Global Gurus

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. She is also president and co-founder of the Network for Public Education, with 350,000 followers. She blogs at dianeravitch.net, Her blog has had more than 32 million page views since she started it April 26, 2012. From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. She was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards. From 1997 to 2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal testing program. She was appointed by the Clinton administration’s Secretary of Education Richard Riley in 1997 and reappointed by him in 2001. From 1995 until 2005, she held the Brown Chair in Education Studies at the Brookings Institution and edited Brookings Papers on Education Policy. Before entering government service, she was Adjunct Professor of History and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. In 2011, She was honored to receive the Daniel Patrick Moynihan award from the merican Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Her last two books were national bestsellers. And she received the Grawemeyer Prize in 2014 for “The Death and Life of the Great American School System. She has received 12 honorary degrees.

Dr. Eric Jensen is a former teacher with a specialty in the applied cognitive science of learning. His M.A. is in Organizational Development and Ph.D. is in Human Development. Jensen is currently a member of the invitation-only Society for Neuroscience and the New York Academy of Sciences. He has worked with three universities and co-founded three multimillion dollar educational companies. Jensen cofounded the first and largest brain-compatible enrichment program, now with more than 70,000 graduates, held in 16 countries. He has written Teaching with the Brain in Mind, Brain-Based Learning, Teaching with Poverty in Mind and 29 other books on learning and the brain. He was the founder of the Learning Brain EXPO and has trained educators and trainers worldwide in this field for 25 years. He is deeply committed to making a positive, lasting difference in the way we learn.

Erik M. Francis, M.Ed., M.S. is an international author and presenter with over 20 years of experience working as a classroom teacher, a site administrator, an education program specialist with a state education agency, and a professional development trainer.   He is  the author of Now THAT’S a Good Question! How to Promote Cognitive Rigor Through Classroom Questioning published by ASCD.   His book on teaching and learning for depth of knowledge (DOK) will be published by Solution Tree International in Fall 2020.

Erik is the owner of Maverik Education LLC, providing academic professional development and consultation to K-12 schools, colleges, and universities on developing learning environments and delivering educational experiences that challenge students to demonstrate higher order thinking and communicate depth of knowledge (DOK). His areas of expertise include teaching and learning for depth of knowledge (Webb’s DOK), higher level questioning and inquiry, authentic learning, differentiated instruction, personalized learning, and talent development.   Erik also has extensive experience working with students who are academically at-risk, gifted and talented students, English language learners, and students with special needs.

Erik’s professional development seminars and workshops have been featured at national, state, and regional education conferences hosted by organizations such as ASCD, Learning Forward, the College Board, the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE), the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), the National Teacher Center, and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB).   He has conducted professional trainings at K-12 schools, colleges, and universities throughout the United States and internationally in Canada, Singapore, and Malaysia.

Erik is an ASCD Author and Faculty Member, a professional development consultant for the Association for Middle Level Educators (AMLE), a presenter and consultant for First Educational Resources, a presenter for Staff Development for Educators, Inc. and a presenter and instructional coach for FACTS Management.

Erik received his Master’s in Education Leadership from Northern Arizona University and Master’s of Science in Film and Television Production and Management from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.  He also holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in Rhetoric and Communication and English from the University at Albany.

Erik lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his family.

A highly regarded urban public school educator in New Jersey for nearly 30 years, Baruti K. Kafele has distinguished himself both as a classroom teacher and as a school principal.

As an elementary school teacher in East Orange, N.J., Principal Kafele was selected as the East Orange School District and Essex County Public Schools Teacher of the Year. As a middle and high school principal in East Orange, Plainfield and Newark, N.J., he led the transformation of four different schools, including Newark Tech High School, which went from a low-performing school in need of improvement to recognition by U.S.News and World Report as one of America’s best high schools.

Kafele is one of the most sought-after education speakers in North America. He is the author of eight books, including his four ASCD best sellers—Closing the Attitude Gap, Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life, The Principal 50, and The Teacher 50. He is the recipient of more than 100 educational, professional and community awards, which include the prestigious Milken National Educator Award in 2009 and the City of Dickinson, Tex., proclaiming February 8, 1998, as Baruti Kafele Day.

Bonita Thompson is the 2019 Business Leader of the Year, Harvard Club NYC (GC4W) Global Connections for Women–awarded for her Leadership Innovation and Workforce Reinvention at Bank of America, Levi Strauss, Genentech, Virgin Unite, Varian, Pacific Telesis and The World Bank. Bonita motivates and accelerates growth and change with her first-person professional experience as a global executive. Her books and keynotes inspire audiences with emotional storytelling that engage people to embrace innovation and transformation.

