Photograph to come
Lynda at her desk in Pontypridd, with the printed chapters and quick reference cards in shot. Natural light, not a studio headshot.
This is an empty frame rather than a photograph, and it is deliberate. This page exists to show you that a real, findable person is behind the standard. An AI-generated portrait would defeat exactly that. The real photograph is coming.
Lynda Smart · Founder and author · Pontypridd, Wales
I write all of it, and I am the person you will deal with.
- Taught in Italy
- Taught in the Dominican Republic
- Taught in Wales
- Trained staff in the United Kingdom
- Trained staff in Ireland
- Trained staff in India
- Summer camps in Tunisia
- Summer camps in Turkey
I have taught English in Italy and the Dominican Republic, and I teach now in a secondary school in South Wales. I have run summer camps in Tunisia and Turkey. Before all of that I spent a decade training staff for large employers in the UK, Ireland and India.
In every one of those settings the same thing happened. People worked hard at the language and then came unstuck on something that was not language at all.
Somebody would understand every word of a sentence and still have no idea what had just been meant by it. Nobody had told them the rule, because the rule is unwritten and the people who live by it do not know they are following one.
RISEA is what I built for that. It is not a grammar course and it does not compete with one. It is the layer underneath — what people actually say, what they actually mean, and what you can safely say back.
Qualifications, and how to check them
Two of these can be verified by somebody other than me, which makes them worth more than the rest put together.
- Registered with the Education Workforce Council Independently checkable
- The statutory register for education practitioners in Wales.
- Enhanced DBS, on the Update Service Independently checkable
- Current and continuously checkable, rather than a one-off certificate.
Important if you are checking the register. My professional registrations are held under my former name, Lynda Prance. Search the Education Workforce Council register for that, not for Lynda Smart, or you will find nothing and reasonably assume I made this up. Same for the DBS certificate.
Teaching qualifications
- Cambridge English Examiner trained — Starters, Movers, Flyers, KET and PET
- Level 4 TEFL Diploma (160 hours)
- 120-hour TEFL Certificate
- 40-hour Advanced Online Teaching Certificate
- BA (Hons) Humanities and English Language, Open University — in progress
- SEN Level 3 Teaching Assistant
- ADHD Awareness
What I actually do, currently
I teach English and literacy at a secondary school in South Wales, on the inclusion and pastoral welfare team. I support learners with social, emotional and mental health needs using trauma-informed practice, and I work alongside the safeguarding and inclusion teams.
That matters for what I sell. The trauma-informed approach in these materials is not a stance I read about. It is what I do on a Tuesday.
Before this
- Primary and ESL teacher, European School Dominican, Cabarete — English, maths, science and geography on the British curriculum. Also ESL for ages 5 to 16, with multilingual learners from Spanish and Latin American backgrounds.
- EFL teacher, Lingue Senza Frontiere, Sanremo, Italy — over sixty young learners aged 5 to 14, summer language camps, and mentoring junior tutors.
- Trainer and project coordinator, NOWTV and Firstsource, Cardiff and Londonderry — recruitment, onboarding and training for new customer service centres, with performance metrics, quality assurance protocols and staff development plans.
- Communication skills trainer, Sky and Firstsource, across the UK, Ireland and India — communication, customer engagement and collaboration, delivered internationally.
- HR training and development, A1 Office Contracts — staff development, training delivery and quality assurance.
The corporate half of that is directly relevant to the certification side of RISEA. Building an induction programme, writing a communication standard and running quality assurance against it is work I did for large employers for most of a decade. I wrote one of my own afterwards, not instead.
Where I am
Pontypridd, in Rhondda Cynon Taf, south Wales. Not “UK-based”. If you want to check that a person exists before you spend public money with them, a town is more useful than a country.
There is no published postal address, because this is a one-person business run from home. A postal address is supplied on request for contracting, and to any organisation that needs one on a purchase order.
How this business is set up
A sole trader business, established 2026, not VAT registered. Full detail — including what is not in place — is on the information for buyers page. I would rather you read the awkward version there than get a polished one here.
What I will not do
I will not give immigration advice. Advising a particular person about their immigration position is regulated, and doing it unregulated is a criminal offence. Everything RISEA publishes is general information plus signposting. Never “in your case”. The same line applies to legal, financial and medical questions — for anything medical, the material points people at NHS 111.
I will not call this an accreditation. It is not one. I author the standard and I award it, and that is said on every page that mentions certification rather than conceded when somebody presses.
I will not invent proof. There are no testimonials on this site, no case studies, no client logos and no statistics about how well it works. RISEA is new, and none of those exist yet. When they do, they will be real and they will be attributed. What the work is built on is on the evidence page instead.
Contact
contact@riseainternational.co.uk. A person reads it and a person answers it, within five working days.