The Eduventures Summit evergreen theme, Higher Ed Remastered, captures what Summit aspires to be year after year: relevant, compelling, and insightful. Remastered occupies the creative space between continuity and change, staring down both reactionaries and revolutionaries. “After” a crisis like COVID-19, both reaction and revolution can look especially appealing.
Has the pandemic strengthened or weakened demand for “traditional” higher education? Has it changed the landscape for adult learners and graduate education? Are new delivery models emerging or are schools reverting to old campus/online bifurcations? Which schools are thriving and perhaps just as importantly, why?
Over the course of the next few days, we’ll also unveil our 2022 Higher Education Technology Landscape and recognize our Innovation Award winners. Here is a preview of what you can expect.
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Founder & CEO, Harvard Diversity Project
Brandon is a nationally acclaimed Harvard educator and author of MISEDUCATED: A Memoir. His story of struggle, success, and service has inspired millions around the world. An at-risk youth and college dropout turned award-winning educator, Fleming is Assistant Debate Coach at Harvard University and Founder/CEO of the Harvard Diversity Project. Fleming was recruited to join the Harvard debate faculty at the age of 27. Harvard later approved Fleming’s proposal to establish a new department within the university system called the Harvard Diversity Project – an unprecedented pipeline program of the Harvard Debate Council. Fleming now leads an executive staff and board that has raised over a million dollars to enroll over 100 students of color into Harvard’s international summer debate residency on full scholarship.Chief Digital Evangelist, Salesforce
Vala Afshar is an award-winning inventor, author, weekly podcaster and columnist, and keynote speaker covering the future of business and work, leadership and innovation. As Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce, Vala collaborates with C-suite executives, industry analysts and thought leaders from around the world on opportunities for digital change.
With over 640,000 followers on Twitter, Afshar is named as a top influencer to senior executives on social media. Afshar’s Twitter account was viewed and shared over one billion times in 2021.
Afshar contributes weekly articles to ZDNET and other publications – published over 250 articles in 2020-2021. Afshar has interviewed over 850 guests on his weekly video show DisrupTV, where he speaks with the top business executives covering the topics of leadership, business, technology and innovation disruptive trends. The show is projected to have over 2 million viewers in 2022.
Afshar spent 13 years leading up to his current role, as a Salesforce customer, in roles of Vice President of engineering, Chief Customer Officer responsible for global customer services and Chief Marketing Officer. Afshar wrote the book ‘The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence’ which tells the story of how his company used Salesforce CRM to build a successful and growing business.
World-Renowned Portrait and Documentary Photographer
After working for British Vogue for several years, Platon was invited to New York City to work for the late John Kennedy Jr. and his political magazine, George. Shooting portraits for a range of international publications including Rolling Stone, The New York Times magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ and The Sunday Times magazine, Platon developed a special relationship with TIME magazine, producing over 20 covers for them. In 2007, his work was awarded 1st prize at the World Press Photo Contest.
In 2008, he signed a multi-year contract with The New Yorker. As the staff photographer, he has produced several large-scale photo essays, two of which won ASME Awards in 2009 and 2010. Platon's New Yorker portfolios have focused on themes including the U.S Military, portraits of world leaders and the Civil Rights Movement. In 2009, Platon teamed up with Human Rights Watch to help them celebrate those who fight for equality and justice in countries suppressed by political forces. These projects have highlighted human rights defenders from Burma as well as the leaders of the Egyptian revolution. Following his coverage of Burma, Platon photographed Aung San Suu Kyi for the cover of TIME—days after her release from house arrest. In 2011, Platon was honored with a Peabody Award for collaboration on the topic of Russia's Civil Society with The New Yorker magazine and Human Rights Watch.
Platon has published four book of his work: Platon’s Republic (Phaidon Press, 2004), a retrospective of his early work; Power (Chronicle, 2011), 100 portraits of the world’s most powerful leaders; China: Through the Looking Glass (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015), in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Service (Prestel, 2016), dedicated to the men and women in the United States Military, their physical and psychological wounds, their extraordinary valor, and the fierce emotions that surround those who serve.
Platon is a communicator and storyteller. He has been invited to be a keynote speaker on leadership at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Chanel, Nike, Yale University, Oxford University, Wharton University, the National Portrait Gallery in London and International Center of Photography in New York. He has also appeared on a range of television media including Charlie Rose (PBS), Morning Joe (MSNBC), Fareed Zakaria's GPS (CNN) and the BBC World News.
Platon's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums both domestically and abroad. He has exhibited in New York at the Matthew Marks Gallery and the Howard Greenberg Gallery, as well as internationally at the Colette Gallery in Paris, France. The New York Historical Society has exhibited a solo show of Platon's Civil Rights photographs, which remain as part of the museum's permanent collection. Other permanent collections holding Platon's photography include The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in Tampa, Florida and The Westlicht Museum for Photography in Vienna, Austria and the Scotland National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.
In 2013, Platon founded a non-profit foundation named The People's Portfolio. The foundation aspires to create a visual language that breaks barriers, expands dignity, fights discrimination, and enlists the public to support human rights around the world. He serves as the Creative Director at Large for the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Platon's first film, My Body Is Not A Weapon, features survivors of wartime sexual violence and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege.
Platon is currently on the board for Arts and Culture at the World Economic.
Platon’s life’s work is the subject of a Netflix documentary, Abstract: The Art of Design. In 2020, the Smithsonian acquired Platon’s archive of prominent African American civil rights leaders and culture leaders.