As a rare award-winning Woman Business Leader, Bonita is today’s ideal keynote: (1) Corporate Executive for 30 years who understands your corporate transformation at global companies, (2) Research Director for the World Success Survey at Wharton, and Adjunct Faculty at Institute of Coaching at Harvard and John F. Kennedy School and (3) New York Times Bestselling Leadership Author of Admired: 21 Ways to Double Your Value.

At Bank of America, she energized employees with a global transformation of 100,000 jobs using people analytics and inspiring examples of ordinary employees embracing extraordinary change.

At Levi Strauss, she empowered employees as project manager on five continents with the launch of the world’s first corporate HR INTRANET. Bonita helped launch the Institute for Contemporary Leadership and served on the Board of the Drucker/Hesselbein Leader to Leader Institute. She holds an MBA from U.C. Berkeley and is a doctoral fellow in Educational Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Barbara Blackburn, Ph.D has dedicated her life to raising the level of rigor and motivation for professional educators and students alike. Barbara’s 28 books, including Rigor is NOT a Four-Letter Word, Rigor and Differentiation in the Classroom, Rigor and Assessment in the Classroom, and Rigor in Your School: A Toolkit for Leaders, provide easy-to-implement concrete examples based on decades of experience as a teacher, professor, and consultant. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Teaching from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In 2006, she received the award for Outstanding Junior Professor at Winthrop University. She left her position at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to write and speak full-time. An international speaker, she presents lively, engaging, and practical on-site and technology-based keynotes and workshops for teachers and administrators in elementary, middle, and high schools. Her current emphasis also includes providing “Rigor Checks”, which are evaluations of tasks, assignments, and assessments, as well as training teachers and leaders to implement “Rigor Checks” in their schools.

Salman Khan is a Bangladeshi Indian American educator entrepreneur and former hedge fund analyst. He is founder of Khan Academy which is a free online platform for education worldwide. It is mainly focused on sciences and mathematical field and those subjects are presented through more than 4000 videos which is having more than 1 million subscribers. As the discoverer of this new kind of education world TIME and Forbes recognize him as one of the 100 Most influential People in the World and $1 Trillion Opportunity

Sir Ken Robinson is a professor emeritus and a great thinker in education and business revolution through his thoughts on creativity innovation and human potential. His speech at the prestigious TED conference in 2006 and 2010 has a highest number of viewers in TED history with 25 million viewers from 150 countries worldwide. He was also honored as one of the Worlds Elite Thinkers on Creativity and Innovation in 2011 by Fast Company Magazine and also as one of the Top 50 Thinkers in the business world. He is also the author of best selling book The Element How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything which he composed in 2009 and was translated into 20 languages.

John Wood is the founder of Room to Read. An organization that believes World Change Starts with Educated Children®, Room to Read seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. At the age of 35, John left an executive career track at Microsoft to form Room to Read. The business acumen honed there, combined with his passion to change the world, makes John a unique and inspiring speaker with universal appeal. He is the author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, a memoir that was named by Amazon as one of the Top Ten business narratives of 2006. The book and was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and led to John’s lifelong dream – a television interview with Charlie Rose. At the invitation of former President Bill Clinton, John served three terms on the Advisory Board of the Clinton Global Initiative. He was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and was named by Goldman Sachs as one of the world’s 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tribeca Film Festival, is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and along with Malala Yousufzai was awarded the World’s Children’s Prize, often called the Children’s Nobel Prize, by the Queen of Sweden. John was chosen for the first-ever Microsoft Alumni of the Year award, given by Bill and Melinda Gates. John has been a three-time speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative and a five-time winner of Fast Company Magazine’s Social Capitalist Award. He has been honored by Time Magazine’s “Asian Heroes” Award and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He was selected by Barron’s as one of the “25 Best Givers” in 2009 and 2010, ranking 11th and 9th on the list, respectively. John holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Colorado, and honorary doctorates from McGill University and the University of San Francisco.

Dr. Joseph S. Renzulli is a leader and pioneer in gifted education and applying the pedagogy of gifted education teaching strategies to all students. The American Psychological Association named him among the 25 most influential psychologists in the world. Dr. Renzulli received the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Award for Innovation in Education, considered by many to be “the Nobel” for educators, and was a consultant to the White House Task Force on Education of the Gifted and Talented.

