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Our Directors
As a team, our Board of Directors have years of experience in project management, administration, academic management, teacher and trainer training, academic program and curriculum design, and language teaching. As long-term expats with extensive personal experience in Eastern Europe and Bulgaria, they bring sound knowledge of intercultural relations and sensitivity and appreciation for local languages and cultures to the table.
This combination of skills, and our executive team's ongoing direct work in The Modern Institute's teaching and teacher training activities, means that we are able to deliver consistent, high quality projects and courses without the need for flying in expensive and short-term foreign expertise. This also results in strong institutional memory directly applicable to the ongoing pursuit of our mission.
David Read
Executive Director
Board Member
david.read@themoderninstitute.euDavid Read holds an MSc in TESOL from Aston University, Birmingham, England and is an affiliated faculty member of the SIT Graduate Institute of World Learning in Vermont, USA. He has been a teacher and teacher trainer for over 15 years and has worked in numerous countries, including Greece, Croatia, Morocco, Poland, Costa Rica, America, South Africa and South Korea. He also has extensive experience working for NGOs in the area of language teaching and training. He worked for the Open Society Institute in Serbia and Kyrgyzstan and has run several training courses for Roma and non-Roma English teachers in Bulgaria for the Bulgarian Center for Development and Training.
Thomas Topham
Founder and Chairman of the Board
Head of Teacher Training
thomas.topham@themoderninstitute.eu
Thomas holds a BA in Philosophy, as well as the UCLES CELTA and DTEFLA Certificates. He is a CELTA trainer and an affiliated faculty member of the SIT Graduate Institute of World Learning in Vermont, USA. He has been an EFL/ESL teacher for the last 15 years, and is now primarily focused on teacher training, training of trainers, and materials and training program development. He's worked all over the planet, from NYC to the jungles of Central America to Kabul Afghanistan. He has had experience in setting up a language school as Director of Studies and Head of Teacher Training for the Soros Foundation Kyrgyzstan, and has also done training work for American Councils for International Education and the Bulgarian Center for Development and Training.
Matt Brown
Board Member
Project Consultant
Matt Brown has been involved with education and training in Bulgaria since 1991. He was a volunteer English teacher in Stara Zagora from 1991 - 1993 as part of the first group of US Peace Corps volunteers in Bulgaria, and then taught at the American College of Sofia from 1993 - 1995. He directed the USAID Participant Training Program for several years and then established that program's legacy organization, the Bulgarian Center for Development and Training.