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Victor Horcasitas

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Victor Horcasitas

Bio:

Sir Victor Horcasitas is a dynamic, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and community builder based in Barcelona. He has raised capital for Barcelona based tech startups since 2009 and raised €650m for his own SPAC to acquire and de-list Stratos Global Corporation.

Known as the “ExpatWhisperer,” Victor is the publisher and CEO of Barcelona Metropolitan, the leading English-language lifestyle magazine covering international topics relevant to expats in Spain. The publication also offers strategic B2B and B2C marketing and advertising services tailored to Spain’s English-speaking audience.

An active and influential member of the international community, Victor was honored by the Barcelona City Council – Economic Promotion as an official City Ambassador. His career spans multiple industries including media, digital marketing, finance, software engineering, telecom, IT consulting, banking and investor protection.

Deeply committed to civic engagement, Victor volunteers with several NGOs and professional organizations such as The American Society of Barcelona, Democrats Abroad, Casa Ronald McDonald, Startup Grind BCN, the Association of American Clubs, the Donation and Transplantation Institute, Barcelona Women’s Network and is a mentor with the Professional Women’s Network – Barcelona and Erasmus programs.

Victor is the founder of the Metropolitan Business Association, BCN FinTech, and the Professional Speakers Association – Spain. A seasoned speaker, Victor regularly presents at conferences and events that promote entrepreneurship, innovation, and international collaboration.

Fun fact: Victor was knighted by HM Queen of Spain by the Order of the Ancient Crown of Aragon, holding the title as “Excelentisimo” and bestowed with the Grand Cross of Justice.

Victor resides in Barcelona, Spain, wih his wife, two daughters and the coolest cat ever!

Session Synopsis:

TBC

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Paola Natalucci

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Paola Natalucci

Bio:

Paola is a certified Neurolanguage Coach® and copywriter who has worked across Italy, Austria, Thailand, Argentina and Spain for over 20 years. She is an avid language learner herself, and speaks 6 languages: not a polyglot but rather a punk, a tinkerer. One of those languages is made of two half-forgotten ones. She has a holistic, brain-friendly and culture-focused coaching approach, supporting advanced adult learners in developing confident, embodied fluency and finding joy in learning. Alongside her coaching practice, Paola has extensive experience in copywriting and branding for her own business and clients.  Navigating both education and marketing as a fellow coach, with a background in politics and communication, has given her a unique perspective on a challenge many of us face: finding visibility without overwhelm, aligning our messaging with our coaching (and life!) values, making messaging intentional rather than stressful, and visibility sustainable, rather than draining. Paola runs two newsletters and one podcast on literature in translation, travel and language learning. She regularly contributes to conversations around multilingualism, intercultural awareness, and developments in online life, communication and work.

Session Synopsis:

Brand Pillars for Coaches: Turn your marketing into self expression (so it can stop being a pain in the a*rse)



This workshop introduces brand pillars as a simple, sustainable framework to support clear, values-aligned communication. Brand pillars provide direction for repetition, helping coaches speak consistently about their work without feeling repetitive, scattered, or overwhelmed. Participants will explore how identifying a small set of personal brand pillars can:

* reduce content stress,

* create coherence across topics and platforms,

* and support authentic, autonomy-aligned messaging that reflects their coaching values.


Objectives & Audience Takeaways

By the end of this 1-hour workshop, participants will: 1. Understand what brand pillars are and why they are particularly useful for teachers transitioning into coaching. 2. Recognise why repetition is necessary for brand awareness — and how pillars give repetition purpose and structure. 3. Identify their own 3–5 core brand pillars, aligned with their values, expertise, and coaching philosophy. 4. Learn how to use brand pillars to generate content ideas with ease, without pressure to constantly be original. 5. Leave with a clear, repeatable framework they can immediately apply to social media, newsletters, and professional communication.

Clear, consistent messaging supports ethical coaching practice by:

* setting appropriate expectations,

* attracting learners aligned with autonomy and responsibility,

* and reducing friction between coach and client.

Brand pillars help coaches communicate who they are and how they work, not through overexplanation, but through meaningful, values-aligned repetition.

