Zia Akhter Abbas is President & CEO of The Citizens Foundation (TCF), one of the world's largest privately-run networks of formal schools for low-income children and the largest private employer of women in Pakistan. He came to education sideways: an IB diploma at Lester B. Pearson United World College in Canada, an MBA from LUMS, then seventeen years in senior business and risk roles at Citi and Standard Chartered, plus a board seat at 1Link, Pakistan's leading payments switch. He left banking for TCF in 2014.

For a decade he led TCF's global resource mobilisation, working with a volunteer movement across 14 countries, building the organisation's global governance framework, stewarding its Government Partnership Schools network (400+ public schools now run by TCF), and driving TCF's Strategy 2030. He became President & CEO in June 2025.

The organisation he now runs began in 1995 with six friends in Karachi who met every Wednesday, decided education was the closest thing to a root cause, and built five schools with their own money. Today TCF operates 2,261 school units across 60+ districts, educates roughly 300,000 students, employs ~24,000 people including 15,000+ female faculty, runs its own construction company that completes two to three schools a week, and moves teachers 75,000 kilometres a day in a fleet of nearly 1,000 vans. Its results: 55% of TCF students complete intermediate (vs 27% nationally) and 26% enter university (vs 12% nationally). Zia is a Schwab Foundation / World Economic Forum social entrepreneur and a board member of the Global Schools Forum.

In this episode, Zia talks with Svenia Busson about:

• Leaving banking for education after seventeen years — and why the nonprofit job turned out to be harder
• How TCF scaled from five schools to 2,261 units using the "unit concept," a cookie-cutter template for an entire school system — and what a sacred template costs you
• Pakistan's 25 million out-of-school children — a population the size of Australia — and why the state stopped building schools decades ago
• Funding 300,000 students with no government money: $60M+ last year from diaspora volunteers, chapters in 14 countries, institutional funders, and zakat acting as a global community endowment
• The all-female faculty decision, made intuitively rather than from research — and the finding that girls' enrolment drops 15% for every 500 metres of walking distance
• What broke when EdTech built for paying markets met dust, theft-prone tablet racks and 24-hour power cuts — and why TCF may have to build its own tools
• The Khan Academy Pakistan / Khanmigo pilot for Grades 6–8 maths and science, why it went teacher-facing rather than student-facing, and what principals said when asked if they'd ever use AI
• Why AI literacy training was rolled out before any AI tools — and why you educate 24,000 people rather than police them
• The Global South inversion: why the biggest unlock may be language, not tutoring, in a country where everything meaningful requires English
• Why the acute Western harms — mental health, isolation — look different when eight people share a room and the phone belongs to your father

Mentioned in this episode:

For those who wish to know more about the Education Futures fellowship: https://educationfutures.ai/fellowship

Dr. Obiageli "Oby" Ezekwesili is Founder and President of Human Capital Africa, an accountability and advocacy organization devoted to Africa's foundational learning crisis — getting every child reading, writing and counting by age 10. An economic policy expert and chartered accountant by training, she was a co-founder of Transparency International and later served in the Nigerian government as Minister of Solid Minerals and then as Federal Minister of Education. She led the public procurement reform agenda that earned her the nickname "Madam Due Process."

She went on to serve as Vice President for the Africa Region at the World Bank, overseeing operations across 48 sub-Saharan countries. She co-founded the #BringBackOurGirls movement, ran for President of Nigeria in the 2019 elections, and founded the School of Politics, Policy and Governance (SPPG), an unconventional school now operating in Nigeria, Senegal and Kenya, with Ghana opening this year, whose graduates are already running for and winning public office. She also advises Club de Madrid, the forum of former democratic heads of state and government democracies and economic development including on AI regulation and governance.

In this episode, Oby talks with Svenia Busson about:

• Human dignity as the through-line of a career spanning Transparency International, two ministries and the World Bank — and why she now calls education "a living thing"
• Africa's demographic pivot — average age 18.9 years, and 85% of global workforce growth by 2050 — and why it leads to either a dividend or a disaster
• Why she stopped "wasting her voice on incorrigible leaders" and built a school to manufacture better ones instead, refusing national accreditation to escape captured systems
• The foundational learning crisis as a matter of life and death — nine in ten children in sub-Saharan Africa unable to read a simple sentence by age 10, and why she refuses to call a spade an agricultural implement
• What actually causes it: no early-childhood preparation, teaching in languages children don't speak, curricular overload, untrained and uncoached teachers, and ministries with no learning data
• What works and has been proven at scale — structured pedagogy, teaching at the right level, teacher coaching, and the question she puts to presidents: "Mr President, what did our children learn today?"
• Sobral in Brazil and India's NIPUN Bharat — a 20% improvement in learning outcomes in four to five years — as evidence that political will, not technical solutions, is the binding constraint
• Why the mobile telephony leapfrog (Nigeria: 500,000 landlines in 50 years, 200 million mobile lines after liberalisation) is the right mental model for AI in Africa
• The agency divide, not the digital divide — a child can have the most advanced AI system and still lack the knowledge and capability to use it purposefully and critically
• Data sovereignty, AI sweatshops on the continent, and why AI must free teachers for individualised attention and values — never replace them

