language learning application.
Bhanu Choudhrie
Founder of Alpha Aviation Group
Bhanu Choudhrie is a British-Indian entrepreneur, investor and business owner. He specializes in emerging Asian markets such as India and China. He founded C&C Alpha Group in London and serves as the firm’s executive director. Bhanu Choudhrie was born in Delhi, India, in June of 1978 and earned a degree in international business and marketing at the University of Boston. His father is Sudhir Choudhrie, a London-based businessman with interests in media, hospitality, aviation, health care, and retail development. An internship at JP Morgan followed his graduation, and Bhanu went to work at C&C Alpha Group in London after that. C&C Alpha Group is a private investment strategy company that he is a founder of. He became the executive director in 2001 and maintains that role today. At C&C Alpha Group, Bhanu Choudhrie works with his brother and the rest of the leadership team to provide advising and consulting services to venture capital investors. In addition to identifying and sourcing deals for new and emerging markets, Bhanu develops solutions and promotes client companies in the hospitality, aviation, health care, agriculture, and utility sectors. In 2016, Bhanu expanded his education by completing the Harvard Business School’s Owner and President Management program. Those skills helped him become the director of Megalith Financial Acquisition Corp. He accepted the position in 2018 after the company’s IPO. Bhanu Choudhrie serves on the board of directors for both Citizens Bank and Atlantic Coast Bank. He is also the director of a charitable organization called Path to Success. The organization was founded by Bhanu’s mother, and it exists to help disadvantaged people and especially women access quality education and disability accommodations. It is especially known for its role in helping women with disabilities reach their sports-related goals. At the 2008 Asian Voice Political and Public Life Awards event in the UK, Bhanu Choudhrie received the award of Entrepreneur of the Year. Two years later, he was recognized again for his outstanding achievements at the Public Life Awards. Bhanu’s passions are helping businesses in new markets, helping people reach their professional goals and spending time with his family. Bhanu Choudhrie currently resides in the Belgravia area of London, United Kingdom.
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About Alpha Aviation Group, C&C Alpha Group, Megalith Financial Acquisition Corp., Path to Success: A leading provider of aviation training solutions for the global airline industry
Tom Hooper
Founder and CEO of Third Space Learning
Matr is Tom’s second venture in education technology. In 2009 he founded BrightSpark, an online teaching business he sold to TES in 2012. He graduated with an MA in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Edinburgh, then worked in investment from 2003-9, when his start-up career began.
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About Third Space Learning: Third Space aims to help every student access great quality online tuition to help them succeed in, and love, their learning
Rodney Aldridge
Founder of The Aldridge Foundation
As the founder of the Capita Group in 1984 until his retirement in 2006, Sir Rodney Aldridge led the company from start-up to becoming a FTSE 100 company, with Capita thus becoming the market leader in the provision of support and professional services to the government and private sector in the UK. Capital Group is now the 50th ranked company on the FTSE 100, with a market capitalisation of over £8 billion. Prior to Capita, Sir Rodney worked in local government for ten years with East Essex County Council, Brighton Borough Council, Crawley District Group and West Sussex Council, becoming a qualified accountant with CIPFA in 1970, joining CIPFA in 1974, and ultimately becoming its Technical Director. Rodney was awarded an OBE in the 1994 New Years Honours List and was given the Freedom of the City of London in 1996. In 2006 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and in 2012 he received a Knighthood. In addition, Sir Rodney is Chair of the Lowry Arts and Entertainment venue in Salford; Chair of Acorn Care and Education, Patron and former Trustee of the Prince’s Trust; and founding member of the Prince’s Charities Council.
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About The Aldridge Foundation, The Prince’s Trust: Aldridge Foundation is an educational charity that helps young people reach their potential through the sponsorship of entrepreneurial
Nicolas Gautier
Founder of EDUKO Education
Nic is the founder of EDUKO and ran the group as CEO from 2015 until late 2018 before becoming group chairman. Nic is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built and invested in numerous businesses across many sectors and continents. Nic is the father of two young boys.
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About EDUKO Education: EDUKO Education UK based group of Education businesses supporting parents with their Early Years choices.
Bertie Hubbard
Co-Founder and CEO of MyTutor
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About MyTutor: MyTutor offers affordable 1-to-1 tutorials online by connecting tutors from the UK’s best unis with pupils at home and in schools
James Grant
Co-Founder & Managing Director of MyTutor
James is a driven, passionate and ambitious entrepreneur, with experience in sales, leadership, strategy, product, digital marketing and fundraising. He started a fledgling events business at 15, which grew to a team of 30, catering for over 1,200 weekly guests. After completing a Philosophy degree at University of Birmingham, James worked for Barclays Wealth, in the Chief of Staff Team, within the Office of the Chief Executive, helping to set the Division’s strategic agenda and taking responsibility for the implementation of sponsored projects. James is a co-founder of MyTutor, creating a new world of one-to-one tuition. The team are unwaveringly focused on their mission to give every student access to 1-1 support. The platform provides live, online one-to-one lessons, delivered by bright, inspiring undergraduates studying at the UK’s leading universities – their secondary aim is to become the leading provider of work to these students. MyTutor uses AI-driven matching algorithms to ensure perfect student-tutor matches and every lesson is taught in an interactive online learning space, which facilitates live video and audio chat, document editing, file sharing and lesson recording. The company’s proudest achievement has been helping 92% of their pupils in 2016 hit or exceed their grade targets. James enjoys public speaking and has presented at a number of education and business events. His other interests include sport (football, rugby, athletics), music (blues & hip hop), travelling, reading and all things startup. He has won a number of awards over the past few years, including Unltd’s ‘Do it’, Mercia’s ‘The Pitch’, O2 ‘Think Bigger’ and Santander’s ‘Spark’.
