Monica Marquez, M. Ed.

As a Women in AI Fellow with the EDSAFE AI Alliance I am happy to share that Applications for the 2026-2027 EDSAFE AI Alliance State and District Policy Lab cohort are now open! We encourage districts, charter schools, educational models, and states to apply. As AI technologies become increasingly integrated into learning environments, educational institutions must develop informed, SAFE (Safe, Accountable, Fair & Transparent, and Effective) policies that maximize benefits while mitigating potential risks. The EDSAFE Policy Lab supports institutions in that mission through 1:1 strategy calls, quarterly cohort sessions, monthly expert forums, and an annual summit. This voluntary community of practice is dedicated to navigating the complex and evolving landscape of artificial intelligence in education. Applications close June 30, 2026. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/exZFy-sD #AIPolicy #EdTech #Education

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It’s more important than ever to talk about how universities can evolve to meet the future. I recently joined Andrew Keen on the “Keen On America” podcast to discuss “Invent Ed: How an American Tradition of Innovation Can Transform College Today” and why it’s time to stop thinking of the university as a museum and start treating it as a startup. We explored how adaptation, creativity and even productive failure can become the foundation for a more dynamic and resilient model of higher education. Invent Ed is available for preorder ahead of its Dec. 16 release: https://lnkd.in/gw5B56Qj Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gbzetZXV

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IHE's Strategic Blueprint for Integrating Workforce-Relevant Credentials highlights the importance of starting small, scaling strategically, and leading with a future-facing vision for lifelong learner engagement. However, the absence of Data Standards in higher education poses significant challenges for workforce-relevant credential initiatives. - Fragmented Record-Keeping: The lack of standardized credential formats hampers the seamless sharing, verification, and recognition of achievements among universities, employers, and learners. This leads to confusion in assessing the value of credentials. - Limited Portability: Without data standards, learner accomplishments like microcredentials, certificates, and badges face difficulty transferring between institutions or into employer systems. This can result in redundant coursework and unrecognized credentials, hindering flexible, stackable learning. - Difficulty in Outcome Tracking: The absence of standardization complicates institutions' ability to gather consistent data on learner outcomes, workforce impact, and ROI. This lack of transparency undermines credibility with stakeholders and prospective students. - Reduced Employer Trust: Employers seek assurances that credentials align with industry skills. Inconsistent documentation diminishes employer confidence, weakens partnerships, and devalues innovative credential programs. - Barriers to Scaling and Innovation: Data incompatibility slows down the launch of new credential pathways, complicates collaborations among universities, and hinders system integration with emerging educational technologies. I concur with IHE's advocacy for interoperable, learner-focused technologies and robust data collection to ensure universal recognition and comprehension of achievements. Unified standards are essential for universities to unlock the full potential, flexibility, and workforce relevance of modern credentials. If your experience suggests looking beyond short-term, grant-funded, one-size-fits-all projects related to transfer equivalences and learning recognition, join us in the conversation to address the fundamentals of data standards and interoperability.

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JD’s post captures an important signal in the market. What stood out to me is how accountability is shifting. These roles aren’t being asked to support the business. They’re being asked to shape enterprise capability. Strategy, workforce design, data fluency, operating model alignment. That’s system-level leadership. I’m seeing this expectation surface across industries, not just in one sector. It feels like our field (Learning, Education, L&D) is stepping into a bigger arena. The question is whether we’re preparing leaders to operate at that level.

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Can’t believe I’m saying this… but we’re sharing our FIFTH issue of The Accidental Consultant! 🎉 In this edition, Katya Murphy, MSW dives into a topic many organizations are still figuring out: AI policy. Katya specializes in helping companies think through how to approach AI thoughtfully and responsibly, but this isn’t just important for companies. It’s also increasingly relevant for freelance consultants navigating how AI fits into their own work and client engagements. She even created a quick, fun assessment to help you start shaping your own approach. Curious where you stand? Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/eZiX6yw5

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Associations are uniquely positioned to teach members the three core competencies needed: collaborating with AI systems, supervising them, and asking better questions of them. (Or we can help) The call to action advises associations to establish AI-integrated learning pathways, offer industry-recognized AI certifications, and address crucial questions of trust and ethics to remain indispensable to their industries.

