People

An ELT professional with 15 years’ experience as a teacher, trainer and Cambridge CELTA/DELTA trainer, Chris has supported and led educational programmes for a variety of industry-leading organisations, including Cambridge University Press and Assessment, and the British Council in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Since August 2019 Chris has led the development and management of several large social media-based learning communities and currently provides consultancy and course coordination services, supporting all aspects of the British Council’s global Open Learning programme for teachers. While coordinating the delivery of 25+ global courses a year and the broader programme, Chris heads our wider team of consultants, which supports the British Council through the redevelopment of its online teacher training content.

With 17 years’ experience in the ELT field, Zoë is an experienced teacher educator, textbook author (OUP), digital materials developer and project manager. She has a strong track record of bringing projects at different stages to completion through writing, building, editing and quality assurance.

Zoë holds an MBA from Lancaster University and has experience leading both remote and on-the-ground teams of trainers for several large-scale teacher training projects in multiple countries.

Bringing six-years’ recent experience of developing online learning content for teachers as a Consultant for the British Council, Zoë has developed 200+ modules as an editor, writer and builder. Since 2022 Zoë has led further teacher development projects on behalf of ThornLearning, reviewing, editing, and building multiple high-profile courses and advising on the development of a vocational English teaching programme for the European Commission.

Sangeeta is a DELTA-qualified ELT specialist with 12 years’ experience, spanning a range of learners and contexts. Previous teaching, training and managerial roles have been with the British Council and International House in Europe and Asia, as well as several UK universities.

Sangeeta’s creative flair and keen eye for detail have made her a key part of many ThornLearning material development projects, leading on initial syllabus planning, content creation, course building and quality assurance for a range of industry-leading clients. Recent contributions have also included developing in-house style guides and training materials for social media writers and writing teacher development content for social media.

Nikki is an educator, marketeer and creative artworker with a track record in delivering digital design and learning solutions for a range of high-profile organisations such as the British Council, Family Assurance, Virgin Holidays, and Virgin Atlantic, in addition to industry-leading print publications. Nikki’s extensive design experience is supplemented with a grounding in ELT, primarily as a teacher of young learners, and subsequently through the development of corporate training materials in the UK travel sector.

25 years of design and marketing experience, combined with her expertise with Adobe Creative Cloud suite leaves Nikki well-placed to support with the editing of existing assets, or the production of new digital ones. Recent projects have included developing a series of digital workbooks to support the British Council’s global Open courses for Teachers programme and producing digital marketing assets for social media.

Carolina is currently based in Porto. She has been in ELT since 2005 as a teacher, teacher trainer, course designer, IELTS and Cambridge examiner. She has worked extensively for the British Council on teacher training projects in various countries including Turkey, Vietnam, Myanmar and Malaysia and more recently worked for CUP as an online teacher development tutor. She has been involved in materials writing for teacher education, language development and vocational learning.  

Highly proficient in multiple languages (Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish), Carolina is also a professionally trained conference interpreter, regularly working at international events and technical workshops for organisations such the EU and OECD. She holds a DELTA, a CELTYL and an MA in Linguistics from University of Naples Federico II with a focus on Sociolinguistics and Creole languages.

Dr. Vanita Chopra is an educator with 16 years’ experience of teacher development as an Assistant language education Professor in Delhi University, and education consultant.

In addition to authoring two books and over 30 papers and journal contributions on assessment, pedagogy and classroom dynamics, Vanita’s recent projects have included:
– the quality assurance of instructional materials for courses, webinars, and workshops.
– tutoring social media-enabled open online courses for language teachers
– the development and delivery of teacher education webinars and live online sessions for a global audience.

Since 2023 Vanita has supported ThornLearning projects as an online English language materials writer, producing content on behalf of the European Commission’s Erasmus+ language support programme.

Nelson Arditto is a teacher and teacher educator based in Spain. He has worked in ELT since 1997 as a teacher, academic manager and teacher trainer in the UK, Spain, Syria, the UAE, Ukraine, Jordan and China. He worked for many years as Course Director and tutor on Trinity teacher training courses (CertTESOL, DipTESOL, TYLEC) and as assistant tutor on the MA in Bilingual Education at the Valencian International University.

He regularly moderates online teacher training courses, mentors new e-moderators and supports teacher activity group and communities of practice facilitators on the British Council Teacher Educator Community website. He is currently a trainer on the British Council Assured Certificate for Teacher Educators course, an assessor for the Trinity CertPT qualification and a trainer consultant and DELTA tutor at NILE. He enjoys producing content for f-2-f and online training courses and delivering webinars for the TeachingEnglish website.

He holds a BA, DELTA, CELTA YL and MA in TESOL qualifications and IH DoS, E-moderator Essentials and NILE Trainer Development certificates. He is currently a doctoral student at Bath University researching online teacher development. His current special interests include learning technologies, instructional design and online teacher and trainer learning.

Iman is an experienced and qualified educator who is DELTA-qualified and a Cambridge CELTA trainer with 18 years of experience in ELT, corporate skills training, teacher development, and academic management. Over the years, she has collaborated with ministries, charities and other organisations on a range of educational projects and language programmes in several countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. These have involved project management, syllabus design, course creation and delivery.

In 2020, she founded a language school in Mauritius which provides academic management and ELT consultancy services to international schools on the island; developing and delivering ELT training material/courses for mainstream classrooms.

She is currently based in the UK where she continues to manage the school remotely and has, most recently, been designing ESL courses for adult refugees and delivering them around Cambridgeshire.

A DELTA-qualified assessment specialist and digital learning content developer, over the past 16 years Louise has contributed to a diverse range of educational projects and programmes as a teacher, trainer, quality assurer, examiner and digital learning content creator.

Originally from Scotland and currently based in Spain, Louise has extensive on-the-ground experience as an English language educator in Europe, Africa and Asia. Since 2016 Louise has supported a more global audience through her work in online education and assessment.

Jenny is a language examination specialist and business manager with over 25 years’ experience of working as an English teacher and in-house teacher trainer, in Hungary, Portugal and Spain. As the co-founder of ipassielts.com, Jenny has supported medical and health sectors through the development and delivery of Vocational English Teaching (VET) materials and training.

Now, combining the skills of ELT teaching with proofreading and learning resources development, Jenny supports digital ELT content production projects as content reviewer, copywriter and proofreader.

With 30 years experience in ELT, Graham lived and worked in Warsaw, Poland (1994-2011) as a business English teacher and as Director of Studies at Linguarama International. He went on to set up and run a small language consultancy in Warsaw. He moved to Cambridge UK in 2011 and was Director of Studies at EF Executive institute (2011-17) which ran short intensive courses for business people from around the world.

Graham has created and delivered ESP courses for many international organisations in a wide range of industry sectors. He currently offers business English communication courses to marketing and sales managers in the pharma, medical device and biotech industries.

He has a Bsc Honours Degree in Management Sciences (Economics) from the University of Lancaster, and the LCCI Diploma in Teaching English For Business.