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About MyTutor: MyTutor offers affordable 1-to-1 tutorials online by connecting tutors from the UK’s best unis with pupils at home and in schools
Robert Grabiner
Founder and Executive Director of MyTutor
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About MyTutor: MyTutor offers affordable 1-to-1 tutorials online by connecting tutors from the UK’s best unis with pupils at home and in schools
June Angelides
Founder and CEO of Mums in Technology
Named the 15th most influential woman in tech by Computer Weekly, June Angelides is the founder and CEO of Mums in Technology, which partners with industry to provide an immersive learning experience that encourages new mothers to take their children to school with them while they learn to code. She founded the company in 2015 when on maternity leave from Silicon Valley Bank, where she held roles as an associate for accelerator growth and an associate for entrepreneur banking. Most recently, Angelides joined Samos Investments as a VC and was appointed chair of the Future Skills Programme. She is also the founding ambassador for the FiftyFiftyPledge and mentor and advisor to startups.
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About Mums in Technology, Samos Investments: Mums in Technology is a child-friendly digital skills training company for mums.
Jack Bekhor
Co-Founder of Uptime App
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About Uptime App, WorkAngel: Uptime App: Thousands of 5-minute Knowledge Hacks from the world’s best books, courses and documentaries, for free.
Jamie True
Founder of Uptime App
Jamie is the CEO and driving force behind LifeWorks. Combining energy and positivity, he is deeply passionate about technology and how it can be used to create positive change in our world today. With a proven track record of growing technology companies from the ground up, Jamie set up his first business at the age of 17 which merged with its largest competitor in June 1997. He co-founded and invented Interclubnet PLC, creating an online trading platform that most major football clubs worldwide used to buy and sell players akin to a Bloomberg terminal “X-tranet”. In August 2000 the company floated on AIM with a market capitalisation of £30 million. Turnover in Year 1 totaled £8.1Million. In January 2004, Jamie launched a 9 patented service called ONSPEED which became the largest Internet accelerator in Europe. The group subsequently floated under a holding company called Z Group PLC in June 2005 for £25 million on AIM. In Jan 2010, Jamie started Grapple mobile, a patented mobile application platform. Grapple won the most Innovative Mobile Agency of 2012 and 2013 and was successfully acquired by Monitse PLC (MONI) AIM for up to £39million in Sep 2013. Jamie founded WorkAngel in 2013, the powerbrand that drives employee engagement, retention and satisfaction for some of the largest companies in the World. WorkAngel merged with Ceridian LifeWorks in 2016 with Jamie serving as the CEO of LifeWorks.
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About Doughlicious, Uptime App: Uptime App: Thousands of 5-minute Knowledge Hacks from the world’s best books, courses and documentaries, for free.
Patrick Joseph Walker
Co-Founder of Uptime App
After 20 years building and launching some of the world’s most innovative digital video services, Patrick committed himself to the future of learning as the Co-Founder of Uptime, alongside seasoned entrepreneurs Jamie True and Jack Bekhor. Uptime’s mission is to inspire people everywhere to learn, grow and contribute to a better world. Before founding Uptime, Patrick was Director of Media Partnerships at Facebook and Instagram, leading content partnerships with media companies and public figures in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Patrick began his career in international media and technology as a TV producer for Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK. While living in Tokyo, he produced and directed award-winning educational and documentary TV programs and participated in the launch of the world’s first HDTV channel. He later joined the BBC as a Senior Broadcast Journalist in Japan and South East Asia where he used new technologies to tell stories from often extremely hostile environments. Patrick moved to London in 2000 to launch early stage digital video services, and became YouTube’s first international employee. He went on to spend eight years with Google and YouTube as the senior director of content partnerships, where he was responsible for launching and managing YouTube across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Patrick was also a founding investor and Chief Content Officer of Europe’s largest multi-channel network, Base79, and served as the CEO of Rightster, a leading content and audience development partner of YouTube and Facebook. Patrick holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Southern California and an M.Ed in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He currently lives in London with his family and regular escapes to the Scottish Highlands to connect with nature and digitally detox.
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About Uptime App: Uptime App: Thousands of 5-minute Knowledge Hacks from the world’s best books, courses and documentaries, for free.
Vassili Philippov
Founder & CEO of MEL Science
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About MEL Science: MEL Science develops up to date chemistry kit subscription and VR software for learning chemistry
Jamie Brooker
Founder & Strategic Advisor of Kahoot!
Jamie Brooker is the Founder & Strategic Advisor at Kahoot!
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About Apps for Good, Kahoot!, The Nordic Web Ventures, We Are Human: Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that makes it easy to create, share, and play fun learning games and trivia quizzes.
Sofia Fenichell
Chief Creative Officer & Founder of Mrs Wordsmith
Sofia Fenichell is the Founder & CEO of Rockpack & he attended Northwestern University in 1986.
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About Mrs Wordsmith, WONDER PLACE LTD.: Mrs Wordsmith is on a mission to illustrate the English language, so kids fall in love with words and with learning.