Joseph S. Renzulli is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut, where he also serves as director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. His research has focused on the identification and development of creativity and giftedness in young people and on organizational models and curricular strategies for total school improvement. A focus of his work has been on applying the strategies of gifted education to the improvement of learning for all students.

Dr. Renzulli’s work on the Three Ring Conception of Giftedness, the Enrichment Triad Model and curriculum compacting and differentiation were pioneering efforts in the 1970s, and he has contributed hundreds of books, book chapters, articles, and monographs to the professional literature, many of which have been translated to other languages. Dr. Renzulli’s enrichment-based and differentiated teaching model has been utilized by more than 35,000 teachers from around the world since 1978.

Dr. Renzulli’s work also provides the foundation for the Renzulli Creativity Program, as well as the Renzulli Learning System, which is an online personalized learning program that provides profiles of each student’s academic strengths, interests, learning styles, and preferred modes of expression. This unique program also has a search engine that matches multiple coded resources with student profiles. The Renzulli Creativity Program and schools that have embraced the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) or Renzulli Learning System, also utilize Dr. Renzulli’s educational philosophy, which infuses high engagement enrichment activities into any and all standardized curriculum topics.

Dr. Renzulli is also the founder, along with Dr. Sally Reis, of the Joseph S. Renzulli Gifted and Talented Academy in Hartford, Connecticut which has become a model for local and national urban school reform for high potential/low income students.

Although Dr. Renzulli has obtained more than $50 million in research grants, he lists as his proudest accomplishment the professional development he has provided at the annual summer Confratute program for teachers and administrators, which has enrolled more than 35,000 participants over the past four decades.

Dylan Ap Rhys Wiliam is a British educationalist and Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the UCL Institute of Education and lives in Bradford County, Florida.

Wiliam was educated at Whitchurch Grammar School in Cardiff and at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys in Greater Manchester. He continued his education at the University of Durham (Bachelor of Science, 1976), the Open University (Bachelor of Arts, 1983), the Polytechnic of the South Bank (Master of Science, 1985) and the University of London (PhD, 1993).

His research focus is the professional development of teachers. His 1998 book, Inside the Black Box, which he wrote with Paul Black, was a successful polemic about formative assessment, selling over 100,000 copies. He demonstrated his ideas in a 2010 BBC documentary series, The Classroom Experiment, in which a class at Hertswood School was encouraged to participate more widely in activities such as answering questions. He further expands on these ideas in his 2011 book, Embedded Formative Assessment, which describes five key strategies of effective formative assessment in the classroom.

According to Google Scholar and Scopus his most cited peer reviewed publications are on Assessment for learning (AFL) and formative assessment.

Dr. Otto Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer at MIT, Boston, a Thousand Talents Program Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and co-founder of the Presencing Institute. He chairs the MIT IDEAS program for cross-sector innovation that helps leaders from business, government, civil society to innovate at the level of the whole system. He is author of Theory U and co-author of Presence and Leading from the Emerging Future. In 2015 he co-founded the MITx u.lab, a massive open online course for leading profound change that has since activated a global platform and eco-system of societal and personal renewal involving more than 100,000 users from 185 countries. With his colleagues he delivered award winning programs for companies including Alibaba, Daimler, Eileen Fisher and Google and co-facilitated innovation labs on reinventing education, health, business, government, and well-being. Otto received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching at MIT (2015) and the EU Leonardo Corporate Learning Award for the contributions of Theory U to the future of management and learning (2016).

Deborah Meier has been working in public education as a teacher, principal, writer, advocate since the early 1960s, and ranks among the most acclaimed leaders of the school reform movement in the U.S. She started her work as an early childhood teacher in Chicago after graduating from the U of Chicago. Her family moved to NYC in the late 1960s where she worked as a kindergarten teacher in Central Harlem. For the next 20 years, Meier helped revitalize public schools in New York City’s East Harlem District 4. In 1974, she founded Central Park East Elementary School (CPE I), a highly successful public school of choice that served predominantly local African American and Hispanic families. During the next dozen years, Meier opened two other Central Park East elementary schools in District 4 as well as an acclaimed secondary school (CPESS), while also supporting and directing the development of similar schools throughout NYC. She  helped found the Coalition of Essential Schools, in the 1980s, under the leadership of Ted Sizer.  In 1987 she received a MacArthur “genius” Award for her work in public education. During the 1990s she also served as an Urban Fellow at the Annenberg Institute. In 1995 she moved to Boston to start Mission Hill, a K-8 school in Roxbury. These schools were part of a network Meier created that helped initiate new small schools, both elementary and secondary, both in NYC and Boston. At Coalition schools, Meier helped foster democratic communities, giving teachers greater autonomy in the running of a school, giving parents a voice in what happens to their children in schools, and promoting intergenerational connections. She has always been a proponent of active, project-based learning, and of graduation through a series of exhibitions of high quality work. She is the author of many books and articles, including The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem, and In Schools we Trust. She is an outspoken critic of state-mandated curriculum and high stakes standardized testing and has written extensively on their unreliability and class/race biases. She is on the board of  FairTest, Save Our Schools, Center for Collaborative Education and the Association for Union Democracy. She is also on the editorial board of The Nation, The Harvard Education Letter, and Dissent magazines.

