Haifa Badi Uz Zaman is a Manager of Artificial Intelligence Partnerships at The Rockefeller Foundation, where she works to advance the use of technology in service of economic opportunity in the United States. She collaborates with funders, researchers, and practitioners to pilot and scale AI initiatives that strengthen workforce outcomes. Her work sits at the intersection of technology, policy, and social impact.

Torie Bates serves as an EdTech Innovation Program Manager at Google.org, where she is currently dedicated to transforming the future of learning and work by leveraging the power of AI. As a veteran Googler with over 13 years of experience at the company, Torie’s professional work centers on the postsecondary and workforce development ecosystems. Within these sectors, she specializes in seeding, incubating, and validating transformative learning solutions that address critical educational gaps. She brings a product-focused lens to philanthropy, actively seeking out interventions that are not only novel but also scalable, sustainable, and effective for broad social impact.

Driven by a deep passion to close the digital divide, Torie is committed to identifying innovative tools that apply cutting-edge technology and learning science to unlock educational and economic opportunity for all learners. Her strategic vision has led to significant accomplishments, including leading large-scale digital skilling Google EdTech products and establishing a multi-million dollar investment portfolio. Torie holds a degree from Stanford University and hails from Chicago, Illinois, where she also contributes to her local community through youth-mentorship and motivational speaking.

Marisa has spent her career focused on innovation in education, with a focus on improving outcomes for students and families nationwide. She is excited to be back home in California supporting increased economic opportunity for adult learners across the state. Marisa was most recently Deputy Director for K-12 Education at the Walton Family Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation, she served as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor in the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. Previously, Marisa was a Director at the New York City Department of Education, a Leadership Fellow at NewSchools Venture Fund, and a founding Education Pioneers Fellow at Aspire Public Schools, along with past work in organizational development and management consulting. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

From 2022 to 2026, Christopher Capozzola served as Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In that role, he oversaw open education offerings including OpenCourseWare and MITx, as well as the Digital Credentials Consortium and MIT Video Productions. As part of his work with MIT’s Digital Learning in Residential Education unit, he continues to facilitate conversations about generative AI in teaching and learning at MIT.

For more than 20 years, Capozzola has taught U.S. history at MIT, and is the author of two books on U.S. political history. He graduated from Harvard College and completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2002.

James Glapa-Grossklag is Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning at College of the Canyons (USA). He serves as Technical Assistance Provider for the California Community Colleges’ Zero Textbook Cost Degree Program, the largest-ever public investment in OER. He co-directs the Open for Antiracism Program, is an OER Fellow for the Michelson 20MM Foundation, and co-leads, with Carnegie Mellon University, a national training program to help faculty from broad-access institutions learn to teach with generative AI.

James is past President of Open Education Global, the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, and Directors of Educational Technology in California Higher Education. James served as a trainer on OER for the US Department of State in the Middle East and North Africa and was Innovation Scholar in Residence at RMIT University in Australia. He held the appointment of Global OER Ambassador for ICDE 2017-21.

In 2019, he received the President’s Award from Open Education Global for “advancing open education around the world through his exceptional dedication, outstanding contribution, and exemplary service.”

Amy Guterman is a social impact leader with 20 years of experience at the intersection of design, technology, and social good. As Senior Director, AI for Impact at Salesforce, she leads the Salesforce Accelerator – Agents for Impact, providing funding, technology, and technical support to scale AI solutions for education, sustainability, and beyond. Previously, she launched Salesforce.org Impact Labs, co-designing open-source technologies that help nonprofits and schools innovate with less risk. Amy is a sought-after speaker whose work has been recognized by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The White House and featured in Forbes, Fast Company, and Wired.

Lydia Logan leads IBM’s community and university skilling initiatives that create more inclusive and effective schools and workforces. Her programs help fulfill IBM’s pledge to skill 30 million people worldwide by 2030, and to skill two-million learners with AI expertise through 2026 — particularly those from historically under-resourced, under-served, and underrepresented communities.

For this role, she applies her decades of leadership and programmatic expertise in the realms of philanthropy, education, public policy, and economic development. These experiences inform Ms. Logan’s strategic development and execution of acclaimed global programs such as IBM SkillsBuild.

Ms. Logan also develops and manages strategic global partnerships with IBM’s clients, non-profit organizations, government, and content and curriculum developers that relate to education and career readiness. IBM’s investments in education and skills are part of the company’s efforts to mobilize technology and employee talent to address some of society’s biggest challenges worldwide, including environmental sustainability.