Farid Haque
Co-Founder ,CEO & Chairman of Erly Stage Studios
Farid Haque is the Co-Founder ,CEO & Chairman of Erly Stage Studios.He attended to the University of Toronto.
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About AssetVault, DataKiwi, Erly Stage Studios: An Education Venture Studio and digital publishing business, our mission is to make learning fun through engaging content and technology.
Jan Lynn-Matern
Founder and Partner of Emerge Education
I am a Founder and Partner at Emerge Education. Emerge Education is a European seed investor focused on companies that bridge the skills gap. Emerge specialises in providing its portfolio companies with access to market insights, partners and customers through its unique industry network. We have a particular focus on investing in challenger universities, bootcamps, workforce re-training programmes, and companies that help universities scale online.
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About Emerge Education: The only fund backed by the world’s leading education entrepreneurs
Taras Polischuk
Co-Founder & COO of Dorm
Taras Polischuk is the Co-Founder and COO at Dorm.
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About Dorm, Forbes, PomaBrush: Dorm is an audio learning app that aggregates and curates the world’s podcasting content.
Ranbir Arora
Co-Founder, CEO of Dorm
Ranbir Arora is the CEO and Co-Founder at Dorm.
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About Dorm: Dorm is an audio learning app that aggregates and curates the world’s podcasting content.
Joshua Wohle
CEO & Co-Founder of Mindstone
Joshua Wohle is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mindstone. In 2013, when Joshua co-founded SuperAwesome — a digital media ecosystem designed for children.
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About Emerge Education, Mindstone: Organise, share and take notes on web pages, PDFs, videos & podcasts so you can learn faster, remember more and get things done.
Patrick Cootes
Chief Learning Officer and Founder of Mindstone
Patrick Cootes is the Chief Learning Officer and Founder of Mindstone learning. As a secondary school teacher and Head of Sixth Form, Patrick has seen first-hand how the current education system leaves people feeling like failures when it’s the system itself that is broken.
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About Mindstone: Organise, share and take notes on web pages, PDFs, videos & podcasts so you can learn faster, remember more and get things done.
Stefan Keranov
Co-Founder & Engineering of Mindstone
Stefan Keranov is the Co-Founder and responsible for the Engineering activities of Mindstone. He is a web developer who’s worked on various content and membership platforms including SuperAwesome, Kaluza, and Very Connect.
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About Mindstone: Organise, share and take notes on web pages, PDFs, videos & podcasts so you can learn faster, remember more and get things done.
Milo Yiannopoulos
Founder of Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant
Milo Yiannopoulos is founder and editor-in-chief of The Kernel, a technology publication. He is a journalist and broadcaster living who writes about technology, entrepreneurship, society, religion, and celebrity culture in the U.S. and Europe. Yiannopoulos is a former technology columnist for The Telegraph. He was also commissioning editor of The Telegraph’s Tech Start-Up 100. His work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, Directors’ Guild of America Quarterly, the 500 Startups blog, Management Today, The Catholic Herald, and others. He’s a regular speaker at tech conferences and an advisor to start-ups, particularly those operating in media, content, publishing, advertising, and social networking. Yiannopoulos was named in the 2011 WIRED Digital Power 100 as one of European technology’s ’movers and shakers’ and is a mentor for the 500 Startups and Springboard accelerator programs.
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About Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant: The Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant is exclusively available to white men who wish to pursue their post-secondary education on equal footing.
Dave Sherwood
Co-Founder & CEO of BibliU
Dave Sherwood co-founder and CEO of Bibliotech, a core etextbooks platform that provides academic libraries and students with unlimited access. He is the co-founder and Chairman of Teach Learn Grow Inc. Dave earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Western Straya, coming to Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship shortly afterwards. Dave dropped out to found Bibliotech.
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About BibliU: An EdTech innovator, BibliU’s platform enables colleges and universities with digital content management, automation, and analytics.
Asif Aziz
Founder of The Aziz Foundation
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About Criterion Capital Ltd, The Aziz Foundation: The Aziz Foundation provides scholarships and grants to help seekers pursue education.
Xavier Collins
Co-Founder & Business Development Manager of Nexus Notes
Xavier Collins is a Co-Founder and Business Development Manager at Nexus Notes.
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About Nexus Notes, Turo: Nexus Notes operates as an online marketplace for university students to buy and sell their course notes.
David Bainbridge
Founder & CEO of boclips
David has deep experience in marketing and sales within corporates and bringing new media products to market. Prior to Knowledgemotion, David was the CEO of Elvis Communications, the Launch CMO for Intel’s IPTV offering in the US and was responsible for bringing the BBC iPlayer to market in the UK. He has sat on the Executive Boards of Freeview and Digital UK and was part of the original Channel 5 launch team. Knowledgemotion is his second start-up after successfully launching and exiting an interactive TV business in 2005. David has a BA in American Studies from Manchester University.
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About boclips: boclips is an online platform that enables its users to find, watch, and learn through educational video clips.
Diego Fanara
Co-Founder and CEO of Unibuddy
Diego Fanara is the co-founder and CEO of Unibuddy.
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About Unibuddy: Unibuddy helping universities and students to attract, engage and convert prospects through peer interactions.
Kimeshan Naidoo
Co-Founder and CTO of Unibuddy
Kimeshan Naidoo is CTO & Co-Founder at Unibuddy.
