Future Learning Design Podcast

Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang⁠ studies the psychological and neurobiological bases of social emotion, self-awareness and culture and their implications for learning, development and schools. She is a Professor of Education at the ⁠USC Rossier School of Education⁠, a Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program Faculty at the University of Southern California, and Director of the USC ⁠Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE)⁠.

Mary Helen was elected 2016-2018 president of the International ⁠Mind, Brain and Education Society⁠ by the society’s membership. She is serving as a distinguished scientist on the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on the Science and Practice of Learning. Mary Helen is also associate Editor for the award-winning journal Mind, Brain and Education and for the new journal AERA Open, and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

In her research work, Mary Helen leads cross-cultural, longitudinal studies investigating adolescent brain and social-emotional development, academic success and relations to school and life achievement in urban contexts as well as the neural and psychosocial correlates of mindsets in low-SES adolescents from different cultural groups. She also serves as scientific adviser to several Los Angeles schools/districts.

Mary Helen’s 2015 book, ⁠Emotions, learning and the brain: Exploring the educational implications of affective neuroscience⁠, is available from W.W. Norton publishers (author proceeds are donated to education-related causes). 

In May 2020, Mary Helen wrote a must-read article in ASCD with ⁠Doug Knecht⁠ (⁠Bank Street College of Education⁠) entitled ⁠Building Meaning Builds Teens' Brains⁠, if you're interested to find out more about the significant implications of Mary Helen's work this is a great place to start!

Social Links

LinkedIn: ⁠@maryhelenimmordino-yang⁠

Twitter: ⁠@CandleUSC

Dr. Zachary Stein is a philosopher of education, psychologist, futurist, and author. He is a founding member of The Consilience Project, with Daniel Schmachtenberger, which is dedicated to improving public sensemaking and building a movement to radically upgrade digital media landscapes. Zak is also co-founder of Lectica, Inc. (with Theo Dawson, a non-profit dedicated to the research-based, justice-oriented reform of large-scale standardized testing in K-12, higher-education, and business), as well as the Civilizational Research Institute, and the Center for World Philosophy and Religion.

Zak is the author of Social Justice and Educational Measurement (2016) and Education in a Time Between Worlds: Essays on the Future of Schools, Technology, and Society (2019).

In 2017, Roger L. Martin was named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers.

Roger is a trusted strategy advisor to the CEOs of companies worldwide including Procter & Gamble, Lego and Ford.

Roger Martin is a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto where he served as Dean from 1998-2013, Academic Director of the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship from 2004-2019 and Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute from 2013-2019. In 2013, he was named global Dean of the Year by the leading business school website, Poets & Quants.

His newest book is A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Managerial Effectiveness (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022). His previous twelve books include When More is Not Better (HBRP, 2020), Creating Great Choices written with Jennifer Riel (HBRP, 2017) Getting Beyond Better written with Sally Osberg (HBRP, 2015) and Playing to Win written with A.G. Lafley (HBRP, 2013), which won the award for Best Book of 2012-13 by the Thinkers50. He has written 30 Harvard Business Review articles.

Roger received his BA from Harvard College, with a concentration in Economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981. He lives in South Florida with his wife, Marie-Louise Skafte.

Roger's I-Think initiative works with educators and students to bring integrative thinking, innovation and design into K12 classrooms.

Social Links

Roger's Medium page: https://rogermartin.medium.com/

Twitter: @RogerLMartin

LinkedIn: @Roger-Martin

Zaretta Hammond is an international education consultant and the author of the best-selling book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. She holds a Master’s in Education in English Education, with a concentration in Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Zaretta is a former high school and community college expository writing instructor. She has also served as adjunct instructor at St. Mary’s College School of Education in Moraga, California, where she taught Foundations of Adolescent Literacy. As a consultant, she has advised and provided professional development to school districts and non-profit organizations across the country around issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching for the past 25 years. In addition to consulting and professional development, she has been on staff at national education reform organizations, including the National Equity Project and the former Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) and she sits on the Board of Trustees for the Center for Collaborative Classroom. She has published articles in Educational Leadership, The Learning Professional, and Phi Delta Kappan.

Zaretta brings a unique focus on neuroscience to the conversation about equity, literacy and culturally responsive pedagogy to make it understandable and practical for educators.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @zaretta-hammond

Twitter: @Ready4Rigor

She is also the founder and Chair of the Board of the FairFight Foundation, a charity that aims to empower girls and women from underprivileged backgrounds through martial arts.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @ginie-servant-miklos

The Global Bildung Network is a network run by volunteers and convened by Lene Rachel Andersen. It is a project under Nordic Bildung. Nordic Bildung is an association based in Copenhagen, Denmark and can be found at www.nordicbildung.org. If you would like to know more, you can contact them at info@nordicbildung.org

Global Bildung Day, on the March Equinox of 2023, is a worldwide gathering of bildung advocates, experts, teachers, and students; all united to support the quality of life, human and nonhuman, through universal education for daily life for all ages. Join us on March 21st as we explore Bildung, Globalization, Nation, and Peoplehood in the 21st Century: https://www.globalbildung.net/gbd2023-march-21/

European Bildung Day Conference 2023 - European Identity: Who are we? Who could we become? Join the drafting of a European Bildung Manifesto May 8-9 2023 in Vilnius: https://www.globalbildung.net/ebd2023/

Michelle Blanchet is co-author of The Startup Teacher (Times 10, 2020), co-author of Preventing Polarization (Times 10, 2023), and an educator and social entrepreneur striving to improve how we treat, train, and value our teachers. After ten years of experience working with young people, she founded the Educators’ Lab, which supports teacher-driven solutions to educational challenges. Michelle earned a master’s in international relations from Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. She has taught social studies in Switzerland and the U.S. and has presented at numerous events, including SXSWedu and TEDxLausanne. Michelle is a part of the Global Shaper Community of the World Economic Forum. She has worked with organizations like PBS Education, the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning, Ashoka, and the Center for Curriculum Redesign.

Brian has been in education for twenty-seven years teaching social studies and coaching varsity soccer in the US and abroad. Brian, a co-host of the 4 A Better Tomorrow Podcast, flew back and forth from Switzerland to run in the 2018 election as a US Congressional primary candidate from the 18th District of Illinois.

Brian holds a master’s degree in educational administration from Illinois State University, where he also served as an adjunct professor working in the field with student teachers in 2018 and 2019. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He currently teaches sociology and civics at Morton High School in Morton, Illinois.

Brian is the co-author of Preventing Polarization (Times 10, 2023) where he and Michelle Blanchet show how all educators can equip our youth with skills to become active and engaged citizens.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @michelle-blanchet-edulab / @brian-deters

Twitter: @educatorslab / 

Jo co-founded www.youcubed.org to give teachers, parents and students the resources and ideas they need to inspire and excite students about mathematics. Her work has been published in the New York Times, TIME magazine, The Telegraph, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and many other news outlets. Her latest book is: Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead & Live without Barriers, published by Harper Collins. 

She is currently co-leading a K-12 Data Science Initiative and was named as one of the 8 educators “changing the face of education” by the BBC.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @dr-jo-boaler

Twitter: @joboaler

Aksinya Samoylova is both a pioneering HR professional, and a passionate progressive educator. She saw that versatility is often overlooked or ignored in the hiring and management process, and that the same issue is endemic to international educational practices. Aksinya felt compelled to investigate polymathy and how it impacts education and work. The result was her book, Why Polymaths?

Aksinya’s keynote speeches and public talks, delivered in English and German draw on a unique combination of the original research she has compiled over many years, and her passion for Philosophy, Psychology, World History, Art History, Science, Asian Studies, and Indian Classical Dance. She is fluent in four languages and knows three others at different levels.

As a graduate in linguistics and pedagogy, she created a concept for a polymathic approach to learning for both individuals and educational insitutions.

Aksinya manages a polymath agency, the first talent acquisition service in the world to specialize in working with companies seeking multidisciplinary professionals.

Aksinya lives with her husband and daughter in Vienna, Austria.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @aksinya

Twitter: @aksinyaPolymath

Instagram: @polymathhistory

Abby Falik is an award-winning social entrepreneur committed to launching the generation of leaders our world needs now.

In 2010 she founded Global Citizen Year, a non-profit that uses the transition after high school to teach the REAL 21st century skills: resilience, empathy, agency and leadership.  As CEO, she raised and deployed over $65M in scholarships and equipped thousands of diverse, emerging leaders to change the world — for good.

In 2022 she joined the Emerson Collective as an Entrepreneur in Residence to incubate new models to transform how young people learn, launch and lead. Using Global Citizen Year as a blueprint, she is on a mission to reinvent the “gap” year as an accessible, purposeful and transformative rite of passage.

A recognized expert on social innovation, leadership, and the changing landscape of education, Abby has been profiled by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Abby is a frequent speaker and has been featured at forums including the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Obama Foundation Summit, the Fast Company Innovation Festival, PopTech, and The Nantucket Project.  In 2018, Abby was named one of America's Top 25 Philanthropy Speakers by The Business of Giving.

Fast Company named her one of the Most Creative People in Business, and Goldman Sachs has selected her as one of the 100 “Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” four times.  For her achievements as a social entrepreneur she has been recognized as an Ashoka Fellow, a MindTrust Fellow, and a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur.

She currently serves on the Advisory Boards of World Learning, Teach for All, and Harvard Business School, as well as on Fast Company’s Impact Council.

