ASU+GSV Summit

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Caleb Hicks, CEO & Co-Founder at schoolai; Jon Woodard, Executive Director, Emerging Technology Initiatives at Wolfram Research; Karttikeya Mangalam, CEO & Founder at SigIQ.ai; Maureen Heymans, VP, Learning & Education at Google; and Jill Barshay, Writer at The Hechinger Report.

The speakers discussed how building an effective AI tutor is not just an engineering challenge, but a pedagogical one. They explored what it takes to design AI systems that support how students learn, reason, and build confidence in real classroom settings.

Using live classroom use cases, the panel examined how tools such as AI tutors, translation, and lesson generation can be embedded into daily instruction with appropriate guardrails, teacher visibility, and alignment to standards. The session highlighted how AI can act as a sidekick for both teachers and students—coaching thinking without shortcutting the learning process.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Mark Atkinson, CEO at Mursion; Majd Sakr, Chief Learning Officer at Accenture; Marissa Farrar, Chief People Experience Officer at Turnitin; Karie Willyerd, Head of Strategic Engagements at GP Strategies; Colton Gyulay, Chief Operating Officer at Speak; and Rob Lauber, CEO at XLO Global.

In an era defined by geopolitical tension, economic volatility, and rapid AI-driven transformation, the session explored how leaders worked to hold their organizations steady while everything around them shifted. Speakers discussed how to preserve clarity, trust, and belonging across remote-first, AI-mediated global teams, sharing real practices for leading through uncertainty, strengthening cohesion, and sustaining culture as disruption became the norm.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Kate Erricker, Group Head Education Research and Global Partnerships at Nord Anglia Education; Nick Yoder, Associate Vice President at Harmony Academy at National University; Rebecca Winthrop, Senior Fellow and Center Director at Brookings; Ying Xu, Assistant Professor at Harvard University; and Jaime Casap, Co-Founder at Purpose Lab.

The speakers discussed how AI is reshaping how we learn, communicate, and participate in society, and examined how to ensure the next generation develops the core human skills—critical thinking, agency, judgment, and empathy—that make civic life possible.

The panel explored key questions around cognition and civic engagement in an AI-driven world:

• How AI may erode productive struggle, metacognition, and deep reading
• The civic risks of outsourcing cognition to algorithmic systems
• How constant algorithmic mediation shapes attention and belief
• How to teach children to evaluate information, argue constructively, and engage in public life, and which core human capacities—judgment, metacognition, productive struggle, and empathy—must be actively cultivated
• How to prepare the next generation for participation in an AI-driven society

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Adam Nordin, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs; Ernesto Pagano, Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group; Hriday Kemburu, Product Growth Lead at GPTZero Inc.; John Bailey, Non-resident Senior Fellow at AEI; and Naomi May, Partner at Cooley.

The speakers examined whether AI represented the next great infrastructure cycle or the next great bubble. They discussed how enterprise demand had been accelerating, hyperscalers had been committing unprecedented capital to chips and data centers, and private markets had been assigning historic valuations to AI startups—while noting that technological revolutions and speculative excess often move in lockstep.

The panel explored key questions shaping the AI capital cycle:

• Are AI valuations and infrastructure spending justified by real, durable demand?
• Where are we seeing repeatable business models — and where is it still “PowerPoint revenue”?
• What happens to startups, enterprises, and public markets if growth slows or the narrative shifts?
• And if this is a bubble — what survives when it clears?

The session offered a clear-eyed debate on whether the industry was in the early innings of a generational transformation or nearing a peak of exuberance.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Charles Elliott, Senior Research Engineering Lead at Google; Chris Clark, Senior Director, Product at Salesforce; Kavitta Ghai, Co-Founder and CEO at Nectir; Dr. Min Sun, Co-Founder and CEO at Colleague AI; and Jennifer Lee, Partner at GSV Ventures.

The speakers discussed how, across campuses and classrooms, ambient AI systems are capturing context continuously—including conversations, workflows, assessments, and interactions—to build persistent learner memory and adapt in real time. They explored how learning is shifting from discrete sessions to continuous streams, from static snapshots to longitudinal memory, from isolated tasks to agentic collaboration, and from standalone platforms to interconnected ecosystems.