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About Unibuddy: Unibuddy helping universities and students to attract, engage and convert prospects through peer interactions.
Thomas Woolf
Founder of EdAid
Thomas is an entrepreneur and former professional athlete. His pioneering approach to frontier markets and technology has seen him build successful businesses in the UK, Middle East & Africa. Thomas’s commercial grounding was delivering innovative solutions for some of the UK’s leading banks as part of Accenture’s Financial Services strategy team in London with career highlights being his work with the World Economic Forum and Islamic Finance ecosystem development. The growth of the UAE as a regional hub for commerce and enterprise saw Thomas move to Dubai in 2005 and build his own successful businesses in the health/fitness and financial technology industries. In 2011, Thomas launched JustGiving the world’s largest fundraising platform for charities across the Middle East and Africa. JustGiving has raised over $4 Billion for 12,000 charities since 2002 and is scaling and transforming charitable giving across the MEA region. In 2016 Thomas launched EdAid.com a crowd funding platform for students to finance their higher education, interest free. EdAid’s mandate is to reduce the cost of higher education, increase access to university, and improve the employability of graduates leaving the system. In his spare time, for fun, Thomas remains a competitive athlete and is Head Coach for Nike in the Middle East.
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About EdAid: EdAid is the alternative lending platform for graduate-level, Higher Education.
Elizabeth Varley
Founder & CEO of TechHub
Elizabeth is a serial entrepreneur and founded TechHub, the community for high-growth tech companies. TechHub has worked with thousands of companies to help them scale. TechHub member companies have been acquired by Google, Facebook, Twitter, Oracle and Microsoft among others, and have raised over $1billion in funding. TechHub also helps corporates like Google and BT access innovation culture and to work with startups to solve business challenges or develop new products. Previously Elizabeth ran an editorial and content agency, and built communities. She’s been selected for Computer Weekly’s UKtech50 top influencers, the Debrett’s 500, and Vogue UK’s Generation Tech among others. Elizabeth also sits on the board of the Digital City Exchange smart cities programme at Imperial College, the Open Data Institute’s Data Pitch technology innovation board, and the Silicon Valley Bank early-stage advisory board. @evarley @TechHub
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About TechHub: TechHub is the home of technology entrepreneurs and startup teams
Franz-Josef Schrepf
Co-Founder & CEO of Tick. Done.
Co-founder & CEO of Tick. Done. Experienced entrepreneur, growth hacker, and TEDx speaker on a mission to empower a billion people with a million new skills. Awarded Tech London Advocates 25 under 25 for his contribution to the London Tech Community. After dark, he is a talk show host, public speaker, and stand up comedian.
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About Tick. Done.: Tick. Done. is a micro-video platform for instant knowledge sharing on a mission to empower a billion people with a million new skills.
Jessica Butcher
Co-Founder of Tick. Done.
Jessica Butcher Co-Founder of Blippar, one of Britain’s best-funded technology scale-ups, currently enjoying rapid ascent as the world’s leading mobile visual-browser. Recipient of numerous female entrepreneur and tech awards including BBC’s Top 100 Women and Fortune’s Most Powerful female entrepreneurs, Jess is a passionate start-up mentor, public speaker and writer on subjects as diverse as women in technology, female entrepreneurialism, digital innovation, digital detox and work-life balance.
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About Tick. Done.: Tick. Done. is a micro-video platform for instant knowledge sharing on a mission to empower a billion people with a million new skills.
Fadl Al Tarzi
Founder & CEO of Nexford University
+15 years of experience in media & technology-related businesses. Hands-on experience building successful strategies, growing companies, raising VC funds, building & managing teams. Founded and played pivotal role in growing several successful businesses,
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About Nexford University: A next generation online university providing students with access to quality, affordable, dynamic education.
Leon Mueller
Co-Founder & CEO of PLAYBOOK
Leon Mueller is the Co-Founder and CEO at Bloom.
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About PLAYBOOK: Mobile Video Micro-Learning for professional education
Akif Yaldir
Founder, CEO of Case Future
I have strong experience in developing successful products and managing effective teams. My core strengths are fast-learning and following an output-oriented approach mainly for mobile products.
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About Case Future: Work on what you love! Find what you can learn easily with better efficiency, learn on mobile and grow your future.
Riaz moola
Founder & CEO of CoGrammar
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About CoGrammar, HyperionDev: CoGrammar scales human mentorship and code review 10 times more affordably.
Adit Trivedi
Co Founder, COO of Lingumi
Co-founder & COO of Lingumi who are providing the world’s best teaching service to children all around the world through Technology.
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About Lingumi: Lingumi is an edtech startup that teaches English to kids aged 2 to 6 using an app and a range of physical products.
Sherry Coutu
Founder & Executive Chairman of Founders4Schools
Sherry Coutu is an angel investor and serves on the boards of companies, charities and universities.As an entrepreneur, Sherry established and successfully sold two businesses in the financial services industry. The first (acquired by Euromoney plc) has operations in more than 70 countries. The second was floated in 2000 on London and Nasdaq and the company was valued at more than $1 billion before being acquired (by AMP plc). Sherry is active in early stage investing and has raised several rounds of venture capital and public equity totaling more than $200 million. Sherry has decades of experience serving companies which range from fast growth private early stage to public and boards with turnover of more than £ 1 bn.She is a frequent public speaker, a national judge of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards, and presents regularly at the top business schools. She specialises in consumer, internet, information services and clean energy. Current university affiliations include Cambridge University and Harvard Business School. Charitable / Government affiliations include the Prince’s Trust, Cancer Research UK and NESTA.
