2024 IESO Staff (additional staff will be added on a rolling basis)
David Madden
Co-Tournament Director, IESO 2024; Founder and Co-Executive Director, International Academic Competitions
David Madden is the co-founder and co-Executive Director of International Academic Competitions and the International Environmental Science Olympiad. He began his involvement in academic competitions in the 1990’s playing quiz bowl for Ridgewood High School and Princeton University. In 2004, he appeared as a contestant on the American quiz show Jeopardy! winning 19 games in a row. He also participated in the Jeopardy! All Star Games tournament in early 2019 which he and his teammates won, and was a semifinalist in the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament earlier in 2024. While taking coursework to become a social studies teacher, he established the first competitions in the International Academic Competitions family in June 2010. For the past 14 years, David has overseen IAC as Executive Director, and as of 2024, approximately 100,000 students in over 50 countries compete in IAC events each school year. David is also a published art historian, an avid bird watcher (which he has done on six continents; Antarctica still awaits), an Ambassador for Environmental Education with the Rainforest Alliance, and once hiked the entire length of the US east coast for the Fisher House Foundation, a veterans charity. He enjoys running, skiing, baking chocolate chip cookies, and playing with his three cheeky parakeets.
Nolwenn Madden
Co-Tournament Director, IESO 2024; Co-Executive Director, International Academic Competitions
Nolwenn Madden is the co-Executive Director of International Academic Competitions and the co-founder of the International Geography Championships. Prior to her career in academic competitions, Nolwenn studied at the French grande école EM Lyon where she received a MS in Management. She also worked as a translator for Microsoft and booking.com before launching the International History Bee and Bowl in 2011. She has organized and directed hundreds of tournaments for IAC throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, and oversees organizational strategy and outreach for IAC. Nolwenn and David have together overseen the International History Olympiad (since its launch in 2015) and International Geography Championships (since its launch in 2018); the structure of the International Environmental Science Olympiad is modeled on these events. In her spare time, she enjoys playing the ukulele, skiing and goofing around with Apple, Maui, and Gigi (the aforementioned cheeky parakeets) as well as playing the cello, baking delicious French desserts, and traveling.
Jay Wickliff
Carbon Credits Trading Game Coordinator
As Director of Strategic Planning, Jay helps chart the future of IAC. He is the co-founder of the National Political Science Bee and coordinates the related discussion groups. He designs academic games like the Great Trading Game and MCs award ceremonies at major competitions including every International History Olympiad. As a teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, he coached the History Bowl team to a National Championship. Jay has also served as Executive Director at Presidential Classroom, a Washington-based civic education program for outstanding high school students, where he founded the Future World Leaders Summit for teenage leaders from around the world. During his career in human resources management, he worked as Vice President for Global Human Resources at Gerber Scientific, Inc., a mid-sized New York Stock Exchange listed company.
Norman Aponte
Norman Aponte has collaborated with International Academic Competitions since 2022 when he helped bring IAC to Puerto Rico. Since then, he has participated as a coach in regional and national tournaments with schools such as The Palmas Academy and Caguas Private School. Mr. Aponte is especially passionate about history, which has led him to pursue postgraduate studies in that discipline. Today, he is a professor at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. In regards to environmental science, he is a promoter of the Sustainable Development Goals in Puerto Rico, a role he performs as a member of the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rico chapter of the United Nations Association (UNA-USA Puerto Rico).