Let me just say that things were shaken up in June. If you had been getting bored of the same people taking out Presenter of the Month titles every month, then it is time to re-engage; we have new Presenters of the Month across the board! Who are they? Read on to find out!
Team Oz
Congratulations to our (now two-time) winner of Presenter of the Month - Steph Douvos from Team VIC!! Stephy D helped over 500 kids in May and ended on an average feedback score of 99.58%. Keep it up Steph!
Australia’s first ever Philanthropic Project is underway…
We are extremely excited to announce that Matt Gover (Team QLD) and Lachie Craig (Team VIC) have been selected to help us with the first ever Philanthropic Project!!!
Lachie and Matt will be travelling to Katherine next week to work primarily with indigenous and underprivileged students at schools who wouldn’t usually be able to work with Elevate. Lachie will also be running coaching diagnostics with 10 students who will go on to complete digital coaching programs. In the office, we’ve been working closely with each school to identify exactly what the students need most and build out a comprehensive plan to help teachers reinforce the skills in the classroom.
For anyone who doesn’t know where Katherine is…
Good luck Lach and Matt – can’t wait to hear how it all goes!!!!
WELCOME GORDIE, our newest CSM!!
It is with huge excitement the AUS office welcomes our newest CSM – Gordie Ryan! Gordie hails from Team VIC. began presenting in Feb 2018, and quickly climbed his way up to 2IC and then TL. Gordie’s special skill is that he can recite every single word of “Les Mis” (literally, every word). Welcome to the team Gords!!
KELLY SPOERK – AUSTRALIA’S NEW 2IC
Finally, a massive shout-out to Kelly Spoerk who was recently appointed 2IC of the Australian Office. Kelly’s journey to Elevate was a long one; starting in the US, detouring through Phoebe’s soccer team, eventually arriving at Team Australia as the Operations Manager. But we are glad that she found us! Kelly has been a rapidly-rising star of the Australian team, excelling in the OM role and continuing that streak since moving into a Head of Recruitment role. She is responsible for finding many of the existing Australian presenters reading this email. Congratulations Kel on a well-earned promotion!
Team Singapore
A short jump over the Timor and Java Seas takes us to Team Singapore, where the arrival of school holidays sees us handing out a range of awards for Presenter of the Month, Presenter of the Term, and Team’s Choice Award.
Let’s start with Presenter (or should I say Presenters) of the Month, where not only do we have a change at the top of the presenting rankings but also a two-way tie! Congratulations to both Asher Chua and Nathaniel Mah who take out the Presenter of the Month award for May with a perfect average of 100% across all their seminars.
Being the end of the term, we also have the Presenter of the Term to announce, and the winner is….drum roll… Emil Lim with 100% feedback! Emil was one was Singapore's first presenters, starting in February 2017, and has been a regular feature of the Presenter of the Month boards. Emil has just been awarded a scholarship to study entrepreneurship in Sweden for a year; this is sad, as we lose a key member of the team for the next 12 months. However, we are extremely proud as well, as this scholarship is a massive achievement. Well done Emil and thanks for everything you have contributed to the team over the last 2 years. We look forward to welcoming you back in 12 months.
Rounding out the podium for Presenter of the Term were runners up, Taesun "K-Pop" Shim with 99.17% (including presenting at some extremely high-performing international schools!) and Ruth “Roo” Ng in 3rd position with 97.25%! Excellent job team!
Finally, onto the honourable mentions. Team Choice Award for May went to Roo who won Office Choice award for May for jumping on plenty of seminars this term and for learning a bunch of new scripts as well, whilst a special mentions also goes out to Ryo Yamamoto who has been focused on presenting to NT groups across May. NT students are often harder to motivate and engagebut Ryo has been killing it, averaging 97% across the month. Great stuff Ryo!
Finally, a reminder to all global presenters about the South East Asia Presenter role that the Singaporean office currently has available. The role involves travelling to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong, presenting seminars to some of the top International Schools in the world. Jack from Team UK just got back from a 3-month gig in the role, and hear what he has to say about it here. To find out more click here.
South Africa
Let’s keep moving as the world turns, leading us to Team South Africa. Again, there was another change in Presenter of the Month as well as another two-way tie! Massive congrats to Samkelo Mvelase of Team KZN and Nick le Roux of Team Gauteng for taking out the award!#
May was a hugely exciting month for Team SA. The team ran 136 sessions with schools, universities, and organisations all over South Africa (and Kenya!), as well as working with more than 20 families through our 1-1 coaching program. Finally, Team SA ran their Annual Conference in May across 5 different provinces, where SA’s fearless leader Dip spoke to more than 350 attendees from over 150 schools, tertiary institutions, corporates, and organisations.
