Hi there!
I’m Liesl Ulrich-Verderber, EWC’s COO, and the Founder of EWCed!
After graduating from Harvard University with a degree in architectural design and economics, I started working with Ever Widening Circles as our COO, and took up our mission to expand into education with EWCed.
While I still spend a lot of time keeping the show running her on Ever Widening Circles, I am now collaborating with educators on EWCed. Over at EWCed, we curate content from Ever Widening Circles for educators to use in the classroom. Our mission at EWCed is to inspire students’ curiosity, connect them to the wider world, and give them a sense of what’s possible. We want to ignite possibility in our education systems with the knowledge that it is still an amazing world.
I have had a life-long passion for education. After serving on the school board as a high schooler, I have been an advocate for customized learning plans, and have seen some of the possibilities for change that are available in our education systems. At Harvard, I designed and taught leadership curriculum and classes to middle and high school students through the Leadership Institute at Harvard College. As we designed EWCed, these experiences teaching a diverse range of students with a video and discussion-based approach to learning have been a major source of inspiration.
As a child, I loved to “teach” classes on the various things I’d learned watching PBS documentaries. As a teacher, I would always wear my cat eye glasses and have my grandfather’s extendable pointer in hand.
When I’m not running around talking to educators and students (which is my favorite part of my job) I’m back in the Ever Widening Circles office pulling whatever hat we need for me that day off the rack and tackling problems from marketing to microwave malfunctions.
I have been a professional photographer since the age of 14, and have had a lifelong passion for design. With my photography skills, I built Phrog Eye Photography, a place that now holds my portfolio of work, including my work in photography, design, and public speaking.
Most of my undergraduate design training at Harvard University was through the Harvard Graduate School of Design. There, I honed my design skills and representation techniques, always with a flair for design that filled the mantra “Is it novel? Is it useful?” I’d like to think that I have taken a bit of that mindset with me here at EWC, and EWCed.
In my free time, I am an aspiring—but more often floundering—outdoor enthusiast, a camera-toting traveler, and a global story seeker.
-Liesl
“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”-Victor Borge
Liesl can be found on Instagram @Liesl.UV
