- Markus Badde, CEO, ICEF GmbH, Germany
- Professor Paul Bacsich, Director, Matic Media Ltd, United Kingdom
- Dr Harold Elletson, (ex-officio), Director, E-Cubed Communications, Chairman, The New Security Foundation, United Kingdom
- Andrew Janis Folkmanis, Economic & European Affairs Advisor & Head of Energy Unit, CBSS, Belgium
- Mark Kalinin, Director, Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance and Career Development (AQA), Russia
- Leonard Mware Oloo, Director, ICWE Africa Ltd.
- Antonio Graf Strachwitz, Managing Director, Strachwitz&Gerhard optimierte werbung GmbH, Germany
- Rebecca Stromeyer, (ex-officio), Director, E-Cubed Communications, Managing Director, ICWE GmbH, Germany
- Huberta von Voss, Author, Journalist and Foreign Policy Affairs Expert for the German Parliament, Germany
- Thijs van Vugt, Director, iE&D Solutions BV, The Netherlands
Markus Badde
Markus Badde is the CEO of ICEF, an international company that connects education providers and student recruitment agents to key markets and networks worldwide. ICEF has built a reputation for quality through ICEF Workshops, the industry's premier educator/agent networking events; ICEF Online, the collaborative Internet platform linking educators and agents; ICEF Higher Education, offering specialised consulting for universities and colleges; and ICEF Training, providing professional development for the international education sector. More than 8,000 education institutions and 18,000 agents from around the world have chosen ICEF for their international student recruitment needs since 1995.
Markus is also Director of the Internet Course Finders, an Internet platform that allows students to research and discover thousands of schools and courses around the world. Before joining ICEF, Markus held various senior marketing positions over eight years at Cisco Systems, the world leader in Internet networking. Markus has a background in journalism and publishing, having studied at CELSA (Sorbonne University, Paris IV) and worked in media and communications in France during the 1980s.
Professor Paul Bacsich
Professor Paul Bacsich is Director of Matic Media Ltd, a consultancy company active for the last ten years in e-learning policy and practice worldwide, with particular interests in benchmarking, quality, standards, and cost benefits of e-learning, as well as critical success factors for virtual universities. He is currently under contract to the UK Higher Education Academy, leading one of the two teams handling the e-learning benchmarking exercise.
Until March 2004 he was Director of Special Projects at UK eUniversities Worldwide Limited, with responsibilities for the e-Learning Research Centre and for competitor analysis of learning systems and learning providers. He was also involved in the EU TELCERT project (standards conformance for e-learning) under Framework 6.
Earlier, Paul was Professor of Telematics at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) where he was Head of the Telematics in Education Research Group, which he founded and headed for five years. His teaching focused on postgraduate courses in business and Internet technologies. In his first few years at SHU he developed the "Virtual Campus" concept, leading the early use of e-learning in postgraduate distance teaching. Prior to this, he had been for many years a project manager at the UK Open University, ending up as Assistant Director of the Knowledge Media Institute.
In the first phases of his career Paul was a Research Fellow at Oxford, a lecturer, and a project manager in ICL (now Fujitsu). He has an MA from Cambridge University and a PhD from Bristol University.
Paul is active in several UK national bodies including being a member of the Commissioning Panel of the Technology-Enhanced Learning Programme of the Research Councils and as Honorary Treasurer of ALT (the Association for Learning Technology).
He is a regular invited speaker at e-learning conferences around the world (most recently in China and Estonia) and always enjoys meeting old and new friends at Online Educa.
Dr Harold Elletson
Dr Harold Elletson is the Director of The New Security Foundation, which conducts research into the implications of the new security environment for civil society. The New Security Foundation provides an international forum for dialogue between the public and private sectors and offers analytical insight and information about new security conditions. The Foundation hosts regular events and conferences, including an annual International Forum on E-Learning for Defence and Security.
Dr Elletson was previously Director of the NATO Forum on Business and Security, which he created with support from the NATO Science Programme. The Forum, which brought academics, businessmen and political leaders together to discuss the implications of the new security environment, was attended by delegates from more than 60 different countries.
A former Member of the United Kingdom Parliament (1992-1997), he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the early stages of the peace process and was also a member of the Select Committee on Environment. Dr Elletson has a good knowledge of education at a local level both in Britain and overseas. He served as a member of the Lancashire Education Authority (the Education Committee of Lancashire County Council) before being elected to Parliament where he represented the interests of schools and colleges in his constituency in discussions with Ministers and on the floor of the House of Commons.
