Who we are

Lea Kuusilehto-Awale, MA, lifelong learner and PhD candidate, is a seasoned educator and educational administrator as well as trainer of trainers in education. She is a firm believer in caring leadership and management.  

Her career has ranged from early childhood education and care (ECEC) to basic, secondary, informal adult education and higher education. In her university career she served as programme director, academic advisor and researcher in the first international Master’s degree programme of Educational Leadership to take place in Finland, located in the University of Jyväskylä.

Prior to her university career she had a long career in teaching foreign languages, in principalship including an International Baccalaureate Diploma School, in training principals on part time basis for the Training Centre of the  Finnish National Board of Education and the  Institute of Educational Leadership in the University of Jyväskylä, as a CEO of a civil society organization (CSO) securing recreation and healthcare services for the elderly, and as a local municipal politician and church counsellor.

She has given keynotes internationally on the reasons behind the success of Finnish basic education  and the ethos of equity and equality of the Finnish education system, given presentations and attended conferences on most continents. Her research interests include administrative change, leading diversity, and caring and responsible leadership and she has published a number of research articles on those.  

Since retiring from her university career, she became the founding member and chair of a multicultural CSO engaged in advancing peaceful coexistence of the various ethnicities in Finland. Simultaneously she has created a six-year (2017–2022) in-service training programme for mother child health clinic workers and university midwifery and nursing students in the Horn of Africa to enhance eradication of maternal and infant mortality. The project is mainly funded by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Lea is its in country coordinator.

Lea is a learner for ever, with currently her PhD studies concluded but the thesis in process. AwaLead is a natural following from her curiosity, experience and networks in capacity building of organizations and individuals.

Born in Iran, grown up in Finland, lived in the UK, visited and worked in some 40 countries, and currently resident in Sweden, Kamran Namdar considers himself a world-citizen and a global activist. The latter identity has to do with his willingness to contribute to the creation of a peaceful and just global society, united in its diversity and conducive to the realization of the noblest human potential. This is why Kamran chose to become a teacher, and later a teacher educator. He sees youth and the educational system that impacts them as some of the key factors in bringing about a global societal transformation. 

While working within the academia, Kamran sees an urgent need to construe a new Age of Enlightenment where the separation of rational and scientific thinking, on the one hand, and existential, ethical and aesthetic perspectives, on the other, brought about by the first Age of Enlightenment, can be replaced by a mature, balanced harmony between these approaches. Such a dynamic equilibrium is the foundation of all the projects and initiatives Kamran has been and is involved in. Without such a complimentary balance, he argues, science and technology lack a moral compass, and even turn against humanity.

Kamran’s holistic and integrative approach to life has led to him participating in several parallel processes of societal reconstruction simultaneously. While teaching and researching at a university, he has engaged in development of civil society organizations, urban development projects, youth leadership training, organizational entrepreneurship, multicultural programs for promoting optimal parenthood, and developing homes that serve as foundations of human rights, equality, and democracy.

Kamran is inspired by the novel opportunities for human flourishing and wellbeing made possible by globalization, and seeks to find ways in which schools could serve to realize the constructive and transformative potential of globalization. To this end, he wrote his doctoral thesis “In Quest of the Globally Good Teacher” where he explores the main elements of a globally relevant, beneficial, and accepted program of teacher education. Kamran has educated and coached school principals and worked with school development internationally. Currently, he is also involved in developing educational models and curricula that help realize the potential of global heroism and transformative agency resident in every young person. 

Most of all, Kamran enjoys what he has termed Collaborative Transformative Learning, where diverse agents bring their perspectives and experiences together in order to create more humane educational and societal solutions – quite much like jazz musicians of various instruments creating together new beautiful melodies.