The session examined how ambient capture is transforming everything from data flows to assessment models to the definition of learner autonomy. The speakers also considered how to design systems that empower rather than surveil, scale personalization without eroding agency, and build interoperable products across a continuous intelligence layer.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Sebastian Belmar, Head of Engineering at LitLab.ai, Dan Lee, Head of Product at Lirvana Labs, Medha Tare, Senior Director of Research, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

EdTech products were described as too often being judged after they reached classrooms—when design decisions were already locked in and impact was harder to course-correct. The session explored how evidence, child voice, and rigorous learning science could instead shape products from day one. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop was highlighted for partnering with early-stage founders to embed research and real learner feedback into literacy technologies before they scale. From foundational phonics tools to AI-powered writing agents, these collaborations demonstrated that intentional design is not a luxury, but a competitive advantage.

In this fireside conversation, Senior Director of Research Dr. Medha Tare joined partners from the Center’s Sandbox for Literacy Innovations to share how early research engagement reshaped product strategy, features, and outcomes. Sebastian Belmar discussed how literacy expertise informed everything from error analysis to learner scaffolds and playful interactivity. Dan Lee shared how their AI writing agent was co-designed with children—leveraging supportive personas to strengthen reflection, revision, and confidence.

The session offered a blueprint for founders, product leaders, and investors: align with the science of literacy, design for the whole child, and treat young learners not as end users, but as expert partners. It emphasized that the products that truly scale are the ones built to work.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Bridgett Willey, Executive Director / COO at UW Health WorkForward; Lori Partain, Chief People Officer at Helios Consulting; Nicholas Morgan, President at Adaptive Construction Solutions, Inc.; Marek Laco, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor, and Ryan Craig, Managing Director at Achieve Partners.

Apprenticeships were described as moving from pilot to a viable pathway, driven by a fundamental shift in how the U.S. funds them. The session spotlighted employers and intermediaries building modern apprenticeship programs in sectors like tech and healthcare, as formula-based funding replaced fragile, one-off grants and “train and pray” programs. Speakers unpacked how treating apprenticeships as real jobs—with built-in training and predictable dollars flowing directly to employers—was changing the landscape, what was working on the ground, and how policy and practice could align to reach 1 million apprentices in the next three years.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Agenia Clark, President at Fisk University, and Kevin Thames, Vice President, AMERS Channel Sales at Equinix.

The session brought to life the power of fusion through a fireside conversation highlighting what became possible when mission-driven institutions and industry leaders moved in true partnership. The speakers shared the story behind their collaboration to advance innovation, infrastructure, and workforce pathways. The discussion explored how Equinix’s strategic support extended beyond sponsorship to true co-creation—aligning institutional vision, corporate expertise, and long-term investment in talent. Together, Fisk University and Equinix were presented as a real-world example of how cross-sector partnerships can unlock new opportunities for students, strengthen workforce readiness, and scale impact in ways no single organization can achieve alone.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Cathy Cheung, Software Engineer at Google; Shashank Agarwal, Software Engineer at Google Research; and Yoav Bergner, Associate Professor of Learning Sciences/Educational Technology at NYU.

The speakers discussed how skill development is increasingly viewed as the next frontier of education, particularly as the gap widens between the skills employers seek and those the workforce currently possesses. They explored which durable 21st-century skills—such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and AI literacy—are most essential for future readiness.

The session highlighted Google Research’s work in AI-powered assessment and development of these skills, examining how AI can help bridge this gap rather than exacerbate it. The speakers also considered how education can evolve from a focus solely on knowledge acquisition to one that includes scalable approaches to skill assessment, practice, and development.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Julia Wilkowski, Learning Science Team Lead | Learning & Education at Google; Kevin McKee, Research Scientist at Google DeepMind; and Shashank Agarwal, Software Engineer at Google Research.

The speakers explored how, in a sea of generic AI tools, technology can be designed to serve the mind rather than replace it. They provided an inside look at the learning science behind Google’s education tools, including Gemini for Education, and examined how Google DeepMind and Google Research measure efficacy and impact.

The session discussed Google’s approach to large-scale Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) to evaluate the impact of generative AI on student learning in the classroom. It also highlighted the realities of conducting rigorous field research, sharing emerging insights and emphasizing the importance of evidence-based, teacher-centric AI deployment.