Her three game changers for Africa: young people, African women, and technology as their enabler.

Mentioned in this episode:

For those who wish to know more about the Education Futures fellowship: https://educationfutures.ai/fellowship

Dr. John Mugo is the Chief Executive Officer of Mizizi Elimu Afrika, the African-led education organization based in Nairobi, Kenya, formerly known as Zizi Afrique Foundation. He holds a Doctorate and a Master's degree in Special Needs Education from the University of Hanover, Germany, and a Bachelor of Education (Music) from Kenyatta University, where he went on to chair the Department of Special Needs Education.

Before founding the organization in 2018, he headed Uwezo, one of East Africa's largest citizen-led learning assessment initiatives, measuring what children actually know rather than what systems claim to teach. He leads ALiVE (Action for Life Skills and Values in East Africa), a regional framework and assessment system that has now assessed life skills and values in over 45,000 adolescents across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and works directly with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development on values-based education and teacher training reform.

In March 2026, Zizi Afrique rebranded as Mizizi Elimu Afrika — "mizizi" is Kiswahili for "many roots" — and launched Vision 2040: Strong Foundations for Lasting Change, a 15-year strategy to reach more than 10 million children across 10+ African countries with stronger foundational learning. His organization currently works across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi and Cameroon, and is piloting AI-supported teaching with Fab AI and Gemini in 15 Kenyan schools.

In this episode, John talks with Svenia Busson about:

• Why fewer than 20% of children in much of Sub-Saharan Africa are learning at grade level — and why he calls that an "80 to 90% leakage" no amount of university investment can fix
• Vision 2040 and the two-lever theory behind it: strengthening government systems instead of building parallel NGO programmes, and forcing a competitive civil society sector to collaborate
• Why Africa's real AI problem isn't models but data — 800+ languages, oral cultures, and knowledge trapped in unpublished grey literature
• The case for voice data and mother-tongue AI as the fastest route to reading — drawn from his own experience learning to read in Kikuyu, not English
• What the Fab AI and Gemini pilot in 15 schools is showing about real-time assessment — and the widening gap between connected private schools and public schools without electricity
• The whole-school approach to values built with Kenya's curriculum institute and piloted in 79 schools — because responsibility and integrity can't be taught in a lesson slot
• Why place value in Grade 1 explains Kenya's KCSE maths results, and the 10-year roadmap to move Grade 3 numeracy proficiency from 30% to 75%
• His blunt advice to ministries drafting AI policy: stop banning it, start investing in your own data, and put young people in the driver's seat
• Why Africa's median age of 19 is an asset rather than a fiscal crisis — and what has to be true for that to hold

Links: Mizizi Elimu Afrika · ALiVE · Uwezo · Fab AI · AI for Education · KICD · John Mugo on LinkedIn

Mentioned in this episode:

For those who wish to know more about the Education Futures fellowship: https://educationfutures.ai/fellowship

Dan Effland is the Chief of Staff & Strategy at Summit Public Schools, where he leads the continued evolution of Summit's school model. He holds a Master's in Special Education from Dominican University and a Master's in Public School Building Administration from Columbia University's Teachers College.

Before entering education, Effland spent over a decade as a professional musician in Chicago. He changed careers in his mid-thirties, teaching guitar to middle schoolers before joining Teach For America — where his cohort, mostly in their twenties, nicknamed him "Stepdad." He became a special education teacher in Chicago and then Seattle, joined Summit Public Schools in 2017, and went on to serve as Dean of Culture & Instruction at Summit Sierra and Executive Director of Summit Atlas High School in West Seattle.

He now leads Summit's innovation work: designing "Summit 3.0", an evolved school model that builds on what Summit has promised families for over two decades and responds to the demands of the AI powered era. Summit operates seven charter schools across California and Washington serving roughly 3,000 students, following its earlier "Summit 2.0" personalization model, which scaled the Summit Learning Platform to nearly 400 schools and 100,000 students nationwide. He also sits on the board of the Washington State Charter Schools Association.

