Bryan Goodwin is the president and CEO of McREL International. Goodwin, a former teacher and journalist, has been at McREL for more than 15 years, serving previously as chief operating officer and director of communications and marketing. Prior to joining McREL, he was a college instructor, a high school teacher, and an award‐winning business journalist. He frequently presents keynotes and conference sessions on best practices for instruction, school leadership, and education innovation. Bryan thrives on translating research into practice, scanning the world for new insights and best practices on teaching and leading, and helping educators everywhere adapt them to address their own challenges.

Peter Senge, PhD, Senior Lecturer, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Founding Chair of the Society of Organizational Learning (SoL), a global network of people and institutions working together for systemic change. His work centers on promoting shared understanding of complex issues and shared leadership for creating healthier human systems. Today, this involves major cross-sector collaborative projects focused on global food systems, climate change, circular (zero waste) business models and regenerative economies, and youth leadership and the future of education.

Professor Louise Stoll’s research and development activity focuses on how schools,districts and national systems create capacity for learning and improvement, with particular emphasis on creative leadership, leadership development, professional learning communities and learning networks. She has also explored some of these issues in the health and other public sectors. Louise is committed to finding ways to help make better connections between research and practice, and particularly enjoys working with school principals and other leaders. A former President of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and School Improvement, she is part-time Professor at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning at the Institute of Education, University of London, a freelance researcher, OECD expert and international consultant. She started her career as a teacher in Inner London, and also spent six years working in Ontario, Canada. Author and editor of many publications including Professional Learning Communities with Karen Seashore Louis; It’s About Learning (and It’s About Time) with Dean Fink and Lorna Earl; Changing Our Schools: Linking School Effectiveness and School Improvement with Dean Fink; No Quick Fixes with Kate Myers, and articles on creating capacity for learning, networking between schools and creative leadership, her books have been translated into five languages. She has developed research-based materials on professional learning communities, a simulation on networking between schools, and The Toolkit: Improving School Leadership, for the OECD. Co-editor of a new book series, Expanding Educational Horizons, she presented a series of Hot Research on Teachers’ TV in England. She is a popular keynote presenter and workshop facilitator, OECD expert and consultant in many countries. Louise is a governor of a special school and she also sings in a jazz choir.

Willard R. Daggett, Ed.D., CEO of the International Center for Leadership in Education, is recognized worldwide for his proven ability to move preK-12 education systems towards more rigorous and relevant skills and knowledge for all students. He has assisted a number of states and hundreds of school districts with their school improvement initiatives. Dr. Daggett has also collaborated with education ministries in several countries and with the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Governors Association, and many other national organizations. He serves on several advisory boards, including: NASA Education Advisory Board – 2008 to present USA Today (national newspaper) Education Advisory Board. Before founding the International Center for Leadership in Education in 1991, Dr. Daggett was a teacher and administrator at the secondary and postsecondary levels and a director with the New York State Education Department, where he spearheaded restructuring initiatives to focus the state’s education system on the skills and knowledge students need in a technological, information-based society.

Barrie Bennett is currently professor emeritus at the Ontario Institute of Studies of Education at the University of Toronto. Although he is in his 47^th year of classroom teaching; and continues to teach in kindergarten to grade twelve classrooms, his larger focus is on how school districts/systems shift to extend and refine the instructional practices of teachers. Over the last thirty-five years he has worked in over thirty districts, in three countries (Ireland, Australia and Canada) on long-term systemic change projects. He is currently working in Ireland, where they are in the eleventh year of the project with secondary teachers (over 40 percent of secondary schools are now involved in the project, with elementary schools starting last year) their international conference in Ireland is in October of 2018. Barrie is also working in the second year of a new project with the Teachers’ Union in Western Australia where they are using his newest text, ‘Instructional Expertise: Conversations With Myself and Others’. The project in WA focuses on teacher self-regulation in the design of learning environments. That work in WA is now in its fifteenth year.Kappan awarded Barrie educator of the in Ontario and he was nominated for teacher of the year at the University of Toronto. In terms of recent publishing, he has two chapters in the Wily Handbook of Teaching and Learning being published this year and has just finished another text titled, ‘Effective Group Work: Beyond Cooperative Learning’.

Mona is a senior partner with McKinsey & Company’s Washington DC office and leads the Global Education Practice. Mona is the lead author of Education to Employment: Getting Europe’s Youth Into Work, Education to Employment: Designing a System That Works, How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better, and is co-author of How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top. These reports have been widely cited in the media and in the education field, and Mona has been invited to speak about these reports in over 40 countries around the world.

Mona serves education clients across the public, private, and social sectors. In the school system arena, her work focuses on supporting system leaders to achieve rapid gains in literacy and numeracy at the classroom level. In the education to employment arena, she works with government leaders to develop youth employment solutions, and with industry and education leaders to develop impactful workforce programs. In higher education, Mona supports institutions to achieve financial stability so as to improve both access and quality.