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AI is opening up new possibilities for how schools, governments, and nonprofits manage funding and measure impact. Investing in tools like Eddi helps organizations streamline complex processes and make better use of limited resources.

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Very proud of the great work we do at Concordia! And proud of my team who design impactful programs in AI. Read what Aniklet Zefi has to say. “You have a lot of leaders who don't have the training themselves, don't understand the technology themselves. So oftentimes, when we fear something, we choose to ignore it,” he says. “A lot of employers expect that them paying for something means that employees will use it. So how do you bridge the gap between you investing in a tool and employees using it?” This question highlights a core issue: many organizations are confusing deployment with adoption. Solving this starts with a needs-based approach, with training tailored to different departments and employee skillsets, he says.

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How to Stand Out When Transitioning from Campus to Consulting If you’ve spent your career in higher ed, you may not think of yourself as a “consultant.” But chances are, you already have the skills: ✅ You know how to build consensus across silos. ✅ You’ve implemented change without formal authority ✅ You’ve navigated complexity (and ambiguity) under pressure The key is learning how to tell that story—clearly and confidently. You've got this 👍 #CareerChange #HigherEdSkills #campusworks

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365 days of the CEO- Day 254 Chief Experimental Loop Officer A Chief Experimental Loop Officer creates continuous learning through iteration. 3 ways to lead: Test before scaling. Learn faster than competitors. Institutionalise experimentation. #Leadership #ChiefEverythingOfficer #Innovation #Learning #Agility

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Certain that metrics like AI‑driven replacement rate, productivity gains, and cost savings will take center stage—highlighting how organizations aim to do more with fewer people. As this trend accelerates, we need elegant, human‑centered solutions to ensure people are prepared with alternatives as workforces shrink. https://lnkd.in/eJ36KvHm

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For those building courses or competency-based rubrics, developing workshops, or building out core curricula around #ArtificialIntelligence, here is the U.S. Department of Labor's #AI Literacy Framework guidelines issued on 2/13/26: https://lnkd.in/g4DrSnbC I'll be using them as I revise my fundamentals and advanced #businesscommunication courses to ensure alignment with industry. #highered #ailiteracy #education #curriculum fyi, in case this is of any value: Jeffrey Punske Holly Lewis Rose Helens-Hart, Ph.D Dr. Joshua Luke Daniel Sid Dobrin Gireesh Gupchup Mario Hayek PhD, PMP, SCMP

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🎤 After the AI Impact Conference: Building > Buying Just wrapped my session at the AI Impact Conference at Georgia Southern University - The Division of Continuing and Professional Education — still processing a bit. I showed a few tools we’ve built at Navigator Schools this year: a real-time coaching dashboard we coded in-house, an auto-grader that uses OCR + voice transcription to score student writing, and a few early prototypes from NovaPath — our bigger experiment in what happens when AI and educators start building together. And the reaction was electric. Not because the tech was flashy — it wasn’t — but because it was ours. Built by educators, for educators, solving real problems we actually face. 🧠 Co-Building Is the Real Revolution That’s the part I think hit people hardest. When attendees saw that a small internal team — not a vendor, not a startup — could build usable AI tools in days, it reframed the whole conversation. The question stopped being “Which platform should we buy?” and became “What can we build?” That’s the shift. That’s the renaissance. ⚙️ Why It Works Co-building changes everything because it keeps context intact. Teachers know the workflow. Coaches know the pain points. When those people are in the loop, the tools just fit. We can still use models from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google — but the layer that matters is the human scaffolding around it. We’re not just prompting models; we’re designing systems. 🏗️ NovaPath and the Edge of What’s Next With NovaPath, we’re testing how far this can go. How much of school operations can be automated without losing the human layer that makes education work? We’re building things like: AI attendance bots that text families and log data directly to dashboards, voice-based SEL check-ins that blend empathy with automation, self-grading exit tickets where students literally speak their reasoning aloud. Each of these started as a small cobuild sprint — a whiteboard, a few teachers, an API key — and now they’re living systems running inside real classrooms. 🔁 The Pattern I Keep Seeing When educators get to build, they stop fearing AI. They start steering it. That’s what I saw today in the room — heads nodding not at the tech, but at the possibility: “Wait… we could actually make this ourselves.” Exactly. That’s the point. 🌱 Final Thought If this is what one conference session can do — a few demos, a few honest conversations — then we’re on the edge of something bigger. The next era of education won’t be bought off a shelf. It’ll be co-built, one workflow, one prototype, one teacher at a time. WWW.explorenovapath.com -Schedule some time if you would like a thought partner