In this episode, Dan talks with Svenia Busson about:

• Stripping school down to three elements — kids, outcomes, and resources — to redesign without inherited assumptions
• Why AI doesn't replace a school model, it reveals whether you actually have one
• Rebuilding Summit's model for the third time: from "college for all" to personalized learning to an AI-native design
• Treating AI as infrastructure — a data layer and knowledge graph — to dynamically match resources to students, not just as a set of tools
• Why "beliefs come first, model comes next, tools come last," and Summit's push to "create the market" for AI-native school infrastructure
• Rethinking "cheating": protecting the learning while empowering the learner in an AI-saturated classroom
• Redesigning Expeditions — two-week, ungraded, off-campus career immersions — and why "learning without walls" might be where school is headed
• Which durable skills matter more, not less, when a chatbot can write a competent essay in seconds

A former teacher now redesigning what school itself should be in the age of AI.

Mentioned in this episode: Summit Public Schools · Marshall Street Initiatives · Robin Lake / Center on Reinventing Public Education, who recommended Dan as a guest · Futre, Diane Tavenner's career-exploration platform, used by Summit juniors and seniors · Justin Reich's MIT Teaching Systems Lab, referenced from an earlier Education Futures episode

Mentioned in this episode:

Education Futures Fellowship

A six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.

Dr. Sonia Tiwari is a children's media researcher based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Director of Research at Oki Pie Lab. She holds a PhD in Learning, Design, and Technology from Penn State University, along with an MFA in Animation and a BS in Film, credentials she first put to work as a character designer in the video game industry before turning to research on how children bond with characters and, more recently, AI.

At Oki Pie Lab, she runs weekly art workshops for children ages five to ten — more than 100 to date — using what she observes each week to test where AI helps kids create and where it gets in the way. Her research includes Tiwari, S. (2025). Designing Expressive Arts Workshops for Families Using AI Tools. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 16(2), 194–204, and Tiwari, S. Designing ethical AI characters for children's early learning experiences. AI Brain Child 1, 11 (2025) — built from analyzing 60 social media videos of 20 AI characters marketed to children as young as three. She consults with edtech founders — including Jules Stories, a UK-based screen-free storytelling companion — on whether their AI characters genuinely serve children's development, and in 2025 she was selected for the Falling Walls Foundation's Female Science Talents Intensive Track.

In this episode, Sonia talks with Svenia Busson about:

• Why visual design — not just language or policy — shapes how children bond with AI characters
• The psychology of "cute" character design, from Japan's Kawaii culture to Germany's Kindchenschema, and how it's used to mask age-inappropriate AI
• The "sticky chat patterns" she's studying with Dr. Jennifer Shen (Keene University) — and their cost to kids' ability to explore beyond one interest
• Her AI Character Assessment framework in AI Brain Child, built from analyzing characters marketed to ages three to eight
• Why safety needs three layers — design, family, and law — and why design alone can't fix a systemic problem
• The patchwork of AI regulation worldwide, from loophole-prone California state laws to stricter approaches across Europe
• Rating efforts underway, from Common Sense Media and Digital Promise to the kidSAFE Seal Program
• What Blake, Carter and Velloso's CHI 2026 research reveals about why teens build their own Character.AI companions

Sonia's recommendation for a future guest: Diana Joseph, CEO of the Corporate Accelerator Forum and an innovation and entrepreneurship strategist working at the intersection of AI and organizational innovation.

Mentioned in this episode:

Education Futures Fellowship

A six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.

Ian Cho graduated from St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and heads to Yale University this fall to study cognitive science. Frustrated that AI had quietly become a "taboo subject" wrapped in cheating anxiety, he founded what is now called Sailing (Student AI Literacy Interscholastic Navigator Group), a peer-led initiative that gives students across schools a space to talk openly about how they use AI and the policies governing it. Outside of Sailing, Ian builds his own AI-powered tools, including productivity apps that pause a Pomodoro timer whenever he looks away from his desk.

Ingrid Namala is entering her fourth and final year at St. Mark's School, where she plans to study neuroscience. She joined Sailing shortly after Ian launched it and now co-leads the group, having presented her own research on the history of generative AI and prompting technique at Sailing's first interscholastic symposium alongside a student from another school. Much of her advocacy centers on protecting academic integrity and destigmatizing honest conversations between students and teachers about when and how AI should be used.

Inspired by AI Co-Lab, the teacher network launched by their teacher Maureen Russo Rodríguez, they grew Sailing into a virtual community spanning more than fifteen schools, running hybrid symposiums, "four corners" debates, and informal salons between students and faculty.