Mona serves as the President of Generation, an independent non-profit founded by McKinsey & Company. Generation is a global program that trains and places disconnected youth in jobs. After two years of operation, Generation has become one of the largest and fastest-scaling programs of its kind, and is live across five countries to date (US, Spain, India, Kenya, and Mexico)

Mona was selected as one of Fortune Magazine’s ’40 under 40’, serves on the Board of Governors of the International Baccalaureate Organization, and is a member of the global advisory council of Teach for All. She was previously a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Education. She has a B.A. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from MIT.

Franklin Schargel is a former classroom teacher, school counselor, and school administrator who successfully designed, developed, and helped implement a process that:  dramatically increased parental engagement, increased post-secondary school attendance and significantly lowered his Title 1 high school’s dropout rate.  The U.S. Department of Education, Business Week, Fortune Magazine, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and The New York Times have recognized his work.

Recently he was nominated for the Brock International Prize in Education for “demonstrating clear evidence of success in dropout prevention and for retaining students in alternative education environments.” He is one of nine people, globally, to be nominated. Previously he has been awarded the Individual Crystal Star Award by the National Dropout Prevention Network (NDPN), and the International Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention honored him with its “Program of the Year Award”.

In addition, he is an internationally recognized speaker and author of twelve best-selling books. Routledge Press has published his latest book: Creating Safe Schools: A Guide for School Leaders, Classroom Teachers, Counselors and Parents, internationally. In addition, he has written over 100 published articles dealing with school reform. One of his books, Helping Students Graduate, has been recognized by the United States Department of Education as “being effective in solving our school dropout problem.” The book utilizes 15 strategies developed in conjunction with the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University.

He has presented workshops  in 49 states, Latin America, and Europe on the topic of school reform, at-risk youth, safe schools and dropout prevention.

Visit Franklin’s website, Schargel Consulting Group, to learn about his workshops, books, upcoming engagements, and many ideas for helping schools, teachers, and students.

Dirk Van Damme is currently Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division IMEP which covers both the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation CERI and the Indicators of Educational Systems INES programme in the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills. He is also professionally involved in educational policy development between 1992 and 2008 and served as chief of staff of Mr Frank Vandenbroucke, Flemish minister of education between 2004 and 2008. His current interests are evidence based innovation in education comparative analyses of educational systems new developments in the learning sciences and knowledge management in education.

Dr J Jay Marino is a Superintendent of schools in the Dunlap Community Unit School District 323 in Dunlap IL. He previously held many positions in schools and has taken the initiative on an ongoing basis for the improvement of education in schools. In addition to his efforts in education, he also helped school organizations in Europe and the US. He also gave numerous presentations at local state, national and international conferences. Among his endeavors, he also writes and became the editor for many publications including Leading Continuous Improvement Inspiring Quality Education Worldwide Magistrum in 2011, A Study of School Boards and Their Implementation of Continuous Improvement Practices, The Journal for Quality and Participation Vol 34 Issue 2 2011

Alexander Russo is an education writer whose work has appeared in Slate, Miller-McCune, The Washington Monthly, City Limits, the Huffington Post, National Review, and Washington Post. He is also the creator of two education blogs, “This Week In Education” and District 299: The Chicago Schools Blog, (sponsored by the Chicago Tribune). The Washington Post recently named “This Week In Education” one of its best education blogs of 2010. Chicago Magazine has named District 299 one of the best blogs in the city. He has been a guest commentator on WBUR’s On Point, WNYC’s On The Media, Chicago Public Radio, Chicago Public Television, and Fox TV Chicago. Before becoming a writer, Alexander was a teacher, an education researcher, and a policy advisor to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Jeff Bingaman, and Ramon Cortines (currently the superintendent of schools in Los Angeles). He has an MA in Education Policy from Harvard and a BA from Stanford. During 2008-2009, Alexander was a Spencer Education Journalism Fellow at Columbia University.

Alma Harris is a Professor and Pro Director Leadership at the Institute of Education London. She is committed in lifting the effectiveness in education systems mainly for school to boost students reputation and she likes to assist schools with the most disadvantaged contexts. Her research includes school leadership transformation and improvement as well as organizational changes.In her most recent research with Andy Hargreaves, they focused on business education and sport sectors for high performing organizations. Alma Harris is the author of Distributed Leadership in Schools Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow and has been translated into a number of languages.

Arne Duncan became the U.S. Secretary of Education in 2009. Teaching runs in Duncan’s family: his mother, Sue Duncan, runs an independent early-learning center for children on Chicago’s South Side, and his father was a professor at the University of Chicago. Arne Duncan went to Harvard University, where he was co-captain of the basketball team before graduating with a sociology degree in 1987. He played pro basketball in Australia from 1987-91. He then returned to Chicago and in 1992, along with his sister, helped create Ariel Community Academy, a new charter public school which he ran for six years. He became director of the magnet school program for Chicago Public Schools in 1998 and in 2001 was named chief executive officer — the equivalent of superintendent — of Chicago’s public schools. His friend and fellow Chicagoan, Barack Obama, was elected president in 2008 and then named Duncan as Secretary of Education.