President of the Five-Campus University of Massachusetts System
The 27th president and the first undergraduate alumnus to lead the five-campus University of Massachusetts system. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he was elected to the presidency after eight successful years as chancellor of his alma mater, UMass Lowell, during which he led the university to top-tier national status, improving its performance in every sphere of activity, including enrollment, student success, fundraising and auxiliary revenue generation.
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author and Presidential Historian
Appearing on stage with Jon Meacham
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a world-renowned presidential historian, public speaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times #1 best-selling author.
Her seventh book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, was published in September 2018 to critical acclaim and became an instant New York Times bestseller. A culmination of Goodwin’s five-decade career of studying the American presidents focusing on Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson, the book provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field, and for all of us in our everyday lives.
Goodwin’s career as a presidential historian and author was inspired when as a 24-year-old graduate student at Harvard she was selected to join the White House Fellows, one of America’s most prestigious programs for leadership and public service. Goodwin worked with Johnson in the White House and later assisted him in the writing of his memoirs.
She then wrote Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, which became a national bestseller and achieved critical acclaim. It will be re-released in Spring 2019, with a new foreword highlighting LBJ’s accomplishments in domestic affairs that have stood the test of time.
Goodwin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys was adapted into an award-winning five-part television miniseries. Her memoir Wait Till Next Year is the heartwarming story of growing up loving her family and baseball. Her sixth book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, won the Carnegie Medal and is being developed into a film.
Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln served as the basis for Steven Spielberg’s hit film Lincoln and was awarded the prestigious Lincoln Prize, the inaugural Book Prize for American History, and the Lincoln Leadership Prize.
Well known for her appearances and commentary on television, Goodwin is frequently seen in documentaries including Ken Burns’ The History of Baseball and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; and on news and cable networks, and shows including Meet The Press and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She played herself as a teacher on The Simpsons and a historian on American Horror Story.
Goodwin graduated magna cum laude from Colby College. She earned a doctorate degree in Government from Harvard University, where she taught Government, including a course on the American Presidency.
Among her many honors and awards, Goodwin was awarded the Charles Frankel Prize, the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal, the New England Book Award, as well as the Carl Sandburg Literary Award.
Goodwin recently founded Pastimes Productions with Beth Laski to develop and produce film, television and digital projects.
Goodwin lives in Concord, Massachusetts. She was the first woman to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room in 1979, and is a devoted fan of the World Series-winning team.
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Presidential Historian
Appearing on stage with Doris Kearns Goodwin
Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning Author Jon Meacham is one of America's most prominent public intellectuals. A contributor to TIME and The New York Times Book Review, Meacham is a highly sought-after commentator, regularly appearing on CNN and MSNBC.
Known as a skilled orator with a depth of knowledge about politics, religion, and current affairs, Meacham brings historical context to the issues and events impacting our daily lives.
His latest #1 New York Times bestseller, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, examines the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in U.S. history when hope overcame division and fear. Meacham is a co-author of the recently released book, Impeachment: An American History, which reveals the complicated motives behind the three impeachments in U.S. history.
Meacham’s Presidential biography, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. The Times said, “Destiny and Power reflects the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it.” Meacham delivered eulogies for both President George H.W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush.
Meacham's #1 New York Times bestseller, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, was hailed as "masterful and intimate" by Fortune magazine. His other national bestsellers include Franklin and Winston, American Gospel, and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
A contributing editor at TIME, Meacham writes for the magazine’s Ideas section. He also pens “The Long View” column in The New York Times Book Review in which he “looks back at books that speak to our current historical and cultural moment.” He served as Newsweek's managing editor from 1998 to 2006 and editor from 2006 to 2010. The New York Times called him “one of the most influential editors in the news magazine business.”
Meacham is a frequent guest on Morning Joe; Real Time with Bill Maher; The 11th Hour, and was featured in Ken Burns’ documentary series The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. Fox News produced an hour-long special about Meacham’s Destiny and Power in November 2015.
Named a “Global Leader for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and chairs the National Advisory Board of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. Meacham is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at The University of the South and a Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt. He is currently at work on a biography of James and Dolley Madison.
President, U.S. Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Allan C. Golston, president of the United States Program, leads the foundation’s efforts to help all students graduate from high school, get to and through college, and get a good job. Originally joining the foundation in 2000 as the chief financial officer, Allan felt a deep connection to the U.S. Program work—which spans early learning, K-12, postsecondary, and education pathways into the workforce, as well as economic mobility and opportunity—and began serving as president in 2006.
Allan believes education provides a bridge to opportunity unlike any other in America, and he is committed to ensuring all young people have the education and opportunity they deserve. This includes a deep focus on equity in education and using data to get to better outcomes for students of all backgrounds.
Allan’s professional background is in consulting, public accounting, consumer packaged goods, software development, finance, healthcare, and education. He holds an MBA from Seattle University and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Colorado.
Eduventures Chief Research Officer at Encoura
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Thursday May 6, 2021 at 2PM ET/1PM CT
After a historic year, the proven and true recruitment strategies used by enrollment offices nationwide have been challenged. With many high school students now harder to find, how can institutions better evaluate the success of their search results and strengthen their engagement strategies for future years?
In this webinar, Eduventures Principal Analyst Kim Reid and ACT | NRCCUA Senior Vice President Clint Chapman will identify what to look for in your funnel right now to improve yield and potential opportunities to strengthen your overall funnel in the years ahead. Sharing research on trends seen throughout institutions this year, we’ll provide practical and effective engagement solutions so that you can meet your students where they are right now, while also building a more sustainable model for the years ahead.
Additional topics include:
- Successful funnel strategies and opportunities
- Methods to improve your current yield
- Creating messaging that resonates with students and families
- New methods to engage harder-to-reach students