Michelle is passionate about understanding people and culture. As an anthropologist and creative facilitator, she utilises methods from social science, creative problem solving and design thinking to enable individuals and organisations to connect creatively, to gain new perspectives and approaches to problem solving, to uncover the insights which drive innovation and to stimulate ideation. It was during her time as a teacher that a love and flair emerged for the design and development of human-centred tools which facilitate change and growth. Michelle continues this work today with client companies and within education in Northern Ireland. Michelle holds a Masters degree in Social Anthropology from Queen’s University Belfast and a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Communication from Limerick School of Art and Design.

Peter Worth is an educator and learning designer working at the intersection of design thinking, leadership, professional learning, and school culture change. As a member of the design team and former co-director of the School Retool professional learning fellowship—a project of the Stanford d.school’s K12 Lab and IDEO—he helped school leaders apply their hacking mindset to build toward an equitable school culture of deeper learning, preparing all students for post-secondary education, career, and civic life.

Now based in Northern Ireland, Peter consults locally and globally, working with and coaching clients in business, university, and schools, including leading Catalyst’s two school leaders’ fellowships in Belfast and the Northwest.

A career educator, Peter has been director of learning design and senior instructional designer for a professional learning edtech company, a senior research associate with an educational research organization, and a public school teacher in Los Angeles County. Peter holds a Master’s degree in education (Learning, Design, & Technology) from Stanford University and a Bachelor’s degree in theater arts from UC Santa Cruz.

Patricia’s core passion is for how Design Thinking and Creative Problem solving can be used inclusively across society. This passion was sparked by a study visit to the d-school, Stanford California over 10 years ago.

Since then Patricia has been focused on developing creative problem solving approaches to stimulate innovation with client companies and in education, where she introduce students from primary school through to PhD to the skills, tools and techniques which will help them to thrive as innovative thinkers in a complex, globalised world.

As a specialist facilitator Patricia has designed and delivered a wide range of design thinking programmes and workshops for strategy setting, team building, uncovering insights, innovation in the private and third sector and strengthening social enterprises. Patricia has a BSc Computer Science and a Masters in Business Administration, both from the University of Ulster.

Ellie Irving has been involved in entrepreneurship education in both the charitable and education sectors in Northern Ireland for more than ten years and is passionate about creating links between business and education.

She is the founder of Junior Dragons, entrepreneurship and life-skills education provider for children, which has been running workshops for primary schools since 2018. As an experienced facilitator, Ellie’s focus has been on developing and delivering entrepreneurship and product design challenges as a vehicle to encourage children to practice ideation and creativity while developing team-working abilities and discovering how they relate to others.

Ellie is also an experienced mental health educator and speaker, mindfulness in schools teacher and former relationship counsellor.