Adrian Underhill

Vice Chair

BA, MSc.
Adrian is a DELTA qualified English language teacher and has a Post Grad Cert in Facilitator Styles and a Masters in Responsible Business Practice. Until 1999 Adrian was a teacher, trainer, and director at International House Hastings. He now works as a consultant, speaker, trainer and author in leadership development, organisational learning and teacher training. He is a past president of IATEFL and series editor of Macmillan Books for Teachers.

Ricard Alonso

Ricard has over 20 years of experience across business operations in Sales, Customer Service and IT with Fortune 500 companies like General Electric and Ingersoll Rand. He specialised in improving the customer experience and increasing profitability and in his last assignment served as Vice President of Sales & Customer Service for the security sector of Ingersoll Rand leading teams in Europe, Middle East, Africa and India. Ricard is Spanish, lives in Belgium and speak English, Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian.

Monica Green

BSc, RSA Dip TEFLA
Monica started working in the TEFL industry when she took her CTEFLA course at International House Lisbon in 1985. She has been involved with International House ever since. She started renovating an as yet unfinished ruin in the Portuguese countryside in 1989 and opened an IH school in nearby Torres Vedras with her partner a year later. She is still managing director of the school as well as the new IH Teacher Training Centre in Lisbon. After many years on various IH committees and Boards, she was appointed Executive Director of the International House World Organisation – a part-time role – in 2008.

Elizabeth McGlynn

Elizabeth, a qualified accountant, has considerable corporate finance experience. Elizabeth has worked across spectrum of industries for various companies, including PWC, Sir William Halcrow and Partners and Lidl. As Financial Controller and then Head of Tax at Lidl, she was responsible for complex tax and property issues as well as running the UK finance department for a large international company that grew from 170 to over 600 stores during her employment. Elizabeth has previously volunteered at a smaller charity and has joined IH to gain experience in a larger charity and to further a long held interest in languages. In addition to being on the main Board, she is also Chair of the Audit Committee.

Keith Davies

Keith has had a long career in financial services, working in a mix of roles in risk management and audit roles at Standard Chartered, the FSA, Deutsche Bank, and Prudential Plc / M&G Plc. At Prudential, Keith was Global Head of Internal Audit before becoming Chief Risk & Resilience Officer for M&G plc and helping the firm successfully de-merge from Prudential. Keith is also a Non-Executive Career with within the Admiral Group, has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University and an MSc in Economics from the University of Bristol, and passed the FT Non-Executive Diploma in 2019.

Tomasz Mazgaj

Tomasz is a project lead who specialises in running global strategic projects in the educational sector. Currently working in LEGO Education, he focuses on developing ‘go to market’ strategies, teacher training programmes and STEAM learning projects across Europe, China, MEA and Asia Pacific.  Prior to working in education, Tomasz worked in global strategy roles with Bentley Motors and the VW Group. Born in Poland, and educated in the UK, he is an Economics graduate, and certified Project Manager

Tita Beaven

BA, MA, Dip Trans, EdD

Born and brought up in Spain, Tita has worked in language teaching since 1991, first teaching EFL in Italy, and most recently as a Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the Open University, where she worked for over 25 years and was Associate Head and then Head of the Department of Languages. She has an MA in History of Art, a Diploma in Translation, and a Doctorate in educational technology. She has published on topics related to language learning and technology, intercultural communication and open educational resources and practices. She is a trustee of Charity Translators, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  

Maxwell Nye

Max’s professional background is in media and communications, having spent 8 years working in some of the largest media agencies in the UK. As a Global Investment Director he oversees USD $0.5 bn in advertising investment across 80 countries for some of the world’s best-known brands. He also brings strong experience in implementing culture change in the workplace, having launched programmes for mental health and eco-sustainability at work. Max is passionate about language learning; he studied English and Modern Languages at Oxford, taught English abroad with the British Council, and has volunteered with charities mentoring disadvantaged students in their application for language study at university.

Phil Huggon

Chair

Phil has a lifelong passion for language and cultures. He studied French and Latin at Oriel College, Oxford. He has lived in Paris, Lisbon and Brussels – qualifying as a professional bilingual tour guide in Paris. Phil travelled extensively in his executive career with BP, MARS and Shell. He has over 20 years’ experience in marketing, customer service and transformation, and led Shell UK’s biggest ever change programme. He now has a portfolio of non-executive and trustee roles, including chairing a Further Education consultancy and an NHS consultancy, and he is Vice-Chair of Healthwatch England. Phil lives in Manchester with his wife and 3 children (all 5 of them are linguists, of course!).