Bringing real life to education
Human Better EDU is on a mission to bring conscious living to formal education.
About us
We are engaging in philanthropic efforts by providing services to students and educational institutions of all shapes and sizes.
Through the launch of Human Better EDU as a nonprofit organization, we are able to expand our proven programs and methodology to serve a broader spectrum of students, teachers, administrators, and educational institutions, including those who have been historically and structurally disadvantaged. We also train educators to bring coaching and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) principles into the classroom.
The work we have done is dedicated to teaching people how to realize their personal and professional visions. Our straightforward and innovative method has changed the lives of thousands of private and corporate clients and has been taught in over 50 educational programs including MIT and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Our Mission
We teach, evolve, and support students, those who teach them, and the institutional cultures that are in service of effective learning.
We deliver scalable coaching and life design solutions to individuals and communities, to elevate individual integrity and conscious living in a variety of educational and organizational contexts, and to support people to effectively connect with and realize their dreams.
Who We Serve
Educational Game-Changers and Their Learning Communities
We are essential partners with institutions of formal education –- our reach extends to all who are out to have students win. From primary to secondary students, from undergraduates to post-docs, to researchers and innovators looking to enhance impact in educational and governmental institutions of all kinds –- we teach, evolve, and support students, those who teach them, and the institutional cultures that are in service to promoting effective learning.
Support Our Partners
Human Bettere EDU is a proud partner to Dream. Believe. Repeat., a coaching and mentoring program in Kenya, Africa, aimed at empowering teenage girls. Visit their website to learn more about their work, or click the button below to make a tax-deductible donation today.
Who We Are
Our Leader
Gaby Jordan
President & Founder
Gaby Jordan is the President and Founder of Human Better EDU. She has a deep passion for empowering parents, students, administrators and faculty across all levels of education that stems from her own commitment to education and students thriving.
Her dedication to this cause and understanding of the value of education started at a young age. Gaby was raised by a single mother who worked tirelessly against the odds to provide an education for her, which resulted in Gaby being the first in her own family to attend college, and then law school.
For 17 years, she has led programming in over 80 universities and educational institutions, both domestically and internationally, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, London School of Economics, Stanford Graduate Schools of Business and Medicine, NYU, Columbia, Yale, Vienna U of Economics and Business, University of Texas at Austin, and in the NYC public school systems, to name a few.
Gaby is also an executive life coach and has trained individuals and teams for over 30 years, and she served as EVP for a prominent executive coaching company where, from 2006-2022 she coached executives, senior leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs in major companies.
Gaby is the mother of two grown daughters and lives in New York City with her husband Robert where they (as singers) love to make music together.
Our Team
Jenny Knowles Morrison
Director of Programming
Dr. Jenny Knowles Morrison is the Director of Programming for Human Better EDU. She comes to Human Better EDU after a twenty-four year career as a Management, Public Policy, Social Entrepreneurship, and International Development specialist. Her most recent faculty appointments have been with the University of Texas’ LBJ School and Texas A&M’s Bush School. She has also taught and developed programming in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and is a cross-cultural specialist.
In her consulting work, Jenny has been an Organizational Behavior, Cross-Cultural Management, Organizational Development, and Change Management specialist. Jenny fell in love with Human Better EDU after piloting coaching and life design curriculum for her graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.
Jenny is a three-time National Science Foundation awardee and widely published, including most recently in the IBM Center for the Business of Government, “Preparing the Next Generation of Federal Leaders: Agency-Based Leadership Development Programs,” the Social Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Public Affairs Education, and Public Administration and Development.
Jenny lives in Austin, Texas and is a mother of 10 and 13 year old daughters. She is a yoga and meditation enthusiast and loves reading and gardening in her spare time.
Jenny holds a PhD in Public Administration from the Wagner School of Public Service, New York University, as well as a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
Ayla Davidson
Director of Operations
Ayla Davidson is Director of Operations for Human Better EDU. She has been growing professionally and personally with the company since 2018 when she joined Gaby in educational organizations.
Ayla is no stranger to the world of education as her career has mainly been as a Teaching Artist in educational theater. Most recently she has worked in Connecticut at Hartford Stage Company and Long Wharf Theatre. As a Teaching Artist she works to use the arts as a tool for learning across a variety of disciplines. She values the learning that takes place through experience and emotion and appreciates applying this value in her life design and coaching work with Human Better EDU. Her goal is to empower students through the arts, whether on the stage or in the classroom.
