About Culture Agents

Lottie Dowling has worked in education and schools for over 25 years as an educator and professional learning leader on a global, national and regional levels. She has run networks of schools with educators working on pedagogical change and whole school improvement, facilitated professional learning in a range of topics linked to global competence including intercultural understanding and student action projects, and designs student programs and materials that support student voice and agency.

When she's not working with Culture Agents around the world, she works as a consultant supporting schools and organizations working in Global Citizenship Education and presents regularly at conferences.

She is a real-life Culture Agent herself, having lived and worked globally in education for many years and experienced more than 50 countries to date. She believes in the transformative power of education to support young people to create and co-design a better world for everyone.

Josh Halpern is a former U.S. diplomat, global educator, and entrepreneur whose work has taken him across China, Spain, India, England, Central America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Throughout his career, he has helped build bridges across cultures through education, storytelling, entrepreneurship, and global engagement. He began as a drama and English teacher in England, advised students in Spain for the Fulbright Commission, founded IdiomArts to teach language through the performing arts, managed education programs in Central America for Georgetown University, developed cross-cultural curriculum for at-risk youth, led strategic development for an educational tourism company in Beijing, and served as VP at education investment firm in Mumbai.

He later returned to the United States to help launch the Obama Administration's U.S. Department of Commerce eCommerce Innovation Lab and then resigned to found the Getting to Global Initiative, a public-private partnership helping small businesses expand internationally through digital trade, with support from five government agencies across three continents and funding from Google, Facebook (now Meta), eBay, and other cross-border technology leaders.

Josh is the creator of Culture Agents and co-founder of Beijing Improv, the first bilingual improv theater troupe in Beijing. It was there that he met Lottie Dowling, who went on to shape the academic backbone of the Culture Agents program.

He holds an MBA from INSEAD, an EMBA from Tsinghua University, a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and a TEFL certificate from Cambridge University. He also hosts the VanBassador series (vanbassador.com), sharing stories of how a global mindset can shape careers and enrich lives.