Abby received a B.A. in International Relations and an M.A. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University. She received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

She lives in Oakland, Ca. with her husband Joel Segre and their two young sons.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @abbyfalik 

Twitter: @abbyfalik

Instagram: @abbyfalik

Alex Budak is a Berkeley Haas professional faculty member, a social entrepreneur, and the author of the very popular book, Becoming a Changemaker: An Actionable, Inclusive Guide to Leading Positive Change at Any Level.

Alex believes everyone has the potential to lead positive change, and he dedicates his life to helping people from all walks of life become changemakers. He co-founded StartSomeGood.com, a platform that breaks down the barriers that prevent people from enacting change. StartSomeGood.com has now helped over 1,000 changemakers in 50 countries raise over $12 million to catalyze new initiatives. 

Alex previously ran Sweden’s leading social innovation incubator, Reach for Change, and worked at Change.org. 

At Berkeley Haas, Alex puts his heart and soul into teaching students and executives from around the globe the mindset, leadership skills and action steps required to become changemakers. He also serves as Executive Director of the Berkeley Haas Global Access Program and Faculty Director of The Berkeley Changemaker Gateway.

Alex has given lectures on changemaking, entrepreneurship, and leadership in venues ranging from Ukraine to Cambodia, Los Angeles to the Arctic Circle, and at the White House and UN agencies. 

Published in 2022, and following the same structure as his UC Berkeley courses, “Becoming a Changemaker” gives readers the tools and confidence required to become changemakers.

Alex is a graduate of UCLA and Georgetown University and the recipient of UCLA’s Recent Alumnus of the Year Award.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @alexbudak

Twitter: @alexbudak

Amala has developed the first international high school curriculum for young people who are displaced. They also offer Changemaker Courses in areas such as Peace-building, Ethical Leadership, and Social Entrepreneurship. Formerly known as Sky School, Amala was conceived in 2017 in response to the gap in quality education provision for displaced youth.

Holli Ghaisen is the Learning Lead for Amala in Kakuma, Kenya. Holli believes Amala’s High School Diploma is not only the answer to the high demand for education in Kakuma, but that it is also offers solutions to the community’s problems. He joined Amala to be part of that solution. Holli has worked for organisations such as Jesuit Worldwide Learning (JWL) and Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

Louie Barnett is Amala's Education Lead, based in Singapore. Louie got involved with Amala as the course leader for 'Peace-building in your community' in 2018. As Education Lead, he is responsible for leading the development and delivery of Amala’s educational work and improving the impact Amala programmes have on student outcomes. Louie is an experienced chemistry teacher and Theory of Knowledge teacher and helped facilitate the Initiative for Peace programme at UWCSEA for several years. As a graduate of the Teach First programme in the UK, Louie has also worked on projects with Teach for Malaysia and Teach for Cambodia, part of the Teach for All network.

Motasim is 18 years old, from Sudan and currently living in Jordan. Motasim is a member of Amala's forth diploma programme cohort. Christine is from Uganda and currently living in Kakuma, Kenya. She is in the second cohort of the Amala diploma programme.

Dr. Akira Drake Rodriguez writes about race, cities, and space in the US.  She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman School of Design. Akira’s book, Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing (University of Georgia Press 2021), examines the dialectic between black feminist politics and public housing policy in Atlanta from 1936 to 2010.  She was recently awarded a grant from the Spencer Foundation to study critical participatory planning strategies in school facilities planning in Philadelphia. 

Akira was the convener and lead author on Transforming Public Education: A green new deal for K–12 public schools, an initiative of the Climate + Community Project, sponsored by The McHarg Center and Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative.

Ana Aguirre is a co-founder and worker owner at TAZEBAEZ S.Coop where she leads the cooperative development area. She is the Vice President for the International Cooperative Alliance Youth network in Europe, where she also serves in the youth executive committee. Among many other projects, she currently co-leads the course on Platform Cooperatives NOW! with The New School (NYC) and Mondragon. Ana studied at Mondragon Team Academy in the first class of the Leadership Entrepreneurship and Innovation (LEINN) degree.

Lucy Stephens is the founder, Co-Headteacher and Charity Director of The New School in south London, UK. With experience gained from a background in teaching, degrees in social psychology, nutritional therapy and herbal medicine, time spent working at the Prince’s Trust with marginalised young people, and having two of her own children, Lucy has focused her attention on what an alternative democratic model of education could look like. She founded The New School to put research into practice, to challenge the current paradigm, and to address the many deeply entrenched problems in education and society.

We will hear from Amalia, Mehrbanoo, Bruno and Ollie at International School of the Hague, Natalia, Bryant, and Mark at Avenues School, New York, Michaela, Lauren, and James at Northern Bay College in Geelong, and lastly Charlie, Josie, Dylan and Nathan at Prahran High School in Melbourne.

Despite working in very different contexts and being at different stages of the process, what you'll hear is that many of the challenges and successes are the same! How much structure is the right amount to give learners freedom but also support at the right time? What skills and approaches to learning do students need and quickly develop as part of this work? How do we reduce the 'fear-factor' of these changes among parents, teachers, school leaders and sometimes amongst students themselves? How do assessments and curriculum structures also need to develop to make sure that these shifts are well-supported rather than working against the system? Because when you hear these students tell their stories, there is NO QUESTION about how significant and real the benefits are of giving them more ownership and control over their learning.

For more background on the theory and practices around supporting student agency, you can check out episode 86 with Larissa Raymond and Jayne-Louise Collins.

The schools featured in this episode are:

International School of the Hague: https://www.ishthehague.nl/academic/myp/pathfinder-curriculum

Contact - Pathfinder Programme Lead: Anne Tabak

Avenues, New York: https://www.avenues.org/open-ed/what-do-students-really-learn-in-mastery 

Contact - Global Academic Dean: Mark Gutkowski

Northern Bay College, Geelong: https://www.nbc.vic.edu.au/ 

Contact - Year 9 Learning Community Leader: James Bayard

Prahran High School, Melbourne: https://prahranhighschool.vic.edu.au/  

Contact - Executive Principal: Nathan Chisholm

Dr. Theo Dawson is the founder and CEO of Lectica, Inc. Since the early 1990s, Dawson's research has focused on developing and building an alternative assessment infrastructure and the technologies to support it. She received her Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. Her award-winning dissertation presented a new approach to measuring learning and describing learning pathways. 

She is the author of numerous articles, book chapters and papers on issues related to human development in journals such as Cognitive Development, Mind, Brain, and Education, The European Journal of Developmental Psychology, Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, The Journal of Applied Measurement, and Developmental Review, has contributed chapters to several edited books, has made many presentations at professional conferences and events. 

Dr. Dawson has run several successful organizations, including Lectica, Inc., and its predecessor, the Developmental Testing Service, LLC. She has secured more than $1.5 million in grants from funding agencies like the Spencer Foundation, the NSF, and IES, and has held appointments at the University of California at Berkeley, Hampshire College, the Medical Center at Louisiana State University, and the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Dr. Dawson has also acted as a consultant to institutions like the U.S. Federal Government, Harvard University, the University of Texas at Arlington, JFK University, the University of Ireland, the University of Cyprus, and a variety of businesses and schools, both in the US and abroad.

Social Links

Twitter: @theodawson 

LinkedIn: @theo-dawson

Sanjay Sarma is the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering. From 2012 until 2021, Sanjay led MIT Open Learning, first as director, then as dean, and finally as vice president. MIT Open Learning includes the Office of Digital Learning, the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili), the Center for Advanced Virtuality, and the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL). In 2020 Sanjay published Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn, which he co-authored with Luke Yoquinto.

Previously, Sanjay co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT and developed many of the key technologies behind the Electronic Product Code suite of radio frequency identification (RFID) standards now used worldwide. He was also the founder and CTO of OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems in 2008. Sanjay has authored over 100 academic papers in computational geometry, sensing, RFID, automation, and computer-aided design, and is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research, including the MacVicar Fellowship, the BusinessWeek eBiz Award, and InformationWeek’s Innovators and Influencers Award.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @mit-open-learning

Twitter: @mitopenlearning

Julie Stern has nearly two decades experience facilitating adult learning, and feels lucky to partner with educators to take their practice to the next level. She is passionate about synthesizing the best of education research into practical tools that support educators in breaking free of the industrial model of schooling and moving toward teaching and learning that promotes sustainability, equity, and well-being. She is a four-time best-selling author of Learning that Transfers, Visible Learning for Social Studies, The On-Your-Feet-Guide to Learning Transfer and Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding, Elementary and Secondary. She is a certified trainer in Visible Learning Plus and Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction. 

Julie is also a James Madison Constitutional Fellow and taught social studies for many years in Washington, DC and her native Louisiana. She moves internationally every few years with her husband, a US diplomat, and her two children.

You can find further info and resources at Julie's website is edtosavetheworld.com.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @julieharrisstern

Twitter: @JulieHStern

Harbord & Khan Educational Consultants - www.harbordandkhan.com

Social Links

Twitter: @harbordkhan; @sara_riaz_khan

LinkedIn: @meredith-harbord; @sarariazkhan

Lene Rachel Andersen is an economist, author, futurist, and Bildung activist. After studying business economy, and theology, she wrote entertainment for Danish television before becoming a full-time writer, focusing on technological development, big history, and the future of humanity. Since 2005, Lene has written 20 books and received two Danish democracy awards: Ebbe Kløvedal-Reich Democracy Baton (2007) and Døssing Prisen, the Danish librarians’ democracy prize (2012). Among her books are The Nordic Secret (2017), Metamodernity (2019), Bildung (2020) and Libertism (2022) and a publicly available paper on Bildung commissioned by the Erasmus+ Programme for the European Union. She is a full member of the Club of Rome, president of the Copenhagen based bildung lab Nordic Bildung, and initiator of Global Bildung Network, Global Bildung Day, and European Bildung Day.

