Ellen Mahoney founded Sea Change in 2013 after over twenty years in international education, including as a high school humanities teacher and counselor. Through Sea Change, she has supported schools navigating war, conflict, and other crises, and has served as the Social and Emotional co-chair of the AAIE Crisis Management Taskforce. She has contributed specialist expertise to the WASC–AISH Crisis Leadership Resource Project, the AISA Child Protection and Safeguarding Handbook, and a risk assessment and crisis preparedness framework developed with the Council of International Schools. Sea Change also authored the widely distributed Support Students in Crisis: The Educator’s Guide for Students Impacted by the Trauma of War and Violence, and since 2019, Ellen has served as a CIS Affiliated Consultant contributing to CIS’s wellbeing frameworks.

A Third Culture Kid and proud alumna of international schools, Ellen previously served as a director at a leading edtech organization, iMentor, embedding mentoring in public schools across the United States. She now works with schools worldwide to design culturally responsive, developmentally aligned SEL, mentoring, advisory, and crisis-response systems, and lives in Hong Kong and California when not on the road.