At Hartford Stage, Ayla developed, wrote, and taught curricula and scripts to teach literacy, history, and math. She has worked in a variety of school settings and trained numerous educators and teaching artists in her curricula, presenting at the Hartford Performs summer conference, among others. Her financial literacy curriculum developed with the Hartford Stage Education department won an Excellence in Financial Literacy Education Award for Children’s Education Program of the Year by the Institute for Financial Literacy.
Prior to Connecticut, Ayla’s work as a freelance teaching artist brought her across the country and abroad, including The Dalton School in NYC, theaters in rural Maine, D.C. inner city schools, Bethesda, MD, Wiesbaden Military Base (Wiesbaden, Germany), and teaching English as a Second Language (T.E.F.L. certified) through theater to school children across Italy. She views the arts, and theater specifically, as the universal language. It can all be worked out on the stage; and applied to our everyday lives.
Ayla lives in the woods of Connecticut with her husband and two young sons. When she is not at her standing desk, she enjoys swimming in the nearby lake, going to see theater, cooking and eating good food, and playing and learning with her two growing boys. Ayla received her Masters of Arts in Teaching and her Bachelor of Arts from Bennington College.
Tammy Trujillo
Lead Tech & Operations Assist
Tammy Trujillo wrote a dream back in 2019 (pre-pandemic) to work with bright lights from near and far from her corner of the world and her dream has come true. As a lifelong student she made her way to Human Better EDU by way of the Coach In Training program.
Tammy joined HB EDU in 2020 and quickly learned how to navigate the world of ZOOM. She is now the Tech + Operations Lead connecting humans across the globe with the HB EDU team. She loves having a front row seat (via Zoom) of our global team in action and witnessing the impact of our work in and out of the classroom with the people we serve. It is a testament that it is never too early or too late to human better.
Tammy grew up in the central valley of California and attended school at both Fresno City College and Fresno State University. She also studied abroad at Regents College in London, England and traveled more than studied. After college she taught windsurfing on a national tour traveling to different parts of the United States and Mexico. She also has kayaked class 5 rapids and rock climbed with Royal Robbins, the first man to climb Half Dome in Yosemite. Royal taught her to “Love what you do and the rest will follow.”
Tammy has spent most of her life surrounded by kids as a mom, a new grand-mom and as the founder of a small non-profit teaching yoga + mindfulness to children young and old including teenage mommas and their babies, incarcerated teenage moys (man + boys), foster youth, homeless youth, and senior citizens in the rural community of Rio Vista, California an hour east of San Francisco. Her happy place is being outdoors: playing, walking, hiking, taking photos, paddle boarding or renovating her little house on the Delta with the help of YouTube.
Program Leaders and Coaches
Casey Seidenberg
Program Leader & Executive Life Coach
Casey Seidenberg brings over 20 years of marketing, communications, business development, and leadership experience to her coaching. After graduating from Cornell University with honors, she worked in marketing at New York City magazines such as GQ and Food & Wine, as well as for various tech companies in San Francisco. All the while, finding her greatest passion in management and helping her team get the most out of their work experiences. No wonder she became a coach.
Casey is committed to helping her clients design and build their dream lives by encouraging them to get honest about what they want and what is holding them back. She helps people show up as their best selves as managers and leaders but also in every other area of their lives. Casey is also fulfilling her dream of empowering teens with the tools they need to navigate their lives from the driver’s seat with confidence. Casey teaches in high schools across the country, helping teens boost their mental wellness and healthy development. She believes we can change the world by developing the next generation of young leaders. She also leads Educator Training programs helping to empower teachers to bring social emotional curriculum into their classrooms.
Casey has two certifications in integrative nutrition, co-founded Nourish Schools and published The Super Food Cards. For a decade, Casey wrote a regular column on kids and nutrition for The Washington Post. She served on the Board of Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., working to support quality healthcare for all children, as well as currently serving as Board Chair for The River School, the only integrated school for children with hearing loss and a center for advocacy on Capitol Hill.
