Facilitator, Strategic Advisor, Author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters

Priya Parker is helping us take a deeper look at how anyone can create collective meaning in modern life, one gathering at a time. She is a facilitator, strategic advisor, acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, the executive producer and host of the New York Times podcast, Together Apart, and the host of The Art of Gathering Digital Course. Parker has spent 20 years helping leaders and communities have complicated conversations about community and identity and vision at moments of transition. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India. 

Parker is a founding member of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network. She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia. 

Parker’s The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Riverhead, 2018) has been named the Best Business Book of the year by Amazon, Esquire Magazine, NPR, the Financial Times, 1-800-CEO-READS and Bloomberg. She has spoken on the TED Main Stage, and her TEDx talk on purpose has been viewed over 3 million times. Parker’s work has been featured in numerous outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, TED.com, Forbes.com, Real Simple Magazine, Oprah.com, Bloomberg, Glamour, the Today Show and Morning Joe. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, Anand Giridharadas, and their two children.

Co-founder & Chief Experience Officer, We and Me

Chad Littlefield is the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of We and Me (www.weand.me)—an organization whose mission is to help leaders, educators, and events make connection easy. Forbes calls Chad a “global expert on asking questions that build trust and connection in teams.” He is a TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and creator of Connection Toolkit™, which is now being used to create conversations that matter on campuses and companies in over 80 countries around the world. Most recently, Chad and his late partner Will Wise launched their books How to Make Virtual Engagement Easy and Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations that Matter, both #1 Amazon Bestsellers.

Chad has led workshops, trainings, retreats, and interactive keynotes at JetBlue, Starbucks, Conscious Capitalism International, Johnson & Johnson, Penn State, Notre Dame, George Mason University, Typeform, Goodwill, and hundreds of events. Feel free to meet Chad via his free resources and weekly videos right here or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Co-founder & CEO, Big Bad Boo Studios

Aly is an award-winning producer of children’s cartoons and cartoon-based curricula that teach pro-social values and SEL, as well as the founder and CEO of Big Bad Boo Studios. His cartoons, co-created by Emmy Award-winning creatives and childhood development psychologists from Sesame Street, have won over 50 international awards and reach a global audience of more than 500 million people in over 100 countries and 40 languages on premier channels such as Disney, PBS, and Discovery Kids. They are also featured on streaming platforms, including Disney+/Hulu, Amazon, YouTube, and Oznoz, where they have been streamed over 4 billion times.

Big Bad Boo's SEL curricula, which are tightly aligned with CASEL Standards, use cartoons as a springboard for activities and discussion, were co-created by the former head of curriculum from Sesame Street, have been used in 15 countries by ministries of education and have won numerous accolades, including the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Award, presented at the United Nations as one of the most innovative education programs in the world. 

In addition to their commercial cartoons and curricula, Big Bad Boo has partnered with UNICEF for over 15 years using cartoons and learning materials to provide trauma relief for over 3 million children in conflict, including programs in Syria, Guatemala, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Palestine. In 2018, Aly won the inaugural Kepyr Award as the humanitarian of the year in the children’s media industry. 

In addition to developing funny and entertaining cartoons, Big Bad Boo is also a leader in the development of assessment instruments that apply the same rigor to SEL skills and competencies as academic metrics, which include unique assessment instruments using cartoon strips for KG-Grade 2. He believes that if we are to mainstream SEL and pro-social values, such as integrity, honesty, and ethical decision-making, we need to assess these skills to build awareness and accountability to our independent school mission statements. Aly is currently spearheading a global benchmarking study for independent schools on climate, culture, and citizenship values.

Aly is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley Law School and lived in New York for over 20 years. Still, he is a proud Canadian who now resides in Austria. He is a member of the executive board at the American International School of Vienna, where his two (adorable) girls matriculate.  He’s an avid golfer, decent Kutchi speaker, and a disastrous cook… but he tries.

Senior Director of Education and Innovation, Big Bad Boo Studios

Rachael is the Senior Director of Education and Innovation at Big Bad Boo Studios, where she guides the educational vision behind work that inspires teachers and students to collaboratively create healthier classroom and school cultures.

With more than two decades of experience in independent and international education, Rachael’s work sits at the intersection of teaching, school culture, and leadership. She is known for helping educators turn big ideas about learning and community into practical systems that support both students and the adults guiding them.

Prior to her current role, Rachael held senior leadership positions at Waynflete School in Maine and the International School of Helsinki, where her work focused on community engagement and student autonomy. She is the founder of Co-Create Schools, through which she develops tools and processes that support youth–adult partnerships and inclusive leadership in school communities.

Rachael is the author of the forthcoming book Let the Learners Lead: Empowering Student Voice to Co-Create School Culture (Routledge, 2026), and the co-author of Cultivating Connections that Matter, a professional learning course developed with ECIS. She has been a featured speaker for the International Baccalaureate’s Belonging and Equity Series, and her writing appears in The International Educator, International School Leader Magazine, and Childhood Education, among other publications.

She is a Lead Contributor to the International Anti-Discrimination Task Force and collaborates with global partners on initiatives related to equity, citizenship, and school culture.