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What are some of the challenges & concerns for leaders in #HigherEd with figuring out #GenAI, check part 1 of this conversation https://lnkd.in/eNkqXCHJ 

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I’m excited to share that Kate O'Neill, CSP® will join us for a closing session at this year’s Common App Illuminate. Kate is a globally recognized strategist and author whose work focuses on helping organizations navigate digital transformation while keeping people at the center of technological change. Known as the “Tech Humanist,” she advises companies, governments, and institutions on issues ranging from AI strategy and data ethics to the future of work. Earlier in her career, she helped build the early digital infrastructure at Netflix, and today she works with leaders across industries to think critically about how emerging technologies shape our world. At Illuminate, Kate will help our community step back and consider the broader implications of artificial intelligence, not just how it changes our workflows, but how it will shape the future our students are entering. As we explore this year’s theme, Driving the next era of access and innovation, I’m looking forward to a conversation that challenges us to think about how higher education can harness technology responsibly while continuing to expand opportunity for students.

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How do we ensure technology continues to serve as it scales? The outcomes technology promises won't just happen. At the heart sits intentional engineering. Kirk Bresniker explores some of the ways #HPE is continuing to push responsible, resilient innovation forward. https://lnkd.in/edRQUK-y

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Listen in as APU’s Dr. Bjorn Mercer and Dr. Mitch Colver explore the transformative role of generative AI in enhancing lifelong learning and critical thinking. Dr. Colver highlights how tools like #ChatGPT serve as valuable aids in distributed cognition, helping individuals process information more efficiently and navigate complex topics in both personal and professional contexts. https://ow.ly/k36k30sPgep #APUSinsight #genAI

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Technology Enables — But Trust and Loyalty Define Leadership. A recent Forbes article by Veta T. Richardson NACD.DC drives home a critical point for #leadership in 2026: trust, not technology, will be the defining differentiator in how leaders lead, teams perform, and organizations succeed. In an era of rapid innovation and AI acceleration, relationships remain the core of leadership effectiveness. This aligns with what I’ve seen repeatedly in my career: trust is the currency that unlocks performance, influence, and resilience. Trust is also a key aspect of all sustainable relationships. Loyalty, then, is the outcome of sustained trust in action. Here’s how I’ve experienced this dynamic firsthand: 🔹 Trust builds entry points for influence. I’ve seen teams solve complex challenges not because they had the best tools, but because they trusted their leaders to be transparent, honest about uncertainty, and accountable for decisions. When people feel safe bringing their full selves to the table, creativity and ownership flourish. 🔹 Technology amplifies capacity, but doesn’t substitute connection. We’ve all lived through digital transformation roadmaps and AI dashboards. But without trust, these tools deliver outputs, not buy‑in. Trust makes technology strategic, not just operational. 🔹 Loyalty is loyalty to people, not platforms. Trust doesn’t just make teams work harder; it keeps them. Loyalty is what happens when leaders repeatedly demonstrate reliability and then repay that trust with support, growth opportunities, and consistency of character. Loyalty is the wind behind retention, advocacy, and collective resilience. To me, the leadership challenge of 2026 isn’t about mastering more technology; it’s about mastering the human dynamics that make technology work for us rather than isolate us. Here are three practical ways leaders can strengthen trust and build loyalty today: 1️⃣ Lead with transparency about risk and learning. Trust doubles when leaders share what they know and what they don’t know, especially in times of rapid change. 2️⃣ Model consistency before expecting commitment. When leaders match actions to words, over time and under pressure, trust gets earned, and loyalty takes root. 3️⃣ Design systems that reinforce trust. Structure feedback loops, recognition practices, and decision processes so people see how trust translates into action, not just ideology. Technology will continue to change how we work. But trust and the loyalty it generates determine whether people choose to work with you, for you, and beside you. That is leadership. #BolerMBA #BolerProfessionalMBA #Leadership2026 #HumanCenteredLeadership #LeadershipExcellence #TeamCulture #LeadWithTrust #SustainableRelationships https://lnkd.in/gD7GZnGK

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