Enjoy What You Do and Who You Do It With

Carmelo is a graduate student in the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab. His research is focused on the design and facilitation of creative learning experiences, in-person and online. His most recent work revolves around Learning Creative Learning: an online course and global community of educators who explore the principles and practices of learning through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play. He’s constantly experimenting with new approaches to online learning, particularly in the context of hands-on, inclusive, playful, and collaborative online coding workshops with the Scratch programming language. Before joining MIT, he worked as a software developer, organizing free coding clubs for children, running professional development programs for educators, and designing other creative learning experiences for learners of all ages.

With a background in teaching and training, Marcus is an ideas man that specialises in solving problems and designing solutions for people and things. Self motivated, resilient, adaptable, Marcus has worked on complex projects in no less than 15 countries. He thrives when challenged in any environment.

Marcus is the Founder and leader of Playground Ideas. After building 40 playgrounds in Thailand, Marcus created an open source playground model that supports anyone, anywhere to build a stimulating space for play using only local materials, tools and skills. Playground Ideas has created more than 4000 stimulating playspaces, in 143 countries for more than 2.2m children. Marcus worked with Belgium designer Emma Ribbens for 18 months to create Nüdel Kart which launched in September 2019.

As the Founder of Leadspire Academy, Teach For Malaysia’s alumni, Soon, believes that mapping the creative potential of all children in Malaysia through performing arts education is at the core of transforming potential. Soon's performance and teaching background in Australia taught him to value performance art education. He believes in working collaborative to promote the importance of arts education in Malaysia.

Two of his students’ theatrical productions titled “Find Your Light” and “Singing To The Lions” were featured Youth Productions for George Town Festival 2017 and 2018 respectively. “Find Your Light 2017” won the Best English Language Program 2018 in ASEAN Region.

Soon's focus on mastery based learning, creativity in teaching and learning as well as interest in innovative practices led him to win Teach For Malaysia’s YTL Transformational Teaching Award in year 2018 and Queen’s Commonwealth Trust Funding in Year 2020.

Von Wong's work lies at the intersection of fantasy and photography and combines everyday objects with shocking statistics. It has attracted the attention of corporations, like Starbucks, Dell, and Nike and has generated over 100 million views for causes like ocean plastics, electronic waste, and fashion pollution. Most recently, he was named one of Adweek's 11 content branded masterminds.

Saku is a serial entrepreneur, innovator, author, and speaker with a background in media and television. He specialises in ‘creativity and innovation’ and has taught in more than a hundred companies around the world.

During his 20 years in television, Saku produced thousands of hours of programs, created almost 100 tv formats, and co-founded Broadcasters, one of the most successful independent tv production companies in Finland. In 2009 Saku Tuominen was the Chief Creative Officer of Zodiak Entertainment, the world’s 3rd largest tv production company in London. In the same year, he also founded Idealist Group, a production company of ideas with a mission to improve the world with bold ideas that are well executed. Saku is currently focused on improving K12 education globally through HundrED, a global education community that seeks and shares inspiring educational innovations.

Shaheen returned to India at 18 to start Akanksha, providing children from low-income communities the kind of education that would maximize their greatest potential. Today, Akanksha serves 9300 children.

In 2008, Shaheen founded Teach For India, with an audacious vision of providing an excellent education to all children across India. Today, Teach For India directly impacts approximately 32,000 children across seven regions. Shaheen has also created projects like the Maya Musical, the Kid's Education Revolution which explore student leadership, creating platforms for student voice and partnership, and TFIx, which is a year-long incubator programme.

Shaheen serves on the boards of Akanksha Foundation, and Simple Education Foundation. Shaheen has been an Ashoka Fellow, a Global Leader for Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum, and an Asia Society 21 Leader. She is the author of the book, Redrawing India and the Miss Muglee Children’s Books. She has a Bachelor’s Degree from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and a Master’s Degree from the University of Manchester.

Lou is passionate about making a difference through education and champions equal access to technology to bridge the educational divide and bring about a positive wave of change in education. Through FrogAsia, she works to empower and equip schools, teachers, students and parents with the right tools and opportunities, made possible by the internet.

Lou graduated with a degree in Materials Science from Oxford University. She enjoys baking in her free time and co-founded Dilufe & Co, an annual Christmas baking project, to raise funds for charity. She is also a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Soon Seng joined the inaugural Teach For Malaysia Cohort as a Fellow in 2012. Prior to becoming CEO, he served as a staff member for over six years, overseeing the training, support and impact evaluation of the Teach For Malaysia Fellowship as Programme Director.

Soon Seng holds a degree in Management and Marketing (Murdoch University) and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education (Universiti Utara Malaysia). He envisions a holistic education system that not only develops students’ academics, but also their social, emotional, physical, spiritual, and leadership skills, in order to thrive in the 21st century.