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Silvia Elizabeth Čiháková Aguilar

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Silvia Elizabeth Čiháková Aguilar

Bio:

Silvia Čiháková Aguilar is an experienced polyglot, educator, and certified professional in language coaching and body-based practices. She holds a PhD in Environmental Economics and has built a multifaceted career spanning over 30 years in language education and coaching. She is a certified German teacher through the Goethe Institut, an official DELE examiner for Spanish with Instituto Cervantes, and a certified Qigong teacher. She is also a Professional Neurolanguage® Coach and a Team Coach accredited by ICF and holds a diploma in CLIL methodology. Silvia has extensive experience teaching Czech, French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish as foreign languages, and has worked with learners of all ages, from infants and toddlers in “Baby and Me” programs, through children, adolescents, and young adults, to professionals and older adults. Her personal experience as a mother of three trilingual daughters further informs her insights into language acquisition and multilingual education. Silvia teaches also Qigong techniques to teachers and coaches who want to regain focus and vitality (not only) for their job. Born in Guatemala and currently residing in the Czech Republic, Silvia integrates her background in economics, neurocognition, and embodied practices to help language professionals develop presence, focus, and sustainable teaching practice.

Publications and Media:

Silvia regularly publishes content on social media about language learning, neurocognition, burnout prevention and professional development, and hosts her podcast ¨401¨ focused on error management and learning mindset. She has been featured in interviews and articles by colleagues and media outlets in coaching, language education, and personal development, in multiple languages. Examples include: Interview with Teachers who Caoch, 2025, English language, Podcast episode with Jennifer Niño, 2024, Spanish Language Podcast episode Teachoviny, 2025, Czech language. Her contributions highlight her expertise in multilingual learning, coaching, and embodied practices, and her commitment to supporting the wellbeing and professional growth of language teachers and coaches worldwide.

Session Synopsis:

Caring for the Neurolanguage Coach: Qigong-Based Self-Regulation for Presence and Sustainable Practice        

Neurolanguage Coaches, as highly trained professionals, work with high levels of attention, precision, and self-awareness, often maintaining a strong internal focus on performance, presence, and results. Over time, this sustained engagement can lead to mental overload and reduced internal ease, even in the most experienced coaches.

This workshop, led by a certified Qigong teacher and Professional Neurolanguage® Coach , introduces selected qigong techniques for personal practice, supporting self-regulation, presence, and sustainable professional functioning. Where possible, we will briefly discuss neuroscientific principles underlying attention, focus, and the mind-body connection, highlighting how simple movement and awareness practices can enhance learning and teaching readiness.

Participants will learn how the techniques are performed, their names, and their intended purpose, with the aim of helping coaches lower internal guard, reconnect with bodily grounding, and restore readiness for learning and teaching—meaning the ability to fully focus, engage, and absorb new information or practices without feeling mentally blocked.

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Dr. Kamile Hamiloğlu

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Dr. Kamile Hamiloğlu

Bio:

Dr. Kamile Hamiloğlu, PhD (Boğaziçi University); EdD (University of Leicester)

Dr. Hamiloğlu has worked in the field of Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching (ELT/EFL) since 1986. She holds a BA in English Language Teaching from Dokuz Eylul University in İzmir and an MA in Communication Studies at İstanbul University in Istanbul, an MA in Educational Sciences (combined with doctoral) from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkiye. She has a PhD in Educational Sciences from Boğaziçi University in İstanbul, Türkiye, and an EdD (Doctoral in Education) in Applied Linguistics and TESOL from the University of Leicester in Leicester, England. She also holds a Teacher Trainer’s Certificate in Critical Thinking from the University of Oregon, USA. Since 2016, she has participated in certification programmes and conferences in Neuro-language Coaching at LCC, London, UK. She has taught a wide range of English Language Teaching (ELT) courses, for BA, MA and PhD programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at Marmara University, Boğaziçi University, and Bahçeşehir University in İstanbul, Turkiye, and at the University of City Island in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, since 1998. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching at Marmara University in Istanbul, since 1998-1999 academic year, where has also served as department chair during several periods of time. She also continues to act as the department’s Practicum and Curriculum Coordinator.

At the start of her career, she worked in private schools, as an English teacher and as Head of the Department from 1986 to 1994. Then she joined Oxford University Press (OUP) as a senior educational consultant, editor, and teacher-trainer. After five years of full-time service at OUP, she continued to collaborate with the organisation on part-time basis for a further four years, (during which time she also began her academic career as a lecturer at Boğaziçi and Marmara University). She also collaborated part-time with Cambridge University Press, as a teacher-trainer. Currently she works with OUP on a freelance basis delivering teacher- training seminars for English teachers.

She has provided consultancy and authored curricula of various well-known private schools or school chains in Istanbul and she has also served as an official academic advisor on curriculum development at the Preparatory Department of Marmara University for a certain period of time.
Since December 2023, she has been serving as the Lead Curriculum Developer and Author of the English National Curriculum and since January 2025, she has been the Editor-in-Chief of the team of authors for K12 English coursebooks in Turkiye. She has been presenting her research at numerous national and international conferences and has been delivering academic lectures as an invited speaker both in Türkiye and abroad since 1994. She published with local and international publishers, and is the author, co-author and editor of several ELT materials. Her academic research interests include professional identity,
professional development, practicum, course and lesson planning, curriculum evaluation and design, material and coursebook evaluation and design, culture, critical thinking, critical reflection, critical pedagogy, and transformative learning in Foreign/Second Language Teacher Education (F/SLTE) and in English as a foreign/second language (EF/SL).