In this episode, Ian and Ingrid talk with Svenia Busson about:

• Sailing (sailingedu.org) — how a "taboo" subject became a peer-led dialogue across 15+ schools
• The Chinese Room thought experiment — and what it reveals about outsourcing understanding to AI
• The hidden toll of unequal AI use — academic integrity, trust, and the students left behind
• Reimagining assessment — in-class writing, oral exams, and whether it's "the death of the essay"
• Why the brain needs friction — reframing struggle as a skill worth protecting, not a bug to eliminate
• The craft of prompting — from lazy fragments to elaborate, metacognitive prompts, and staying polite with AI
• The case against banning AI for under-21s — literacy over prohibition
• AI, authenticity, and the future of work — why staying human might be the real advantage

Mentioned in this episode:

Education Futures Fellowship

A six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.

Dr. Rukmini Banerji is one of the world's most influential figures in grassroots education. Trained as an economist — a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a PhD from the University of Chicago — she chose classroom-level work over academia, returning to India in 1996 to join Pratham, one of the world's largest education NGOs, where she served for over a decade as CEO before recently stepping into the role of Senior Advisor.

In 2005 she launched the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), the citizen-led household survey that has demonstrated, year after year, a hard truth: going to school is not the same as learning. She also pioneered Pratham's Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach — grouping children by what they can actually do rather than their age — now used across India and adapted in parts of Africa and Asia. For this body of work she was awarded the 2021 Yidan Prize for Education Development, the world's highest education accolade.

Today she is bringing that same rigor to AI. Pratham has partnered with Anthropic to deploy a Claude-powered "Anytime Testing Machine" (ATM) — an assessment tool that grades handwritten student work and generates curriculum-aligned questions, with teachers reviewing AI feedback before it reaches learners. First adapted for over 5,000 women in Pratham's Second Chance program, it is now piloting across 20 schools with plans to reach 100 by the end of 2026.

In this episode, Rukmini talks with Svenia Busson about:

• Why she left economics for the classroom — and how "big ambition and not much money" shaped Pratham's community-driven model
• The origin of Teaching at the Right Level — teach the child where they are, not where the curriculum says they should be
• What ASER has revealed every year since 2005 — that enrollment and learning are two very different things
• Pratham's partnership with Anthropic and the Claude-powered "Anytime Testing Machine" — and why human oversight is non-negotiable
• The gap between what edtech companies want to sell and what the ground actually needs — "technology rains on you, then you're expected to use it"
• Assessing learning in the age of AI — why the process (the questions a student asks) matters more than the final essay
• Why middle school (ages 10–14) is education's next great frontier — and why the 15-year-old of 2031 must look different from the one of 2026

Mentioned in this episode:

Education Futures Fellowship

A six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.

Christine Braun is the Chief Creative Officer of Cresconova, the education charity behind Cresconova Labs, a hands-on studio for ages 8–16 in Chelsea, London. She holds a BFA from the University of the Arts and a Master of Artisanry from the University of Massachusetts, a grounding in material-making that runs through everything she's built since.

Her path began with founding Robots for Kids Too, a hands-on robotics company she and her husband ran in Vermont after homeschooling her own gifted son, before she went on to manage the Innovation Lab at The Nueva School in Silicon Valley, one of the country's leading schools for gifted learners. She later directed Harvard's REEF Makerspace at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, working to break down the silos between academic disciplines, and served as an Adjunct Professor of Engineering at the University of San Francisco. She won the 2020 Lemelson-MIT Excite Award for invention education and mentored on Disney+'s Shop Class. Today, as CCO of Cresconova, she shapes the creative vision behind both Cresconova Global (online, ages 6–11) and Cresconova Labs, the organization's new in-person studio.

In this episode, Christine talks with Svenia Busson about:

• Her path from sculpture and furniture design to founding a robotics company for her own gifted son
• What "design thinking" really means inside The Nueva School's Innovation Lab
• Building Harvard's REEF Makerspace to break down the walls between academic disciplines
• The difference between "gifted" and "inspired" students — and why Cresconova doesn't test for talent
• Cresconova's Inquiry, Systems Thinking, Design Thinking framework — and how it scales from age 5 to 18
• The "human-to-AI interaction" protocol: question, frame, unpack, own, iterate
• Why she believes AI expands creativity rather than threatening the maker tradition
• Why students turn to AI instead of trusted adults — and the role shame plays in that shift

(Christine also recommended Stephanie Couch, Executive Director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, as a future guest.)

Mentioned in this episode:

Education Futures Fellowship

A six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.