Dr Elletson is enthusiastic about the new opportunities technology is creating for education and is a member of the advisory board of eLearning Africa, an international conference on technology-assisted learning in Africa. He chaired a roundtable discussion on the use of e-learning in the fight against HIV Aids and other diseases, involving experts from Africa, Europe and North America, at eLA 2007 in Nairobi.
An international public affairs consultant and a fluent Russian speaker, he has advised many leading companies on aspects of their business in the former Soviet Union, including BP in Azerbaijan and Alstom in Siberia. He has written widely on political and historical subjects and his first book, The General Against the Kremlin, was published by Little Brown. Dr Elletson holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Bradford.
Andrew Janis Folkmanis
Andrew is an engineer and economist who began his career as a private business consultant in the 1980s. He has since gone on to become an Official of the European Commission (1988-2002); Head of Energy at the Council of Baltic Sea States (2003-2006); Advisor to the President of Latvia (2003-2007); Deputy Chairman of the New Security Foundation (2006-present); and President of Baltic Nuclear (2007-present).
Mark Kalinin
Mark Kalinin is the Director for International Cooperation of the Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance and Career Development (AQA), which conducts institutional audits of universities in Russia. The AQA is an active HE policy maker and is widely represented at the national level in the committees and working groups of both chambers of the Parliament, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Federal Service on Supervision of Education and Science and the Ministry of Mass Communications. On the international scale the AQA is well connected to such QA networks and organisations as the ENQA, INQAAHE, APQN, EFQUEL and OECD.
Mark Kalinin has previously worked as the Director for International Cooperation of the Moscow University of Industry and Finance where he was in charge of international marketing policies as well as the implementation of Bologna activities on the institutional level. He has also consulted a number of educational and IT companies from the EU and the USA wishing to establish their business in Russia, including the advice on the political context, identification of the correct people to engage and help to find creative and credible solutions to problems.
His special fields of interest include but are not limited to education quality, quality of e-learning, education policy, institutional economics and project management.
Mark holds a degree in International Communications from the Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University and is currently working on his degree in Economics at the Moscow University of Industry and Finance. He is fluent in Russian, English and understands some German.
Leonard Mware
Leonard Mware is the Director of ICWE Africa Ltd., focussing on the company’s business development on the African continent. He previously worked as an independent consultant for the World Bank, as well as a DFID consultant for the Ministry of Education (Kenya). The private sector also benefited from his IT consultancy skills, including BBC Worldwide Interactive Learning, UK and the National Housing Corporation.
Until recently, he was also the e-Learning Coordinator at Maseno University in Kenya.
He has extensive knowledge in the fields of IT, ICT, engineering, as well as teaching and training. He also served as a senior lecturer at the Kenya College of Communications Technology, where he also successfully introduced e-Degree programmes. Leonard has a wealth of experience in leading national and international integrated marketing campaigns, which have combined media relations, advertising, web site co-ordination and event management. He has travelled the globe, covering Asia, Europe and North America.
Leonard holds a masters degree in Information Systems from the University of Sunderland.
Antonio Graf Strachwitz
Antonio Graf Strachwitz is the founder and Managing Director of Strachwitz&Gerhard optimierte Werbung GmbH, Berlin, which offers corporate design, communication and advertising services in various fields with clients such as Berliner Kurier, Berliner Zeitung, Depot, Malteser Hilfsdienst and Mercedes-Benz CharterWay.
Graf Strachwitz was born and raised in Bavaria, where he studied arts, graphic design and advertising communications in Munich and founded his first advertising company, Studio Strachwitz.
After leaving Munich to expand his creative perspectives, Graf Strachwitz's advertising career led him to New York, Hamburg and Berlin, where he worked as junior art director, art director, copywriter, copy chief, creative director and managing director on campaigns, corporate and packaging designs for both international and national clients.
Graf Strachwitz's conceptual and creative work has been awarded numerous national and international advertising awards up to the Silver World Medal of the internationally renowned New York Festivals.
His latest business activity, Strachwitz&Gerhard optimierte Werbung GmbH, focuses on a new mode of operation that increases communication budget efficiency by more than 25% in comparison with conventional advertising development methods. He continuously supports various charity projects.
Rebecca Stromeyer
Rebecca Stromeyer is the Executive Director and founder of ICWE GmbH and Chairman of the Board of the award-winning web portal Internet Course Finders, which is dedicated to education and offers information on all types of educational institutions worldwide. She is also a co-founder of ICEF GmbH, the recognized global leader in international student recruitment and travel for education workshops.
Rebecca grew up in an international environment and was raised multilingually. She was born in Kuwait and spent most of her formative years in different countries in the Middle East, the longest time spent in Lebanon. She studied Slavonic Studies, Comparative Literature, Business Administration and Media Studies in Berlin, Moscow and the UK. This background provided the basis for her first successful exhibition series on languages and multiculturalism, which have been organised in a number of European cities such as Berlin, Budapest, London, Warsaw, Moscow and Prague since 1988.
