Our People
Seasoned educators, psychologists, and industry innovators guiding our compass. The facilitators, mentors, and behind-the-scenes magicians who make every community event sing.
Pınar O’Connor
Cemal Bozkurt
Ozgur Dayac
Berna Aker
Nesli Deniz
Melek Sarı
İlayda Bozdoğan
Cahit Demirtaş
our values
What powers our community?
Youth Voice First
Decisions—from programme themes to event formats—include input from our Youth Advisory Committee and regular participant polls.
Radical Inclusivity
Sliding-scale access, multilingual content, universal-design venues—and a behind-the-scenes team as diverse in gender, ability, and culture as the community we serve.
Compassionate Care
Certified experts and trauma-aware mentors ensure gentle boundaries and all-round support, so everyone feels respected, comfortable, and free to explore
Curiosity & Lifelong Learning
Micro-credentials, mentor exchanges, and reflection circles help both youth and adults around them keep growing.
Playful Innovation
Prototyping labs, art-tech mashups, and game-based challenges make experimentation the norm.
Impact & Transparency
Each project maps to UN SDGs, and we publish open reports on outcomes, donations, and scholarship allocation.
We are hiring
Are you interested in joining our team?
Advisory Committee
Seasoned educators, psychologists, and industry innovators guiding our compass.
Core Crew
The facilitators, mentors, and behind-the-scenes magicians who make every workshop sing.
Open Positions:
- Youth Advisory Hub Member
- Movement & Wellbeing Program Advisor
- STEAM & Maker Education Advisor
- Technology & Science Program Advisor
- Creativity & Design Thinking Program Advisor
Pick your journey
If you’re as obsessed with design and tech augue placerat est, nec semper nisl erat ac ex el convallis ligula commodo ac. Aenean congue elit.
1. For Children & Young People
2. For Families & Educators
3. For Schools & Organizations
3. Online Academy
5. Become a Youth Mentor
1. For Children & Young People
For Children & Young People
Dive into hands-on maker labs, wellness jams, and global challenges. Mix any of our six pathways, earn micro-credentials, and collaborate with mentors and peers in a safe, youth-led space.
2. For Families & Educators
For Families & Educators
Access ready-to-use toolkits, parent circles, and CPD workshops that weave well-being, creative intelligence, and digital balance into daily learning—at home, in class, or on the go.
3. For Schools & Organizations
For Schools & Organizations
Co-design pop-up programmes, innovation sprints, or year-long curricula mapped to the UN SDGs. We train your staff, supply resources, and provide dashboards that track real-world impact.
3. Online Academy
Online Academy
Log in any time to bite-size quests, mentor videos, and community forums. Learn at your own pace, collect badges, and join monthly virtual hackathons to put new skills into action. – Coming soon!
5. Become a Youth Mentor
Become a Youth Mentor
Complete our twelve-week certification in trauma-aware facilitation and youth-voice leadership, then join a global network of mentors making curiosity, resilience, and inclusion the norm.
Pınar O’Connor (She/They)
Pınar derives her energy from the meeting point of ideas, places, and people. Born in Istanbul—the only city that straddles two continents—she grew up multilingual and seeing cultural & language exchange as both bridges and catalysts. After completing a francophone secondary education, she earned a bachelor’s in Production-Systems Engineering at Sabancı University and went on to international roles in technology transfer and process design. Along the way, one question kept resurfacing:
How do systems—and the humans inside them—learn and evolve?
Stints across Europe and Australia led to the founding of Aperio Academy in 2017, launched in Australia’s Bellingen Shire to blend well-being education, interdisciplinary learning, and community impact. Today, Learning-Design Lead at Aperio Academy, Pınar weaves her multidisciplinary expertise to support families, educators, schools, and mission-driven organizations in turning everyday questions into future-ready skills and local impact.
Committed to inclusivity, ethical innovation, and sustainability, her toolkit is intentionally broad: a systems-engineering mindset, a Graduate Diploma in Counselling, 850 hours of yoga-therapy training, an international camp-director accreditation and further CPD in youth space—evidence-based pieces woven together with plenty of play and reflection.
A member of ANZMHA, PACFA, ICF, and WomenTech Network, Pınar continues to collaborate with educators, psychologists, and technologists to co-create learning experiences that nurture curiosity, adaptability, and responsible digital citizenship in young people.
You are welcome to find out more here.