Session Synopsis:

Neuro-language Coaching for the Whole Learner: Integrating Mind, Body, and Heart for Holistic Communication through Individualised Learning

 

Effective, healthy, and versatile communication should be the central goal of foreign language education. Achieving such communication requires more than linguistic accuracy, performance-based assessment or instructional differentiation; it requires a mindset that recognises the learner as a whole person. This session proposes Neurolanguage Coaching as a holistic, neuro-informed approach that integrates mind, body, and heart within individualised learning to support sustainable communicative development.

Rather than framing individualisation as the instructional differentiation and adaptation of materials or techniques alone, this approach redefines it as a collaborative, neuro-informed, and growth-oriented partnership between educator and learner. From the outset, Neurolanguage Coaching establishes a dialogic learning process in which metacognitive awareness and strategic autonomy develop alongside reduced threat responses, strengthened confidence, and psychological safety. Together, these dimensions cultivate holistic communication, communication that is not only linguistically competent but emotionally sustainable, identity- aware, and adaptable across contexts.

Moving beyond purely cognitive models of language acquisition, the “whole learner” is conceptualised as a dynamic interplay of cognitive engagement (mind), emotional well-being and identity formation (heart), and embodied regulation (body). Grounded in neuroscience- informed coaching principles, Self-Determination Theory, constructivist pedagogy, and research on language anxiety, the approach positions communication as both cognitively constructed and physiologically and emotionally regulated.

Through practical illustrations and pedagogical implications, the session demonstrates how Neurolanguage Coaching shifts language practice from correction-driven performance to reflective growth conversations. By embedding the integration of mind, body, and heart as both principle and mindset, foreign language learning can foster communicative competence alongside resilience, agency, and long-term well-being.

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Markus Mutter

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Markus Mutter

Bio:

Markus is a Freediving and Functional Breathwork instructor specializing in breathwork and autonomic nervous system regulation. Over the last years, he has designed numerous immersive breathing and wellness workshops that combine neuroscience, somatic practice, and real-world performance psychology. His work bridges ancient Freediving wisdom with modern educator burnout prevention, helping coaches and teachers transform their own resilience and deepen authentic connection with learners. Markus speaks and teaches across Europe, blending rigorous science with practical, embodied practice.

Session Synopsis:

One Breath Together: Freediving Lessons for Educator Resilience and Classroom Connection”

What happens when a teacher and student breathe together?
Neuroscience shows us: shared regulation builds safety. Safety builds connection. Connection builds learning. Yet educators are drowning. Stress, overwhelm, and disconnection are epidemic. And our students feel it, their nervous systems mirror ours. What if the solution lived in our breath? In this session, Markus Mutter brings freediving wisdom into language education. In the depths, freedivers learn to reframe discomfort as information, to stay present under pressure, and to build unshakeable trust with their guide. These are not exotic skills, they are portable mental practices that work in any classroom.

You will discover:
✦ Why your nervous system is your greatest teaching tool — and how to protect it from burnout using three micro-practices freedivers use daily.
✦ How to co-regulate with your students — turning isolated anxiety into shared calm through breath rituals that take less than two minutes.
✦ A three-step mental protocol that both you and your learners can use before difficult moments (exams, presentations, hard conversations), building a common language of resilience.
✦ How to transform stress signals into readiness — the same reframing that helps freedivers stay calm at depth.

This is not passive wellness. This is practical neuroscience you can apply anytime. Leave with: a breathing toolkit, a co-regulation ritual, and the understanding that when we care for the teacher’s mind and heart first, students thrive.

Neuroscience-grounded: Autonomic regulation, co-regulation, neuroplasticity, interoception—all evidence-based. Practical for educators: Every tool is immediately usable in a classroom or coaching session. Holistic & embodied: Honors the mind-body connection central to neurolanguage coaching. Addresses the real crisis: Educator mental health and resilience are urgent, often overlooked topics in teacher development. Unique voice: Brings a fresh, embodied perspective to language education from the freediving world.

