Carla Aerts

Founder of Refracted! an online global inter-disciplinary learning and education community.

Carla, an inter-disciplinarian and change maker, strives for piercing the silos in education. An EdTech thought leader and learning scientist, she recently ran a global EdTech catalyst and Think Tank: the Tmrw Institute bringing international education stakeholders together: from policymakers, EdTech start-ups to learners. She also ran the Next Billion EdTech Prize for start-ups in the Global South and resource-poor contexts. 

Carla was director of futures at UCL - Institute of Education in London, where she developed new strategic initiatives, developed and ran an EdTech start-up programme that mentored 250 start-ups in impact evidencing and research as well as start-up development. Prior to this role, Carla was Global Digital Director at Cambridge University Press. Carla led on EdTech product developments and ran digital education programmes across Europe, India, Japan, Korea. She has provided advisory input for education reform programmes.

She started mentoring EdTech start-ups 8 years ago and has mentored over 100 start-ups and non-profit organisations, an activity she enjoys hugely. Most recently Carla mentored non-profit organisations working in refugee camps and socio-economic deprived contexts, affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Carla speaks and moderates at international conferences, appears on podcasts and is a member of the WEF Expert Network on AI and Childhood. She also sits on a number of boards and advisory boards. She is a governor at her local rural primary school.