Does the United States economy still have room for students’ dreams?
As unemployment numbers climb and student debt rises, many of us wonder what this means for the next generation. Is there still room for students to pursue their dreams? Kevin examines the powerful data and its impact on our ability to adapt to maintain this opportunity. Joining Kevin is famed author Heather McGowan and the person behind the data, Karl Rectanus of LearnPlatform.
Heather discusses her latest book on adapting and Karl shares the behind-the-scenes conversations U.S. school districts are having about the role of EdTech on education.
Guests
Meet Heather
Future-of-work strategist Heather E. McGowan helps leaders prepare their people and organizations for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Heather’s clients range from start-ups to publicly traded Fortune 500 companies, including AMP Financial, Autodesk, Citi, AARP, and The World Bank. Her academic work has included roles at Rhode Island School of Design, Becker College, and Jefferson University, where she was the strategic architect of the first undergraduate college focused exclusively on innovation.
In 2017, LinkedIn ranked Heather as its number one global voice for education. Pulitzer Prize–winning NYT columnist Thomas Friedman frequently quotes Heather in his books, describing her as “the oasis” when it comes to insights into the future of work.
In 2019, Heather was appointed to the faculty at the Swinburne Centre for the New Workforce in Australia. Her think tank is called Work to Learn because she believes that in the Third Industrial Revolution, we learned (once) in order to work and now, in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we will work in order to learn (continuously). Heather is the co-editor and author of the book Disrupt Together: How Teams Consistently Innovate, The Adaptation Advantage and a Forbes contributor.
Meet Karl
Karl Rectanus is the co-founder and CEO of LearnPlatform, a mission-driven “for benefit” corporation. LearnPlatform’s edtech effectiveness software as a service is quickly becoming required infrastructure for school districts, state agencies and their partners to save time, save money and improve student outcomes. The organization’s ground-breaking work in managing and measuring the impact of education technology has created a market category and industry standards of education technology, referenced both in academia and the press, including The New York Times, Education Week, Hechinger Report, The 74 Million, MarketBrief, and EdSurge.
Karl has lived, worked, and studied in over 12 countries, and was a James M Johnston Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill. He completed graduate courses at UCLA’s Anderson Business School and CalTech Executive Extension. He has been named a BMW Herbert Quandt Transatlantic Fellow, North Carolina Teaching Fellow, Education Policy Fellow, and serves on non-profit boards dedicated to equity, access, and effective public policy. Karl, his wife, and three daughters live and work in Raleigh, NC.