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About Cambridge Angels group, Founders4Schools, London Stock Exchange, PrimeLocation.com, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Silicon Valley Comes to the UK, The Digital Property Group, University of Cambridge, Workfinder: Founders4Schools is a free service that enables teachers to invite founders of successful, businesses to visit schools, to inspire learners.
Christian Samuel
Founder of Resooma
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About Personalised Co, Resooma: We’re building an end-to-end rental marketplace with simplified payment solutions that serves both tenants and property owners.
Riya Pabari
Co-Founder of Framework
Riya Pabari currently serves Founders Academy as co-founder and CEO. Riya also serves founders Pledge as pledger. Prior to this, Riya has worked with Founders Intelligence as innovation manager for two years. She attended Cambridge University in 2005.
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About Framework: Framework is the world’s first on-demand business school especially made for startupland
Asha Haji
Co-Founder of Framework
Asha Haji is the Co-Founder of Framework. She attended Harvard Business School in 2011.
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About Framework: Framework is the world’s first on-demand business school especially made for startupland
Deqian Jia
Founder of Schema
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About Schema: Schema is a beautiful note taking tool combined with a reliable knowledge database.
Robin Souter
Founder / Transformation Director of Opogo
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About Opogo: Opogo is a community platform designed to help schools attract and retain the talent that’s right for them.
Justin Hsu
CEO / Founder of MarcoPolo Learning
Justin Hsu is one of the founders of Marco Polo Learning.
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About MarcoPolo Learning: MarcoPolo Learning is an award-winning digital curriculum developer for early learners.
Flavius Plesu
CEO & Founder of OutThink
A cyber security leader with almost 20 years industry experience, Flavius is the Founder and CEO of OutThink. As a former CISO, he has led complex cyber security transformation programmes across large, global organisations. It is his passion for security that motivated Flavius to challenge the status quo and start OutThink, to solve the People challenge. Flavius holds a GCHQ-certified Information Security Masters degree from Royal Holloway, University of London. Strategic thinker, strong decision-making abilities, result oriented and collaborative leadership style. His primary focus is enabling organisations understand their cyber security risk exposure to make well informed business decisions. Having a strong technical background and a good understanding of business processes, he is naturally proficient at explaining the technical concepts surrounding the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and supporting IT systems to all levels of management. Extensive expertise across a wide range of information security disciplines – Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), information security policies, ISMS, ISO 27001, ISF Standard of Good Practice, Data Privacy, legal and regulatory compliance – SOX, PCI DSS, GDPR, NHS IGTA, computer security, network security, web application security, secure business architectures and security technologies, with a strong emphasis on information risk management. CISSP, CRISC, CISM, SABSA SCF, SCP, QSA, ISO 27001 LI/LA
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About OutThink: Cybersecurity human risk management platform (SaaS)
Jesse Lozano
Co-Founder & CEO of Pi-Top
Jesse Lozano is CEO and co-founder of pi-top. Since launching in 2014, with Ryan Dunwoody, pi-top has grown into a world leading maker platform built for students and teachers across the world. pi-top has now released their 3rd generation device and is used by over 2,000 schools and Code Clubs world wide. pi-top’s purpose is to give every learner the opportunity to be inspired by STEAM education.
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About Pi-Top: Pi-Top is a creative learning company and their mission is to inspire a generation of makers, fixers & problem solvers.
Damian Kimmelman
Founder and CEO of Batelle
Founder of Batelle, Co-founder of Founders Pledge, Rho.co and DueDil
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About Batelle, Creative Destruction Lab (CDL): Batelle is a modern childcare company that uses high-tech solutions to support mental, emotional, and physical development.
Craig Massey
Founder of Satoshi Block Dojo
Over the last 23 years, Craig has started five technology companies primarily in the mobile and digital marketing space. He has sold four of those companies including Last Second Tickets, to Monitise PLC in June 2014 for £12.3M and Brainstorm to Opera Telecom for £3.2M. This means he totally connects with entrepreneurs and understands their pain in starting a new company. It also means that he understands how to use digital marketing efficiently to reach both B2B clients and direct to consumers.
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About Satoshi Block Dojo: Satoshi Block Dojo provides best-in-class with cutting-edge technology to educate, develop, and elevate start-up entrepreneurs.
Jamie O’Connell
Co-Founder of Life Lessons Education
Jamie O’Connell is a Life Lessons Education co-founder. He has over 13 years of edtech expertise and a skill set suitable to establishing early stage start-ups. He is currently putting his skills to use in his own firm, Life Lessons. He is deeply committed to balancing the educational competitive landscape and giving young people with the foundations they need to be successful in life. He went to Bangor University for his education.
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About Life Lessons Education: Life Lessons is a company that specializes in teaching young people life skills via the use of educational technologies.
Nicole Rodden
Co-Founder of Life Lessons Education
Nicole Rodden is a Life Lessons Education co-founder. She is committed to providing young people with the foundations and skills they need to fulfill their full potential and prosper, regardless of their origin, gender, or sexual orientation. They developed Life Lessons to teach young people important life skills, beginning with relationships and sex education. She received her master’s degree in education and PGCE from UCL, as well as her bachelor’s degree in theological studies from the University of Bristol.
