Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Geordie Hyland, Chief Executive Officer at American College of Education; Ajita Menon, President and CEO at Calbright College; Chris Lynne, President at University of Phoenix; Jacob Fraire, President at ECMC Foundation; and Charles Westrin, Managing Director and Chief Product Officer at BCG U.

The speakers explored how non-traditional students had become the majority of learners in higher education—students who were working, parenting, returning after a break, or attending part-time—and how this shift was fundamentally reshaping enrollment, persistence, and the financial model of higher education.

This session convened higher education leaders for a critical conversation about what it took for institutions to adapt and remain at the forefront of meeting the needs of non-traditional learners. Panelists highlighted evidence-based strategies driving results, including leveraging enterprise-grade AI to provide proactive advising and persistence supports; building stackable, workforce-aligned credential pathways that improved speed to value; redesigning enrollment and academic calendars for greater flexibility; and strengthening financial resilience through models that expanded access without shifting costs to students.

At its core, this conversation focused on institutional readiness and how designing for the new majority of students was no longer simply about access, but a defining strategy for higher education’s future.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Ben Nelson, Founder and CEO at Minerva Project; Shai Reshef, President at University of the People; Jeannie Tarkenton, Founder and CEO at Funding U; Ian Wilhelm, Deputy Managing Editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education; and Nancy Gonzales, Executive Vice President and University Provost at Arizona State University.

The speakers convened a future-focused dialogue on the three forces most likely to shape higher education through 2030. In a fast-moving, double-moderated conversation, they examined where pressure was rising, which models were breaking, and what was emerging to replace them.

The session explored financial challenges including rising costs, the limits of loan forgiveness, and new models designed to reduce student debt while keeping institutions financially viable. Panelists also examined learning transformation through the move from seat time to outcomes, with AI positioned as core learning infrastructure powering assessment, guidance, and credential pathways aligned to work and mobility.

The conversation further addressed human-centered priorities including belonging, mental health, equity, and the evolving expectations of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, as well as working adults, caregivers, and learners under extreme conditions. Blending national reporting, institutional innovation, and real-world case studies, this session surfaced what higher education must rethink now to remain credible, accessible, and human-centered in the decade ahead.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Thomas Arnett, Senior Research Fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute; Noelle DeLaney, Chief Operating Officer at the National School Choice Awareness Foundation; Emory Edwards, Vice President of Outreach and Entrepreneurship at EdChoice; and Keri Hunter, Director of K12 at Stand Together Trust.

The speakers took a fact-based look at what school choice meant today, why millions of families had been navigating the education system differently than they did a decade ago, and how participation was evolving across the country. They explored who was participating in school choice and where innovation was emerging across public, charter, and private schools.

This session examined how school choice was shaping K–12 education nationwide by highlighting what families were choosing while identifying the key questions policymakers, educators, and funders should be asking next. The conversation focused on understanding the realities of modern school choice through data, trends, and practical insights, offering a clearer view of how educational options were expanding and what those shifts meant for the future of American education.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Justin Dent, Founder and CEO at Outschool.org; Jamie Rosenberg, Founder and Executive Chairman at ClassWallet; Chris Minnich, CEO at MetaMetrics Inc.; Raphael Gang, Director of K12 Education at Stand Together Trust; Frank Sikernitsky, Chief Information Officer at Step Up For Students; and Bill Hansen, President and CEO at Building Hope.

The speakers explored how choice did not scale on aspiration alone, but on infrastructure. They examined the complex operational backbone behind every ESA, scholarship program, and pluralistic ecosystem, including payment flows, fraud prevention, eligibility verification, vendor onboarding, compliance automation, reporting, and user experience.

This session pulled back the curtain on what it actually took to operationalize choice at scale. Panelists discussed how leaders were designing systems that balanced efficiency with integrity as policy ambition met technical execution. The conversation highlighted the importance of building modern infrastructure capable of supporting multiple choice pathways while ensuring accountability, access, and trust across increasingly complex educational ecosystems.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Jorge Elorza, CEO at Democrats for Education Reform; Ashley Berner, Director at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy; Lindsay Fryer, President and Founding Principal at Lodestone DC; Corey DeAngelis, Visiting Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research; and Robert Enlow, President and CEO at EdChoice.

The speakers explored how choice had become politically charged, but did not need to be. They convened leaders from across the spectrum to ask a sharper question: where could stakeholders align around what worked for kids — and the families who knew them best? The session examined areas of fusion already emerging across systems, as parents exercised greater agency and demanded more responsive, high-quality options.

As federal education tax credits entered the national conversation, panelists discussed how states, districts, and providers faced a new layer of opportunity and complexity. They explored how these policies could be navigated responsibly to expand access for all students while strengthening public systems.