Professor John Hattie is a researcher in education. His research interests include performance indicators, models of measurement and evaluation of teaching and learning. John Hattie became known to a wider public with his two books Visible Learning and Visible Learning for teachers. Visible Learning is a synthesis of more than 800 meta-studies covering more than 80 million students.  According to John Hattie Visible Learning is the result of 15 years of research about what works best for learning in schools. TES once called him “possibly the world’s most influential education academic”.

John Hattie has been Director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, since March 2011. Before, he was Project Director of asTTle and Professor of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, Canada. You can find a full CV of Professor John Hattie (PDF) at the website of the University of Auckland.

Bryan Goodwin is the president and CEO of McREL International, a Denver-based nonprofit education research and development organization. Goodwin, a former teacher and journalist, has been at McREL for 15 years, serving previously as Chief Operating Officer and Director of Communications and Marketing.

He has authored or co-authored several books, including Simply Better: Doing What Matters Most to Change the Odds for Student Success, The 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching: A Checklist for Staying Focused Every Day, Balanced Leadership for Powerful Learning: Tools for Achieving Success in Your School and The Future of Schooling: Educating America in 2020. Goodwin writes a monthly research column for Educational Leadership and presents research findings and insights to audiences across the United States and in Canada and Australia.

Larry Ferlazzo teaches English, Social Studies and International Baccalaureate classes to English Language Learners and mainstream students at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California.Larry wrote six books:Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching; Self-Driven Learning: Teaching Strategies For Student Motivation; The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide (with co-author Katie Hull Sypnieski); Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Challenges; English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work; and Building Parent ngagement In Schools (with co-author Lorie Hammond). Larry has won several awards, including the Leadership For A Changing World Award from the Ford Foundation and was the Grand Prize Winner of the International Reading Association Award for Technology and Reading. Larry writes a popular education blog a http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/ , aweekly teacher advice column for Education Week Teacher and a weekly post for The New York Times. My articles on education policy regularly appear in the Washington Post and the Huffington Post. In addition, my articles have appeared in publications such as ASCD Educational Leadership, Social Policy, and Language Magazine.Larry was a community organizer for nineteen years prior to becoming a public school teacher.

Robert j Marzano PhD, is cofounder and CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory in Colorado. A leading researcher in education, he is a speaker, trainer, and author of more than 30 books and 150 articles on topics such as instruction, assessment, writing and implementing standards, cognition, effective leadership, and school intervention. His books include The Art and Science of Teaching and Effective Supervision. His practical translations of the most current research and theory into classroom strategies are internationally known and widely practiced by both teachers and administrators. Dr. Marzano received a bachelor’s degree from Iona College in New York, a master’s degree from Seattle University, and a doctorate from the University of Washington.

Leader. Visionary. Entrepreneur. Disruptor. Change Maker. Angela embodies each of these descriptors with passion, commitment and fierce determination. She has been creating and leading change in education and enterprise for 31 years, teaching every level of school from grade school to graduate school and consulting with companies around the world.

Angela founded Choose2Matter to bring the world hope by helping every individual embrace their value and potential contribution. Initially launched to challenge and inspire students to work collaboratively to develop innovative solutions to social problems, Choose2Matter has evolved into a movement that support parents, educators, and employees around the world. Her work in 60,000 classrooms across 100 countries has rallied more than a million children who have banded together to launch 170 social enterprises and pass 17 laws. And organizations across all industries are finding new ways to ignite the genius of their employees, successfully addressing a $15 trillion employee engagement problem

Angela earned a BS in Education with a minor in Neuroscience and Master Degrees in Literacy and Ed Leadership.

