Julie Anne(jules)Gilleland

Designer, mother of 3 boys and education change maker with over 18 years experience in the field of design and education. In 2007 I founded Turtlewings, a nonprofit centre in Brussels Belgium, welcoming educators, children and families to explore design thinking with educational concepts. The idea based on my masters' thesis that I completed in 2000 at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland.

In 2014 a good friend and I won the Open Education Challenge with an idea I developed at Turtlewings. Think with Things strived to make a difference in education on a global level by bringing the concept of hands-on learning through play, and thinking with found objects into the normal structured learning environments of children as well as adults.

Jumping from the nonprofit world of working with children and educators as a to being the CEO of one of the proposed best Edtech companies in Europe proved to be a more significant step than I realized, I will admit! So, I am happily back to working independently with museums, schools and organizations to help them achieve their dreams.

My passion lies in working with educational institutions, government initiatives, museums and corporations in the field of creating experiences and environments that inspire creative thinking. I am an expert at executing innovative programming centred on child and or adult learning, the design of learning environments, and inspiring individuals to reach their full potential. I love presenting and training and have played with a variety of groups from teams of teachers, museum practitioners, business people, artists, parents and children from 0-99.