This conversation focused on moving beyond labels to shape innovative, durable solutions together. The session highlighted this moment as an opportunity for leaders across differing perspectives to center students and families while building practical, effective approaches that respond to evolving educational needs.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Deirdre Quarnstrom, Vice President of Education at Microsoft Corporation; Pierre Lagrange, CEO at Mrs Wordsmith; Aaron Feuer, CEO and Co-Founder at Panorama Education; Angélica Infante-Green, Commissioner of Education at the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE); and Jenny Anderson, Author, Speaker, Journalist, and representative of the Center for Flourishing Teen.

The speakers examined how schools have been facing an engagement crisis that showed up everywhere, from chronic absenteeism and declining motivation to fractured attention and growing student disconnection. They explored how AI-powered tools and digital learning environments have been reshaping how young people focus, create, and experience school, making engagement not just a classroom challenge, but a systems challenge.

This session brought together learning science, system leadership, and product innovation to examine engagement as an ecosystem. Panelists explored what research revealed about motivation, belonging, and attention in digitally saturated environments; how technology could either erode or strengthen those drivers; and what school systems were seeing when engagement broke down at scale.

From statewide absenteeism trends to classroom-level design choices, speakers shared how districts and developers were rethinking learning experiences to restore relevance, agency, and meaningful challenge. The conversation connected theory to practice by asking how schools could use AI and digital tools responsibly while rebuilding the human conditions that make students want to show up, persist, and learn. This was a conversation about re-engaging a generation, not through a single solution, but through aligned science, design, and leadership in an AI-shaped world.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Mark Angel, Co-Founder and CEO at Amira Learning Inc.; Dacia Toll, Co-CEO at Coursemojo; Jasmine Walker, Director at The Center for Outcomes Based Contracting; McKenzie Snow, Director at Iowa Department of Education; and Christina Grant, Executive Director at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.

The speakers explored what happened when districts stopped buying products and started building outcome-driven partnerships. They discussed a new contracting model where funding followed impact, accountability was shared, and student learning sat at the center of every decision. Instead of transactional, à la carte purchasing, these models tied a meaningful portion of funding to student outcomes and made districts and providers jointly responsible for results, implementation, and continuous improvement.

The session unpacked what became possible when accountability was shared. Panelists examined how outcome-aligned partnerships drove stronger implementation fidelity, helped ensure students received the right dosage of support, and delivered higher levels of student engagement than traditional procurement approaches. They also explored how these models supported fiscal transparency, focused resources on students with the greatest needs, and allowed systems to course-correct in real time. The conversation probed whether moving from an à la carte mindset to fully integrated, outcome-aligned partnerships was essential to sustaining measurable change in K–12, and what it took to make these models work at scale.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Tammy Wincup, CEO at Securly; Richard Culatta, CEO at ISTE+ASCD; Curtis Lewis, Founder and President at Boldly Moving Education Ahead (BMEA); Solome Tibebu, President at Behavioral Health Tech; and Aaliyah A. Samuel, Education Consultant.

Speakers explored how today’s students are growing up in a radically different environment shaped by constant connectivity, AI-powered tools, digital surveillance, and intensifying mental health pressures. They discussed how these shifts are expanding the role of schools beyond traditional education, requiring broader, more integrated safety nets that combine mental health support, social-emotional learning, digital citizenship, online safety, and emerging AI safeguards. The conversation highlighted how education and technology leaders are working to address new risks thoughtfully—without overcorrecting—by balancing protection with trust, safety with student agency, and offline wellbeing with online resilience to better support the whole child in an increasingly complex digital age.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Molly Nagler, Head of Learning at Moderna; Gordon Trujillo, Vice President, Enterprise Learning & Development at DaVita; Austin Ashley, Head of Digital Learning at Bain Academy, Bain & Company; Joshua Clark, Chief Learning Officer at IBM; and Al Dea, Founder at The Edge of Work.

This fast-paced show & tell session, MC’d by Al Dea, featured learning leaders sharing real examples of how they were integrating AI into their organizations. The speakers crowdsourced the emerging AI enterprise learning leader playbook, offering practical insights into how enterprise learning functions were applying AI across diverse organizational contexts.

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Alex Laurs, Chief Learning and Development Officer at Ernst & Young; Janelle Simmonds, Global Enablement Lead, Future Workforce Strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software; Jenny Dearborn, Chief People & Enterprise Excellence Officer at Greenfield Global; Todd Minor, Global Learning Leader, Microsoft Customer & Partner Solutions at Microsoft Corporation; and Julia Stiglitz, CEO and Co-Founder at Uplimit.

The speakers discussed how learning organizations have taken many forms—from internal L&D to customer education and hybrid enablement—while the mandate has increasingly remained the same: build skills effectively, at scale, and with measurable impact. As AI reshaped how learning was designed, delivered, and embedded into work, this session surfaced lessons that emerged when audiences, operating models, and practices intersected. The discussion showed how workforce leaders could translate insights across contexts to drive meaningful skill-building, performance, and impact in a fused learning ecosystem.