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Joe Rios

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Dr Joseph Rios

Master Communication Skills Development Coach and Educator

Bio:

Dr. Joseph Rios is an international educator with a PhD from Stanford University, where he studied the anthropology of communication. He began his career as Director of Education in Silicon Valley public schools, then moved to the private sector at Intel, where he led a global workforce development initiative. He went on to train and consult Fortune 500 companies worldwide in leadership communication before serving as Pedagogy Lead for language learning initiatives at Google. He later led entrepreneurship bootcamps with Columbia Business School and founded Dakodit, a company dedicated to advancing human-centered communication and leadership in the age of AI.

Session Synopsis:

Rivers to Raindrops: Human Generativity, AI Prediction, and the Future of Language Teaching

As AI becomes increasingly fluent, language educators are questioning where they fit. This talk offers a clear, human-centered answer. Using Rivers to Raindrops as a guiding metaphor, it contrasts machine-driven language prediction with human language creation shaped by experience, intention, culture, and relationship. It argues that language teaching is inherently creative work and that educators play a vital role in helping learners move beyond correctness toward lived communication. Participants will leave with renewed clarity about their value—and a practical classroom activity that makes human generativity visible, felt, and teachable.

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Continental Café

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Wednesday Continental Café - 17.00 until 19.00

Asimina Alexandropoulou

From Cinderella to CinderWheela: Rewiring Learning through Inclusive Fairy Tales

This interactive workshop explores how inclusive fairy tales (“IncluTales”) can be used as neurolanguage coaching tools to create emotionally safe learning environments and foster deeper language engagement. Using short excerpts from reimagined classic fairy tales, such as Cinderella, featuring diverse characters, including neurodivergent and disabled protagonists, participants experience how storytelling activates emotion, attention and meaning-making, all key elements of effective language learning. The session highlights how small narrative shifts can lower anxiety, increase curiosity and motivation and support both linguistic accuracy and mastery, while also gently promoting social awareness around disability and inclusion.

Engagement Plan

Participants work with short story excerpts, guided reflection prompts and brief collaborative tasks. The session prioritises experiencing, doing and reflecting rather than theory-heavy input, ensuring high engagement and direct transfer to real teaching and coaching contexts.
Audience Takeaways
Participants will:
*Understand why inclusive narratives enhance learning from a neuroscience and coaching perspective
*Learn how to use short story excerpts to support emotional regulation and sustained learner engagement
*Practise adapting a narrative moment while maintaining clear linguistic and coaching goals
*Leave with practical, low-effort strategies that can be applied immediately in language teaching or coaching practice

Bio:
Asimina Alexandropoulou is an experienced EFL teacher, teacher trainer and language-school owner with a strong professional and academic focus on inclusive education, learner diversity and emotionally safe learning environments. She studied English Language & Philology at the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece and holds an MA in Special Education and Learning Difficulties. She is also a Certified SpLD Assessor and has over 20 years of teaching experience, working with both neurotypical learners and students across a wide range of learning profiles, including dyslexia, ADHD, autism spectrum conditions and physical disabilities.

Alongside her classroom practice, Asimina has completed extensive professional development and specialist training in special and inclusive education, and has been actively involved in teacher training, educational consultancy and curriculum design. Her work supports educators in creating inclusive, brain-friendly language classrooms that prioritise emotional safety, learner autonomy and meaningful engagement for all learners. Her professional interests sit at the intersection of foreign language education, neuroscience-informed teaching and emotional intelligence, with a particular focus on how storytelling and narrative activate learning, reduce anxiety and support identity, belonging and motivation in both neurotypical and neurodivergent learners. Over the past years, she has designed and delivered workshops and conference presentations on dyslexia-friendly teaching, inclusive assessment, parent–teacher communication and SEN-aware language learning. Asimina is the creator of ‘IncluTales’, an original educational project that reimagines classic fairy tales through an inclusive lens, featuring protagonists with disabilities and neurodivergent traits. These stories are used as practical tools for language learning, emotional awareness and social sensitisation, and are currently being developed into a children’s book accompanied by an educational appendix for teachers and parents.

Irina Francis

Must vs Want: How the Must–Want Motivation Matrix Unlocks the Brain’s Capacity to Speak a New Language

Many adult learners – especially immigrants under stress – experience a paradox: the stronger the internal pressure to speak (“I have to”), the more speech can shut down.

This talk introduces a neuroscience-informed framework for understanding speaking blocks through motivational modes Must vs Want, and presents my Must – Want Motivation Matrix (from “I don’t speak” to “I speak”) as a practical diagnostic and coaching tool.

Participants will learn how pressure-based motivation can activate threat responses (e.g., anxiety, rigid self-monitoring, avoidance) that reduce access to speech, and how approach-based motivation (“I want to”) can support safety, meaning, and agency – conditions that make speaking more available.