She is the author of eight books, including Liberating Genius,The Habitudes and The Passion Driven Classroom. Angela is widely recognized as one of most influential voices on social media today, consistently ranking in the top 1% and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. @angelamaiers

Prof Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University UK. He conducted the Hole in the Wall experiment in 1999 while at NIIT, Kalkaji,New Delhi with a computer embedded in the wall of a slum to observe the behavior of unsupervised children. He called this Minimally Invasive Education, MIE. He then went on to invent Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) in UK schools and conducted remoter presence experiments with a ‘Granny Cloud’ that he created. He was awarded the first one million dollar TED Prize in 2013, which he used to create ‘Schools in the Cloud’ that combine SOLEs and the Granny Cloud into a facility for the future of learning.

Michael Fullan is a Canadian researcher on education and the former Dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He is one of those who reform educational system to achieve moral purposes of all children learning. As an award winning author, he also received several awards through his books including Leading in a Culture of Change, Breakthrough with Peter Hill and Carmel Crevola, Turnaround Leadership in Higher Education with Geoff Scott and Change Wars with Andy Hargreaves. Winner (with Andy Hargreaves) of the Grawemeyer Award in 2015 for the book Professional Capital of Teachers—award for “the power of a single creative idea that can impact on the world”.Latest two books ar the bestsellers : Coherence (with Joanne Quinn), and Deep Learning ; Engage the world Change the world (with Joanne Quinn, and Joanne McEachen).

Andy Hargreaves from Boston Massachusetts is theThomas More Brennan Chair in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. He is the founder and co director of the International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. His interest in researching includes emotions of teaching and leading and the sustainability of change and leadership in education business sports and health. He is an author of Teaching In The Knowledge Society Education in the Age of Insecurity book received the Choice Outstanding Book Award from the American Libraries Association for Teaching and the American Educational Research Association Division B Outstanding Book Award.

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is the world’s champion in project management. He has transformed a tactical topic such as project management into one of the central issues in CEO’s 2030 agenda. He argues that projects are the lingua franca of the business and personal worlds from the C-suite to managing your career or relationships.

Antonio’s research and global impact in modern management been recognized by Thinkers50 with the prestigious award “Ideas into Practice”. He has influenced CEOs of leading organizations; preeminent business media such as Harvard Business Review and The Economist; top business schools like Instituto de Empresa and Duke CE; renowned thought leader conclaves, such as Thinkers50 and the Peter Drucker Forum. His vision has impacted thousands of organizations leaders and MBA students.

He is a visiting professor at some of the world leading businesses schools (including Duke CE, Skolkovo, IE, Solvay, Vlerick); and a much in demand keynote speaker at events worldwide. Author of the bestselling “The Focused Organization” (Gower 2012) and contributor to four other business books. His next book, “The Project Revolution” (LID 2019) has been just published.

Global Chairman of the Project Management Institute in 2016, his work focuses on advising senior leaders on  ; prioritize and implement strategic initiatives; build high-performing teams; work across silos and become a learning organization; all essential elements to create a culture that strives for execution, excellence, and collaboration.

Dr. David A. Sousa is an international educational consultant and author of more than a dozen books that suggest ways that educators and parents can translate current brain research into strategies to improve learning. A member of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, he has conducted workshops in hundreds of school districts on brain research, instructional skills, and science education at the pre-K-12 and university levels. He has made presentations to more than 200,000 educators at national conventions of educational organizations and to regional and local school districts across the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia.

Dr. Sousa has edited science books and published articles in leading journals on staff development, science education, and educational research. Dr. Sousa has been interviewed by Matt Lauer on the NBC Today Show and by National Public Radio about his work with schools using brain research.

Dr. Sousa has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, a Master of Arts in Teaching degree in science from Harvard University, and a doctorate from Rutgers University. His teaching experience covers all levels. He has taught senior high school science and has served as a K-12 director of science, a supervisor of instruction, and a district superintendent in New Jersey schools. He was an adjunct professor of education at Seton Hall University for 10 years and a visiting lecturer at Rutgers University.

Richard Gerver has been described as one of the most inspirational leaders of his generation. He is an award-winning speaker, bestselling author and world-renowned thinker.

Richard began his career in education, most notably as headmaster of the failing Grange Primary School. In just two years, he famously transformed the school into one of the most acclaimed learning environments in the world. He was celebrated by UNESCO and the UK Government for its incredible turnaround.