Prior to IBM, Ms. Logan led the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools initiative that provides technology and training to under-resourced public schools. She served as senior policy director at the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, where she drove education policy and philanthropic investments to improve the management, quality, and transparency of public schools. Ms. Logan also served as the VP of programs for the Kimsey Foundation, to improve educational outcomes at under-resourced public schools, and helped low-income families bridge the digital divide.

Ms. Logan holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Carlos Monje Jr. is Head of JP Morgan Chase’s PolicyCenter, which develops and advances sustainable, evidence-based policy solutions to drive inclusive economic growth in the U.S. and around the world.

Monje most recently served as Under Secretary of Transportation Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The third-highest-ranking official in the department, Monje supervised policy, research, innovative finance, international affairs and project delivery. He led the team that helped pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), a $650 billion infusion into our nation’s infrastructure system. He formed and led the implementation team that has funded 45,000 projects around the country and was recognized by the Partnership for Public Service with a 2023 Service to America Award (colloquially known as the Sammies, or the Oscars of federal service).

Monje led process for the Biden-Harris presidential transition where he recruited, trained and deployed more than 400 volunteers to do a top-to-bottom review of the federal government amidst a pandemic and contested election.

Monje served as Twitter’s Director of Policy and Philanthropy for the US and Canada at a time of unprecedented scrutiny for the tech sector.

Monje was previously Special Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff of the White House Domestic Policy Council where he helped oversee all aspects of policy, message and event development across a wide spectrum of domestic policy issues. He also was a founding staffer of the White House Office of Social Innovation, where he oversaw efforts to pass and implement the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act and promoted cross-sector partnerships.

Laura Pinnie has built her career at the intersection of education, workforce development, and impact investing, with a focus on supporting companies and institutions that expand opportunity for learners and workers across the education-to-employment continuum. Laura is a Managing Director at Leeds Illuminate, a growth equity firm investing in education and workforce companies that improve outcomes from the first day of school to the last day of work. Previously, Laura was a Director at ZOMA Capital, where she led investments in education, workforce, and sustainability-focused companies. Earlier in her career, she worked in J.P. Morgan’s Impact Investing Group, deploying debt and equity capital across emerging markets and mission-driven sectors, and began her career as a Credit Analyst covering higher education, nonprofit institutions, and healthcare systems. Laura serves as a Trustee at Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she is Chair of the Finance Committee, and is deeply committed to building cross-sector partnerships that connect K–12, postsecondary, and workforce systems to better serve learners at every stage of life.

Carol Rava is the Vice President – Education Grantmaking for Ascendium, a national philanthropy supporting postsecondary and workforce programs that help low-income learners on their path to upward mobility. Prior to this role, Carol worked at the Postsecondary Commission, an accreditor for colleges that provide strong economic returns to their students. Carol helped found the tech non-profit Get Schooled, which offers free digital college and career counseling for low-income students. She was an executive with Seattle Public Schools, and spent eight years in a variety of leadership roles in advocacy, communications and education programs for the Gates Foundation. Carol has a Master’s in Education Policy from Stanford and a Bachelor’s in History and Religion from Harvard. She lives in Seattle.

As a senior program officer at the Gates Foundation, Pavani Reddy advances the responsible development of artificial intelligence in learning and wayfinding—helping ensure these systems are effective, transparent, and harm-aware.

For two decades before joining the foundation, Reddy worked at the intersection of product strategy, design, development, and data—leading product management and user experience in educational technology at EAB and legal technology at LexisNexis. Beyond her work at the Gates Foundation, she collaborates deeply with entrepreneurs (inspired by the belief that all entrepreneurship should be “social”) to help them help others flourish.

She is the author of Ethical Product Development (2020), a guide for innovators seeking to maximize social good while minimizing harm. She holds a B.A. in economics and development studies from Brown University (RI) as well as a J.D. and an MBA from the University of Virginia.

Philipp Schmidt is CTO of Axim Collaborative, a non-profit organization founded by MIT and Harvard to address systemic equity gaps in higher-education. He is also a research scientist at MIT and advisor for digital credentials. Prior to joining Axim, Philipp was the Director of Digital Learning at the MIT Media Lab. He has extensive experience developing technology-enabled programs that increase opportunities for learning and education. Philipp founded Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), a non-profit that provides wrap-around support for online courses through a network of public libraries, serves on the board of College Unbound, a college designed from the ground up to serve adult students, and was a founding board member of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. He co-authored the Cape Town Open Education Declaration and has developed a number of open standards for digital academic credentials including Mozilla Open Badges. He has received Shuttleworth and Ashoka fellowships, and came to MIT as a Media Lab Director’s fellow. Before moving to the US, he lived and worked in South Africa. He holds a CS degree from FH Furtwangen in Germany and an MBA from MIT.