Global Education Symposium

A global citizen, Maya Thiagarajan has taught high school English in the US, India, and Singapore. She spent the last eight years in Singapore, where she taught at The United World College of South-East Asia. In addition to teaching, she conducts professional development workshops for teachers in Singapore and India, and she is the author of Beyond The Tiger Mom: East-West Parenting for the Global Age, a book about how to blend the best of Eastern and Western approaches to parenting and education. Currently she runs an education consultancy called TREE, which helps schools in Asia recruit and train teachers.

Petteri is an accomplished teacher and educational consultant. He has extensive experience teaching at the comprehensive school level as well as training educators and administrators in Finland and around the world. He’s passionate about creating innovations in student-centered pedagogy by combining educational theory and practice. In 2015, this passion brought Petteri to Virginia as a Fulbright Scholar, and his fast growing reputation as a dynamic facilitator has taken him to Ohio, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Indiana, Colorado, Virginia and Florida to lead professional learning sessions for local educators. During one of his last visits to the US he was invited to speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Mitalene is the Director of PreK-12 and International Programs at Professional Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her current work involves designing learning experiences for education leaders. She co-chairs the HGSE’s Think Tank of Global Education, which is designed to advance global competence in K-12 schooling.

Layne is currently a consultant for special education. He has an extensive career in education as a general and special education teacher, school administrator, district trainer, program director, and in higher education as a professor of special education, assessment, early childhood and teacher education. He has, and continues to work with various countries in the areas of education and special education to include Mexico (2009-2011), Canada (currently), Vietnam (currently), and across the United States (currently).