A big shout-out to our Coaching team in SA, where the feedback continues to be exceptional. A special shout out to Deanre for some amazing feedback we received last week. We were speaking with the father of a student that Deanre is working with who said that his son’s study skills had improved so much that he had gone from near the bottom of the class to the top student!
Finally, Team SA is continuing to grow the team at the moment. Having just finalised the appointment of a new Account Manager (to be announced next month!), we are excited to announce that we have created a brand-new role to start in November 2019; the Head of HR. The Head of HR is responsible for finding, selecting, managing, coaching, and developing our amazing group of presenters. If you think you have a good eye for talent, like working with people, and have a presenting skill or two to pass on to another generation of presenters, then go to the Job Ad here and apply!
United Kingdom
As the world continues to turn we end up in the UK, where we have another new Presenter of the Month….Matt Walker. Well done to Matt for maintaining 100% feedback across the month! That’s now 4 months on the trot to Team Northwest. Team London, Team Mids, take up the challenge!
In other news, we wanted to pass on this awesome piece of feedback that came through during the week:
“I just wanted to say a massive thank you for all your support with organising these sessions this year. I also want to give some feedback on the presenters we had with us yesterday. Staff and students were so impressed with the professionalism, energy, and enthusiasm of the presenters and how engaging they were for even some of our most challenging students. In particular, I would like to thank Jack Beresford, who took on our lowest ability classes and managed not only to hold their attention but build up a rapport with them in a short space of time, showing patience, respect and an ability to reach them at their level. The parents who attended the seminar were just as impressed with him and I’ve already had numerous emails thanking me for the evening and saying how much they got from it, all credit for which goes to Jack. I look forward to working with you again in the future”
Great work Jack, who has hit the ground running after his time in Singapore.
Finally, a big note of congratulations to Charlie Rush, Team UK’s CSM extraordinaire, who has just been appointed 2IC in the office. Charlie started with Elevate back in 2017, rising through the office as Operations Manager, then moving into the CSM role. She has been extremely successful in ensuring that seminars run like a well-oiled machine and that Steve never becomes too arrogant. Well done Charlie on a much-deserved promotion!
Team NY
Finally, skip over the Atlantic and we find ourselves in New York, where there is soooo much to report!
But let’s start with the Presenter of the Month, where again we had another two new presenters at the top of the rankings (and obviously another tie!). Congrats to Sophia Carlin & Ravyn Carico!! Both averaged 100% over the month of May across 13 and 10 schools respectively and have really been hitting the ball out of the park with the types of student comments received:
Sophia: “It was a fun program and it was interesting to learn many new things. I learned different new symbols for different things like the central idea, key points, evidence, connections and questions. I really liked your presentation and the attitude you had for this seminar.”
Ravyn: “I like it, and it makes me believe in myself. I love this and I’m so glad Elevate is part of my school community” and “10 - porque a prendemos mucho. El programa fue chevere con la maestra joven.”
Team NY is coming off a massive May, where we helped over 15,000 students across 80 schools. Check out this video to get a taste for the feedback.
Amazingly inspiring stuff everyone! Great work.
But, that’s not all that’s happened. Over the course of May the team moved from Hoboken to a new office in Manhattan. If you didn’t make the Office Warming party, make sure you get across to check out the new space.
Even though the school year hasn’t finished, we are starting to lock in school programs for 2019/2020 and things are already looking much bigger, meaning we will continue to grow the presenting team. If you know anyone who is amazingly charismatic, can tell a great story, and would be a good fit for Elevate, reach out to David at david@elevateeducation.com and send through their details.
Last, but certainly not least, a reminder for Team NY (as per blog – insert link), that the US National Awards are going to be held on Friday 28th June 7, 2019 (9am – 5pm): Please make sure you are available for this! The event will include the awarding of Presenter of the Year and Team Leader of the Year (which as we know, has a pretty awesome prize attached to it!). Besides the awards, the day will also include professional development workshops held by members of the Elevate team, both local and international. It will be held in the new office.
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As ever, a big thank you to everyone who was out in the classroom, out working 1-on-1 with students and every office team member. Your hard work and dedication meant that we were able to help over 100,000 students in May, which is absolutely massive! Thank you on behalf of the HQ Team!