This season's Global Bildung Day is approaching on 21st September and you can sign up and find out more here:  https://www.globalbildung.net/gbd2022-september/

Carlota Perez is a British-Venezuelan researcher, lecturer and international consultant. She studies the mutual shaping of technical change and society and the lessons provided by the history of technological revolutions for economic growth and development.

In Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages (Elgar 2002), Carlota put forward her theory of the emergence and diffusion of technological revolutions and of the role of finance in the process. She is currently working on a sequel, Beyond the Technological Revolution, funded by Anthemis UK, which will analyse the roles that government, business and civil society play in the deployment of the potential of each revolution.

Carlota is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at University College London, UK and at SPRU, the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, UK; Adjunct Professor of Technology and Socio-Economic Development at the Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance at TalTech, Estonia. 

Her long career has spanned civil service, consultancy, academic research and teaching, beginning in the 1970s with an investigation into the structural causes of the energy crisis in her home country of Venezuela. After working on international technology transfer at the Institute of Foreign Trade in the 1970s, she became the founding Director of Technological Development at the Ministry of Industry (1980-83) – where, alongside other policy instruments to promote innovation, she created the first venture capital fund in the country.

Carlota has acted as consultant for several Latin American governments and for international organisations and multilateral agencies such as UN Industrial Development Organisation, United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), the Andean Pact, the World Bank, the OECD and the EU, where she chaired the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Expert Group for Green Growth and Jobs.

Social Links

Twitter: @CarlotaPrzPerez

Youtube: @CarlotaPerez

Dr. Jayne-Louise Collins is Co-director and lead designer and researcher at EdPartnerships International. Her interests include organisational and system learning through a regenerative and ecological paradigm of change.

Jayne-Louise’s work is focused on educational research and building learning capacity in organisations through a partnering approach. She has had extensive experience in partnering with a range of education systems and schools across Australia to build connected leadership capacity, creating the conditions for regenerative change, and in turn flourishing and hopeful cultures of learning.

Jayne-Louise also brings a depth of knowledge and understanding of recent research and practice in the field of learner agency – for both young people and adults. Her learning designs privilege internal research processes that activate the voice of young people and adults and invite collaborate analysis and collective sense making; an important anchor for ongoing co-design with partners.

Larissa Raymond is a designer and leader of professional learning at EdPartnerships International. Prior to joining EdPartnerships she was Head of Teaching and Learning at Caulfield Grammar School.

Larissa has a wealth of experience and insight in partnering with young people and adults in primary and secondary school contexts and local communities. She recently designed, researched and published the outcomes of a longitudinal research project exploring the structural, material, and cultural challenges encountered by a secondary school when conceptualising and enacting learner agency: Beyond Student Voice: Navigating Challenges in a Time of Neoliberalism (co-authored with Anne Cloonan).

Jayne-Louise, Larissa and their EdPartnerships colleagues completed a two-year qualitative research project exploring learner agency in partnership with young people, their teachers and principals (2019-2021). 

This resulted in the publication of a series of papers and a conceptual framework which continues to shape learner agency initiatives in various education sectors: Learner agency as a living ecology: A way of being in the world and being in the world with each other.

This is the introduction in a series of short podcast spotlights on schools around the world who are putting many of these ideas into practice in which we speak with young people, teachers and leaders.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @dr-jayne-louise-collins / @larissa-raymond

Twitter: @Jayne_Louise_C / @PartnershipsEd

Glenn Whitman is a History teacher and Executive Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (CTTL) at St. Andrew's Episcopal School. Glenn is the co-author of Neuroteach: Brain Science and the Future of Education, the co-designer of Neuroteach Global and Neuroteach Global Student and co-editor of Think Differently and Deeply, the international publication of the CTTL. Glenn earned his MALS from Dartmouth College and a BA from Dickinson College and has shared the work of the CTTL through publications such as Edutopia, ASCD Express and EdSurge and presented around the world at public, private, and international school conferences including: Learning Forward, New Teacher Center, Learning & Brain and SXSWedu.

Social Links

Twitter: @gwhitmancttl

LinkedIn: @glenn-whitman

Dr. Nandini Chatterjee Singh is a cognitive neuroscientist and currently Senior Project Officer at UNESCO MGIEP (Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development), in New Delhi, India. UNESCO MGIEP focuses on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 towards education for building peaceful and sustainable societies across the world by developing programmes that promote social and emotional learning, innovate digital pedagogies and empower the youth. Their mission is to 'build kinder brains.'

After receiving a PhD in physics from the University of Pune in India, Nandini studied auditory learning mechanisms in songbirds at University of California Berkeley. She returned to India in 2002 and the first cognitive and neuroimaging laboratory in India at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) in India, where she set up SALLY (Speech and Language Laboratory). Using behavioral and functional neuroimaging experiments, her laboratory sought to understand neurodiversity especially children with autism and dyslexia. Her research laboratory at NBRC also conducted research on how Indian ragas elicit distinct emotions.

Since 2017, Nandini has been at UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) where she has led the development of EMC², a neuroscience-based framework that builds SEL competencies of Empathy(E), Mindfulness (M), Compassion (C) and Critical Inquiry (C). She is focused on designing new interactive curricula using innovative digital pedagogies like digital games, digital dialogue to cultivate SEL and she conducts cross-cultural research to assess their efficacy in school education systems.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @nandini-chatterjee-singh

Twitter: @nanchatter; @UNESCO_MGIEP

Wiliam is Professor Emeritus of educational assessment at UCL Institute of Education (IOE), London, UK and Executive Director of the Learning Sciences International Dylan Wiliam Center. After a first degree in mathematics and physics, Wiliam taught in urban public schools for seven years, during which time he earned further degrees in mathematics and mathematics education.

He has served as dean and head of the School of Education at King's College London, senior research director at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ and Deputy Director of the Institute of Education, University of London. Since 2010, he has devoted most of his time to research and teaching.

Wiliam's most recent publication, Creating the Schools Our Children Need: Why What We're Doing Now Won't Help Much (And What We Can Do Instead), analyses the approaches that American schools have taken in order to improve student achievement, and shows why they are unlikely to succeed, while at the same time, providing clear advice about the steps that schools need to take to raise student achievement and close achievement gaps. His other works focus on the profound impact strategic formative assessment has on student learning. He is co-author of Inside the Black Box, as well as Embedding Formative Assessment, the Embedding Formative Assessment Professional Development Pack, and Leadership for Teacher Learning.

Social Links

Twitter: @dylanwiliam

LinkedIn: @dylanwiliam

Ulcca Joshi Hansen is an author, educational thought leader and social change advocate with a twenty-year career dedicated to shifting the foundational values and approaches that underpin America’s education system. She currently serves as the Chief Program Officer for Grantmakers for Education, a partner organization for education philanthropists as they adapt to the changes impacting our world.

Ulcca began her career as an elementary school teacher in Newark Public Schools. Over the last twenty years she has gained experience across the non-profit, public, and philanthropic sectors, in the US and abroad, leading programs, conducting research and crafting policy.

In her most recent roles as Chief Strategy Officer at Boundless and Vice President at Education Reimagined, she built partnerships between schools, districts, non-profits and higher education institutions committed to expanding access to relationship-based, relevant and real-world learning experiences in the K-12 and post-secondary spaces. As Vice President of the Public Education and Business Coalition she expanded the Colorado Teacher Residency to become the first residency-based preparation program in the country to serve both urban and rural districts. She also redesigned the residency curriculum, grounding new teachers in the fields of learning science, human development and human well-being.

Ulcca’s recently released book, The Future of Smart: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive, traces the roots of America’s dominant approach to education, illuminates why so many reform and innovation efforts over the last three decades have fallen short and proposes a path forward.

Ulcca earned her Ph.D. in Education and Philosophy from Oxford University and a JD from Harvard Law School. She has been recognized nationally for her work in education as a Harry S. Truman Scholar; a British Marshall Scholar; and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @ulcca

Twitter: @ulcca

Tyson Yunkaporta is an author, academic, educator, Indigenous thinker, maker, arts critic, researcher and poet. He is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland and has ties in the south. His born-country is Melbourne and adoptive and community/cultural ties all over, from Western NSW to Perth. Tyson carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.

Tyson is the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (2021) a remarkable book about everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits to Schrödinger’s cat.

In the book, Tyson looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective and asks how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?

Tyson is also an advisor to the Consilience Project, founded by Daniel Schmachtenberger and Zak Stein.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @tyson-yunkaporta

Gregory Biggs is the Director of Fieldwork Education, the organisation that develops a range of International Curriculum for learners aged 2-14 across Early Years, Primary and Middle Years, known by many as the IEYC, IPC, and IMYC. These curricula are learnt and taught in over 1,000 schools and more than 90 countries worldwide. Fieldwork Education provides schools the International Curriculum, accompanied by their professional learning pathway and their accreditation services to schools working with the International Curriculum around the world.

Prior to leading the team at Fieldwork Education, Gregory was the global product manager for the IB’s Diploma and Career-related Programmes, located in Singapore. Before which he worked with governments and ministries on structuring national education reform efforts across the Middle East and South East Asia, out of Abu Dhabi. With a Master’s from the University of London’s Institute for Education in Education and International Development, Gregory has spent the last 12 years supporting institutions delicately balance global perspectives with local contexts.

Tristian Stobie's career has spanned a wide range of educational contexts. Starting as a teacher, and then Secondary Principal, he has worked in New Zealand, UK, Lesotho, Monaco, Austria and the Netherlands.