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About Life Lessons Education: Life Lessons is a company that specializes in teaching young people life skills via the use of educational technologies.
John Yeo
Co-Founder & CEO of Codebashing
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About Codebashing: Codebashing | Train, Refresh and Validate your development teams’ Application Security knowledge using our cloud-based e-learning platform.
Gyan Chawdhary
Founder & CTO of Codebashing
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About Codebashing: Codebashing | Train, Refresh and Validate your development teams’ Application Security knowledge using our cloud-based e-learning platform.
Nelson Sivalingam
Founder and CEO of HowNow
Nelson Sivalingam is the Founder and CEO of One Minute City and the co-founder of award-winning production company Barking Mad.
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About HowNow, Wonderush: HowNow is a London-based EdTech startup that connects experts and learners by offering interactive video lessons.
Kuvera Sivalingam
CFO and Co-Founder of HowNow
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About HowNow: HowNow is a London-based EdTech startup that connects experts and learners by offering interactive video lessons.
Ashish Kumar
Co-Founder & CTO of HowNow
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About HowNow: HowNow is a London-based EdTech startup that connects experts and learners by offering interactive video lessons.
Lee Carlin
Co-Founder and Head of Talent & Experience of The Intern Group
International Education Entrepreneur. Passionate about accessibility & inclusion. I am a customer-focused individual who has experience in bootstrapping an international education start-up to £10m+ revenue, helping to create life-changing experiences for over 10,000 global students to date. I am based between London & Latin America.
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About The Intern Group: The Intern Group is an EdTech company that connects global talent with opportunity
David Lloyd
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Office of The Intern Group
A British national, David studied at University College London and the London School of Economics. He previously lived in Argentina where he completed an internship at Rolex, perfected his Spanish and fell in love with the continent. Before setting up The Intern Group he was a fixed income salesman on the Iberian desk for Merrill Lynch in London. He left Merrill to pursue his true dream – to promote international opportunities and give others fantastic experiences like he had along with advantages that last.
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About Magma Partners, The Intern Group: The Intern Group is an EdTech company that connects global talent with opportunity
Raj Mendhir
CEO and Co-Founder of Wintern
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About Wintern: Wintern is an Assessment Centre service provider and Leadership Education organisation.
Mike James
Co-Founder of Wintern
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About Wintern: Wintern is an Assessment Centre service provider and Leadership Education organisation.
Mike James
Co-Founder of Wintern
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About Wintern: Wintern is an Assessment Centre service provider and Leadership Education organisation.
Duncan Cheatle
Founder/CEO of Learn Amp
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About Founders Pledge, Learn Amp, Rise To, Supper Club: Learn Amp is an online learning and performance management platform.
Nik Kafka
Founder, Chief Executive Officer of Teach A Man To Fish (TAMTF)
Nik Kafka is the founder and Chief Executive of Teach A Man To Fish. Leaving a successful banking career in the City of London for a local microfinance institution in Paraguay, Nik discovered an innovative school aiming not only to teach the poor how to become rural entrepreneurs, but to do so as a self-financing social enterprise. Having helped transform this school into a replicable model, and realising the huge potential for funding education through enterprise rather than charity, he returned to the UK to found Teach A Man To Fish. Under his stewardship Teach A Man To Fish has grown into an international network whose membership now numbers over 4,500 education institutions and experts in more than 125 countries. Over 50,000 young people have benefited directly from Teach A Man To Fish programmes across Africa, Asia & Latin America. Honoured as a Young Global Leader in 2009 by the World Economic Forum, he was more recently named in 2011 as one of Devex’s 40 Under 40 International Development Leaders in London. He holds a first-class BSc in Chemistry from the University of Bristol, an MSc in International Development from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London, as well as professional qualifications in finance.
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About Teach A Man To Fish (TAMTF): Encouraging and supporting education projects that generate sustainable livelihoods for young people across the developing world.
Oliver Fisher
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Springpod
Oliver Fisher is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Springpod.
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About Springpod: Springpod is an early careers attraction, engagement and recruitment technology that helps young people discover their futures.
Guy Riese
Founder & CEO of Up Learn
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About Up Learn: Up Learn is an online education platform.
Elizabeth Tweedale
Founder and CEO of Cypher Coders
Elizabeth Tweedale is the CEO and founder of Cypher Coders
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About Cypher Coders: Cypher inspires children to learn the language of the future through hands-on creative coding camps and courses.
Andy Skipper
CTO Coach and Founder of CTO Craft
Consultant CTO to online businesses around Europe; founding CTO with Made.com, a designer furniture retailer launched in March 2010 under Pro Founders and Jaina Capital among others. Responsible for technology and partner selection, business process modelling, team building and resource strategy, production infrastructure design. Executive-level technical manager, with a hands-on development and testing background. Having operated as a CTO for a number of high growth startups since 2006, he’s built and managed several successful agile teams of PHP, Python, Java and .Net developers and testers, including internationally distributed teams. A certified Scrum Product Owner, he specialises in implementing agile practices which provide means of constant improvement within the development and operations teams, and a culture of improved transparency with the rest of the business.
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About CTO Craft, Saccade Consulting: Learning experiences, coaching and peer mentoring network for CTOs and engineering managers
Nick Ross
Founder and CEO of Guider
Nick Ross is the Founder and CEO of Guider.
