Announcing EdSurge Independent’s Fall 2018 Fellows
As a student-run publication that aims to amplify and empower voices of higher education students, we are very excited to announce our Fall 2018 Fellows!
Since Summer 2016, the EdSurge Independent has steadily built its cohort base with young people who care about making an positive impact in education. This 8th cohort gathers a diverse group of members. Coming from 3 countries and 7 universities, our 7 newest members bring together a wide breadth and depth of educational experiences. Among the group are polyglots, engineers, entrepreneurs, educators, medical practitioners, writers, and consultants.
Throughout this fall, our Fellows will meet online every week to discuss the most pressing challenges in education as well as engage with leading educators, philanthropists and entrepreneurship. They will also share their perspectives with the readers of EdSurge Independent and beyond.
If you are interested in receiving updates about our cohort’s activities as well as fellow’s work, you can subscribe to our newsletter here!
May we proudly present our Fall 2018 EdSurge Independent Fellows (ordered by last name) and also our Cohort Leaders:
Mahdi AlBasri
Mahdi is an and MD and Masters in Medical Education candidate at Harvard Medical School. He is a fellow at the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching and a Teaching Fellow at HMS. His research focuses on teaching empathy with virtual reality for rising physicians. He also works on the development of curricula and programs on management, design thinking and policy for medical students and physicians to better equip them with the diverse contemporary skills needed in healthcare right now and to facilitate more effective communication in the healthcare industry.
Apart from clinical work, Mahdi was also a fellow in government strategy and policy at the Bahrain Crown Prince’s First Deputy Prime Minister Office, where he worked on the development of several public sector strategies and implementation plans in the fields of health, education, media and international relations.
Margherita (Maggie) Berti
Margherita Berti is a doctoral student in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT), minoring in Educational Technology, at the University of Arizona. She holds a master degree in Linguistics/Teaching English as a Second Language from Indiana State University and currently teaches undergraduate Italian courses. Margherita has over three years of experience in language teaching at the university level in Italian, Spanish and ESL.
Her current research focuses on materials development for assessment and pedagogical purposes with the integration of innovative and accessible technology tools. Margherita has presented papers at national conferences such as ACTFL, AAAL, CALICO and SWCOLT and published articles and reviews in journals such as Issues and Trends in Educational Technology (ITET) and CALICO Journal. Margherita is currently narrowing her dissertation topic, which will focus on the use of virtual reality in the educational context for language and cultural learning.
As a successful learner, language instructor and, researcher, Margherita seeks to create positive educational environments where students can successfully learn through the use of researched practices, technology tools and authentic materials.
Sarah Chamberlain
Sarah is in the inaugural cohort of Georgetown University’s Master’s in Learning and Design. Before making her way to Washington, DC, she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior from the University of California, Davis. After briefly working in the biotechnology field, she completed a Design Media certificate from the University of California, San Diego. Equipped with both a science degree and a design portfolio, Sarah began her career in online learning through developing microlearning videos for the pharmaceutical industry.
Sarah’s focus on the intersection of technology, education, and design led her to her current Master’s program. Sarah also works for the learning design team at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. She develops online courses for Georgetown students, designs massive open online courses, MOOCs, and engages in learning analytics to continually improve course offerings. Sarah’s combination of work and educational experience established her interest in learning science — how do people learn, how can we engage diverse student backgrounds in learning, how does technology aid (or hinder) learning, and how can we design the future of higher education.
Outside of work and class, Sarah enjoys rock climbing, snowboarding, painting, crosswords, and curling up with a good book.
Kwok Yi (Jimmy) Kam
Jimmy Kam is currently a first-year MBA student at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, pursuing strategy major with a focus on social impact pathway.
Prior to MBA, she was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where she served corporates and government-related organizations in Greater China and South East Asia across consumer goods and finance sectors. During her time at BCG, she has also led the Social Impact committee of the Hong Kong office for a year. She has also worked for Grant Making — Youth, Education & Training, Poverty team of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, one of the top five private Trust globally, where she took lead in the execution of strategic review initiatives.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, she is particularly keen in personal growth development and character building. As such, she devoted personal time to mentor and coach high school and university students outside of her full-time job. Her long-term goal is to create a social venture that provides innovative personal growth education solutions using education technology for teenagers and young adults, leveraging the vehicle to shift the focus to developing academically excellent but also resilient and confident individuals who can rise as future leaders of changes in the society.
Jie (Vincent) Liu
Vincent was born and raised in a countryside of suburban Chengdu, China, where he only started learning English at seventh grade. He later came to the U.S. for high school and became a first-generation college student at Duke University. While overcoming his educational obstacles, he realized the significance of education resources and hope to bridge the gap in education through technology. He is majoring in Computer Science and wants to use his skills in Software Development and Deep Learning to improve education technology, particularly in personalized learning.
