Elisheva (“Ellie”) Avishai is codirector of the Mill Institute at University of Austin. The Mill Institute is leading a movement of K-12 and post-secondary educators to change the way students engage with the most heated issues facing society.

Previously, Ellie served as director of programs for Jack.org, a Canadian youth mental health education organization. In this capacity, she led all of the organization’s mental health education programs, which includes thousands of mental health talks in high schools and universities. She was also a partner at The Learning Accelerator, a leader in personalized learning in the U.S.

Ellie also founded and led the Rotman I-Think Initiative at Rotman School of Management in Toronto. The initiative, which started as a solo project but has grown into a national nonprofit, uses tools from design thinking, integrative thinking, metacognition, and mental modeling to enhance real-world problem-solving in middle and high schools across Canada.