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About Guider: On a mission to create the best personal-development platform for employees worldwide, with mentoring and coaching at its core.
Jen Lexmond
Founder & CEO of Easy Peasy
Jen Lexmond the founder of EasyPeasy, an app that sends game ideas to parents of pre-school children, to help develop the skills that will prepare them for school, and beyond. She hatched EasyPeasy in 2014 through the Design Council’s Knee High Challenge to come up with ideas improve the health and wellbeing of children under 5.
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About Easy Peasy: EasyPeasy is an app that sends game ideas to parents of young children, to help develop the skills that will prepare children for school.
Vivi Friedgut
Founder & CEO of Blackbullion
Vivi Friedgut is a financial management expert who spent almost a decade managing the wealth of high net worth families and individuals. In 2012 she established Blackbullion, an education technology company committed to helping young people up-skill for the 21st century through better money management, employability and enterprise skills. It is her ambition to ensure that through Blackbullion Online students develop the confidence, knowledge and skill to take control of their financial destiny and create an epic future. Vivi is an author and regular commentator of matters of personal finance and employability. She holds an economics degree from the University of New South Wales in Sydney in her native Australia.
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About Blackbullion: Award winning fintech platform reimagining the student financial stack
Tim Perkins
Co-Founder & Director of Nudge Global
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About Nudge Global: Brighter financial futures for everyone, everywhere
Jeremy Beament
Co-Founder & Director of Nudge Global
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About Nudge Global: Brighter financial futures for everyone, everywhere
Noam Tamir
Founder and Director of Healthcare Learning
Noam Tamir serves as Founder and Director of The Healthcare Learning Company Limited. Mr. Tamir has extensive experience in computer services, management, and marketing as applied to different market niches. He is also the Founder of Isys Plc and has been its Managing Director. He is a Member of the Worshipful Company of IT and has been a Contributing member of the IT Training & Education Panel. He was the youngest officer at the ‘Entebbe Raid’. Mr. Tamir graduated in Computing and Industrial Management Engineering at the Technion in Haifa, Israel.
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About Healthcare Learning: HLC is an integrated learning provider offering cutting-edge learning solutions predominantly in the dental market.
Mike Elms
Chairman & Co-Founder of Hotcourses Group
Mike founded the company in the belief that every student should be able to make the right education choice for their future and providing them with the best information to help them achieve this is at the heart of the Hotcourses Group mission.
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About Hotcourses Group: Hotcourses Group operates a program search Website.
Kate Hersov
Founder & Chief Medical Officer of Jumo Health
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About Jumo Health: Jumo Health provides educational content and tools to help children and families understand, manage, and own their health.
Chris Donnachie
Co-Founder of UniZest
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About BESPOKE, UniZest: Global banking for international students
Chris Tudor
Founder & CEO of MASSOLIT
Chris Tudor is a Founder & CEO at MASSOLIT.
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About MASSOLIT: MASSOLIT is an online educational platform that hosts short video lectures aimed at secondary/high school students.
Steve Dineen
Founder, Chief Storyteller & CEO of Fuse Universal
Founder and President of Fuse Universal.
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About Fuse Universal: The Fuse learning platform connects people with the knowledge and expertise they need to improve their skills and perform.
Kathryn Parsons
Co-Founder and CEO of Decoded
Kathryn Parsons is co-founder and CEO of Decoded, a technology education company founded in East London in 2011, which launched with the promise to teach anyone Code in a Day. The firm’s accelerated learning experiences have since expanded to include the worlds of code, data, innovation, cyber security and artificial intelligence. In addition to growing and scaling the business, Kathryn is a regular keynote speaker and campaigns globally for code on curriculums and gender diversity in technology. Described by the Evening Standard as “a woman on a mission to teach us all to code”, Kathryn was part of the successful campaign to have code introduced as a mandatory subject to the UK national curriculum in September 2014. In 2016 she was appointed Chairwoman of the UK Government Institute of Coding and received an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list. In 2017 Kathryn joined the London Mayor’s Business Advisory Board, the UK Government Cyber Security Skills Advisory Board and the non-executive board of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. She’s a self-confessed language lover, having studied Japanese and Mandarin in her spare time and Latin and Ancient Greek at Cambridge University.For her code is just another language, one used by billions.
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About Decoded: Decoded is the world’s leading Tech Educator, teaching digital skills to whole organisations and business leaders from across all sectors.
Naimish Gohil
CEO & Founder of Team Satchel
Naimish Gohil is Founder & CEO at Show my Homework.
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About Team Satchel: Team Satchel develops a range of school software focusing on homework, behavior, classroom management, and teaching resources.
Nick Bennett
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Fika
Nick Bennett is the Co-CEO and Co-founder of Fika.
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About Fika: Fika is a platform that seeks to promote ‘mental fitness’.
Jermaine Hagan
Founder & Product Visionary of Revision App
Jermaine Hagan is the Founder and Product Visionary at Revision App.
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About Revision App: Revision App offers revision content for GCSE, 11 PLUS, and KS2 students.
Wahida Samie
Founder of Studentbase
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About Studentbase: Creating the Global Student Network
Carlos Lagrange
Co-Founder & CPO of Sunlight
Carlos Lagrange is the Co-Founder and CPO of Sunlight.
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About Sunlight: Sunlight helps companies grow an engaging learning culture by facilitating their team’s access to any book, event, or course in the world.
