Speakers

Leonor Stjepic is an award-winning social entrepreneur, CEO and mentor.

Leonor’s first part of her career was spent in the private sector in several senior managerial roles and running her own consultancy. After a consultancy job in Spain ended, Leonor decided to volunteer to work with children who were victims of the war in former Yugoslavia.

Coming back to London, Leonor started working with UK NGO, National Playing Fields Association, where she was responsible, for organising 5 Royal events a year (Prince Philip was the President and Her Majesty The Queen was the Patron of the charity).

Her next NGO role was for human rights charity, Index on Censorship, before becoming the first CEO of the Galapagos Conservation Trust. There she worked with the BBC on the first Galapagos series with Sir David Attenborough and transformed the organisation into the voice of Galapagos in the UK.

Her next CEO role was as Chief Executive of medical research institute, RAFT. During her time at RAFT, Leonor created a life sciences company, Smart Matrix Ltd, and was its CEO for five years, whilst concurrently serving as CEO of RAFT. Under her leadership both organisations won several international awards

Leonor has sat on numerous boards, including the Jane Goodall Institute and Chair of London Fire Brigade Enterprises.

In June 2018, Leonor took up her fourth CEO role as Chief Executive of the Montessori Group. Under her leadership, the Montessori Group has set up the International Montessori Institute in partnership with a UK university which offers the only Montessori degree in the world and has recently created a historic partnership with the Chartered College for Teaching.

Leonor sits on the Advisory Board of Global Thinkers Forum; the Steering Committee of Karanga - The Global Alliance for Social Emotional Learning and Life Skills; the Advisory Board of award-winning social enterprise, Venner and as the representative of the Montessori Group as a Partner of the Global Responsible Leadership Institute.

Leonor has personally won 6 international awards for leadership.
In April 2021, the Global Forum for Education and Learning named Leonor one of the Top 100 Visionaries in Education.

Recently Leonor became Chair of the Advisory Board of the award-winning Croatian craft gin company, Duh u Boci that produces Old Pilot’s Gin.