Our instructors

Stacey Matson

Stacey Matson is a children’s and young adult author, creative writing instructor and manuscript consultant based in Vancouver, BC. She has served as Writer in Residence for the Saskatoon Public Library (2025–2026) and as the Writer’s Trust Berton House writer-in-residence in Dawson City, Yukon (2016). Stacey supports writers of all ages in developing their craft through her teaching with the Creative Writing for Children Society and her work as a manuscript consultant for Simon Fraser University. She is also a member of the Moon Jelly Arts Collective, a multidisciplinary group of artists delivering immersive arts programming in schools across BC. 

Stacey has published five novels with Scholastic Canada, including Eleven Out of Ten and Finding Cooper. Her first book, A Year in the Life of a Total and Complete Genius, was a Junior Library Guild Selection and won the Chocolate Lily award.  

Joshua Mattson

Eric Mazzi

Eric Mazzi, BSc, MSc, PhD, is Principal at Mazzi Consulting and Adjunct Professor at New York Institute of Technology—Vancouver.

He is a consultant and educator specializing in technology and policy for industrial and commercial energy systems. He provides analysis, measurement and verification, policy studies and education to reduce energy use and emissions while promoting energy equity. He has taught university and certification courses, and served five years on engineering faculty at UBC. He is lead editor and co-author of the forthcoming 9th edition of the Guide to Energy Management.

Lawrence McDaniel

Lawrence McDaniel, BSc, is the Chief Technology Officer at Querium Corporation, an edtech company specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing for educational institutions. He is the principal author and lead product engineer of Smarter by Querium™, an AI resource orchestration platform designed to teach generative AI to non-programmers.

Lawrence brings extensive experience in financial modelling, forecasting systems, analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, web, database technology and cloud infrastructure. He is a veteran of the hedge fund industry and multiple startups and early-stage ventures with dozens of successful product launches and one NASDAQ IPO under his belt.

He publishes regularly on advances in web technologies and open source platforms, and is the principal maintainer of openedx-actions, a set of CI-CD tools for scaling Open edX on Kubernetes. Learn more about Lawrence here.

Christopher McLeod

Emily Meier

Daria Melnik

Mona Mendel

Ella Meyer

Mobina Mobaraki

Mobina Mobaraki, PhD, MSc, is Co-Founder and CTO of an AI mental health startup and an AI and Python programming instructor. She is a PhD-trained AI researcher, entrepreneur and educator and has conducted applied research with Google’s XR team, contributing to world-class R&D in extended reality and machine learning.

At her startup, an AI-powered wellness platform, Mobina has led the product from concept to paying clients and secured non-dilutive funding through Mitacs, gaining acceptance into the NextAI accelerator. She has coached and instructed professionals and students in AI, Python programming, performance strategies and technology adoption, bringing technical expertise to responsible AI use and decision-making.

Mobina is passionate about empowering practitioners and businesses to work effectively with AI systems and she has published several articles including Masked Face Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks and Similarity Analysis.

Paula Moriarity

Leigh Morrow

Leigh Morrow is a former television investigative reporter (CBC, Global, City TV) who covered local and international stories in Canada, the United States and Vietnam. With a degree in journalism and more than three decades in broadcast journalism, she loved telling people’s stories and digging deep for many award-winning investigative pieces. From her experiences, she co-wrote a memoir for women in their middle years, Just Push Play – on Midlife. In 2017, she became certified by the Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies in California to teach and train others in the Guided Autobiography method. Leigh teaches Guided Autobiography level 1 and 2, and a number of courses on creative aging, including The Wisdom Years: Aging with Purpose and Creativity. Learn about Leigh’s studio where she writes and creates on her website.

Shahriyar Motahari

Shahriyar Motahari is a PhD student in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at UBC, specializing in developing innovative technologies for the removal of emerging contaminants from water. Shahriyar also has a background in tutoring high school students, reflecting his passion for teaching and mentorship.

Ulysses Mugavazi

Ulysses Mugavazi is a Zimbabwean writer living on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ land. He was a recipient of the Mozilla Foundation’s 2023 Creative Media Awards, a keynote speaker at the Science Fiction Foundation’s 2024 Annual Conference, and a McCormack Writing Center Winter Online 2026 nonfiction scholar. He graduated from UBCs MFA in Creative Writing in 2025. His work has appeared in Level Ground’s SKEW and was shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards.  

Soroush Nasseri

Dr. S. Soroush Nasseri is a biomedical engineer and researcher at the UBC School of Biomedical Engineering. Soroush's research focused on developing tools for the application of 3-D cell cultures for development and discovery of novel drugs.

Liza Navarro

Laurence Neal

Laurence Lewis Neal is a trans/nonbinary writer, historian and artist holding dual master’s degrees in Creative Writing and History. They are an alumnus of UBC and currently live on Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh lands. Neal’s nonfiction essays have been published in Dissent and Guernica, their short fiction was a Summer Literary Prize finalist, and an excerpt of their forthcoming novel was longlisted for the 2026 Disquiet Literary Prize. Their poetry will appear in Eavesdrop’s 2026 anthology. Neal incorporates autobiographical elements in their fiction, fiction techniques in their nonfiction, and poetic language and historical research in all their work. Over the past decade, they have taught writing to students of diverse ages, learning styles and neurotypes, and they are passionate about passing along craft wisdom and community support. 

Justin Newell

Justin Newell, art historian and artist, has lectured extensively on Western Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1300-1963, the Bible in Western Art, and the Greek Myths in Art. His lectures have been offered at UBC and local colleges, as well as aboard Elite Cruise Ships, where he is recognized as one of their top special interest speakers. He also conducts art history tours to Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris, London, and other art centres of the world, weaving his knowledge of history, art, political events, and famous sights into his presentations.

Lucia Nogacz

Lucia Helena Kouten Nogacz, MA, has close to 30 years’ experience teaching Portuguese language, literature and writing to learners of all ages in Brazil and Canada.

After earning her master’s degree in Portuguese language and literature, Lucia worked as a teacher and pedagogic programs coordinator at elementary and high schools in Brazil. She was also a pedagogic director at a preschool in Curitiba where she developed bilingual Portuguese-English projects.

In Canada, Lucia has worked as a language instructor at Berlitz Canada since 2010, and is accredited in Practical Teaching Techniques in speaking, listening, reading and writing from the same institution. She has taught several levels of Brazilian Portuguese classes to various ages and has prepared students for the Portuguese Language Proficiency Test (CELPE-BRAS). Lucia also has experience revising, translating and proofreading books and scholarly materials from Spanish and English to Portuguese.

Lucia was born in Curitiba, Brazil, and moved to Vancouver more than a decade ago. She reads books of a variety of genres daily, and has a passion for learning about Portuguese and English literature and languages.

David Ogle

David Ogle, MSc, COC, PCC, believes coaching is an effective means to distill our genius into simple and doable actions. He applies his background in neuroscience and organizational leadership to coaching executives, senior leadership teams, and Olympic athletes. By leveraging a deeper understanding of the brain and seeking a greater awareness around one’s role as a leader and their contribution, the highest potential for performance is achievable.

David holds a Master of Science in Applied Neuroscience and Mental Health and brings over a decade of coaching and organizational leadership experience in high-growth organizations. He graduated from the UBC Certificate in Organizational Coaching, is a certified StandOut Strengths Coach and has completed courses through CTI.