Mercedes Mayol Lassalle is the World President of OMEP (Organization Mondiale pour l’Education Préscolaire /World Organization for Early Childhood Education) since 2020 and elected member of the Coordination Group of the Collective Consultation of NGOs on EDUCATION 2030 - CCNGO/ED 2030, to 2024.
Graduated in Educational Sciences, she is Professor on Public Policies for Early Childhood in the Master in Early Childhood Education at the University of Buenos Aires. She has been Professor of the Regional Training Program in Educational Policies, of IIEP-UNESCO for Latin America; Professor in Teacher Training on Early Childhood Education, in the National University of Lomas de Zamora and the National University of Santiago del Estero; Member of the Regional History Team of the National University of La Pampa.
She organized daycare centers and kindergartens for governments; coordinator of ECCE public policies assessments and curricular development; Head of the Cabinet of Advisors of the Minister of Education and General Director for Early Childhood of the City of Buenos Aires; Consultant in the United Nations Development Program on education and rurality; Advisor for the Ministries of Education several government and international organizations.

Adrijana Višnjić Jevtić is an assistant professor at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Teacher Education (Zagreb, Croatia). Her research interests are early childhood education, cooperation between families and educational institutions and early childhood teachers’ competences and professionalism. She authored and co-authored over 30 research papers published in journals such as International Journal of Early Childhood, and International Journal of Early Years Education, among other. She is also one of the editors of “Young children in the world and their rights, 30 years with the UNCRC” (Springer 2021). She is a member of OMEP, EECERA and TACTYC. Currently she holding position of the vice president of OMEP for European region.

Marián López Fernández Cao is a reference in Art Education, Art Therapy, gender equality in the art system and art and social justice through creative processes. With extensive training in Fine Arts, Sociology, Gender Studies and Psychotherapeutic Intervention, supported by national and international scholarships and grants for academic excellence, she develops a solid line of research and teaching. The research group she has been leading since 2010 (941935, EARTDI) has been rated excellent by the State Research Agency in 2023.
She has held and holds positions of academic and research responsibility. Since 2017 she has been Vice-President of the European Consortium for Education in Therapies through the Arts (ECArTE).
She is a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and director of the Arts, Plastic and Visual Education Unit.

Machi Cleanthous, MD, is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. Dr. Cleanthous completed her residency in C & A psychiatry at the University Hospital of Örebro (USÖ) and completed her training in integrative psychotherapy at Södersjukhuset Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. After working for 5 years as the senior consultant in charge of the Neuropsychiatric Department of the child psychiatric clinic of USÖ, as well as of the neuropsychiatric team of Örebro’s Rehabilitation Centre in Sweden, she relocated to Cyprus in 2017 and since then runs her own private practise. She was the chairwoman of the Cyprus C&A Psychiatric Association in 2019-2021.

Mathias Urban, PhD, is Desmond Chair of Early Childhood Education, and Director of the Early Childhood Research Centre (ECRC) at Dublin City University, Ireland, Professor (II) of Pedagogy at the University of Stavanger, Norway, and Affiliate Professor and Fellow at EDPolicyFORWARD: The Center for Educational Policy at George Mason University, USA. He works on questions of integrated early childhood systems, diversity and equality, social justice, and professionalism in diverse socio-cultural contexts. Mathias has over 20 years’ experience in designing and leading international collaborative research projects. He was awarded the ‘Marianne Bloch Distinguished Career Award’ by the international Reconceptualising Early Childhood Education network in 2018, and the DCU President’s Research Impact Award 2020. Mathias is the lead author of the 2018 (Argentina), 2019 (Japan), 2020 (Saudi Arabia), 2021 (Italy), 2022 (Indonesia), and 2023 (India) G20/T20 early childhood development, education and care policy briefs, and a member of the European Commission expert working group on Early Childhood Education and Care.

Dr John Siraj-Blatchford is an independent educational researcher and consultant, and has served as an honorary Professor at the University of Plymouth and Swansea. He is also an Executive Member of OMEP UK, and co-founded SchemaPlay and The Land of Me . John was previously employed at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education and served as an Associate Director of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme. In 2014 he was commissioned by UNESCO to co-author (with Ingrid Pramling-Samuelsson) an early childhood review of the UNESCO Decade for Education for Sustainable development, and he chaired the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for Sustainable Development workshop at the 2015 UNESCO ‘End of Decade’ ESD Conference in Nagoya, Japan. John Siraj-Blatchford is currently providing leadership for the OMEP UK Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Citizenship Award Scheme, and is actively promoting effective learning through Play in the UK and more widely. He has researched and published widely on the subject of social justice and equity in early childhood learning and development, and is keen to promote partnerships between preschools in the global North and South that can make genuine contributions in their collaborative convergence and contraction of carbon footprints. Mathias is the lead author of the 2018 (Argentina), 2019 (Japan), 2020 (Saudi Arabia), 2021 (Italy), 2022 (Indonesia), and 2023 (India) G20/T20 early childhood development, education and care policy briefs, and a member of the European Commission expert working group on Early Childhood Education and Care.