Rachael is a graduate of Middlebury College and holds a master’s degree in education from Brown University. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her spouse and their two young-adult children—her favorite collaborators and constant teachers.

Executive Director, Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University

Nicole Brittingham Furlonge is a listener, educator, writer, and convener whose work champions deep listening as both an art and a practice—essential to how we learn, lead, and live together. As Professor of Practice and Executive Director of the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, she guides educators and school leaders to pause, attune, and move with empathy, curiosity, and courage.

Whether in classrooms, boardrooms, or communities, Nicole sparks conversations about how listening builds trust, fosters belonging, and creates the conditions where learning can thrive. A first-generation college student, she earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and brings to her teaching and leadership a love of story, sound, and systems thinking. She also teaches in Columbia’s Narrative Medicine program and co-founded the LEARNS Collaborative, which helps organizations shape human-centered and equitable cultures.

Nicole is the author of Race Sounds: The Art of Listening in African American Literature (University of Iowa Press) and is currently developing projects that reimagine listening as a civic, educational, and organizational infrastructure. Her career spans classrooms and leadership roles at independent schools including St. Andrew’s School (Delaware), The Lawrenceville School, Princeton Day School, and Holderness School, where she has served as teacher, department chair, dean of teaching and learning, and director of diversity.

She also shares her voice and vision through service on the boards of The School at Columbia University, International School Services (ISS), Impact Reading, and The Center for Reaching and Teaching the Whole Child. Across all of her work, Nicole invites educators and leaders to cultivate school cultures and practices that are designed to listen, adapt, and grow.

Futurist, Thought Leader, Author of The Future of Smart

Dr. Ulcca Joshi Hansen is a futurist and thought leader on human-centered design and educational transformation. She is the author of the award-winning book The Future of Smart and hosts The Future of Smart podcast.

Ulcca was fortunate to spend two years as a Program Fellow at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in New Jersey, working with thoughtful educational transformers like Ted Sizer and Sir Ken Robinson, who were committed to expanding our collective understanding of what learning and success look like.

Since then, Ulcca spent the last twenty years researching, advocating, and working to move the education system and the players within it in the direction of being human-centered: meeting the developmental needs of young people, reflecting what we know about how learning happens, and honoring the need each person has to find, develop, and live out their unique sense of purpose.

Ulcca's work includes non-profit planning, program design, evaluation and improvement, adult/teacher preparation, and school-based improvement strategies, always with an eye towards incorporating cutting-edge research on human development, the learning sciences, and best practices in networked organizational change management. Her newer offerings are focused on helping adults develop the skills they need to relate more confidently and bravely to conversations about race, identity, equity, and belonging – all foundational aspects of the schools and educational experiences our children deserve.

Founder, President and Senior Consultant of The Learning Collaborative

ISS Women's Breakfast Speaker 

Fran Prolman is an internationally recognized educator, author, consultant and keynote speaker. She is known for her depth of knowledge, dynamism, energy, practical application and proven track record of results.

Fran brings over 30 years of experience providing multifaceted work addressing broken systems, challenging personalities and thechallenge of growing adults with organizations and school systems throughout the United States and the world. She was a member of the first Understanding by Design trainer cadre for ASCD providing training and coaching training throughout the United States, a faculty member for ASCD and a senior consultant at Research for Better Teaching training trainers and educating thousands of administrators and teachers in effective leadership and learning practice.

Fran has been an instructor on systems thinking and adult learning at the George Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania. Fran focuses on building human capacity through a variety of avenues. She facilitates leadership retreats, training and coaching for executives and school leaders. She delivers organization-wide keynote speeches and workshops. She coaches clients to be able to shift dysfunctional teams to highly functional teams. Fran assists organizations and teams in the appropriate use of data, designs professional growth and evaluation systems and builds the skill sets of others to navigate the change process with grace.

She facilitates boards of all kinds in good governance, clarity in the purpose of being a member of the board and the skillsets for all to all “play nice in the sandbox” with each other. She is a frequent presenter for the U.S. Department of State, European Council of International Schools, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Central and Eastern European Schools Association,Near East South Asia Association of
International Schools, African Association of International Schools, the Tri-Association for the Caribbean and Central America andnumerous client school systems, associations and organizations in the United States.

Fran is the author of Building Your Instructional Leadership, Transforming Schools: Leading and Learning in Complex Systems and Women in Leadership: Self-Trust, Self-Care and Courage and Deep Listening: The Art of Ego Management.

Clinical Psychologist and Co-Founder of The Truman Group

Sean Truman spent the majority of his childhood in Nairobi Kenya, where his father worked for the United Nations and his mother was a teacher at the International School of Kenya. He attended college in the US and received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Connecticut. He was a National Institute of Mental Health Fellow at the Yale University School of Medicine, where he worked both at the Child Study Center and in the Department of Psychiatry.

In 2010, Sean co-founded Truman Group, a practice of more than 120 clinicians that provides mental health care and consultation to expatriates worldwide. He is frequently invited to speak and consult regarding mental health in international communities, including international schools.

Dr. Truman has published in the area and is regularly sought out as a consultant in the international school community. He frequently works with school leadership and school counselors and is involved in clinical care, program, and policy development in the communities in which he serves.

Sean currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.