He has also worked in a number of roles for the International Baccalaureate Organisation. He was involved in the early development of the International Schools Association Curriculum, which became the IBMYP,  and later he became Head of IB Diploma programme curriculum development.

Tristian joined Cambridge International as Director of Education in July 2011, and was appointed Director of Curriculum & Qualifications Development in February 2020. He leads the design and development of Cambridge programmes and qualifications for learners aged 5 to 19.

Tristian completed a Master’s and a Doctorate degree at the University of Bath with research interests in curriculum and pedagogy. He has written various articles and contributions to books as well as presented widely at educational conferences and events.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @tristian-stobie / @gregory-biggs

Twitter:  @CambridgeInt / @gregory_biggs

Wendy Kopp is CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent organizations working to develop collective leadership to ensure all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Prior to launching Teach For All in 2007, Wendy founded and led Teach For America – which has proven to be an unparalleled source of long-term leadership for expanding opportunity for children in the United States – for 24 years. Wendy led the development of Teach For All to be responsive to the initiative of social entrepreneurs around the world who were determined to adapt this approach in their own countries.

Wendy is the author of A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All (2011) and One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way (2000). She holds honorary doctorate degrees from 15 universities and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Wise Prize for Education (2021), Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2008) and the Schwab Foundation’s Outstanding Social Entrepreneur Award (2003).

Wendy holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and resides in New York City with her husband and their four children.

In the news

Social Links

LinkedIn: @wendy-kopp

Twitter: @wendykopp

Michele Dal Trozzo is currently in charge of the Montessori department of GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori.

GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori is an Italian company based in Gonzaga, Mantua. GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori is well known worldwide for its unique history in the manufacturing and marketing of Montessori materials and furniture. Its origins in the early twentieth century are strongly connected to the presence of Maria Montessori in Gonzaga, as a friend of Maria Maraini Guerrieri Gonzaga, who started one of the first Casa dei Bambini. Nowadays GAM designs, manufactures and markets furniture for nurseries, schools, libraries and cultural centers.

Michele started working for Gonzagarredi in 1996, right after graduating in Business and Economics at the University of Parma.  In more than 25 years, he has been involved in several different areas of the company business - sales, customer care, logistics, purchasing and manufacturing, product development, classroom design, including the design of the Montessori Museum located in the company headquarters. He also has been attending conferences, trade shows, visiting schools meeting teachers and customers in more than 30 countries, keeping constantly in touch with people deeply committed to provide excellent education to children.

Social Links

GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori

Professor Deborah Eyre is a global educational leader, academic researcher, writer helping good schools become world class through a focus on student performance. Using her 25 years researching into how gifted students think and learn and then creating frameworks to help schools and enrichment providers to enhance provision for these students, she created High Performance Learning with the aim of enabling all students to reach that same advanced performance. 

As well as being a widely published author, Deborah's career has included a variety of senior education roles both globally and in UK and she has advised governments and educational foundations in UK, Hong Kong, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, USA and Singapore. From 2010-2014 she was Global Education Director for Nord Anglia Education and prior to that served as Director of the UK government’s innovative National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY), based at the University of Warwick, where she published Room at the Top: Inclusive education for high performance (2016).

Deborah holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Warwick and Professorship from Oxford Brookes University. She is a practical academic and writes for a variety of audiences from policy makers to parents but her first love is teachers and teaching. Deborah had served on many board and is currently is Board Member of the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), a Trustee of the Swan Multi-Academy Trust (Oxford) and the Inspiring Futures Foundation, a Board member at Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland (CTYI) a Freeman of the City of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @deborah-eyre

Twitter: @eyre_deborah

Todd Shy has taught for more than twenty-five years in Cary, North Carolina, San Francisco, California, and New York City. He is currently Head of Upper Division at Avenues The World School in New York. His writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Raleigh News and Observer, where he was a regular contributor, the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Salmagundi, and numerous other publications. In 2008 he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. His recent book Teaching Life: Life Lessons for Aspiring (and Inspiring) Teachers was described by the founder of the Academy for Teachers as a “an eloquent love letter to teaching and to life.”

Social Links

LinkedIn: @todd-shy

Twitter: @avenues_org

This is the second conversation that I have had with Prof. Gert Biesta, and it is a special episode reflecting on the current crisis in Ukraine and the wider context of this - that some call the meta-crisis. Our first conversation earlier this year, on World-Centred Education, can be found here: https://anchor.fm/futurelearningdesign/episodes/On-World-Centred-Education---A-Conversation-with-Prof--Gert-Biesta-e1cqcj5. 

For more information on Gert - he is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, UK. He holds Visiting Professorships at the University of Agder, Norway, and Uniarts, the University of the Arts, Helsinki, Finland. Gert is a prolific author and has written many books on the theory of education and educational and social research, and his work has appeared in 20 different languages. He has particular interests in national and global education policy, curriculum, teaching and teacher education, democracy and citizenship education, religious education and arts education. His latest book is World-Centred Education: A View for the Present (2021) and this is a good overview of the key ideas in this seminal book. A selection of his previous books are The Rediscovery of Teaching (2017); Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future (2015); The Beautiful Risk of Education (2015); Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy (2015) and Complexity Theory and the Politics of Education [edited with Deborah Osberg] (2010) Gert is co-editor of the British Educational Research Journal, co-editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, and associate editor of Educational Theory. He co-edits a two book series with Routledge: Theorizing Education (with Stefano Oliverio), and New Directions in the Philosophy of Education (with Michael A. Peters, Liz Jackson and Marek Tesar). 

Social Links 

LinkedIn: @gert-biesta 

Twitter: Gert suspended his Twitter account only to return when Donald Trump was no longer on the platform!

Bas van den Berg is the educational coordinator of the Centre of Expertise Mission Zero at the Hague University of Applied Sciences where he leads large scale educational innovation projects such as The Challenge, coordinates the Mission Impact minor and lectures in courses related to sustainability, circular economy, ethics and regenerative futuring. Bas is also the host of The Regenerative Education Podcast (available on all major platforms). Bas was awarded the accolade of Sustainable Higher Educator of the year 2021 in the Netherlands and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts since 2021.

Bas is an external PhD-candidate at Wageningen University in Education & Learning Sciences. His research interest focuses on how higher education can be redesigned to tackle wicked eco-social problems and what this type of regenerative learning asks from educators and educational design. Exploring how ecologies of learning can be designed that connect societal learning-based change with the transition towards more regenerative futures. 

Social Links

Medium: @bvandenb

LinkedIn: @bas-van-den-berg

Email: B.vandenBerg@hhs.nl

LinkedIn: @sandra-milligan 

Twitter: @SandraMilligan3 @ARCMelbourne

Estelle Baroung Hughes is the Founding President of Africa Learning International, focused on SDG 4 (Quality Education for All) in Africa. As a Cameroonian citizen, Estelle is passionate about the cultural wealth of her 250 languages country. The focus of her NGO is to honour the diversity of African nations by supporting culturally responsive education on the continent. ALI provides teacher professional development, Master Teacher programs, shares educational resources and opportunities and organizes conferences and teacher exchanges.

As an educator, Estelle specializes in international education. She is a teacher, a researcher, and an educational coach. She is a teaching and talent development consultant to Enko Education (where she was part of the founding team) and she is also a Language & Literature teacher at the Ecolint: International School of Geneva.

Estelle is also a blogger and a musician.

Social Links

Twitter: @EstelleHughes20

LinkedIn: @estelle-hughes

Dr Kevin House is Education Futures Architect at Education in Motion, a growing family of premier education brands, including Dulwich College International and Green School, with more than 11,000 students. As part of this work, Kevin is leading the development of a new and innovative high school concept called SE21. You can find out more about SE21 here. 

Kevin is also Associate Professor in Practice in the Education faculty at Durham University.

Prior to this, Kevin led quality assurance processes for the International Baccalaureate Organisation as the Head of IB World Schools. 

He was Head of High School at the German European School of Singapore, Director of Curriculum at Suzhou Singapore International School and Head of English at the International School of Valencia. 

Kevin completed his doctoral thesis in International Education at the University of Bath and has been working to align programme standards across awarding bodies such as CIS, WASC and IB. Kevin is also a qualified trainer for global safeguarding practices and protocols.

Social Links

Email: Kevin.House@eimglobal.com

LinkedIn: @dr-kevin-house

Twitter: @KevinHo17644986

AJ Juliani is the Founder/CEO of Adaptable Learning and serves as Faculty for the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education (PLN).

Prior to his current role, AJ served as Head of Learning & Growth at NextLesson, Director of Learning and Innovation for Centennial School District, and Education and Technology Innovation Specialist for Upper Perkiomen School District. Previously AJ worked as a K-12 Staff Developer (Instructional Coach) in the Wissahickon School District where he also taught middle school and high school English/LA.

Juliani's latest book is Adaptable: How to Create an Adaptable Curriculum and Flexible Learning Experiences That Work in Any Environment. Previously he authored EMPOWER, an education best-seller and the award-winning LAUNCH on bringing design thinking into K-12 classrooms. Juliani's previous books include "Learning By Choice" and "Inquiry and Innovation in the Classroom: Using 20% Time, Genius Hour, and PBL to Drive Student Success" available from Routledge Press.

Juliani now speaks at conferences, organizations, universities, schools, and events around the world on innovation in learning, teaching, and leadership.

Juliani spent two summers in South Africa and Swaziland, volunteering at clinics, running kids camps, preparing a community structure to be used for a medical clinic, church, school, and food shelter. Since then Comfort For Africa built a six-building school that has over 300 students!

AJ received his MS Degree from Drexel University in “Global and International Education”. He founded –Project: Global Inform – a project that gives students the power to do something about human rights violations.

