Dancing with Elephants: Influencing Education Systems in a World in Flux
Friday, March 30, 2012
Session Description
Location: Lecture Theatre 4
Education is one of the sectors most impervious to change, as evidenced by continued reliance on outdated curricula, teaching methods and administrative processes. Yet helping today’s youth develop new ways of thinking and relevant skills has never been more urgently required, given complex and accelerating local and global challenges. Where are innovations in the education system coming from and how are creative entrepreneurs working in traditional educational institutions to mainstream these approaches?
Time & Location
Time:
09:00 - 10:30, Friday, March 30, 2012
BST
Speakers
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Speaker
Co-Founder, Roadtrip Nation
Mike Marriner hit the road upon graduation in an RV to interview leaders across America and learn how they found their roads in life. That experience was nationally released through a best-selling book and PBS Series, which led to the development of The RTN Experience curriculum. To date, in partnership with the California Department of Education, the curriculum has guided over 80,000 low-income students in building their own Roadtrip Projects and has been shown to significantly impact the influencing factors that keep students in school.
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Speaker
Founder and Executive Director, Fundación Origen
Mary Anne Müller is a social entrepreneur, educator and Buddhist instructor. In 1991, she founded Escuela Agroecologica de Pirque and in 2004, she founded Fundación Origen, an institution for Sustainable Education, Entrepreneurship and Peace. Mary Anne is an Ashoka fellow, Avina leader and member of Schwab Foundation. She is currently launching the School for Peace & Sustainable Education to train South American teachers and social leaders.
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Speaker
Director, California Career Resource Network, California Department of Education
John Merris-Coots is the Director of the California Career Resource Network (CalCRN) program within the California Department of Education. CalCRN provides career information, resources, and training materials to California’s middle school and high school students, parents, counselors, educators, and administrators. He has spent the past 19 years providing professional development training and resources to California educators while working for the Sacramento County Office of Education and the California Department of Education.
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Speaker
Manager of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability, Natura Chile
Daniela Bertoglia is Manager of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability for Natura Chile. Her role emphasises developing, implementing and communicating Natura's sustainability strategy and related plans to internal and external stakeholders. She has pursued relevant opportunities to encourage the development of the company's social entrepreneurship endeavour as well as its educational programme. Daniela has a Master's degree in Strategic Communications and a Bachelor of Social Communications from de Del Pacifico University, Chile.
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Speaker
Madhav Chavan moved from the field of Chemistry to the field of literacy a few years after his return to India having acquired a Ph. D. in the United States and some post-doctoral experience there. He worked in the field of adult literacy from 1989 to 1994 inspired by the National Literacy Mission launched by late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India. In 1994, Unicef in Mumbai put him in charge of creating a ‘societal mission’ to universalize primary education in the city of Mumbai. As a result he co-founded Pratham that started in 1994-95 as a Mumbai based organization and has now grown to be one of India’s largest NGOs working across the country with millions of children every year with a focus on basic learning outcomes including reading and math. Its flagship programs, Read India and the Annual Status of Education Report have earned the organization a reputation as a pedagogy and advocacy innovator that has influenced policy and practice at the national and international level. He stepped down as CEO of Pratham Education Foundation but continues to be on its Board and actively leading the new experimentation in use of technology for education.
Madhav has been personally recognized for his work with the WISE Prize and The Skoll Award for social entrepreneurship among other honors. His organization, Pratham, has received the Kravis Prize for Leadership, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award for developmental work and the LUI Che Woo Prize for positive energy.
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Speaker
Director, Stanford University
Debra is focused on achieving a more just and sustainable economic system through collaborative action, human centered design and transformational systems change. She serves on the Boards of the Skoll Foundation, B Lab, IDEO.org, Imperative 21 and the global advisory boards of the African Leadership University and the Wellbeing project. She also works as an advisor to social ventures around the world.
Pre-Covid, Debra was a faculty member at Stanford University's d.school where she co-founded the FEED (Food Entrepreneurship, Education and Design) Collaborative.
Pre-Stanford, Debra was a business executive at Hewlett Packard where the common threads in her broad, 22-year career were driving large scale change, creating new businesses and producing positive social impact and good business results concurrently.
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Speaker
Principal Secretary, Department of Education, Government of Bihar
As Principal Secretary, Department of Education, Anjani Kumar Singh is in charge of elementary to adult education in the state of Bihar, India, and is responsible for the education of 20 million children. His efforts to improve the status of adult education for the people of Bihar have been recognised by the government of India, and were awarded twice successively the UNESCO prize for Literacy by the President of India. He places a special emphasis on bridging the gender and social gap in the domain of education.
