Wayne Mackintosh (Ph.D) is the Managing Director of the OER Foundation and holds the UNESCO Chair in OER.

A teacher by training, he is coordinating the establishment of the OERu, an international innovation partnership which aims to widen access to more affordable education for all. Wayne’s work over the last two decades has focused on open sourcing education. Wayne is the recipient of the 2019 International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) Individual Prize of Excellence in recognition of his work pioneering an OER-enabled transnational micro-credentialing system. In 2020, he received the award for Excellence in Leadership at Otago Polytechnic and the Open Education Global Leadership Award for significant long standing contributions to Open Education.

Wayne lives in Cromwell on the beautiful South Island of New Zealand.

Tolugauvale Matai-Uatisone is Assistant University Librarian at the National University of Samoa. Tolu has more than 30 years working experience in various areas in the Learning Resources Centre in the Library.

Tolu holds a Master of Information Technology in Library Studies from Queensland University of Technology, a BA (Sociology and Management)from USP Fiji, and Diploma in Library Studies from USP Fiji.

Tony Mays is the current Education Specialist for Open Schooling at the Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver, Canada and also the managing Associate Editor of the Journal of Learning for Development.

He completed his undergraduate studies in the United Kingdom and then started his career as a secondary school teacher in Malawi, through a posting organised by the British charity Voluntary Service Overseas, in a school which supported both traditional full-time day scholars as well as non-traditional learners registered with the Malawi College of Distance Education. His interest in teaching and learning through both contact and distance education methods, as well as combinations thereof, continued throughout his subsequent career which increasingly focused on teacher development through distance education and then also about distance education, in work with Promat Colleges, Saide, the University of Pretoria and the University of South Africa. He is a former President of the National Association of Distance Education and Open Learning in South Africa (NADEOSA), former
Honorary Treasurer of the Distance Education Association of Southern Africa (DEASA) and former chair of the biennial Distance Education and Teachers Training in Africa (DETA) conference. Tony holds a DEd in Curriculum Studies from the University of South Africa.

Deepak Bhartu is a former Open Education Design Architect at the University of the South Pacific (USP). He has worked in the higher education industry in the capacity of an educator, learning designer, business analyst and a project manager for the past 13 years.

Deepak holds a Master of Arts (Education), Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, and a Master of Computing and Information Systems, all from USP. Deepak has been the lead architect for USP’s Open Educational Practices initiative including USP Global, PACFOLD initiatives, and adoption, integration, and capacity building of Open Educational Resources (OER) at institutional level. Deepak’s interests are in assessment design, digital pedagogies, and educational innovation to enhance learning and teaching experiences.