SPEAKER BIOS
Manish Jain has served for the past nine years as as Coordinator-Co-Founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development and as Chief Editor of the journal, "Vimukt Shiksha" (Liberating Learning). He has edited five books on the theme of Learning Societies which explores the future of learning and ways to transform/dismantle the current models of education. He also helped start the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkon) movement in India. He is very involved in the Udaipur as a Learning City process-project working where he works actively with local children and families on community video, healthy cooking, zero waste living and rooftop organic farming. He also serves on the advisory board of several organizations committed to nurturing innovative forms of learning, leadership and convivial communities including: The Berkana Exchange and The Swaraj Foundation.
Prior to founding Shikshantar, Manish spent two years in France working as one of the principal architects of the UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Learning Without Frontiers global initiative. Manish has also worked as an consultant in the areas of educational planning, policy analysis, research, program design and use of media/technology with the UNICEF, USAID, UNDP, World Bank, Academy for Educational Development, and Education Development Center in several countries in Africa, South Asia and Central Asia. He has served as Assistant Editor of The Forum for Advancing Basic Education and Literacy with the Harvard Institute for International Development. Manish also spent two years as an investment banker (mergers & acquisitions and corporate finance) with Morgan Stanley focusing on the telecom and high technology sectors. For the past 13 years, he has been trying to unlearn his Master's degree in Education from Harvard University and B.A. in Economics, International Development and Political Philosophy from Brown University in order to see the world with more authentic and creative eyes. He lives with four amazing women – his wife, Vidhi; his daughter, Kanku; his sister, Shilpa; and his grandmother, Gia – who help to keep him honest in his search for truth.
Alison McKee, is the parent of two grown and independent unschoolers, and the author of two books about homeschooling: Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves , and From Homeschool to College and Work. She stumbled onto unschooling in 1980 when she read an interview with John Holt. In it he mentioned going off to school with an appetitie for reading and graduating 13 years later detesting the thought of reading anything at all. Wow was that a wake-up call!
Since that time she has read every issue of Holt's magazine, Growing Without Schooling (now out of print), founded an unschooling support group, written extensively about unschooling, learning and unschooling her own children. Over the years she has cherished the opportunity to champion unschooling ideals through her writing, national conference presentations, consultations with families and many small speaking engagements. Alison has seen her unschooled children grow into extremely interesting independent adults firsthand, and if she had to do it over again she'd trust her children even more than she had during their years at home.
