Meet your mentor
More than a coach —
a mentor for exceptional thinkers and speakers.
For more than fifteen years, Miha Andrič has worked with some of the world's most ambitious students, helping them develop something far more valuable than competition results alone: the ability to think with clarity, communicate with confidence, and approach complex problems independently.
As an internationally recognised philosopher, educator, debate coach, and communication specialist, his work brings together academic philosophy, elite competition coaching, psychology of learning, argumentation, and modern educational research into a single mentoring approach.
Over the course of his career, he has worked with students, teachers, professionals from the business world, universities, and educational organisations in more than forty countries across Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
While many educators specialise in only one field, Miha's career has uniquely combined philosophy, debate, curriculum design, teacher education, leadership, and international educational policy. This interdisciplinary perspective allows him to mentor students not simply toward winning competitions, but toward becoming intellectually independent people capable of succeeding at the highest academic levels.
What matters most, however, is not where his students compete — it is who they become, and how they build their career path and reference portfolio.
- Years of mentoring
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- Countries worked in
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- Teachers trained
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- Students in workshops and lectures
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- Students mentored one-on-one
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Philosophy
Helping students learn how to think
Philosophy has always been at the heart of Miha's educational work.
Today he serves as an Executive Board Member of the International Philosophy Olympiad (IPO), the world's most prestigious philosophy competition, helping shape its academic standards and future development. He previously directed the organisation of the Olympiad in 2020 and 2021 and has spent more than a decade working closely with national delegations, essay evaluators, coaches, and some of the world's most talented young philosophers.
His students have earned several medals and honourable mentions at the International Philosophy Olympiad, but his approach extends far beyond competition preparation.
Students learn to analyse philosophical texts, construct sophisticated arguments, write original essays, explore competing traditions of thought, and develop intellectual confidence. Rather than memorising theories, they learn to question assumptions, recognise hidden implications, and defend their own positions through careful reasoning.
Many of his former students have continued their studies at leading universities around the world, pursuing careers in philosophy, law, politics, economics, medicine, and academic research.
Debate
Coaching future leaders and world-class communicators
Alongside philosophy, Miha is internationally recognised as one of the world's most experienced debate educators.
During his career he has served as Chief Adjudicator at more than one hundred international debate tournaments, coached national debate teams, directed highly successful school debate programmes, and established debate academies across Europe, the United States, Africa, and the Middle East.
He has served as:
- Director of the Slovenian National Debate Organisation.
- Board Member of the International Debate Education Association (IDEA).
- Advisory Board Member of the International Public Policy Forum (IPPF, New York).
- Director of international debate academies in the Middle East, USA, Slovenia, Turkey, the UK and Africa.
- National team head coach for Slovenia, Turkey and others.
- National debate programme advisor for many European countries.
- Head coach of the globally most successful school World Schools Debate programme between 2014 and 2018.
His students have won national championships, represented their countries internationally, defeated national teams at major World Schools Debate tournaments, and later pursued successful careers in law, diplomacy, public policy, business, medicine, and academia.
But debate, in his view, is never simply about speaking well. It is about learning to think under pressure, evaluate evidence, understand opposing perspectives, communicate with precision, and make good decisions when the answer is not obvious.
Those are lifelong skills that extend far beyond competition.
Global educational leadership
Shaping education beyond the classroom
Miha's influence reaches well beyond individual mentoring.
Throughout his career he has helped design educational programmes, develop international curricula, organise academic competitions, advise educational organisations, and train coaches across multiple continents.
His work has included collaborations with universities, ministries of education, schools, NGOs, and international educational institutions, where he has contributed to the development of philosophy education, debate programmes, critical thinking curricula, and communication training.
Whether developing national debate programmes in emerging educational communities or helping shape international philosophy standards, his goal has remained remarkably consistent: to help education produce better thinkers — not simply better test-takers.
Training teachers
Teaching the teachers
Exceptional students need exceptional educators.
Alongside his work with young people, Miha has become one of the region's leading teacher educators. Over the past fifteen years he has trained more than 20,000 teachers through professional development programmes focused on critical thinking, communication, motivation, leadership, philosophy for children, classroom dialogue, artificial intelligence, and modern educational methodology.
His workshops are known for combining philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, communication science, and practical classroom strategies into highly interactive learning experiences.
This work continuously informs his mentoring. Because he spends much of his professional life helping teachers improve how they teach, he understands not only how students learn — but also where traditional education often fails to develop independent thinkers.
Beyond competitions
Preparing students for university — and life
Although many students initially join the programme to prepare for the International Philosophy Olympiad or elite debate competitions, the mentorship quickly becomes much more than competition coaching.
Students develop abilities that continue to serve them throughout university and professional life:
- Analytical thinking.
- Academic writing.
- Persuasive communication.
- Intellectual confidence.
- Independent research.
- Structured decision-making.
- Public speaking.
- Interviewing skills.
- Leadership.
Many former students later study at leading universities worldwide and pursue careers in law, medicine, economics, philosophy, business, politics, technology, diplomacy, and academia.
The common denominator is not what they study. It is how they think.
A truly personal mentorship
Why only a small number of students?
Unlike large online courses or coaching academies, Miha intentionally accepts only a limited number of private students each year.
Every mentorship is individually designed around the student's goals, strengths, learning style, and long-term ambitions.
Sessions are highly interactive and resemble intellectual conversations rather than traditional lessons. Students are challenged with questions, real philosophical problems, debate simulations, writing exercises, and personalised feedback that evolves as they progress.
Between sessions, students receive detailed comments on essays, speeches, debate cases, and independent projects, creating a continuous learning process rather than isolated weekly meetings.
This level of personal attention simply cannot be achieved in larger programmes.
Online mentoring
Bringing world-class mentorship anywhere in the world
Students currently work with Miha from Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East, and beyond.
Online sessions combine the flexibility of remote learning with the depth of intensive one-to-one mentorship. Using shared documents, live annotation, collaborative writing, debate simulations, and personalised assignments, students receive the same level of interaction and feedback as they would in person.
Many families appreciate that geographical distance is no longer a limitation. Whether preparing for an international competition, strengthening university applications, or developing long-term intellectual confidence, students can access world-class mentoring from anywhere.
Miha has extensive experience in online education — he established the first online international debate tournament in the world (Bluebonnet) in 2020, moved the International Philosophy Olympiad into the online environment in 2020 and 2021, has organised more than fifty international online debate tournaments and academies, and now offers training courses for teachers and schools on the benefits and traps of the online educational environment.
Educational philosophy
Learning how to think
Education should not tell students what to think. It should teach them how to think.
Knowledge matters. But knowledge becomes truly powerful only when students learn to question assumptions, connect ideas across disciplines, evaluate competing arguments, communicate with clarity, and build positions they genuinely understand.
That is the purpose of this mentorship — not simply to help students succeed in competitions, but to help them become thoughtful, intellectually independent people capable of making meaningful contributions wherever life takes them.
In the field
Lectures, academies and tournaments
Gallery
Lectures, seminars and international conferences
Join the programme
Only a limited number of students are accepted each year.
To ensure genuine individual attention, places are deliberately few. Students and parents are invited to begin with a short introductory conversation to discuss goals, expectations and whether the mentorship is the right fit. Following this conversation, a personalised mentoring plan and schedule are designed together.
- The first conversation
- Free and without obligation — a chemistry meeting for the student, the parents and the mentor.
- Fees
- Determined after the first free conversation, once the scope, frequency and goals of the mentorship have been agreed together.