Most importantly, AJ is someone who truly believes in the "inquiry-driven" education movement. He has five kids of his own and wants them to grow up in a world that values their ideas. His award-winning blog and website serve as a place to share ideas and thoughts around "Intentional Innovation" and the future of learning.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @ajjuliani

Twitter: @ajjuliani

Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the forefront of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature: The Process of Becoming A Regenerative Leader (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK.  Previously held corporate roles - Head of Practice for KPMG, and Global Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). You can connect with Leadership Immersions here.

Laura Storm is an international thought leader and expert on sustainability leadership and has spent her entire career advising global leaders on sustainability and building impact- and purpose-driven organizations, and movements, including the Copenhagen Climate Council, the World Business Summit on Climate Change, Project Green Light and Sustainia. Under Laura's leadership, Sustainia became a global mega-brand within sustainability with an outreach to more than 150 million people, a database of 4000 sustainable solutions, multiple state-of-the art publications and a unique partner network.

In 2018, she founded Regenerators - a collective focused on teaching leaders from all walks of life about regenerative design, regenerative organizations and leadership and regenerative living. For her work, she has been awarded the title ‘Worldchanger’ by Greenbiz and is selected by the World Economic Forum as a ‘Young Global Leader’. She serves on multiple Boards and on the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network as an expert in sustainable development and climate change. Her academic background is a Master in Political Communication and Leadership from Copenhagen Business School.

Sir Michael Barber is a world leading expert on government delivery, education systems, systemic innovation and education reform.

Sir Michael led the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit for the Blair administration in the UK from 2001-2005. Since then, he has worked on delivery and system-wide reforms in more than 50 countries. He personally leads high-stakes engagements with political leaders, such as quarterly cabinet retreats in Canada with PM Justin Trudeau, to help them adopt the delivery approach.

Michael held the first Chair of the Office for Students in the UK from 2017 to 2021, and prior to that as Chief Education Advisor at Pearson, Michael led a worldwide programme delivering Pearson’s strategy for education in the poorest sectors of the world, especially in fast-growing developing economies.

Michael was a Partner at McKinsey & Company and Head of McKinsey’s global education practice. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter. Before joining government he was a professor at the Institute of Education at the University of London.

Sir Michael has written extensively on education at all levels, government delivery and innovation. His most recent publication 'How Seventeen Secretaries of State for Education, through Thirty Years of Constant Change, Enabled the System to Improve' was published this month and is a synthesis of the reflections of the UK education ministers since 1986.

Michael's book Accomplishment: How to achieve ambitious and challenging things was also published earlier this year and sets out the ingredients for success based on the stories of many inspirational people and Michael's own experiences of delivering success for governments and education systems around the world.

Other books he has authored are Deliverology 101: A Field Guide For Educational Leaders and How to Run A Government: So that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don't Go Crazy.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @sirmichaelbarber

Twitter: @MichaelBarber9

Professor Daniel T. Willingham earned his B.A. from Duke University in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Harvard University in 1990. He is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1992. Until about 2000, his research focused solely on the brain basis of learning and memory. Today, all of his research concerns the application of cognitive psychology to K-16 education.

Daniel writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine, in which he has translated relevant cognitive science research for educators since 2003. He is also a prolific author whose writing on education has appeared in seventeen languages. His classic book, Why Don't Students Like School?, has recently been republished in its second edition with additional material. He has also written When Can You Trust the Experts?, Raising Kids Who Read, and The Reading Mind. His forthcoming book (set for release in August 2022) is entitled Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy, this time directed at students themselves to support them to develop their self-management and study skills. 

In 2017, Professor Willingham was appointed by President Obama to serve as a Member of the National Board for Education Sciences.

Social Links

Twitter: @DTWillingham

Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang studies the psychological and neurobiological bases of social emotion, self-awareness and culture and their implications for learning, development and schools. She is a Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education, a Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program Faculty at the University of Southern California, and Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE).

Mary Helen was elected 2016-2018 president of the International Mind, Brain and Education Society by the society’s membership. She is serving as a distinguished scientist on the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on the Science and Practice of Learning. Mary Helen is also associate Editor for the award-winning journal Mind, Brain and Education and for the new journal AERA Open, and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

In her research work, Mary Helen leads cross-cultural, longitudinal studies investigating adolescent brain and social-emotional development, academic success and relations to school and life achievement in urban contexts as well as the neural and psychosocial correlates of mindsets in low-SES adolescents from different cultural groups. She also serves as scientific adviser to several Los Angeles schools/districts.

Mary Helen’s 2015 book, Emotions, learning and the brain: Exploring the educational implications of affective neuroscience, is available from W.W. Norton publishers (author proceeds are donated to education-related causes). 

In May 2020, Mary Helen wrote a must-read article in ASCD with Doug Knecht (Bank Street College of Education) entitled Building Meaning Builds Teens' Brains, if you're interested to find out more about the significant implications of Mary Helen's work this is a great place to start!

Social Links

LinkedIn: @maryhelenimmordino-yang

Twitter: @CandleUSC

Joshua Freedman is a leading expert on applying emotional intelligence (EQ) to optimize performance. He is the CEO of Six Seconds, the world’s most extensive EQ organization, now with offices and representatives in 25 countries. 

Josh teaches people how to increase EQ to be happier, stronger, and more effective professionally and personally. He works with leaders and teams around the world helping them use emotional intelligence to get better results.  His clients include FedEx, Microsoft, INTEL, Amazon, all branches of the US armed forces, and the United Nations.

Josh is the bestselling author of At the Heart of Leadership, as well as Inside Change, the Handle With Care EQ Activity series, the SEI EQ Leadership Assessment, and the Organizational Vital Signs and coauthor of The Vital Organization.

Michael Eatman is an experienced inclusion strategist, educator, and coach. He is the Founder of Culture7 Coaching, blending expertise on emotional intelligence and EDIB (equity/diversity/inclusion/belonging) to build leadership capacity and organizational culture for a diverse and inclusive workplace. 

Previously Michael was Director of Community Life at The Pike School, Director of Diversity and Community Life at University School of Nashville and Director of Intercultural Programs at Spring Arbor University

Michael's is a Certified Diversity Professional for Organizational Leadership from Diversity Training University International and Advanced Certified Personal & Executive Coach from the College of Executive Coaching. He is Preferred Partner and Certified EQ Advanced Practitioner from Six Seconds EQ Network.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @michael-eatman / @freedman

Twitter: @EatmanatPike / @eqjosh

Jonathan James is a teacher, education consultant and doctoral candidate at the UCL Institute of Education.

Jonathan's own doctoral research investigates how policies developed in response to the threat of terrorism are being implemented in schools in England and France in light of the two countries’ policy traditions, and educators’ pre-existing values and practices.

Jonathan has written extensively on the role of schools in anti-terrorism policy and is an expert on values education and countering radicalisation. His book, co-authored with Dr Jan Germen Janmaat, Civil Disorder, Domestic Terrorism and Education Policy: The Context in England and France was published in 2019.

At the UCL Institute of Education, Jonathan has taught on the 'Minorities, Migrants, and Refugees in National Education Systems' and 'Comparative Education: Theories and Methods' Master's courses.

Since 2020, Jonathan has provided consulting services to the OECD’s Education Policy Outlook.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @jonathan-james

Twitter: @JonathanJames30

Sharath Jeevan is one of the world’s leading experts on reigniting our inner drive (intrinsic motivation). He founded and led STiR Education – arguably the world’s largest intrinsic motivation initiative. STiR has re-ignited the motivation of 200,000 teachers, 35,000 schools and 7 million children in emerging countries. 

Sharath is currently the Executive Chairman of Intrinsic Labs, which supports organizations all around the world to solve deep motivational challenges, from governments to leading UK universities and high-profile corporations. He was elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2014 and was recognised as one of the UK’s ten leading social entrepreneurs in 2019.  

His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Economist, NPR, CNN, the Hindustan Times and the Times of India. Sharath holds degrees from Cambridge University, Oxford University and INSEAD. 

Sharath's first book Intrinsic is out now on Amazon and other retailers. It is a book which takes readers on a journey around the world to find practical and inspirational answers to solving our motivational crisis. It harnesses ground-breaking research, from psychology and economics to philosophy and behavioural science. Sharath helps us to see how we can achieve more lasting fulfilment and success in our work, careers, relationships, parenting, and as citizens. Intrinsic has received glowing testimonials from global thought leaders, the CHROs of leading companies and bestselling authors.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @sharathjeevan

Twitter: @sharathjeevan_

Andreia Mitrea is the CEO of Colina Learning Center - a new educational project seeking to change the way people think about learning. As part of the Colina Nouă residential development in Romania, Colina Learning Center is developing a new educational concept in response to the question: “How might we use school to serve the learning of both children AND adults?" As the residential development and school grow, Andreia is leading the development of an innovative "integrated adult-child curriculum".

Andreia believes that “It doesn’t take a village, it takes a GREAT village to raise a child.” 

With a background in the corporate sector, Andreia is now an experienced educational entrepreneur. In 2007, she co-founded the Avenor College and Foundation, which has now become one of the best-reputed private schools in Bucharest, Romania.

As a leader and manager, Andreia saw her role as a ‘partner’ and a ‘critical friend’ to the educational team, constantly connecting them to our vision, values and strategic objectives and enabling them to create policies, processes, standards which created a sustainable, high-quality organization.

Andreia is passionate about organizational learning and systemic approaches and has a Master’s in Educational Leadership from the Institute of Education, London.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @andreiamitrea

Dr. Samah Karaki is a neuroscientist, and the founding director of the Social Brain Institute. SBI is an NGO based in Geneva and operating in Europe and the Middle East where it implements research-based strategies to support individual and organisational change.