Objectives:
(1) clarify how motivational framing shapes the brain’s readiness to speak,
(2) identify markers of protection-mode vs learning-mode in adult learners, and
(3) equip participants with a brief, repeatable coaching sequence for shifting clients toward “want” motivation and sustainable communication.

Bio:
I am a clinical psychologist, supervisor, and neurolanguage coach with over 25 years of professional and research experience exploring how the brain learns – and what supports or blocks learning, including adult foreign language acquisition. My core training is in clinical psychology. From the beginning of my career, I have been driven by a persistent question: why do some people learn with ease while others become blocked, even when motivation is high? This focus shaped my academic path. My PhD research examined leaders’ professional identity and how a leader’s interaction style influences employees’ motivation, learning capacity, and initiative. Through both research and practice, I observed a stable pattern: the behaviour of a person in authority can either open or narrow another person’s ability to learn, take agency, and develop.

Later, my work expanded to the neuropsychological mechanisms of learning from early childhood. I led international grant-funded projects aimed at identifying behavioural patterns of a significant adult (e.g., a parent, primary caregiver, or teacher) that create conditions for more effective brain functioning in children – particularly in speech development, attention, self-regulation, and readiness to learn. Within international research contexts (including Russia, Vietnam, and the United States), I contributed to developing behavioural markers and assessment indicators for adult responsiveness to a child’s signals, and I presented related findings at international conferences and in publications.

Olivier Dierickx

Healing through Poe-Tree: How words and nature can rekindle your heart and let you blossom

After this session, the audience will gain insights about how words, languages, nature could help to connect to our body and our heart. The intention is to bring the awareness to our senses, our imagination, the present moment, the nature that surrounds us, to reconnect to our heart. NeuroScience focus so much to the brain, I truly believe that we can also embark the heart, the body, our whole self, in order to be united again in the beautiful Multi-Verse of this Powerful play. This session will be a blend about neuroscience research and also creativity, interaction and imagination.

Bio:

As a kid and adolescent, Oli was already tapping into the magic of languages, words, cultures, poetry, books “choose your own adventures”, and thanks to my grandfather and French teacher, to critical thinking and the power of appreciation.

After more than 2 decades of finding his way, he finally get back to Language training in 2019, and Neurolanguage coaching in 2022, thanks to Rachel and her incredible community.

On this 10th anniversary edition, he wants to explore the power of words, movement, and heart connection

Iulia Pittman

Coaching in Systems: Rethinking Neurolanguage Coaching® in Institutional Contexts

Neurolanguage Coaching® is often practiced in 1:1 contexts where the coach largely controls the container, the language, and the pace of the conversation. In institutional settings—such as universities and organizations—coaching takes place inside systems shaped by hierarchy, structure, expectations, and established cultures that are not always aligned with coaching principles.

This interactive workshop invites participants to rethink how Neurolanguage Coaching® functions when it enters institutional contexts. Drawing on lived experience coaching undergraduate and graduate students and faculty, as well as introducing coaching to administrators within a university setting, the session explores how context shapes coaching conversations, how autonomy and agency take on different meanings inside systems, and how coaching presence must adapt without losing its core.

Participants will be invited to shift from seeing coaching as a set of tools or techniques to seeing it as a stance—one that requires heightened awareness of language, power, neuroscience-informed framing, and context. Through guided reflection and interactive exploration, participants will examine assumptions about coaching that may work well in private practice but need to be rethought in institutional environments.

The workshop is designed to help experienced Neurolanguage Coaches® develop greater contextual intelligence and confidence as they bring coaching into educational and organizational systems.

Bio:

Dr. Iulia Pittman is an Advanced Certified Neurolanguage Coach®, linguist, and Full Professor of German and Linguistics at Auburn University (USA). With over two decades of experience in higher education and language development, she works at the intersection of neuroscience, multilingualism, and academic leadership. She integrates Neurolanguage Coaching® principles into university language teaching and applies brain-based coaching approaches in her work with language learners, graduate students, and faculty. In addition to her academic role, she serves as a faculty coach and contributes to institutional conversations about developing sustainable coaching cultures within higher education.

 

Her work focuses on autonomy, agency, and long-term growth in complex educational systems. Drawing on a strong research background in linguistics and second language acquisition, she bridges academic scholarship and coaching practice to support meaningful and lasting transformation for learners and educators.

