Dana Mortenson

Biography

For 20 years, Dana Mortenson — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of World Savvy — has been influencing and changing the conversation about education with educators, administrators, parents and community members. The world is changing, and educators need the freedom and the resources to help our systems of learning change along with it. We can only rise to meet our biggest challenges if our students learn to think through complex problems, and design solutions from a global perspective. Problem-solving, comfort with ambiguity, collaboration, empathy, critical thinking — all are essential tools in today’s global knowledge economy. And a big part of educational equity is ensuring all students have access to those tools.

Dana is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of World Savvy, a national education nonprofit working to educate and engage youth as responsible global citizens. World Savvy supports change agents in K-12 education to create more inclusive, adaptive schools that ensure all young people can develop the skills and dispositions needed to thrive in a more diverse, interconnected world. World Savvy programs provide support at three critical levels to deeply integrate global competence into teaching, learning and culture: student engagement, educator capacity, and school and district leadership support. Since 2002 she has led the organization through significant national expansion, reaching more than 800,000 students and 6,800 teachers across 45 US states and 32 countries, from offices based in Minneapolis, San Francisco, and New York.
Dana is an Ashoka Fellow, was named one of The New Leaders Council’s 40 under 40 Progressive American Leaders, and was winner of the Tides Foundation’s Jane Bagley Lehman award for excellence in public advocacy in 2014.