Samah's research focuses on the neuronal basis of stress affecting emotional and social behaviours. She is also interested in the neural basis of memory and unconscious processes, empathy, behavioural change and creativity. Combining scientific outreach and consultancy experience with neuroscience insights, Samah has delivered tailored seminars to over 2000 academics, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, scientific institutes as well as universities, teenagers at schools and consulted on change management programs for leaders in various organisations.

Samah also works on bridging the gender and racial gap in the field of STEM and is active in outreach and public communication of science. She has written about the psychology of empathy, creativity, implicit bias and gendered leadership.

In October, Samah's book Le travail en équipe (Dunod, 2021) was published, which addresses the factors that allow human groups to collaborate effectively, from the perspective of cognitive science.  

Samah received her BA in Biology at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, her Masters in Neuroscience from The University of Lyon, and earned her PhD in Neuroscience in 2011 from the University of Montpellier.

She also holds an Masters degree in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Montpellier and Max Planck Institute.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @samah-karaki

Find out more about Future Learning Design at www.futurelearningdesign.com/podcast and follow Tim on Twitter @teb_logan or on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn: @hatim-eltayeb

Twitter: @ALAcademy

Mart Laidmets is the General Director of Education and Youth Board of the Republic of Estonia. Previously, from January 2019 until August 2021, he held the position of the Secretary General of the Ministry of Education and Research of the Republic of Estonia, responsible for directing the work of deputy secretary generals and departments of the Ministry as well as co-ordinating the work of state institutions and government bodies under the Ministry’s sphere of administration. 

In addition to this, Mr Laidmets has been board member of Foundation Innove, and has been working for the non-profit association Universities Estonia and the University of Tartu. He has been a Researcher at the Uppsala University, Advisor to the Chancellery of the Riigikogu (parliament) and an Advisor to the Prime Minister of Estonia. 

Mr Laidmets has a degree in history from the University of Tartu.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @mart-laidmets

Twitter: @Harno_ee

Jessica Cavallaro is an innovative educator and curriculum designer who brings the agile mindset into the classroom. She is a champion of project based learning and creating purposeful educational experiences both in and out of the classroom. Jessica has delved into applying Agile and Scrum to keep students connected, collaborating and creating while teaching in a hybrid setting. She is passionate about developing better systems that put students first in education.

Roslynn Jackson is an educator that believes failures are the stepping stones to success. She is a co-founder of the Agile Mind, which strives to help teachers learn to use an Agile mindset to help students acquire the skills they need to solve real world problems while learning educational concepts. She is passionate about making education engaging and meaningful for teachers and their students.  She believes the best strategies for doing so involve  “organized chaos” and getting your hands dirty- this means using systems that provide opportunities for authentic hands-on learning. Roslynn believes that using Agile skills with students, and helping other educators to do the same, is the way to transform our education framework into one that truly prepares our learners for the real world challenges ahead of them, and gives them the tools to do it.

Social Links

Jessica - LinkedIn: @jessicacavallaro; Twitter: @JesGilbert5

Roslynn - LinkedIn: @roslynn-jackon; Twitter: @RoslynnJackson

Kiran Bir Sethi is a designer who became a teacher, a principal who grew into an education reformer and subsequently morphed into a social entrepreneur. A trained graphic designer from the National Institute of Design, she comfortably uses the language of design – iteration, prototype, design specs – to develop not only curriculum innovation, but also community-based social programmes.

Kiran founded the award winning Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India, in 2001. Riverside, is viewed as a laboratory to prototype design processes that uses a systems approach to build a culture of empowerment, graduating young citizen leaders with an ‘I CAN Mindset’ – using their agency for the greater good.

Riverside Learning Centre (RLC) started in 2016, has codified the practices and processes of The Riverside School and designed training programmes around the 6 Pillars of Curriculum, Parent Partnership, Personal & Professional Development, Community, Administration and Leadership that empower more schools to become user centered.

Kiran is also the founder of aProCh—an initiative to make our cities more child friendly, for which she was awarded the Ashoka Fellow in 2008.

In 2009, Kiran launched Design for Change which uses a simple 4 step design framework – FIDS (Feel, Imagine, Do, Share) to cultivate the I CAN mind-set in all children. Today, DFC is the world's largest movement of change - of and by children, and is in 60+ countries—impacting over 2.2 million children and 65,000 Teachers.

Kiran is a judge for the prestigious YIDAN Prize and a Visiting Global Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 2019, she was awarded the Earth Prize in Luino, Italy, the Lexus Design Award for 2019, in Pune, India, and DFC has been recognised as one of the 100 most innovative educational programmes in the world by HundrED.org in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

Social Links

Twitter: @kiranbirsethi

LinkedIn: @kiranbirsethi

Raya Bidshahri is a serial education entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and award-winning educator.

Raya is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the School of Humanity, a revolutionary online high school with a progressive model and skill-based curriculum.

Raya is also the Founder of Awecademy, an award-winning organization offering future-focussed & wisdom-based education. She has served on the founding teams of multiple organizations including SciFest Dubai, and SheWorks.

Raya serves as an advisory board member to multiple EdTech companies and is a member of the Bett Future Education Council. She was named one of the BBC's 100 Women for 2019.

Raya has spoken at many conferences including the G20/Y20 Summit, Global Education Forum, UNESCO Expo-Sciences, GESS Leaders, HR Tech Summit and much more.

She has been sharing her expertise as a keynote speaker for over a decade – since the age of 16 – and brings a much-needed youth perspective to discussions about the future of education.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @rayabidshahri

Twitter: @raya_bid

Dave Snowden is the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge. His work is in the area of naturalising sense-making, seeking to base social science research and practice in the natural sciences. He is generally considered to be a pioneer in the application of complex adaptive systems theory to a range of social issues, and in the development of narrative as a research method. His work extends across government and industry in a variety of fields including knowledge management, strategic planning, conflict resolution, counter terrorism, decision support and organisational development. 

Snowden, then of IBM Global Services, began work on a Cynefin framework in 1999 to help manage intellectual capital within the company. He continued developing it as European director of IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management, and later as founder and director of the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity, established in 2002. Cynthia Kurtz and Snowden described the framework in detail the following year in a paper, The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world, published in IBM Systems Journal.

Snowden holds a variety of academic positions. He is a visiting professor at the University of Canberra, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and University of Pretoria and is a visiting fellow at Warwick University, Nanyang University, the Universita' Cattolica in Italy and the Singapore Management College. He was Director of the EPSRC (UK) research programme on emergence in 2006 and was appointed to the NSF (US) review panel on complexity science research in 2007. He is also on the editorial boards of several knowledge management journals and is an Editor in Chief for Emergence: Complexity and Organisation. His HBR cover article with Mary Boone A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making was selected as the 2007 Best Practitioner-Oriented Paper in Organizational Behavior by the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management.

Earlier this year, Dave Snowden (and Friends) published the book Cynefin®: Weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world (2021: Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd).

Dave lives in the UK where he pursues his passions of Welsh Rugby, Wagnerian Opera and walking.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @dave-snowden

Twitter: @snowded

Priya Lakhani OBE is the Founder CEO of CENTURY Tech, the award-winning artificial intelligence education technology company. CENTURY is the global leader in AI-powered learning tools for schools and families, working in dozens of countries across the world.

In 2008, Priya left her career as a barrister to launch a successful cooking-sauce business, which through its charitable foundation provided millions of meals and thousands of vaccinations to the underprivileged in India and Africa, and funded several schools.

Priya was awarded Business Entrepreneur of the Year by the Chancellor in 2009 and Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2014. She was a business advisor to the UK’s coalition government, was appointed to the UK government’s AI Council in 2019 and is a regular commentator on global news for the BBC.

In 2018, Priya co-founded the Institute for Ethical AI in Education. In 2018, CENTURY won a prestigious MIT SOLVE (Education) award, and in 2019, Priya was named Economic Innovator of the Year by The Spectator. In 2020, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Coventry University’s engineering faculty and appointed Honorary Vice President of the Council of British International Schools.

Social Links:

LinkedIn: @priyalakhani 

Twitter: @priyalakhani; @thisiscentury

Olli-Pekka Heinonen is the Director General of the International Baccalaureate.

Previously he held the position of the Director General at the Finnish National Agency of Education. Mr Heinonen has been the Minister of Education and Science (1994-1999), Minister of Transport and Communication (1999-2002) and Member of the Finnish Parliament (1995-2002). He has also been the Television Director at the Finnish Public Broadcasting Company and State Secretary in five different ministries. Mr Heinonen has held various positions of trust within different sectors of society. 

Mr Heinonen is a member of the Education Advisory Group for the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs. 

Mr Heinonen holds a Master’s Degree in Law. He is married and has three children.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @olli-pekka-heinonen

Twitter: @Heino1Olli

Professor John Hattie is an award-winning education researcher and best-selling author with nearly 30 years of experience examining what works best in student learning and achievement. His influential 2008 book Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement is believed to be the world’s largest evidence-based study into the factors that improve student learning. Hailed by the Times Education Supplement as “teaching’s Holy Grail”, this ground-breaking study involved more than 80 million students from around the world and brought together 50,000 smaller studies.

Since 2011, John Hattie has been Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne. He is also the Chair of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). He is also past-president of the International Test Commission and Associate Editor of the British Journal of Educational Psychology and American Educational Research Journal.

John Hattie was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours, is a Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders and the American Psychological Association, and has published and presented over 500 papers, and supervised 190 thesis students.