Sharyn Collins

The Grasp of the Mother Tongue in Learning the Sounds and Pronunciation of a Second Language

As you know, our brain is wired for survival, and wherever possible, it will try to save energy by finding the easy way to perform a function. Let me connect this to language learning, and let’s talk about the grasp of the “mother tongue”, in other words, the dominance of our first language. Our mother tongue is our connection to family, culture and identity. It is a basis and a language system which can help in second language acquisition. Most of all, we feel comfortable and secure with it. It is our natural default language. It is also dominant. From birth, a child develops a sound system, using the palate, plus lips, teeth and tongue to produce certain sounds. These sounds, possibly even unique to that first language, become embedded in the memory to form habits, and as we all know, habits are hard to break! These sounds become the default sounds. A student learning a second language often has to learn different sounds. If the second language is related to the mother tongue, such as Spanish to Portuguese, or Swedish to Norwegian, then the adjustment is not as great as it might be between Chinese, which is tonal, and, for example, English. This adjustment is hard and takes time, effort and a great amount of practice. But how important is it to aim for perfection, to try and replicate exactly the sounds of the second language?

Good communication should always be the aim, and that includes not only accent, but also body language, gesture and cadence. A perfect accent is never necessary as long as it is clear. As a German language trainer, but a native English speaker, I believe I speak with a decent German accent, as I have studied it for many years. And yet, if I ask a German native speaker what my accent is like, the comment is often: “ It’s clear, and it’s good, but it’s not quite German. “ I don’t mind, I try my best. I can live with that. A course with an emphasis on pronunciation practice and accent improvement should always begin with a discussion between teacher and student. Different students will have different goals. I always explain what is meant by the grasp of the “mother tongue”, and that if they want to improve their accent in a foreign language, they will have to fight the dominance of the mother tongue, and that is hard!!!! Too much pronunciation practice can be tedious; it depends on the student and their needs. Can it be done? Well, yes. Just look at actors for proof, but actors have the incentive of being paid quite a lot of money for their effort and maintaining their reputation. Very often, an actor preparing for a role with a foreign accent will use an accent coach and have so many lessons, even sometimes, moving in with the coach to achieve their goal. Our students usually don’t have the time or the money. So, in summary, it is so important to understand that the “mother tongue” can really dominate when learning the sounds of a second language.

I feel a student should be made aware of this. I also feel that they should know that as long as they speak clearly and can be understood by the majority of people, then that is more than enough.

Bio:

Sharyn Collins is a polyglot and language trainer who specialises in Standard British English pronunciation. She is also a lecturer in communication and gives talks all over the world, promoting better communication through clear speech. Sharyn has given training in so many countries, including Bahrain, where she taught the royal family, Oman, Mexico, Cyprus, India, Turkey, Lithuania and Northern Ireland. “I have already had the privilege of speaking at three Neurolanguage conferences and am very excited about taking part in the new conference cafe in Sitges this year, says Sharyn. “I will be discussing ‘the grasp of the mother tongue’ when learning the pronunciation of a new language. This conference is very informative and such fun at the same time. Over the years, I have made so many friends, and I just love being part of this Neurolanguage community.” 

Hanaé Loison & Laura Pipponzi

PlusPlus your skills as language trainer: Experience your PlusPlus sauce!

PlusPlus your skills as language trainer: Experience your PlusPlus sauce is a 60-minute interactive workshop inviting participants into a space of playful, hands-on co-creation. Using PlusPlus as simple yet powerful visual and tactile building blocks, participants explore how these elements can enrich Neurolanguage Coaching practice. Through collaborative building tasks, visual metaphors, a relaxed atmosphere, and group reflection, they experiment with new ways to foster engagement, connection, and creative expression in language sessions.


The workshop includes group creations, a gallery walk, collective sharing, and final reflections. Participants leave with renewed energy and concrete ideas for integrating more playful, tactile, and brain-friendly activities into their coaching — or for shaping their own unique secret sauce.

Bio:

Hanaé Loison is a trainer-of-trainers and strategic learning consultant with 15 years of experience supporting organisations in their transition toward multimodal, active and brain-friendly pedagogy. As a Neurolanguage Coach for French learners, she combines neuroscience-informed approaches, experiential learning, coaching principles and pronunciation expertise to design meaningful and personalised learning experiences that foster autonomy, creativity and authentic communication.
Laura Pipponzi is a language coach and facilitator with 15 years of experience in language education and corporate training. She has worked across schools and international companies, adapting her programmes to diverse learners and professional contexts. As a Neurolanguage Coach, she integrates creativity, emotional intelligence and CLIL-inspired methodologies to support meaningful communication and real-world confidence through safe, playful and purposeful learning environments.

Hanaé and Laura met at the 2022 Neurolanguage Coaching Conference. Together, they bring strong pedagogical expertise, coaching skills and a shared passion for experiential, joyful learning.

