Clare Stead

Clare has over 10 years of classroom experience teaching across all age ranges and across three continents. Clare has worked as an education researcher, working with the top 5% of schools in England and Wales. In this role, she looked for best practice and helped roll it out across the country, advising governments around the world on teaching and learning strategies. 

Clare then moved to Zambia and designed and built Mwabu, an app to give African children international standard primary education in their own language. The content was translated and voiced into 9 languages, one of which required the dictionary to be written for it to stabilise it for translation. That content is now rolling out across Africa and being used daily by over 300,000 children and 10,000 teachers. 

As a direct result of watching too many children arrive at school and fail, Clare built the Oliiki app having seen the science of the brain development that takes place in the first 1000 days of life and realising the significant impact this period has on children’s life outcomes and therefore the outcomes for society as a whole. 

The Oliiki app is now rolling out into the hands of parents via nurseries, health workers and others, helping parents understand the power of play for development.