The Advisors

Here are the people who never cease to believe that there is something more than what the youth can do change the world. Together with them, your student leaders are working hard to bring you the best youth program you will ever have!


 Kip Cates
The Chair and Founder
Prof. Kip A. Cates has a B.A. in Modern Languages (French, German, Japanese) from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Reading, England. He is the coordinator of the "Global Issues In Language Education" Special Interest Group (GILE SIG) of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) and is past president of the international TESOLers for Social Responsibility (TSR) Caucus.
He is a professor in the Faculty of Regional Sciences at Tottori University, Japan where he teaches courses on Globalization, Global Issues, International Exchange and English Communication. He also teaches graduate courses on Global Education for the MA-in-TESOL program of Teachers College Columbia University (Tokyo campus). He publishes a quarterly "Global Issues in Language Education" newsletter and has given presentations on global education in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Hungary, Malaysia, Vietnam, Greece, Egypt, and Korea. He has worked, lived or traveled in 50 countries and speaks nine languages.
His current projects include global education teacher training for the Japanese NGO Peace Boat and organizing an annual “Asian Youth Forum” (AYF) which brings together college students from countries such as Japan, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Russia and the Philippines for workshops promoting international understanding through the medium of English as an Asian language.
See more about Kip at www.kipcates.com.

Peter Wanner
The Conference Chair
Prof. Peter John Wanner has a Ph.D. in Informatics (Human Informatics – Language Processing Aspects) from Nagoya University, Japan.  He also earned a Masters of Science Degree (MS) in Linguistics from Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA.  He is the President of Teachers Helping Teachers, an organization that brings language educators to developing countries mostly in Asia to strengthen teacher development seminars and workshops there (Laos, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, and the Philippines).  This organization is also a Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Japan Association of Language Teachers (JALT).  
Dr. Wanner is a professor in the Language Education department of the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University, Japan.  He teaches graduate courses including practical applications of linguistics in language learning, Psycholinguistics, and Neurolinguistics.  The past five years, he has been involved in Language Brain and Cognition Studies of language processing of alphabetic languages (ABC) and orthographic languages (Kanji) such as Chinese and Japanese.  He speaks some of the basics of most the languages of most of the countries he frequently visits including China, Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines.  
His current projects include bilingual acquisition theory of language processing in bilinguals.  He also advises the board of Language Brain and Cognition studies at Tohoku University on various projects they are working on.  Furthermore, he is an advisor to the human securities program, a new discipline that is even more important as global understanding of human resource management becomes even more intricate.  In addition, he has been involved as a co-chair for the past two Asian Youth Forum (AYF) conferences in Japan (2008) and the Philippines (2009).  Finally, he strongly encourages youth from AYF to pursue higher education in programs such as the Human Securities program or International Cultural Studies programs at Tohoku University.