Who We Are

Karen is a highly qualified and experienced educator with over 20 years’ experience in the UK and overseas, ranging from Early Years to adults, in the private and state sector. She has had varied and extensive responsibilities including: Executive Manager, Head Teacher, Deputy, Coordinator, Class teacher, SENCO.

She has been a whole school coordinator for: Inclusion, behaviour, EAL, assessment, PSHE, safeguarding, RE, attendance. She was Resources and Communications Manager at The National Centre for Language and Literacy before taking up the position of Learning Hub Director at the Institute of Education, University of Reading.

As well as being a Director of GOALS4Life, she is also a Director of Specialkidz which aims to promote the education of children and young people with a variety of disabilities and/or difficulties for the purpose of enabling them to learn, appreciate and enjoy the skill of communication through the use of technology.

Please find more information about her on her University of Reading Staff Profile and LinkedIn Profile.

Sandie Lee is a retired Chartered Quantity Surveyor. She has spent the last 25 years working in Academia for University College of Estate Management, a leading online University in the Property and Construction sector.

Prior to joining the College Sandie gained her first degree in Quantity Surveying and a Masters’ Degree in Construction Management. She has worked in Private Practice in the traditional quantity surveyors’ role on a wide range of projects, gaining experience in dealing with clients and contractors from inception through to the completion of projects.

Sandie took great pleasure in encouraging and supporting students to gain a professional qualification and further their careers. She continues to work as an External Examiner for Northumbria University and on the Accreditation Panel of the Chartered Institute of Building.

Ken is the Founder and Executive Director of Decibels. Ken is also the Director of the Deafax Research and Development Unit and is based at the Institute of Education, University of Reading as well as at the Computer Science Department, Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has studied at Loughborough, Surrey and London Universities. He has been challenged by a variety of roles… as a top class sportsman, Royal Marine Commando, parent of a deaf daughter, teacher of English, History and PE, teacher-lecturer in deaf education, advisory lecturer in special needs and as a charitable entrepreneur. He has been responsible for helping to set up-the Breakthrough (Deaf/Hearing) Integration Trust (now named DeafPlus), Deafax, AACT for Children and Inclusive Environments. For his contribution to preventative medicine and healthcare, he was recently elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Also, he has just been awarded an Honorary Degree from Loughborough University as part of their Centenary Celebrations.

For more information about the Founder, please visit Deafax and AACT for Children.

He has been, and is involved, in the following Deafax projects:

1. The Leverhulme Research Project “The significance or otherwise of ICT for the reading, writing and communication skills of deaf people”.
2. Digital Emotional Subtitling - improving community learning and the understanding of English text for people with deafness, linguistic disabilities, ethnic minorities and others.
3. “Credit Crunch” - to develop a highly visual interactive DVD which incorporates audio, graphics, text and British Sign Language for deaf people and others with linguistic difficulties.
4. UK Master Teachers of the Deaf Programme-this will follow the work undertaken in the USA by Professor Harold Johnson –see www.deafed.net. We are exploring programmes which link the Virtual Learning Centre with the Michigan State University and other centres of teacher training of deaf education.
5. Speech Recognition Technology- the intention is to explore the use of different forms of SR software in the classroom involving teachers, deaf children and others with speech challenges. Also link with this Automatic Text Display which uses computer based speech recognition of teacher’s speech in the education of deaf children.
6. The Deafax/Decibels/IE Virtual Learning Academy is being developed in order to move into the important area of online distance learning for local, regional, national and international purposes.

ken@deafax.org / ken.carter@decibels.org.uk

Stephen was born in Maidenhead and after completing his education in the County of Berkshire, he spent his first 10 years in the retail industry, and then decided to move into the financial services industry. He has continued in this industry ever since, and now has his own extremely successful financial services company, Stephen Spires Financial Services Ltd. The Company is actively involved with investment planning, pension planning, life assurance, protection and mortgage arrangement. He currently has around 500 clients who are serviced on a regular basis. Investment planning is arranged on a medium to long term basis, and over the last decade he has successfully increased his clients’ money substantially.

As he is a Trustee/Director & Treasurer of Ability2Access (formerly named Inclusive Environments) which is a charitable company, he was delighted to be asked to be a Director of GOALS4Life (Academy for Virtual Education Research & Inclusive Learning) as his financial planning & overall business experience will be of considerable value to this innovative online learning initiative. His leisure time is spent playing golf, going to the gym, fishing and travelling (when time allows).

Luis started his career as a Secondary Teacher employed by the Portuguese Ministry of Education.He later became a Ph.D researcher at the University of Minho with his subject area being the European Union’s Digital Literacy policies.

On completing his doctorate, he came to the UK and became a Visiting Scholar at the University of Reading and a tutor at the Oxford University Language Centre. He later moved to Coventry University as a Learning Technologist and recently became a Senior Lecturer in Education and Digital Literacies.

Even though extremely busy, he has agreed to act as an Adviser for GOALS4Life especially as part of its online learning will be educating individuals and groups of people who are disadvantaged and have a variety of disabilities.

Since February 2016, Riccardo Mancuso has been skilfully developing and leading the implementation of a strategy to shape future business opportunities for Decibels and GOALS4LIFE (Global Online Assisted Learning & Support). He is continuing to develop a comprehensive 5-year business plan comprising both transactional & transformational elements to ensure stakeholder buy-in and establish a robust & transparent governance model.

He has over 15 years of experience in a blue chip environment, providing a broad, strong foundation of best practice solutions to tackle operational challenges. Riccardo works with a strong sense of urgency to achieve quality results, quickly.

Outside of work, Riccardo loves to explore and discover new things. His camera follows him wherever he goes and his computer boasts a decade of photos of architecture, people and cultures.