About

About Teru Clavel

Teru Clavel is a comparative education expert, bestselling author, and speaker who has shared her insights on education and globalization on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS, The TODAY Show, CBS This Morning, CNBC’s Squawk Box, and Channel NewsAsia. She has written columns for and has been featured and cited in the Times of London, The Chicago Tribune, The Japan Times, Financial Times, the Washington Post and numerous other publications.

Her book, World Class: One Mother’s Journey Halfway Around the Globe in Search of the Best Education for Her Children (Simon & Schuster imprint Atria, 2019), chronicles her experience over a decade raising her children in the local public schools of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Palo Alto. Written with research, personal anecdote and takeaway, World Class offers real-world solutions to the toughest education dilemmas we face here and abroad. She has been heard on over 2,500 radio stations including WGN in Chicago and KABC with Dr. Drew Pinsky in Los Angeles and on top podcasts like Mom Brain with Hilaria Baldwin and Daphne Oz.

Teru has a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth in Asian Studies and earned a master of science in Global and International Education from Drexel School of Education with a concentration on China, Japan, and the United States, where she graduated with top honors and an award for her independent research on “Japanese Parents’ Approach to Educating their Children in a Globalization Era.


While living abroad, she was an education journalist and college consultant. Teru recently returned with her family to her hometown, New York City.

Teru believes in advancing the next generation through public service. She introduced the Grameen Foundation, that specializes in establishing microfinance networks globally, to multinational institutional investors and corporations in Hong Kong. She spearheaded 6-figure fundraising efforts for Half the Sky childcare centers and orphanages throughout China. She established a sports scholarship in Hong Kong for underprivileged youth to compete globally and taught English to Shanghai’s migrant children through a Chinese NGO and the US Embassy. In Tokyo, she served on the Advisory Board of The Japan Times. In Silicon Valley, she was a mentor in the Peninsula Bridge program to help less privileged first generation youth succeed in high school to matriculate at a four-year college.

Prior to her commitment to global education, Teru graduated from the New York School of Interior Design with High Honors to then host an internationally syndicated home design show for HGTV while running her own design firm.