Featured Speaker for 2011

We pleased to announce that Dr. Edem Adubra of UNESCO will be the featured speaker at the 10th Annual Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture.

He will address the congress at the opening session on Wednesday, 30 November 2011 at 5:30 p.m. in the main hall of the Trilussa Palace Hotel, Rome, Italy.   

Dr. Adubra joined UNESCO in 2003 as program specialist in the Division of Secondary, Technical and Vocational Education. Among other duties, he helped coordinate the Interagency Working Group on Secondary Education. The Group promoted the important role of school leadership in quality education, and the improvement of learning contents.

In 2006, Dr. Adubra transferred to the field in the Windhoek Cluster Office where he directed UNESCO education programs in Angola, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. He also coordinated the development of a close partnership in education between the Southern African Development community (SADC) and UNESCO field offices in the sub-region. He later assumed the interim of the director of the Windhoek office in 2009 before later being appointed back to Headquarters as the Chief of UNESCO's Section for Teacher Policy and Development.

Prior to his international career at UNESCO, Dr. Adubra had spent over 16 years of his
professional life as a teacher, a teacher trainer and a high school principal in his home country, Togo.

Dr. Adubra got his Bachelor of Arts degree from Université du Bénin (Lomé, TOGO), obtained his Masters in Linguistics from Lancaster University (UK) and a dual Doctoral degree in Educational Administration and Comparative and International Education from the Pennsylvania State University (USA).

Previous Guest Speakers

- Ms. Joan Colin Carpenter, Co-Founder, American University of Rome
- Mr. James Creagan, President of John Cabot University, Rome, and former U.S.
Ambassador
- Dr. Maria Amata Garito, President, UNINETTUNO
- Mr. D. Brent Hardt, Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires, U.S. Embassy
to the Holy See, Vatican City
- Dr. Rose Lee Hayden, President, Worldviews Multimedia and Editor of the new
Michel Thomas Method Vocabulary courses
- Mr. R. James Nicholson, Ambassador, U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, Vatican City
- Dr. Franco Pavoncello, President, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
- Mrs. Katérina Stenou, Director, Division of Cultural Policies and Intercultural
Dialogue, UNESCO
- Mr. Michael E. Sweet, Founder, Learning for a Cause, and Member of the 
Canadian Commission for UNESCO
- Mr. Gaddi H. Vasquez, Ambassador, United Nations, Rome