Leadership
Derek Cabrera, Ph.D.
Founder & President
Dr. Derek Cabrera is an internationally recognized expert in thinking skills. As a scientist, researcher, and educator, he is senior faculty of the Research Institute for Thinking in Education, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute for the study of complex systems, and was faculty at Cornell University where he taught the graduate-level course on systems thinking. He has presented nationally and internationally on educational topics, thinking skills, and learning. He has worked extensively with teachers and senior staff in districts throughout the US. Derek was awarded the Association of American Colleges and Universities' K. Patricia Cross Future Educational Leaders Award. He was National Science Foundation Post Doctoral Fellow in
the College of Human Ecology and a National Science Foundation IGERT
Fellow in Nonlinear Systems at Cornell.
His research focuses on systems thinking and thinking universals and is grounded in interdisciplinary work in nonlinear and systems sciences, evolutionary biology, cognition, human development, and education. He holds a U.S. Patent for the revolutionary Patterns of Thinking Method that
underlies the design of ThinkBlocks and ThinkTiles, an educational tool he invented that teaches
advanced thinking skills to children and adults. Derek is the author of numerous books, book chapters, peer-reviewed journals articles, and whitepapers and his research has been profiled in refereed journals, trade magazines, and popular publications.
Prior to his current appointments, Derek worked for over a decade both nationally and internationally as an educator and mountain climbing guide with Outward Bound and other organizations. An avid adventure traveler and arm-chair anthropologist, he has led high-altitude climbing expeditions to the world's most remote mountain regions and visited tribal communities around the world. As a social entrepreneur, Derek led fundraising efforts to establish the Aceh Relief Fund for victims of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and cofounded Children of Rural Africa to develop schools in Nigeria. Derek holds a PhD in Education from Cornell University. He lives with his wife, son, and dog in Ithaca, New York.
Laura Colosi, Ph.D.
Vice President
Laura Colosi is a well-known educator, evaluator, and expert in research methods, with a particular focus on assessing educational outreach programs. She has more than fifteen years of research and teaching experience at Cornell University in the area of parenting as it relates to developing children who are better thinkers and learners.
Laura taught coursework on Families and Social Policy in Cornell's Department of Human Development before she focused her research on issues relating to parent and child well-being—for example, increasing parent-child interaction as a means to improve children's academic and social outcomes.
Laura is Vice President of ThinkWorks, a company established in 2007 that crystallized her vision of how schools can equip children with the thinking skills they need in order to thrive in any situation they will face in life. In addition to overseeing all aspects of the business, Laura welcomes the opportunity to educate any audience on the imperative of teaching thinking skills and on how the teaching method and products offered by ThinkWorks help parents, teachers, and other professionals to reach their goals for their children, students, or employees.
Laura's work has been published in Cornell's resources for parents, academic journals, and most recently, the children's book Journey to Planet Knowledge, coauthored with Derek Cabrera. She is currently writing a five-part series for younger children to introduce them to the four simple rules that underlie all thinking.
Prior to her work at Cornell and ThinkWorks, Laura conducted research at the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and The U.S. Department of Justice.
Laura holds a PhD in Policy Analysis and Management and a Master’s in Public Administration from Cornell University. She currently serves on the Board for her children's after-school program, volunteers time in both of her children's elementary-school classrooms, and lives in Ithaca with her two daughters.