Save the Date: 2025 Retreat for Heads and Assistant Heads of School
Event Details
Keynote:
Leading in Transition:
What Are the New Skills, Literacies, & Dispositions for Liminal Times?
presented by Homa S. Tavangar
A wide variety of experts – from anthropologists to organizational developers, historians to futurists – all agree: we are living through a time of significant transition. Schools in particular are under duress, whether due to AI, social-political polarization, climate pressures, staff burnout, changing measures and visions of “success,” or other emerging crises and challenges. All of which begs the question, what is the purpose of school in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world? And crucially, what are the new skills, literacies and dispositions leaders need to guide their communities into the future?
This keynote will unpack these big questions, share insights from experiences with innovative schools around the world, and introduce the tools and strategies, from anticipatory skills to managing complexity and operating with radical candor, that will support independent school leaders to support more relevant, just, sustainable (regenerative), healthy, and joyful schools, now and into the future.
Homa Tavangar is the co-founder of the Big Questions Institute and the Oneness Lab.
She brings 30+ years’ experience helping diverse organizations and individuals to build cultural, racial and global competence, strategic governance, and visionary, generative leadership in diverse schools and organizations. She coaches leaders on accountability for equity, leading through crisis, and advises on strategic design and planning across five continents. She has co-authored seven books for educators, and is the author of best-selling Growing Up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World (published by Random House) and Global Kids (Barefoot Books). Her most recent publication is 12 Big Questions Schools Must Answer to Create Irresistible Futures with Will Richardson (forthcoming, 2025).
A graduate of UCLA and Princeton, Homa was born in Iran, has lived on four continents, speaks four languages, and has heritage in four world religions. She serves on several Boards, including ISS (International Schools Services) and is a judge for the Templeton Prize, considered the “world’s most interesting prize” with a purse calibrated to exceed the Nobel Prize. She is married and the mother of three adult daughters, and resides in Villanova, Pennsylvania.
Stay to tuned for additional information and details.