Former Secretary General. International Council for Open and Distance Education, ICDE.
Gard Titlestad led the ICDE operations and the Permanent Secretariat.
He works in close partnership with UNESCO for the new Sustainable Development Goal 4. Collaboration between institutions, associations, companies and individuals is a key priority, on a regional, global and north-south-south basis. ICDE participates in the Teachers Task Force for Education 2030, the Global Alliance for Literacy and the UNESCO led initiative for Quality Assurance in Higher Education.
Gard joined ICDE in 2011 after serving at the Nordic Council of Ministers, NCM, in Copenhagen, Denmark, as director for the Department of Knowledge and Welfare. He managed the secretariat for several configurations of ministers including the ministers for education, research and IT, the ministers for health and social affairs, the ministers for labour affairs, for a shorter period the ministers for enterprise and the ministers for finance. Before joining the NCM, Gard served as Research and IT Counsellor for Norway, and as member of the executive team for the Norwegian delegation to the European Union.
Prior to this, he was a senior official in the European Commission in Brussels, Directorate General Information Society. In Norway he worked for the Norwegian Government in research and development agencies.
Gard is a member of the Advisory Board of the African Virtual University (AVU) online Journal of Research in Open, Distance and e-Learning (JRODeL). Editorial Advisory Board of the Indian Journal of Open Learning and the Editorial board of the American Journal of Distance Education. ICDE publishes the platinum open access journal Open Praxis. Mr Titlestad retired from International Council for Open and Distance Education in 2018. Gard Titlestad continues to be a Member of the Governing Board of UNESCO IITE.