John's notable publications include Visible Learning, Visible Learning for Teachers, Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn, Visible Learning for Mathematics, Grades K-12, 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning and, most recently, 10 Mindframes for Leaders.

Social Links

Twitter: @john_hattie

Conrad Hughes (MA, PhD, EdD) is Campus and Secondary Principal at the International School of Geneva, La Grande Boissière, the oldest international school in the world. He has been School Principal, Director of Education, International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme Coordinator and teacher in schools in Switzerland, France, India and the Netherlands.

Conrad, who is also a member of the advisory board for the University of the People, senior fellow of UNESCO's International Bureau of Education and research assistant at the University of Geneva's department of psychology and education, teaches philosophy.

His PhD (2008) is in English literature: The Treatment of the Body in the Fiction of JM Coetzee. His EdD thesis (2018), written at Durham University, is on the relationship between prejudice and education with specific focus on how education can reduce prejudice.

He is the author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and as Director of Education at the International School of Geneva he led the publication of Guiding Principles for Learning in the 21st Century with UNESCO. He has been chief editor for special editions of Springer’s Prospects Journal with entries by leading academics such as Sugata Mitra, Steve Higgins, Doug & Lynn Newton, Scilla Elworthy, Paul Black, AC Grayling and Juan Carlos Tedesco.

Conrad's most recent books are Elitism and Education: Challenges and Opportunities (2021, Routledge), Educating for the 21st Century: Seven Global Challenges (2018, Brill) and Understanding Prejudice and Education: The Challenge for Future Generations (2017, Routledge).

Social Links

LinkedIn: @conrad-hughes

Twitter: @conradhughes0 

Valerie Hannon co-founded Innovation Unit and leads Innovation Unit’s international education work. She has supported education change programmes in numerous systems, including the UK, Europe, USA, Australia and Africa, and is a founding member and Co-Chair of the Global Education Leaders Partnership (GELP).

Valerie Hannon’s career spans leadership of education systems, research, teaching, and capacity building. In the UK, she was Director of Education for Derbyshire and an advisor on creativity in the Department for Education. She has led many Innovation Unit education programmes, including Next Practice projects, Learning Futures (in the UK), and Learning Frontiers (in Australia). She has been consultant adviser to Finland, South Africa and British Columbia, Canada and is an established thought leader in the field of education innovation.

Valerie is an expert adviser on education to the OECD, and a frequent contributor to the World Summit on Innovation in Education (WISE). She is a regular keynote speaker and facilitator at international conferences and workshops. Valerie’s new book, published by Innovation Unit Press, is called Thrive: The Purpose of Schools in a Changing World (2nd Edition, released Feb. 2021), co-authored with Amelia Peterson.

Social Links

Twitter: @valeriehannon

George Couros is an Innovative Teaching, Learning, & Leadership Consultant and speaker and the author of The Innovator’s Mindset and Innovate Inside the Box, co-authored with Katie Novak - and co-owner of IMPress Books. He has worked at all school levels, from K-12 as a teacher, technology facilitator, and school and district administrator. He is currently an Adjunct Instructor with the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. 

George is the father of two wonderful children, Kallea and Georgia, and is driven to ensure that they and every student have amazing experience in their K-12 schooling. He is not focused solely on preparing students for the “real world” but wants them to make the real world better.

George believes that meaningful change happens when you first connect to people’s hearts and then their minds, and he does his best to model this through his speaking, writing, and daily work.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @georgecourosim

Twitter: @gcouros

Girish Menon joined STiR Education as CEO in January 2021 after five years as Chief Executive at ActionAid UK. He brings more than 30 years’ experience as a leader in the international development sector, having previously held roles as International Programmes Director and Deputy CEO at Water Aid UK, where he was responsible for programmes in 22 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.

Girish was born and brought up in India, and started his career with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme. He has also worked at Action Aid, Plan International and DFID in India. Since moving to London in 2005, he has served on the boards of various non-profit organisations. He is currently on the board of Hope and Homes for Children.

John McIntosh is the Director of Design and Programme Readiness and oversees the design of STiR’s programmes for teachers and government officials. He has worked as a teacher trainer and an advisor to professional development programmes in India, Sri Lanka, and China.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @stireducation

Twitter: @STIReducation

Dr. Abdulla Al Karam, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director General of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), is responsible for a wide spectrum of education in Dubai’s private sector, spanning early learning, school, and higher education and training Institutes. Dr. Abdulla has the distinction of holding key positions across the United Arab Emirates, as well as being a Board member of the National Qualifications Authority, of the UAE Federal Government. He was also appointed to the Board of the Social Sector, Government of Dubai. He has recently been nominated a member of the Higher Committee for Protection of the Rights of People with Disabilities in the Emirate of Dubai. 

Previously, Dr. Abdulla held positions in various government sectors, including: Vice Chairman and Secretary General, Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Distinguished Academic Performance; Chairman of the Dubai Government’s Human Resources Committee, which was set up as the link between human resources programmes and initiatives and Dubai’s goals and strategic priorities; Board member, Dubai Knowledge Fund, which seeks to effectively participate in developing Dubai’s knowledge capital through profitably managing funds. 

He was also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Education 2010. Prior to the formation of KHDA, Dr. Abdulla held the post of CEO of Dubai Knowledge Village, which ushered in the International Branch Campus, with a remit to diversify the educational landscape in Dubai. Before that, Dr. Abdulla headed the Research Unit at Dubai Internet City and began his career working as a software engineer in the United States and France. 

Dr. Abdulla holds a PhD in computer engineering from the University of South Carolina.

Social Links

Twitter: @khda

LinkedIn: knowledge-&-human-development-authority

Brad Carter has spent 20 years exploring the role of education in society and the way we go about educating people. A former leadership development executive with Apple Inc. and head of the innovative THINK Global School, his work has taken him across Europe, Australia, China, and North America. A highly creative thinker with a talent for finding clarity in complexity, he brings his global expertise to innovative curriculum building and a deep study of the learning process, whether in formal school settings, communities or enterprise. A former teacher and school administrator, Brad was Director of the Centre for Innovation at Mulgrave School, Vancouver and Assistant Head of School at Island Pacific School on Bowen Island.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @bradfordrcarter

Twitter: @Braddo

Andy Hargreaves is Director of Chenine (Change, Engagement and Innovation in Education) at the University of Ottawa and Research Professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. He is Past President of the International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, recent Adviser in Education to the Premier of Ontario and currently to the First Minister of Scotland, and founder of the ARC Education: a group of nations committed to broadly defined excellence, equity, wellbeing, inclusion, democracy and human rights www.atrico.org

Andy has consulted with the OECD, the World Bank, governments, universities and teacher unions worldwide. Andy’s more than 30 books have attracted multiple Outstanding Writing Awards – including the prestigious 2015 Grawemeyer Award in Education for Professional Capital (with Michael Fullan). He has been honored with the 2016 Horace Mann Award in the US and the Robert Owen Award in Scotland for services to public education. Andy is ranked by Education Week in the top scholars with most influence on US education policy debate. In 2015, Boston College gave him its Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award. He holds Honorary Doctorates from the Education University of Hong Kong and the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His most recent book, Moving: a memoir of social mobility and education, is published by Solution Tree. His two upcoming books in 2020 with Dennis Shirley are Five Paths of Student Engagement: Blazing the trail to learning and success (Solution Tree), and Well-being and Socio-emotional Learning: How to Build Everyone Back Better (ASCD).

Social Links

LinkedIn: @HargreavesBC

Twitter: @HargreavesBC

Dr. Katie Martin is the author of Learner-Centered Innovation and Chief Impact Officer at Altitude Learning. She teaches in the graduate school of Education at High Tech High and is on the board of Real World Scholars. Dr. Martin has worked in diverse contexts to learn, research, and support deeper learning for all students. She has served as a middle school English language arts teacher, instructional coach, and led the district’s new teacher mentoring program.

At the university, district and school level, Katie Aspires to create experiences that empower all learners to develop the knowledge, skills, and mindsets to thrive in a changing world. As a mom, she wants her kids to have learning experiences in school that build on their strengths and interests, and as an educator; she is passionate about making sure we do the same for all kids.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @katie-martin

Twitter: @katiemartinedu

Matt Barnes is the co-founder of The Education Game with Dr Scott Van Beck

Matt believes that “normal” is broken in traditionally structured schools and wants to make “weird” the new normal. Over 25 years, Matt has distributed $500m in philanthropy, led an education reform nonprofit, served on nine educational boards from pre-K to university, and coached thousands of parents on education system navigation. In 2020, Matt launched “The Education Game,” a platform that inspires parents to embrace a Future-Ready learning model that shamelessly deemphasizes grades and academic compliance while radically emphasizing learning, problem-solving, and student-engagement. He is the father of three teens who were educated in alternative models.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @matthewcbarnes 

Twitter: @mattbarnes4kids

Liz Nilsen’s passion is for creating programs that nurture the next generation of thinkers and doers, through the development and growth of innovation and STEM education ecosystems.  As the Associate Director at the University of North Alabama Agile Strategy Lab, Liz shepherds the expansion of the Lab’s programming and manages the Strategic Doing Institute on behalf of that organization, including partnerships with other universities interested in deploying Strategic Doing.

Liz was senior program director at the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab; she is also a former senior program officer at VentureWell, where she provided leadership to the Pathways program for the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), an effort to engage with 50 colleges and universities to redesign undergraduate engineering education.

Prior to joining VentureWell, she led STEM initiatives at the Penn State Center – Pittsburgh, was the southwest regional coordinator for the Pennsylvania STEM Network, and served as Director of Outreach and New Economy Program Development at the Institute of Advanced Learning & Research, a Virginia Tech initiative. She earned her BA from Stanford and an MBA from Northeastern University.

