Askwith Essentials: Leading the Global Education Movement

Americans have idealized the red one-room schoolhouse in popular imagination, but the reality is, schools today must think of their impact beyond the walls of a single classroom. Indeed, educators need to think of their impact on a global scale. On Friday, October 26, Askwith Forums will host a panel discussion about the advancement of education opportunity, equality, and inclusion on an international scale.

Part of Harvard’s Worldwide Week, celebrating the global engagement of the greater Harvard community, this panel will feature leaders in the advancement of global educational thought — all of whom are Ed School alumni. They will delve into the large-scale impact of education and how students should be thought of as global citizens, and will look at the issues that can accompany globalization. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Fernando Reimers, director of the International Education Policy Program.

As Reimers has told Usable Knowledge, "Globalization has connected economies and countries to a much greater extent than ever before. This can result in new anxieties, mistrust and conflict, or it can result in unprecedented collaborations across cultural boundaries to address the challenges of our times. Which way things turn will depend to a great extent on what teachers and schools choose to do about global citizenship."

The panel:

• Wilson Aiwuyor, Ed.M.’12, has a background in research, consulting, and politics. He worked for the Department of Education under the Obama administration and currently serves as an operations analyst for the Global Partnership for Education at the World Bank. As a leader, Aiwuyor hopes to address systemic issues of policy and educational access. “I wanted to go into international development, and contribute to eradicating poverty through education,” he told the Harvard Gazette in 2017.
• Luis Garcia de Brigard, Ed.M.’07, former deputy secretary of education for Colombia, is the founder and managing partner of Appian Education Ventures, a venture firm focused on socially conscious private investment as a way to promote growth and change in education in Latin America.
• Myra Khan, Ed.M.’15, is an education specialist for the World Bank. She runs The Pakistan Education Post, a website dedicated to collecting and distributing news about education in Pakistan to make it easier for people to get involved. “The main thing I learned was to remember constantly that the reason we are all in this work is for children,” she wrote in the book, One Student at a Time: Leading the Global Education Movement. “Working at big, bureaucratic organizations will sometimes make you forget that.”
• LeAnna Marr, Ed.M.’03, is an education specialist with USAID in Morocco and has worked in various parts of the Middle East and Africa since graduating from HGSE. “In many ways, my job is to figure out how to wed U.S. foreign policy priorities with educational needs in a country," she told Ed. Magazine. "I can't think of a more rewarding job than helping children worldwide gain access to quality education."