Our team
Meet our world-class team from around the globe
Lydia Cao, Ph.D. 🇨🇦🇨🇳🇫🇷🇬🇧🇺🇸
Co-founder
Lydia is a researcher at the University of Toronto, Canada. She has studied and worked in education field for over 12 years at some of the most prestigious institutions in the world. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and obtained her Ph.D. in Education from the University of Cambridge, England. She completed her Master's in Education from the University of Strasbourg, France, and her Bachelor of Education from McGill University. With her extensive background in education and experience as an educator, she founded BirdHouse. A firm believer in the vital role of parents in children's education, she is committed to empowering parents with the knowledge, skills, and resources to be great educators.
Allie Johnston, Ed.M. 🇺🇸
Co-founder
Allie Connors Johnston is a homeschooling parent of three children based in New England. A lover of and advocate for learning, she earned a Masters in Education from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education and English from Boston College. For the last ten years, she has supported education publishers and organizations focused on learning as a consultant. Before that she held corporate roles for NYC-based curriculum publishers. She specializes in market research, product development, editorial services, and product marketing.
Janneke Nieboer 🇳🇱
Learning designer
Janneke is a mindfulness coach and equine-assisted therapist from the Netherlands. She discovered the transformative power of mindfulness while overcoming ovarian cancer in 2008. Inspired by her own life-changing experience and recognizing the stress and unrest that children face in today's world, Janneke is now dedicated to offering mindfulness training to help children cope with relationship challenges, test anxiety, sleep problems, and concentration difficulties. As a certified equine-assisted coach, Janneke specializes in coaching and healing children with the help of horses, especially children with special needs and children who are neurodivergent.