Mariel Geiger and Orianne Robert du Camp d’Orgas

Brains on a Roller Coaster: How Perimenopause and Menopause Impact Women’s Learning Journeys

While the majority of Neurolanguage Coaches® and many of our clients are women in midlife, menopause — and its impact on cognition and learning — remains a largely overlooked topic in our professional conversations. At the same time, male coaches also benefit from understanding these neurological and cognitive shifts, both to better support learners and to foster more empathetic, informed coaching relationships.

This workshop invites participants to reflect on their own experiences, assumptions, and knowledge gaps related to menopause. We will present current scientific insights into what happens in the brain during peri- and menopause, with a focus on how these changes influence cognitive functions such as learning, memory, focus, attention, verbal fluency, and motivation. We will connect these neuroscience findings with practical coaching strategies that support clients navigating this transition — and that help coaches manage their own cognitive wellbeing during midlife.

Through storytelling, neuroscience input, and guided reflection, participants will gain a clearer understanding of the so-called “menopause brain” and leave with actionable, brain-friendly approaches that make language learning more compassionate, empowering, and effective for all.

Bio:

Maria Eliza Geiger (Mariel) is a Professional Neurolanguage Coach® who supports German-speaking professionals in improving their English speaking skills through engaging, brain-friendly conversation sessions. Her approach combines practical communication practice with insights from neuroscience, helping learners build confidence and fluency in a supportive and motivating environment. She holds a CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults), completed in Munich, Germany, and a B2 certification in German. This enables her to work effectively and empathetically with German-speaking learners, particularly in navigating cross-linguistic challenges when expressing themselves in English. Drawing on her strong interest in how the brain learns languages, she created SHIFT HAPPENS, a program designed to help learners recognize and overcome neuromyths and limiting beliefs that can prevent them from progressing toward their language goals. In addition to facilitating English conversation sessions at MVHS, she has recently expanded her work to include teaching her mother tongue, Tagalog/Filipino. Through this, she continues to build bridges between languages and cultures while empowering learners to communicate more confidently and authentically. As a passionate advocate of lifelong learning, she is also currently learning Spanish at the age of 53 — demonstrating that it is never too late to start learning a new language.

Orianne Robert du Camp d’Orgas is a Professional Neurolanguage Coach® with a Master’s Degree in Language Didactics. She is passionate about acquiring new skills – across various disciplines – as a way to stress-test her mental patterns, confront the limits of her own frameworks, and ultimately transform them. Her work focuses on helping individuals gain clarity, agency, and alignment by exploring the often unseen patterns, beliefs, and habits that influence how we learn and act. Orianne is particularly interested in a holistic understanding of learning; she explores the connection between cognitive processes and the moving body, seeking how greater awareness of this relationship can support more effective and sustainable development.
Through her work, she invites learners and professionals to approach change with curiosity, awareness, and a deeper, embodied understanding of how they learn.

Hind Elbaallaoui

In this session, I want to share the reality of Arab learners — their struggles, their fears, and also their amazing potential. Too often, they translate in their heads, worry about mistakes, or carry limiting beliefs that stop them from speaking. Using Neurolanguage Coaching® techniques and mindset tools, I will guide participants through practical activities that I use with my own students: the mirror speaking challenge, voice identity work, and emotion-linked vocabulary anchoring. These exercises have helped even beginners find their voice and speak with more freedom. The workshop will be hands-on and interactive. Participants will try the activities themselves, reflect on the experience, and then design a small “confidence challenge” they can use with their own learners.

This is not just theory — it’s real practice, taken from my own coaching journey with hundreds of students across Morocco and the Gulf.

 
Audience Takeaways


How to reduce fear and hesitation in learners.
Simple coaching tools that build fluency fast.
Practical activities ready to apply in their own context.
Inspiration from real learner stories of transformation.

Bio:

My name is Hind Elbaalaoui, and I am the founder of Linglo Speaksy, an English academy that works with learners in Morocco, the Gulf countries, and Arab students living abroad. I have been teaching English for more than 14 years, and during this journey I discovered that learning a language is not only about grammar and vocabulary — it’s about confidence, mindset, and identity. I became certified in Neurolanguage Coaching® and other teacher training programs because I wanted to bring something different to my learners: a way of learning that is brain-friendly, practical, and emotionally engaging. Over the years, I have helped students who were shy, blocked, or afraid to speak, and I’ve seen them transform into confident communicators. Many of them achieved promotions at work, passed exams, or started to use English in real-life situations after struggling for years. Through Linglo Speaksy, I create programs such as Speaking Boost and Khalik Fluent, which combine coaching with real practice. My vision is to make Arab learners more visible on the global stage, and to share how mindset and coaching can change the whole learning experience.