Ed Morrison is Director of the Agile Strategy Lab at the University of North Alabama, and was the founder of the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab. Ed’s work emphasizes the strategic value of focused regional collaborations and open innovation, network-based models in today’s global economy.

Ed is the developer of Strategic Doing to accelerate collaborations, now widely used across the U.S. and is now gaining attention internationally. His work won the first Arthur D. Little Award for excellence in economic development presented by the American Economic Development Council.

Prior to starting his economic development work, Ed worked for Telesis, a corporate strategy consulting firm. In this position, he served on consulting teams for clients such as Ford Motor Company, Volvo, and General Electric. He conducted manufacturing cost studies in the U.S., Japan, Mexico, Canada, Italy, Sweden, and France.

Ed started his professional career in Washington, D.C., where he has served as a legislative assistant to an Ohio Congressman, staff attorney in the Federal Trade Commission, and staff counsel in the US Senate. He holds a BA degree cum laude with honors from Yale University and MBA and JD degrees from the University of Virginia.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @liznilsen; @efmorrison

Twitter: @STEMetc; @edmorrison

Dr Siva Kumari was appointed seventh Director General of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in January 2014 based in the Netherlands office, becoming the first woman to hold the post.

Dr Kumari joined the IB in April 2009 as Asia Pacific Regional Director in the Singapore office. In May the following year she was appointed first Chief Operating Officer based in the Washington office, with global responsibility for research, university recognition, school improvement and professional development and relationships with schools, governments and foundations across the three IB regions: Americas, Asia Pacific, and Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Prior to joining the IB, Dr Kumari ended her 15-year tenure at Rice University, USA as the first Associate Provost for K-12 Initiatives. In her career at Rice she won competitive US National Science Foundation funding, local and national corporate foundation funding, and national and regional awards for her research and work in teaching and learning.

She has a bachelor of science degree from India, a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and a doctorate in education from the University of Houston, Texas, USA in online learning. For her work in international education, she has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Amity University, India.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @sivakumari

Twitter: @siva_kumari

Malcolm Parlett has had an active and distinguished career in educational research, training and gestalt therapy. He obtained a first class honours degree in Psychology from the University of Nottingham in 1962. He became a research student working in the Psychological Laboratory at King’s College, Cambridge. His Ph.D research was into memory and selective perception.

Moving from experimental psychology to pursue applied studies in education, he worked in the Education Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning Analysis, before being appointed as a Lecturer in Educational Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. At MIT he developed his innovative qualitative research method, “illuminative evaluation”, to investigate students’ experiences of education. He also conducted a major study for Wellesley College, and became a colleague and friend of Professor Donald Schön.

Malcolm was Principal research officer at the National Foundation of Educational Research and a member of the Group for Research and Innovation in Higher Education at the Nuffield Foundation. He was also a research associate in the Department of Educational Studies at Oxford University. Later, he directed a consulting group – the Higher Education Study Group – in Newton, Massachusetts and worked for a variety of colleges, foundations, and overseas agencies, including the Exxon Education Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, UNICEF, and USAID. Malcolm was also a Professor at the Open University, in the Institute of Educational Technology.

Malcolm went on to train in gestalt philosophy and methods and then worked all over the world as a distinguished gestalt therapist, consultant and speaker. He was the founding Editor of the British Gestalt Journal, a position he held for 16 years.

In his early research he was the author of several papers and chapters about higher education, qualitative research, and science education, including one in Nature. In 1977 he co-edited Beyond the Numbers Game – A reader in educational evaluation and also Introduction to Illuminative Evaluation: Studies in higher education. 

In 2015 his book, Future Sense: Five explorations of whole intelligence for a world that’s waking up, was published and has been reviewed in the Gestalt Review and the BGJ. In 2016 he edited and contributed to a collection, Contact and Context: New directions in gestalt coaching. 

In 2020 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Gestalt Organisation and System Development Center, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @malcolmparlett

Website: www.wholeintelligence.org

Email: malcolm.parlett@myphone.coop

Abdul Matheen Yousuf is Executive Director of Project You, and an award winning social entrepreneur with a focus on youth issues and education. He has a bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering and a LLM in International Business Leadership. He cofounded Project You with Hend Al Rais in 2017 and has led the development of auxiliary learning systems to bridge the gap in learning that youth face today.

With support from Expo Live during the first cycle of its University Innovation Programme (UIP), Project You is a collaborative platform to facilitate self-discovery, capacity building of skill and talent and mentorship and guidance to align each individual's skill to achieve the best to their ability. They do this through a robust program involving schools, national and international strategic organizations, passionate psychologists and industry leaders to uncover and harness the best in youth potential.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @AbdulMatheenYousuf

Twitter: @abdlmateen; @projectyoux

Jennifer Groff, PhD is an educational engineer, designer, and researcher, whose work focuses on redesigning learning environments and systems. Currently, she is the Innovation Fellow at WISE (Qatar Foundation), where she is leading the development of their Global Innovation Hub--a platform helping schools transform for our modern world. Previously, she was the Chief Learning Officer for Lumiar Education, a network of innovative, redesigned schools. She has spent much of her career doing leading-edge work at the MIT on new learning pedagogies and game-based assessments, and recently earned her PhD from the MIT Media Lab. Previously, she was the co-founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign, an international NGO dedicated to redesigning the general curricula for the 21st century. 

Previously, she was the Vice President of Learning & Program Development for the Learning Games Network—a non-profit spin-off from the MIT Education Arcade, where she led the national Playful Learning initiative. She also served as the technology expert on the OECD Innovative Learning Environments project, and was a Fulbright Scholar to the UK, at Futurelab Education in Bristol, United Kingdom.

A former K-12 educator, Jennifer was named one of 12 Microsoft Innovative Teacher Leaders in 2005, one of the Top 100 Influencers in Ed Tech (2017-18) by Ed Tech Digest.

Social Links

Twitter: @jsgroff

Linked: @jennifersgroff

Website: http://learningfutures.global

Dr. James Mannion is an education researcher and consultant who worked as a Science teacher for 12 years, and spent 8 years in school leadership roles. James has an MA in Person-Centred Education from the University of Sussex, and a PhD in Learning to Learn from the University of Cambridge. James’s doctoral thesis is an evaluation of Learning Skills, a whole-school approach to teaching and learning that led to significant gains in subject learning, with accelerated gains among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. James works part-time as a Bespoke Programmes Leader at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning at the University College London Institute of Education. In this role, he works with teachers and schools throughout the UK to promote research-informed approaches to professional development and school improvement. James is a passionate advocate of practitioner inquiry as a basis for professional development, and he regularly presents at educational conferences on this subject. He is also a member of Oracy Cambridge, a study centre and think tank dedicated to promoting effective speaking and listening skills in schools and the wider society. 

James runs research-informed training and consultancy through Rethinking Education with Kate McAllister.

In 2020, James co-authored Fear Is The Mind Killer: Why Learning to Learn deserves lesson time - and how to make it work for your pupils with Kate McAllister.  

Social Links

Twitter: @RethinkingJames

LinkedIn: @james-mannion

Email: james@rethinking-ed.org

Ed Fidoe is co-founder and President of the London Interdisciplinary School. LIS will provide a fully interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, with students studying complex problems rather than specific subjects. Students will graduate with a BASc in Interdisciplinary Problems and Methods. LIS also runs professional/leadership programmes.

In 2012, with Peter Hyman and Oli de Botton, Ed co-founded School 21, an innovative 4 – 18 school in Stratford, East London, designed for children from all starting points and backgrounds (achieved Outstanding Ofsted in 2014).

Ed has advised leaders at Cambridge University, the London School of Economics along with some of the UK’s most exciting schools that are exploring new ways of teaching students. He has also worked with organisations specialised in working directly with disadvantaged students such as ARK Schools and Teach First.

Ed was also the co-founder of EDSPACE, a co-working space for innovative education companies. Prior to founding School 21, Ed worked at McKinsey & Co and ran a theatre production company.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @Edward-Fidoe; @LIS

Twitter: @weareLIS

Prof. Sugata Mitra is Professor Emeritus at NIIT University, India. He retired in 2019 as Professor of Educational Technology and Principal Research Investigator in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. In 2012, he was Visiting Professor for the MIT Medialab in Massachusetts, US.

In 1999, Sugata began the now world-renowned ‘Hole in the Wall (HIW)’ experiment, when a computer was embedded within a wall in an Indian slum at Kalkaji, Delhi and children were allowed to freely use it. The experiment aimed at proving that kids could be taught computers very easily without any formal training. Sugata termed this as Minimally Invasive Education (MIE). The experiment has since been repeated in many places around the world.

Sugata is the recipient of many awards from India, the UK, USA and many other countries in the world and has conducted research that has pushed the boundaries of many disciplines including electrical engineering, medicine and computer science.

He has a PhD in Physics and is credited with more than 25 inventions in the area of cognitive science and educational technology. He was conferred the prestigious Dewang Mehta Award from the Government of India for Innovation in Information Technology in 2003. Amongst many other awards, he was also awarded the 1 million dollar TED Prize in 2013.

In 2006, Sugata invented Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs), now in use throughout the world. In 2009, he created the Granny Cloud, of teachers who interact with children over the Internet.

Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra’s publications and work has resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world.

Sugata published hundreds of ground-breaking academic papers, and in 2019 pulled many of his ideas together into his book, The School in the Cloud: The Emerging Future of Education.

Social Links

Twitter: @sugatam

Web: www.cevesm.com