Yiorgos Nikoletakis
CEO & Founder of 100mentors
Yiorgos enjoys surrounding himself with his role models: educators & entrepreneurs. After having worked in 4 US states, Spain, Greece & China, “arguing like I am right, listening like I am wrong” is his favorite motto.
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About 100mentors: We empower today’s youth to consciously take their once in a lifetime decisions & prepare them for the workplace of the future.
Dean Jacobs
CEO & Founder of Wibbu
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About University of East London, Wibbu: Wibbu is an award-winning education-entertainment studio specialising in engaging language-learning tools for the classroom.
Tram Anh Nguyen
Co-Founder of The Centre for Finance, Technology & Entrepreneurship
Tram Anh Nguyen is the co-founder of CFTE, The Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship. She started her career on a trading floor in New York where she was a trader and main market maker for Standard Chartered. She then moved to Dresdner Kleinwort London before joining UBS Wealth Management where she worked with UHNW families in London. She has navigated between the corporate and entrepreneurial world, and knows the excitement and challenges of entrepreneurship. Tram Anh strongly believes that in a world dominated by technology, people must remain at the centre of society and organisations, and that education and training are key to help individuals adapt to a fast changing world. That motivation drove her to launch the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship, an education platform supported by senior leaders from the largest institutions, startups and universities. CFTE helps finance professionals upskill, find more opportunities, build better finance and be part of the Future of Finance. CFTE launched in 2017 its first Around Fintech Foundation course in 8 hours with today professional learners coming from 35 countries. Tram Anh spoke at Money2020 Europe on Jobs of the Future in Finance and Tech for inclusion: A sustainable commercial model enabling access for all She is a frequent speaker in universities and organisations and likes to share about the importance of lifelong learning in a fast changing job market. Beyond her professional career, she is a keen supporter of EPIC Foundation, a new model of disruption in the philanthropy sector and is part of their London Chapter. Of Vietnamese origin, Tram Anh was born in France, lived in Paris and New York, and is now settled in London with her husband and three beautiful daughters
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About The Centre for Finance, Technology & Entrepreneurship: The Centre for Finance, Technology & Entrepreneurship is an education platform for the finance industry.
Simon Gaeremynck
Founder, Director, Senior Software Engineer of Fronteer LTD
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About Fronteer LTD: Creating awesome Educational Technology experiences
Thomas Ermacora
Founder, Creative & Strategic Director of Machines Room
Thomas Ermacora FRSA, is a Danish-Italian regeneration architect, impact entrepreneur and futures thinker, helping communities, developers and local authorities making better and happier places. He is the producer, design director and co-author of Recoded City: Co-Creating Urban Futures, due for release fall 2015 by Routledge International, exploring the potential of distributed and participatory placemaking to balance cities. Founder and creative director of strategic regeneration non-profit Clear Village, he has delivered initiatives catalysing the recovery of neighbourhoods in the UK and across Europe. The tools and processes he has invented and developed have received numerous peer accolades and been nominated for the INDEX award 2013 and Placemaking Awards 2014 & 2015. In 2012 he restored a complex of warehouses from reclaimed elements in Hackney, east London, to create the Limewharf cultural innovation hub which houses the Machines Room fablab. Prototyping space and futures laboratory for both artistic and technological projects, Ermacora has curated groundbreaking shows such as Adhocracy with Joseph Grima and supported the incubation of hardware start-ups like Technology Will Save Us. Today the Machines Room has become a circular economy testbed for institutions such as NESTA, the Crafts Council, the British Council’s Maker Library Network, the Royal Society of Arts and various universities such as the RCA and CSM. Inspired in his multi-faceted career by project work with Gehl Architects and Gehry Partners among others, and now working closely with Carmody Groarke, his works and observations on how to make more resilient cities has made him a pioneering actor in the relation between the DIY/open-source urbanism and maker technologies.
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About Machines Room: Machines Room is an open access maker space for professionals, learners, and the inquisitive.
Charles Brook Shanahan
Sales & Co-Founder of GoSay
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About GoSay: GoSay creates digital products for the online education sector
Anjali Singh
Non Executive Director / Co-Founder of ODE.systems
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About ODE.systems: ODE App – objectified decision engine – supports people on their way to make better informed, transparent, and stress-free decisions.
Tom Osborne
Founder @Rouse and CMO @KidED of KidED
Founder at KidED.
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About KidED, KidED: We’re bringing a solution to a globally growing issue of kids rather playing than learning.
Andy Agar
Co-Founder and CEO of Music TCHR
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About Music TCHR: Music TCHR is a platform that focuses on music, teaching, songwriting, live events, and the marketplace.
James Weatherill
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Arbor Education
Education data evangelist. He co-founded Arbor Education after spending time as an analyst and corporate venture manager, and can’t wait until education has caught up with the digital age.
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About Arbor Education: Arbor helps schools transform the way they work
Alex Kearns
Founder of Tiki-Toki Timelines
Alex Kearns is founder of bootstrapped services Tiki-Toki.com, PeoplePlotr.com and Ganttology,com
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About Ganttology, Tiki-Toki Timelines: Tiki-Toki is web-based software for creating beautiful interactive timelines that you can share on the internet.
Germán Bencci
Founder & CEO of CodeYourFuture
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About CodeYourFuture: CodeYourFuture is a non-profit organisation supporting refugees with the dream of becoming developers.