Saniya Chughtai…CEO and Founder of The Wadi Tribe Philanthropist, Serial Entrepreneur, Business Consultant, Children’s Author, Interior Architect and International Designer. She has appeared on Design shows such as “Showhouse” on Ireland’s national television network RTÉ, for several seasons. She won the People’s choice award in INDEX exhibition, Dubai for the contemporary Majlis design. She has also written 7 successful children’s books under the series ”The Adventures of Chee & Dae ”. The first book has been translated into Arabic & Urdu. Her latest book ‘Tach and the Cosanthor’ won the ‘Viewers choice award’ by TCK publishing. She recently ventured into film, making a short documentary titled “The Story of the Storyteller”. This won the best short documentary at the GUTech short film category at the Muscat International Film Festival 2016 in Oman. She took TWT to the Finals in Richard Branson’s VOOM 2016 competition. She loves reading, telling stories and traveling. Her favourite pastime is spending time with children.She is high on life!
Education Advisor
Edward Cooper is passionate about children’s education in its widest, most holistic form. He believes everyone’s future will be brighter if we can get our children’s education right today, and above all else children’s social and emotional learning. Edward is delighted to support the ground-breaking work of The Wadi Tribe, drawing upon his experience first as a journalist and, since 1997, as a teacher of primary and secondary students, teacher-trainer, school principal, management advisor, and external school evaluator. Born in England, Edward has travelled and worked around the globe and counts as his highest achievement his three young children who are doing their best – against the odds – to teach him how to be a better parent and person!
Advisor
Brendan McKittrick is an established executive who has worked in over 12 countries across many fields of expertise. Brendan says that he never considers The Wadi Tribe to be work as its fun and rewarding to see so many people benefit from the stories and the Social Emotional Learning programmes. Brendan is a life-long member of the GAA and has played football and hurling with many clubs over four continents on his travels, and says that it’s community based approach makes it the greatest sporting organisation on earth. He is sure that Tach the Hurler will definitely get to visit more GAA clubs worldwide than he has!
Senior Editor
Meet Kieren Knapp, The Wadi Tribe’s editor extraordinaire! Born in London but raised in Oman, Kieren has spent much of his life in the desert, climbing sand dunes, exploring date plantations and chasing sunsets! Kieren’s love of adventure and creativity has been vital to The Wadi Tribe’s continuing success story! Kieren has a BA English w/ Creative Writing (Hons) and loves reading, live music and swimming.
Content Creator & Social Media Manager
Meet Alizeh Chughtai, The Wadi Tribe’s creative social media expert. Alizeh was born in Ireland and is currently studying ‘Media and Communications’ in London. She hopes to become a public speaker some day and an accomplished author! She also has her own brand called ‘Chuggy’, fun notebooks to embrace your uniqueness.
She loves reading, running and loves animals especially dogs!
Designer
Arifa Sayla is an illustrator, cartoonist and a designer who loves to visualize everything! She lives in her own world of colors and characters, and believes to give happy endings to every picture, being it a cartoon or her real life. Born in UK, brought up in Pakistan and recently moved to Canada, she has multiple exposures of cultures which helps her shape her own illustration style. She loves to socialize and cook, but above all, to draw. As a kid she didn’t like to read, pages full of words haunted her so she decided to make it easy for the next generation and became an illustrator. Her son Mustafa keeps her energies high, and is always excited to look forward to his mothers new books.
Designer
Dave Alvarez has been a character designer, a storyboard artist and a visual developer for WB Animation Group, WB Animation, Disney TV, Nickelodeon and others. His work can be seen in shows like Scooby Doo and Guess Who, The Looney Tunes or Spongebob Squarepants.