Casey loves being a mother to her three children: Henry is 19, Teddy is 18, and Pippa is 11. She happily ever after married her college sweetheart Nick and is currently living in Washington, DC.
Bettina Wertheim
Program Leader, Executive Life Coach & Regional Director Europe
With over 20 years as a corporate communications professional in tourism, transport, retail, arts, and science, Bettina brings a broad understanding of various organizations and their specific challenges. She has worked as an executive consultant for multi-corporate enterprises, for small family-owned businesses, for high-tech startups, and for nonprofits.
Bettina is an executive coach who supports executives, managers, entrepreneurs and educators globally to produce results that make them happy, proud and inspired – both professionally and personally.
She is deeply passionate about bringing our coaching methodology to higher education: What an opportunity to equip young individuals, who are about to enter their careers, with the powerful tools to design the lives of their dreams. As well as helping faculty to unlock their full potential.
As a program leader, she was involved in introducing Human Better EDU at leading Business Schools in Vienna, Berlin, London, and Lisbon. Bettina leads seminars, coaches individuals, and, in her role as Regional Director Europe, spearheads Human Better EDU’s expansion in Europe.
Bettina graduated from Berlin University of the Arts with a degree in Communication in Social and Economic Contexts, and is a certified quality management auditor. She is happily married, has a teenage son, is a passionate yoga practitioner and horseback rider, loves classical music, and watching movies on big screens. Bettina coaches and leads programs in English and in German.
Osnat Nissani
Program Leader & Executive Life Coach
Osie Nissani is a highly seasoned Business Consultant with 10+ years experience coaching Founders, CEO’s, C-suite executives, and senior leaders of companies from start-ups to Fortune 500s. She has over 20 years experience in coaching individuals in the personal growth domain as a workshop leader and a trainer. She’s led seminars and workshops to more than 15,000 people globally. Previously Osie was an SVP and Senior Executive Life Coach with Handel Group.
Her expertise includes leadership development, toxic relationship resolution, professional effectiveness, and career transition and expansion. In the education world she has brought our life design method to 8th graders as well as postdocs at New York University, Fordham University and Columbia University. She has coached educational leaders in communities from the Bronx to Long Island.
Prior to working in life coaching, Osie owned and operated a successful business venture. As an executive, she relied on her entrepreneurial spirit, artistic eyes, and creativity to personally pioneer and develop a jewelry line that was later sold to stores owned by one of the largest buying groups in the United States. She uses these experiences in her work training executives, managers, administrators, and students in the language of accountability, helping accelerate and bring resolutions to issues and challenges across a host of different sectors. She is committed to providing leaders and teams with tools that enable them to be empowered and proud, enhance their success, foster inclusiveness, effective communication, alignment, and a collaborative environment.
She has provided executive coaching and leadership development programs in the following sectors: Advertising; Manufacturing; Technology, Finance, Entertainment; Real Estate; Legal: Hospitality; Architecture; and, Fashion.
As a parent of a learning-disabled child, Osie’s deep commitment to assisting parents and families who face similar challenges has enabled many children to secure the life-challenging support services they need, and has provided her own family a model of strength and philanthropy. Growing up in a kibbutz along the shared border between Israel and Southern Lebanon has both emboldened and humbled her. She is fluent in Hebrew and English, politically sensitive, and extremely resilient. She lives in Forest Hills, NY, has two grown sons and a daughter in law. She loves hiking, biking, swimming, and kayaking.
Suzee Edwards
Expert Life Coach & Coach Instructor
Suzee Edwards was raised in Los Angeles, CA and graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Music degree and Cal State Northridge as a Music Therapist. She worked as a studio violinist until she left the music industry to see what the corporate world had to offer.
Suzee’s nationwide search led her to work with Barkley Court Reporters where she was responsible for recruiting and managing more than 100 reporters across the State of California.
In 2004, Suzee moved with her family to Jupiter, FL and decided to open up a pole dancing studio (yes!) and in 2008 became a yoga instructor.