​Richard has since transitioned to the global stage where he uses his trademark humour and natural style to deliver passionate, provocative and authentic speeches. He draws upon the first-hand experiences and unique insights garnered from frontline education to explore the links between great leadership, human potential, change and innovation. His ability to connect experiences across many seemingly different environments helps people to expand their thinking and perception of potential. It is this authenticity and uniqueness which has helped Richard win him global acclaim and invitations to speak on the most recognised stages, including TED, the RSA and BBC radio.

Rachael Mann is passionate about all things related to education, technology, and science. She is an “edufuturist” who believes in the importance of shaping the educational philosophies and spaces of today by looking toward the innovations of tomorrow. Rachael is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences and events across the country, and she speaks and writes about disruptive technology, education, and careers. She is the author of The Spaces You Will Go and coauthor of Martians in Your Classroom, an educational title about integrating STEM into the classroom utilizing space-related initiatives.

Rachael holds an MA in educational leadership and  has 14 years of classroom teaching experience as a career and technical education instructor. Ms. Mann’s experience includes her work as the Network to Transform Teaching State Director, the Professional Learning Director of STEM, and the Arizona State Director for Educators Rising.   She is a founding member of the Council on the Future of Education, president-elect for the NCLA executive board, vice-president of New and Related Services for ACTE, and a member of the Region V Policy Committee.

From professional growth to motivational talks to workshops, Rachael loves to inspire audiences to think bigger and dream beyond. Connect with Rachael on social media @RachaelEdu to learn more about her work.

Co-Founder, The Love and Logic Institute Inc., School Consultant Services. Over 30 years of experience in education, including: Teacher, Principal, Administrator. 34 years of experience as a speaker, consultant. Jim Fay has become one of America’s most sought-after presenters in the fields of parenting, positive discipline, and classroom management. With Foster W. Cline, M.D., he is the co-founder of The Love and Logic Institute and co-author of the bestseller Parenting with Love and Logic. He’s become a pied piper for parents, providing practical teaching and parenting techniques and encouraging adults to be consistent and effective in their efforts with kids. Jim Fay has over 30 years of experience in education, serving in public, private, and parochial schools in a variety of roles, including elementary education, art and music teacher, school principal, and administrator. He has been consulting and speaking about parenting and education for more than 30 years, founding School Consultant Services, the sister company to the Cline-Fay Institute, in 1977. Through working in a variety of education settings, including inner-city and suburban schools, Jim saw the need to structure the classroom, the schools, and the home in a way that would build positive relationships with children. The structure would teach children responsibility and self-discipline, while still giving kids the message that adults cared about them.

Elizabeth Ross Hubbell is an educator, author, and speaker with more than 20 years’ experience across many levels of education. She serves as Senior Program Manager for Student Affairs at Academic Impressions where designs professional learning experiences for higher ed. Her primary topics of interest include developing women leaders in education, helping marginalized students succeed, and using data in a high tech/high touch way to impact student success. Prior to joining Academic Impressions, Elizabeth served as a K12 consultant at McREL International, focusing on instructional strategies and technologies. She has presented at ASCD, ISTE, EARCOS, and ACEL conferences. Elizabeth is a former Montessori teacher.

Pasi Sahlberg is a global academic from Finland who analyze academic systems around the globe and reforms to education systems. He engages directly to communities and practitioners and he is recognized as an international school improvement activist. He is an active speaker who made more than 300 keynote speeches and which was published over 100 articles chapters and on books regarding education. In 2013 he won a Grawemeyer Award for his best seller book Finnish Lessons What Can the World Learn from educational Change in Finland.

Dr. David Cooperrider’s founding theoretical work in “Appreciative Inquiry” is creating a positive revolution in the leadership of change. With implications for every aspect of business, AI has experienced exponential growth as a change initiative methodology. This growth is testimony to the profound impact AI is having in business, education, healthcare, communities, non-profit and government institutions.

David speaks at large corporate and association conferences and has served as advisor to a wide variety of organizations including the Boeing Corporation, Fairmount Minerals, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, McKinsey, Parker Hannifin, Sherwin Williams, Wal-Mart, American Red Cross, American Hospital Association, Cleveland Clinic, and World Vision.

Mike Kim is one of the most well-known and well-respected teachers in the LSAT industry. Mike has a unique ability to understand the architecture of standardized exams, and more importantly, Mike has a proven ability to help students drastically improve their scores. Previously, Mike co-created and oversaw the development of the Manhattan LSAT books and courses. Inspired by self-driven students who prepare for the LSAT on their own, he set out to create the ultimate self-study guide, and The LSAT Trainer is the result.