Thomas Westenholz
Founder
Thomas is passionate about creating innovative solutions to improve and revolutionise education. He founded a healthcare solution in Denmark that would improve workforce engagement, health and productivity. He later moved to the UK and founded Empire Claims and now Positive Edge Education.
Thomas Westenholz felt a strong frustration seeing so many talented students disengage with education. Instead of fulfilling their potential so many students simply got left behind.
This combined with a deep passion for education, having spent 15 years learning about education, psychology and neuroscience lead to the idea of merging the latest research findings with technology to create engaging programs that will help all students fulfil their potential.
When Thomas became a father and had to spend 10 months in intensive care with his son it created the spark to start ‘Positive Edge Education’: a new type of education that inspires, engage and provide the tools to adapt and flourish in a rapid changing world.
But to put together a holistic educational program that address the challenges faced by schools on all levels Thomas needed a group of professional teachers, educators, and researchers to help make the Positive Edge model a reality.
Patty O'Grady
Advisor
Patty O’Grady, Ph.D. is a Professor at the University of Tampa where she teaches human development courses. She is an expert in the area of neuroscience, emotional learning, and positive psychology with special attention to the educational arena.
She brings more than 30 years of experience as a teacher, administrator, researcher, writer, and trainer to her work.
Dr. O’Grady’s recent book, Positive Psychology in the Elementary School Classroom, published by W. W. Norton & Company (2013), is a manual for teachers.
Over the years, Dr. O’Grady focused her work on helping educators better understand and promote the neuro-affective aspects of learning and accomplishment. She is committed to insuring that educators nurture the developmental assets that predict student success, understand the importance of affective learning, and promote the school positive psychology movement.
Orly Wahba
Program advisor
Orly is a teacher, educator, entrepreneur, award-winning film maker and TED speaker. In 2011, Orly founded Life Vest Inside, a non-profit kindness organization.
Orly spent 8 years as a school teacher and managed to reach the children that were categorised as unteachabl
Jan Gerhards
Advisor - Game Based Learning
Jan studied maths and sciences at Sixth Form and studied Land Economy at Cambridge University.
Jan spent a year working as a Teaching Associate in a London school.
He is using technology to create a game-based, hands-on science teaching programme for the KS3 curriculum.
Sherria Hoskins
Advisor
Dr Sherria Hoskins has a PhD in learning and teaching.
She is the head of the department of psychology at Portsmouth University.
Sherria is a researcher and help progress education through scientific research. She has just completed a big study of xxx schools implementing Growth Mindset in the UK.
In 2004 she was awarded a University Teaching and Learning Fellowship for her contribution to teaching and learning and in 2013 she was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy
Renee Jain
Advisor - Social and Emotial Learning
Renee has an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and has worked with thousands of adults and children to help them get better results.
As an expert in psychology and human potential she is currently delivering Social and Emotional learning programs in 200 schools.
Aleksandar Cocek
Web developer
Aleksandar is our technical wizard. He is responsible for developing our e-learning portal that schools and students use to improve their ability and results.
He is a backend developer and project manager and his job is to make it easy and fun for you to learn.
Ian
Film Producer
Ian & Dominic Higgins are the creative magicians responsible for our video production. Their first film The Wolf Who Came in from the Cold, won “Best Animation” at one of Hollywood’s first all-digital film festivals.
Since then they have produced, directed, written and edited two other award winning short films, The 13th Day and All That Remains.