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Deborah Wright

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Deborah Wright

Bio:

“Deborah is a linguist at heart, with a lifelong fascination for language, culture and sound. Her interest in the wider world began in her teenage years, when her family regularly hosted international students on English programmes. Growing up in a musical family as a violinist, Deborah developed an early sensitivity to sound — helped in no small part by her father, who drove her weekly to orchestra rehearsals and played recordings of aeroplane engines instead of music. To this day, she can distinguish a Spitfire from a Messerschmitt by sound alone — a reflection of her finely tuned listening skills. After studying Modern Foreign Languages with European Politics and History, she became a secondary school teacher in the UK before moving to Germany to work with both adults and children. During the pandemic, Deborah deepened her focus on phonetics, exploring the musicality of speech — including the “attack, decay, sustain and release” of sounds. This led her into accent training and neurolanguage-based communication work. She is currently training in the Richard D. Lewis Method for intercultural communication and is delighted to contribute a lively and thought-provoking perspective to this year’s event.”

Session Synopsis:

Negotiation Is Not What You Say — It’s How You Sound

– Understand how cultural communication styles (Richard D. Lewis) are expressed not only through words, but through melody, rhythm, pacing, and stress
– Recognise why negotiations succeed or fail due to misaligned prosody, even when language is “correct”
– Learn how SmartMotion principles (embodied sound, rhythm, and flow) can increase:
perceived credibility, trust, authority, and emotional alignment in negotiations
– Be able to adjust their vocal melody and rhythm to better match different cultural negotiation styles (linear-active, multi-active, reactive)

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Natassa Manitsa

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Natassa Manitsa

English Educator, Teacher Trainer, Digital Marketing Specialist, and Author, Co-founder of EdSkills Academy and Founder of EduMarketing Agency

Natassa Manitsa is an English Educator, Teacher Trainer, Digital Marketing Specialist, and Author with over 25 years of experience in language education. She is the Co-founder of EdSkills Academy and Founder of EduMarketing Agency, specializing in teacher training, educational marketing, and content creation.

She has trained educators worldwide and has held key roles in academic consulting, communication, and social media management. A published author, she has co-written books on literature, writing, and CLIL and has contributed numerous articles and essays to various academic platforms and magazines. Her academic background includes studies in School Psychology, Translation, British Studies, Marketing, and Communication, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Philosophy & the Arts. She is also Webmaster and Social Media Coordinator for IATEFL TEASIG, focusing on trends in language assessment.

Session Synopsis:

Beat Imposter Syndrome in Your Classroom Through Your Lessons: A Confidence-Boosting Experience Using Vocabulary and Communication Activities

“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand brake on.” — Maxwell Maltz

What are these agonising self-doubts and dark thoughts that appear in the middle of the night? Does the fear of failing ever make you want to give up? Yet, sometimes just a little failure can become the foundation of success. After all, it all comes down to self-confidence, something that can be learned and built, even though the demanding world of business, studies, expectations, and life in general can easily deflate it.

In this workshop, we will explore the causes behind this growing “teacher/student self-doubt epidemic” and examine practical ways to boost self-confidence through teaching techniques that simultaneously enhance vocabulary development and communication skills.

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Patricia Bergström

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Patricia Bergström

Bio:

Patricia Bergström is a multilingual Professional Neurolanguage Coach® and Licensed Teacher Trainer with over 26 years of experience guiding learners and educators through transformative change. Her work explores the intersection of language, emotion, identity, and intercultural awareness, informed by professional certifications in mindfulness, emotional intelligence, NLP, and laughing medicine, and grounded in neuroscience. Founder of Effective Learning 4 Life, Patricia holds an MA in TESOL and an MA in Modern Foreign Languages from the University of St Andrews. She serves as Project Officer for Alumni Relations for the UN SDSN Global Schools Programme and co-coaches the IHE micro-credential in Solutionary Teaching and Learning, supporting educators worldwide to create meaningful, sustainable impact.

Session synopsis:

From Wobblies to Grounded: Navigating the Emotional Slumps of Self-Employment

Becoming your own boss is often framed as freedom, flexibility, and fulfilment, yet the emotional and cognitive “wobblies” that accompany self-employment are rarely spoken about. Slumps in motivation, self-doubt, comparison, and identity confusion are common, particularly in the age of social media, where curated success stories distort reality and amplify inner pressure.

In this 60-90 minute experiential workshop, participants will explore the neuro-emotional dynamics behind entrepreneurial slumps and the identity shift from employee to self-directed professional where participants will learn how to recognise, normalise, and navigate these wobblies with greater self-compassion and clarity.
The session offers a safe space to name what is usually hidden, reframe internal narratives, and develop practical tools to remain grounded, resilient, and aligned, even when motivation dips and external validation is absent.