Mario is a founding member of the world-renown PILGRIMS Teacher Training Centre. He served as a teacher trainer at PILGRIMS from 1974 to 2019, and for many years he has also acted as a trainer and mentor for language teachers at the annual University of Oxford summer school.

Mario has had a significant impact on the methodology of teaching English. He is the main advocate of humanism in language education, lecturing and training at conferences and educational events for teachers worldwide. He has co-authored numerous books, most famously including Grammar games, Once upon a time, Vocabulary, Creative Writing and Humanising Your Course Book.

Here at The Bridge, Mario has helped us to design a feedback system and consulted our teaching methodology. We are currently collaborating on the HLT.digital project, an online teacher training platform.

Mike Shreeve has taught in state schools, language schools and management academies. He has also worked  in a business and professional context as an accountant,  business owner, director of consultancy and training and in HR  The connecting principle  is an interest in people and what makes them tick psychologically speaking . He has his own coaching client base consisting of professionals (accountants and lawyers) , educators and entrepreneurs . His main approach is as a holistic coach recognising each part of our lives  is informed by the other.

Mike is  an EMCC qualified coach who aims to enable his clients to reach deeper levels of wellbeing  and use their own creativity to move forward in their life . He started the Bridge Coaching Partnership with Klaudia Bednárová to enable her business clients to qualify as coaches.  This  year long programme  has recently been described as  “offering a comprehensive programme of tools, methodologies and teaching methods that give participants a unique perspective on providing high quality and effective coaching and mentoring, enhanced by the opportunity to practice on external clients with real world challenges ” It has a dual purpose of improving the English and people skills of the participants.

Outside of professional life, Mike lives in Brighton, has two sons and enjoys walking and contemplating the South Downs, writing poetry, watching the Seagulls (Brighton and Hove FC)  and is (healthily)obsessed with playing tennis.

Philip Kerr lives in Vienna, where he trains teachers and authors professional publications, methodological guides and English textbooks. His latest textbooks include Evolve (Cambridge University Press), Studio (Helbling), Straightforward (Macmillan) and Inside Out (Macmillan). He has significantly contributed to the research on using one’s native language in teaching foreign languages and has authored the prestigious award-winning book Translation and Own-Language Activities (Cambridge University Press). He was involved in the development of several language learning (predominantly vocabulary) mobile apps, regularly publishes in professional journals and writes a blog on technology in language learning at https://adaptivelearninginelt.wordpress.com/. He inspires us to keep getting better.

Rakesh Bhanot has been teaching English, training teachers and lecturing at conferences aimed at teaching English worldwide since 1972. He has been active as a teacher trainer all over the world, mainly however in the UK, Russia, Germany and Italy. He spent a large part of his career at a university …… and as an inspector of a language school network in Germany.

Today, Rakesh volunteers as an English teacher and mentor to other teachers at state schools – in central Europe and Greece. He publishes extensively and is a member of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language IATEFL Publications Committee. Rakesh is one of the founding editors of several professional journals, including Language Issues – the National Association for Teaching English and Community Languages to Adults’ (NATECLA) journal.