Although her business was thriving, the truth was her 10 year marriage wasn’t. In search of a way to fix it, Suzee and her husband did everything from breath work to marriage counseling. They finally landed on life coaching. Although all the modalities helped, this was the first time Suzee realized she also had to take responsibility for her impact on what was failing in their marriage and work to be vulnerable and honest about what she truly needed. She fell in love with this style of life coaching which drastically improved so many areas of her life. So much so, she decided to become an executive life coach herself. No surprise, Suzee’s passion and expertise lie in the area of love, family, hard conversations, finding and following your passion, and, of course, health and fitness. She works with clients all over the world.
Suzee & Phillip have been married for 21 years, have two children, one dog, and several yoga mats.
Our Board
Gaby Jordan
President & Founder
Gaby Jordan is the President and Founder of Human Better EDU. She has a deep passion for empowering parents, students, administrators and faculty across all levels of education that stems from her own commitment to education and students thriving.
Her dedication to this cause and understanding of the value of education started at a young age. Gaby was raised by a single mother who worked tirelessly against the odds to provide an education for her, which resulted in Gaby being the first in her own family to attend college, and then law school.
For 17 years, she has led programming in over 60 universities and educational institutions, both domestically and internationally, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, London School of Economics, Stanford Graduate Schools of Business and Medicine, NYU, Columbia, Yale, Vienna U of Economics and Business, University of Texas at Austin, and in the NYC public school systems, to name a few.
Gaby is also an executive life coach and has trained individuals and teams for over 30 years, and she served as EVP for Handel Group where since 2006 she coached C suite executives, senior leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs in major companies.
Gaby is the mother of two grown daughters and lives in New York City with her husband Robert where they (as singers) love to make music together.
Monique L. Nelson
Chair and CEO, UniWorld Group Inc.
Since May 2012, Ms. Nelson has served as the Chair and Chief Executive Officer of UWG, the country’s longest-standing multicultural advertising and marketing agency. From June 1999 to February 2007, Ms. Nelson was the Global Lead for Entertainment Marketing at Motorola.
She sits on the Audacy Board of Directors, the Advertising Week Global Board, AdWeek Diversity & Inclusion Council, The Brandeis Board of Trustees, The Eagle Academy Board as well as the New York Advisory Board for The Posse Foundation, of which she is an alumna. She is also a member of the Brooklyn Chapter of Links, Inc., an international, not-for-profit corporation established in 1946, which is the nation’s oldest and largest volunteer service organization of extraordinary women who are committed to enriching, sustaining and ensuring the cultural and economic survival of African Americans and other persons of African ancestry, and contributes to many organizations and charities. Ms. Nelson has a BS in Human and Organizational Development from Vanderbilt University and an MBA in International Marketing and Finance from Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul University.
Rick Wagner
CEO, Agile Defense
Rick Wagner serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Agile Defense, an innovative IT services and solutions provider. In this role, he leads the organization through strategic transformation with intentional investments in mission-guided innovation, and deliberate M&A to drive Agile Defense to the forefront of the technology consulting market.
Prior to joining Agile Defense, Mr. Wagner led Microsoft Federal, supporting federal agencies of all sizes and scopes as they deliver mission-critical work and embrace technology to achieve objectives and serve citizens. Prior to Microsoft, Mr. Wagner was President of ManTech Mission, Cyber & Intelligence Solutions (MCIS) Group, dedicated to advancing technological services to the United States Government’s Intelligence and Department of Defense communities. Mr. Wagner established ManTech as a leader in Cyber and IT while achieving over 20% growth per year.
Before joining ManTech in 2015, Mr. Wagner was chief strategy officer at TASC, Inc., where he led growth strategy and business development. Over his 16 years at TASC, he rose from program manager/systems engineer to senior vice president of the company’s Defense Group. Earlier in his career, Mr. Wagner held management positions at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and worked as a software engineer and project manager for the Naval Surface Warfare Center.
Mr. Wagner has been selected to the Washington 100 for three consecutive years, was selected as 2019 Intelligence Leader of the Year and is a 2021 Federal 100 awardee. He is a staunch advocate of efforts that support veterans and has a passion for Early Childhood Education and STEM projects. Mr. Wagner is a member of the Intelligence & National Security Alliance (INSA) Board of Directors and Fairfax Future’s Board of Directors. He was recently appointed as a commissioner to the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. Additionally, he is a member of AFCEA and the 4×24 Leadership Program of Executive Mosaic.
Mr. Wagner earned a Master of Engineering Management from George Washington University and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.