Over the last decade and a half, Rebecca Stromeyer has been organising events related to education and training, as well as languages and media in all parts of the world. Her most prestigious enterprise to date is the ONLINE EDUCA conference series whose flagship, ONLINE EDUCA Berlin, she helped launch in 1995. The annual conference is regarded as the key networking event of the international e-learning industry. ONLINE EDUCA MADRID, first held in 2000, expanded the palette to the Spanish-speaking e-learning community.
She founded eLearning Africa in 2006. The first edition of this annual international conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2006. It was followed by subsequent editions in Nairobi, Accra, Dakar, Lusaka and Dar es Salaam. The conference is attended by over 1700 delegates from all sectors and ministers from many African nations.
Rebecca is a founding director of E-Cubed Communications, an agency for international communications, marketing and public affairs. She is an advisory member to ELIG and a board member of GDLN Global, a global board overseeing the 120 GDLN affiliates in 80 countries. She is Chairperson of the East Trust, a non profit organization that aims to make a lasting positive impact on education in Africa and she is also a board member of the Drucker Society, a practitioner-led, multi-stakeholder group that builds on Peter Drucker’s fundamental ideas and ideals with the aim of contributing to the evolution of management as a vital piece of a functioning modern society.
Connecting people to enhance the educational process is Rebecca Stromeyer's main focus.
Huberta von Voss
Huberta von Voss (MA) is an author and freelance journalist in Berlin. She studied political sciences, history, and romance languages on a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Upon graduating, she worked as a correspondent for various Berlin newspapers, covering domestic politics and defense issues.
In the mid-1990s, she was appointed press spokeswoman of the German parliament. From 1997 to 2002, she accompanied her husband on an ambassadorial posting to Beirut and Nicosia. Since returning to Berlin she has been working as an expert in the department for modern history, international affairs and human rights of the German parliament and as an author.
Huberta is currently working on a book on child poverty in Germany (Rowohlt, Berlin). She believes that education is a human right a society should fight for instead of taking for granted. She considers the value of education to be highly underestimated and that investments in that sector should rise dramatically. She supports UNICEF's campaign to establish the notion that education is also a children's and women's right. A lot remains to be done, even in industrialised countries as the report of the UN Special Rapporteur Venor Munoz on the disadvantaged situation of immigrant children in Germany has shown. A mother of four, Huberta thinks that every child should have the same access to high quality education.
Her last book on the Armenian Genocide, Porträt einer Hoffnung: Die Armenier. Lebensbilder aus aller Welt(Schiler Verlag, Berlin 2. ed. 2005.) has been translated into both English (Berghahn Books, New York/Oxford 2007) and Spanish (Imago Mundi, Buenos Aires 2007). Editorial and translation work includes the Lebanese poet Nadia Tuéni (2000, 2004) and the novelist Alexandre Najjar (2001).
Thijs van Vugt
Thijs van Vugt is Director of iE&D Solutions BV, an educational consultancy firm in The Netherlands, and of StudyWorld (The Netherlands) BV, a student counselling and recruitment agency. He holds an MA in International Economics from Tilburg University (The Netherlands) and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Public Management from Tias Business School (The Netherlands).
Since graduating from Tilburg University in 1989, Thijs has worked for the university in various capacities, both at the central and faculty level. He also worked for the ERASMUS Bureau in Brussels for six months in 1993-1994. In early 1995 he moved to Britain to work for Sheffield Hallam University, only to return to Tilburg University in late 1996. In 1997, he became Head of the International Office of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, where he developed and set up international marketing and recruitment activities. From November 2003 until January 2006 he was Tilburg University's International Marketing Officer, developing and setting up the university's corporate international marketing and recruitment strategy and operations.
Thijs is the founder and chair of the Professional Section on Marketing & Recruitment of the European Association for International Education (EAIE). Since 2005, he has also been a member of EAIE's Executive Board. Thijs has been a course leader and trainer of various staff development courses for EAIE and CIRIUS, as well as for various universities around the world. In September 2006 he published his first book together with Tim Rogers as co-editor called The Impact of Tuition Fees on International Student Recruitment .
In 1991, Thijs was one of the founding fathers of the European Association for Leisure and Tourism Education (ATLAS) and has been an executive board member for almost five years.
Some of iE&D Solutions' past and present clients are: IDP Education, CINOP International, Nuffic, Utrecht University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Antwerp, ESSCA Angers, Politecnico di Milano, and the Institute for Law and Finance in Frankfurt.
