Wilfried Hartmann is Professor Emeritus of Comparative and International Education at the University of Hamburg. He served as Vice President of this University for three terms of office, during which time he was actively engaged in promoting international relations and partnerships and advancing the transfer of knowledge and technology. For many years he was a director of the European University Foundation in Luxemburg and vice-chairman of the Governing Board of the UNESCO Institute for Education, including through the period when the institute was planning today’s UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Andrea Detmer is former Associate Director for Innovation in Engineering, Catholic University of Chile. She is a specialist in innovation, policy, and socio-emotional learning in higher education.  She has extensive international experience in higher education in Latin America, UK, and continental Europe, as a researcher, university manager and policy maker. Innovation, community engagement, learning pathways and socio-emotional learning are her main areas of expertise.  She holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University College London, Master’s in educational planning and a bachelor’s in industrial engineering.  She is Chilean and lives in Paris.

Marco Lietz, Head of international projects  at BIWE– the vocational education and training organization of the employer´s associations from Germany´s southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg. He was born in Argentina and has lived in Germany and in El Salvador.  For more than 10 years, he coordinated the Dual Education at the Technological Central American Institute in El Salvador and participated in the implementation of dual study programs at its engineering school ITCA-FEPADE.  Since 2015 he has been working in international projects of BIWE and, since 2018, he has directed its projects in many countries .He has a degree in business/managerial economics and speaks English, French, German, and Spanish.

Alice Amegah, Ph.D. Candidate in Education, University of Cambridge.  She is an emerging expert in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) for development. Presently, she is researching young women’s participation in STEM in vocational pathways in Ghana. She is the brains behind Education and Aspirations Hub, a non-profit organization providing quality and equitable guidance and counseling to prepare young people for education and work transitions. Education and Aspirations Hub is based on her experience in adolescent counseling, teaching and research. As the current President of the African Society of Cambridge University, Alice is creating systems where African students, as one of the minorities groups at the University of Cambridge, can thrive as a group of young African leaders.

Katherine Caves is Lab Director of the Center for the Economics and Management of Education and Training Systems (CEMETS) at the Chair of Education Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and earned her master’s degree in the field of Education. Her PhD research was on the economics of education at the University of Zurich. Her research interests center around the economic, institutional, and infrastructure foundations of strong vocational education and training (VET) systems all over the world, especially what those foundations are in successful VET systems and how they can be developed in nascent VET systems. In addition, she is currently working on identifying the success factors and barriers to labor market-oriented education systems reforms.

Stephanie Matseleng Allais is Research Chair of Skills Development and Professor of Education at the Centre for Researching Education and Labor at Wits University. She is an educational sociologist, focused on education/ work relationships. Her research focuses both on the political economy of transitions from education to work and curriculum and knowledge aspects of educational preparation for work. Her books include Knowledge, curriculum, and preparation for work, published in 2018 by Brill/SENSE, with Yael Shalem, and Selling Education Out: National Qualifications Frameworks and the abandonment of Knowledge, published in 2014 by Sense. In 2010 she was a fellow at the Centre for Educational Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Before this she managed and conducted research into qualifications frameworks in 16 countries for the International Labour Organization. She has worked in government, distance education, trade union education, teaching high school, teaching adult basic education and training, and leading a student organization. She served on many committees by appointment of Ministers of Education in South Africa, has served as special advisor to the current Minister of Higher Education and Training, and has been involved in numerous policy processes, most recently the South African COVID skills strategy. Prior to entering the Federal government, Dr. Sclafani served as chief academic officer of the Houston Independent School District in Texas, one of the nation’s largest urban school districts. She earned a PhD in educational administration at the University of Texas, Austin.