During the past summer, he was a research intern at Duke’s Office of Information Technology, creating a recommendation system for students to choose from enormous amounts co-curricular activities that the university offers. In August, he joined the development team of an open source project named Learn Anything, a platform generating mind-maps for nearly any topics.
As a national fourth level tea specialist, Vincent started Duke CommuniTEA when he was a freshman, a tea club that hosts Tea Ceremony and Tea Workshops, striving to cultivate the sense of community at Duke by bringing people together. He believes in the power of community, and the necessity of understanding different cultures in this globalized world.
Ray Liu
Ray Liu is a junior at Duke University studying economics and education. He is also the Founder and CEO of PeerKonnect (peerkonnect.org), which licenses peer tutoring software to high schools that empowers schools to run efficient, sustainable peer tutoring programs. PeerKonnect currently works with 7 partner schools across 4 states, and hopes to provide quality academic support to students through peer tutoring and help foster healthy, collaborative learning environments at schools.
Ray’s inspiration for PeerKonnect came from personally realizing the power of peer tutoring while tutoring physics in high school. This led him to start a google form based peer tutoring program that reached over 20% of his high school.
PeerKonnect is currently in Wave 5 of 4.0 Schools’ Tiny Fellowship for education startups, and Ray was also recently named ‘DKE under 30’ by his international fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, for his work on PeerKonnect.
Overall, he is very interested in education technology and entrepreneurship. At Duke, he loves meeting people from all walks of life and watching basketball.
Tu (Eric) Ngo
Eric Ngo is a sophomore majoring in Psychology and Cognitive Science at Truman State University. Coming from Vietnam, Eric is the first in his family to ever attend an abroad institution. Born in an area where studying abroad remains a fantasy for most people, Eric is motivated to make high-quality, world-class education more accessible to students.
Eric has been working for 3 years as Vice-President at NTAP (Nghe Tinh Abroaders and Professionals) — a non-profit organization with over 200 members across 15 countries across the world aiming to bring international education closer to less-fortunate students. There, he works to provide information of scholarship opportunities to students and creating a strong network of Vietnamese students across the world.
Eric’s time as both a student and tutor made him more understanding of student needs. He realized that while education’s accessibility is important, its quality is no less necessary. He believes that two of the ways to improve education quality is creating research-based education practices in teaching and learning and equipping students with skills that better prepare them for long-term career. As Director and Head of Content of The Flame Conference, he joined his friends to apply psychological knowledge to create a conference that equips nearly 500 students with soft skills such as resume editing, essay writing, and English skills as well as how to apply them in students’ college application and future career.
Angele Law (Cohort Leader, Spring 2018 Fellow)
Angele believes in the power of empathy, courage and collaboration in driving lasting, systemic changes in education in beyond. Currently an MBA student at MIT Sloan School of Management, she focuses on education innovation and entrepreneurship. She is a Co-President of Education Club, the Edtech Sector Practice Lead at Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, and is working with middle schools in Hong Kong and Boston to explore how MIT’s STEAM learning philosophy can be brought into the K-12 space.
She has had the privilege to work with schools, non-profits, corporations and governments on their challenges related to strategy, growth, funding, impact and efficiency. Past roles she took up included being a Strategic Projects Summer Associate at Boston Public Schools, Summer Fellow at Education Pioneers, Senior Associate at Boston Consulting Group and government-appointment member at Hong Kong Commission on Youth.
Her passion in education stems from the systematic challenges that she experienced and observed in the Hong Kong’s education system. She aspires to launch a network of schools in Asia that encourages students to explore their interests, maximize their strengths and pursue their dreams. She strongly believes that it is only with passionate and self-motivated thinkers, dreamers and leaders that we can collectively solve the big problems of our era and make the world a better place.
Linda Zhang (Cohort Leader, Summer 2018 Fellow)
As a junior at Duke University, Linda majors in public policy but keeps her strong interest in higher education. After her freshman year, she spent the summer at Duke Kunshan University researching on Chinese students’ perception of liberal arts education. She spent the next summer researching on apprenticeship and dual system education with Siemens in Charlotte, NC, USA.
Besides her academic interests, Linda has a big appetite for different foods and try to stay (mildly) in shape by boxing competitively and coxing for the Men’s Rowing team at Duke. She is also a veteran drummer with djembe, congas and bongos.
In addition to introducing you to this incredibly impressive group of Fellows, we encourage you to follow EdSurge Independent on Medium and Facebook as well as subscribe to our monthly newsletter! We will be sharing with you the best insights and perspectives about education from some of the most passionate and insightful young people.
