Silja Kallenbach, Vice President of World Education, Inc. oversees the U.S. Division at World Education.  Silja has 37 years of experience in adult education as administrator, professional development provider, program developer, researcher, and teacher.  Silja oversees the EdTech Center @World Education. 

Silja co-designed the Transition to College and Careers demonstration project and its theory of change and worked closely with the evaluators as well as its predecessor, the 25-site New England ABE-to-College Transition Project. Silja co-founded the National College Transition Network. Other projects that Silja has helped to design, secured funding for, and worked on include: Networks for Integrating New Americans, the New England Learner Persistence Project, and the Adult Multiple Intelligences Study. Silja is the recipient of the 2014 national award for Promoting Literacy Nationally and Internationally issued by the Coalition of Adult Basic Education (COABE) and a 2006 Massachusetts Literacy Champion selected by the Massachusetts Literacy Foundation. 

From 1994 to 2011, Silja served as the Director of the New England Literacy Resource Center at World Education, a six-state partnership of state adult education directors, professional development providers, and educators whose purpose is to build the capacity of the region’s adult education programs. Silja is former director of the City of Boston Adult Literacy Initiative, and a co-founder and former Associate Director of the Boston Adult Literacy Fund (now First Literacy). She began her adult education career as a teacher of English Language Learners and then became an incorporator and Coordinator of a Latina women’s learning center in Boston. Silja grew up in Finland and is a US and Finnish citizen. Silja has an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts.