Claudia Ferradas (British Council Argentina)

Claudia trabaja para el British Council Argentina como Capac

Claudia works for the British Council Argentina as an English Language Teacher Trainer. She has extensive international experience as a teacher educator and materials writer. She holds an MA in Education and Professional Development from the University of East Anglia and a PhD in English Studies at the University of Nottingham.

In Argentina, she is a lecturer at the Instituto de Enseñanza Superior en Lenguas Vivas, Buenos Aires and at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza. In the UK, Claudia has been a Visiting Fellow and research supervisor at the School of Languages, Leeds Metropolitan University, and an Associate Trainer with NILE (Norwich Institute for Language Education). She has also taught in the MA programme in TEFL at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and has co-chaired the Oxford Conference on the Teaching of Literature on five occasions.

Laura Pérez (British Council Cuba)

Laura Pérez works as Project Manager for the British Council, Cuba. She has a BEd in English Language from the Pedagogical University of Havana, and taught for six years in primary, secondary, and tertiary education. She has also worked as freelance interpreter and with the management team at the British Embassy in Havana.

Mark Gregson (British Council Venezuela)

Mark has been Project Manager at the British Council in Venezuela for the last five years. Before that, he worked for 25 years at the School of Modern Languages at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) in Caracas, where he taught English language and British culture at undergraduate level, and Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis and Applied Linguistics on postgraduate courses. He was a founding member of the Masters in English as a Foreign Language at the UCV, and was Head of the English Department and Head of Extension at the Modern Languages School for several years. Apart from his management work in Venezuela, Mark is also an editor for the Primary Skills football project.

Michael Houten (British Council Brazil)

After working as a History and English teacher in the UK and later as an EFL teacher in Spain, Michael joined the British Council in 1991, managing English teacher development projects in the Czech and Slovak republics, Poland, and Brazil. He returned to the UK in 2003 as Online Learning Manager in charge of the successful LearnEnglish suite of websites. More recently he managed the English components of partner projects with the London Olympic Organising Committee and the Premier League which produced online resources such as the English for the Games and Premier Skills English websites. He also dealt with business partnership enquiries around the use of British Council digital English content, working with Intel and Ministries of Education around the world. In May 2012 he joined the Brazil English team and is based in Rio de Janeiro.

Pilar Aramayo (British Council Mexico)

Pilar Aramayo Prudencio (MEd ELT, Dip RSA) is Director of Partnerships (English) at the British Council, Mexico. For the past 18 years she has worked as a teacher, teacher trainer, materials writer and course designer. In the public sector, she was in charge of designing the Mexican national curriculum for TEFL in preschool, primary and secondary education, and authored teacher training materials to support curriculum implementation. In the private sector, she developed an online training programme for language teachers, which is currently used in Spain and nine countries in Latin America. Her professional interests include teacher education, online learning and public policy design.

Kate Harris (British Council Mexico)

Kate Harris is Head of English at the British Council, Mexico; this includes English language teaching, teacher training and exams throughout Mexico. She has worked in ELT for 16 years and for the British Council as a teacher and in management for the last 14 years. She has an MA in HRM, and a postgraduate certificate in Talent Management.  Her current primary research focuses on talent management and continual professional development for teachers.

Thomas Connelly (British Council Chile)

Tom is the ELT Manager for the British Council in Chile and is the current President of IATEFL Chile. He has worked in ELT in the UK, Spain, Mexico and now Chile. Prior to joining the British Council, he worked for 5 years at the Instituto Chileno Britanico as Academic Director of Capacitacion Docente, coordinating EFL projects in public and private sectors. Tom holds an MA in Applied Linguistics & ELT from Surrey University in the UK. He has also taught Applied and General Linguistics at the British University and Universidad Alberto Hurtado and been a local tutor for University of London’s (Institute of Education) MA TESOL programme. He spends his summers fly-fishing and enjoying fine Chilean wine. He has no hobbies as he is the father of twins.

Paul Woods (British Council Argentina)

Paul Woods is the British Council’s Regional Language Advisor for the "Southern Cone", covering Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. He has been Director of the British Council in Botswana and Mozambique, and has managed English Language projects and trained teachers since 1972 in over 40 countries around the world.  He managed the British Council's Global Education UK website in 2010/11 and was British Council English Manager for sub/Saharan Africa from 2007 to 2010 . He is currently managing a highly innovative pilot project to deliver English lessons remotely to primary schools in Uruguay via videoconferencing.