July 22 | 1:15 PM
One of Forbes' Top Futurists, Heather E. McGowan is a sought-after future-of-work strategist, keynote
speaker, and 2x bestselling author. She equips leaders and organizations to navigate relentless change by
activating their most critical resource: their people. By teaching audiences to ask better questions, she
enables them to adapt at the speed of possibility to Solve Tomorrow's Problems™.
Heather’s audiences range from startups and government organizations to publicly traded Fortune 500
companies, including Google, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Mastercard, FedEx, AT&T, and Kaiser
Permanente. Whether she's engaging in intimate conversations with senior executives or delivering
keynotes to thousands, she transforms perspectives through data-driven insights, powerful visual
frameworks, and practical optimism. Her approach helps organizations turn their distinctly human
capabilities—adaptability, empathy, and curiosity—into strategic advantages in times of rapid change.
Heather's approach to innovation was shaped by her early career as an industrial designer. At Safety 1st,
she helped transform the company known for its "Baby on Board" sign in to a comprehensive baby safety
products' leader, developing multiple top-selling products. Her success continued at Wilson Sporting
Goods', where she designed award-winning tennis footwear. Her innovative work extended to medical
devices, where she designed surgical equipment controls, and sustainable consumer goods, creating a
groundbreaking recyclable razor system that remains in production two decades later.
This hands-on experience taught her that true innovation isn't just about finding solutions—it's about
asking better questions to Solve Tomorrow’s Problems. After earning her MBA from Babson College,
Heather expanded into socially responsive investing and later led RISD's Center for Design and Business,
helping organizations integrate user-centric design thinking into business strategy.
As Strategic Architect at Philadelphia University (now Jefferson University), Heather created an awardwinning,
interdisciplinary college focused on innovation. Her achievements included integrating 18
existing programs into a new core curriculum and creating an immersive design thinking-based program.
The curriculum won the Core 77 top National Design Award for Education.
Heather’s emergence as a global thought leader began with a viral LinkedIn series on the future of
work—reaching 100,000 readers in 24 hours—which sparked speaking invitations worldwide. Often
quoted in The New York Times, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Thomas Friedman referred to Heather as
an “oasis” for her insights into the future of work. Her bestselling books include The Adaptation
Advantage, which became an accidental guide to the pandemic, and The Empathy Advantage, named a
Top 10 Business Book of 2023.
Heather holds a BFA in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design, an MBA from Babson
College focused on Entrepreneurship, and was recently awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from
Pennsylvania College of Art and Design for her contributions to innovating education.
Personal experiences, like mobilizing 7,000 strangers to find a life-saving bone marrow donor for her
brother, fuel Heather's unwavering optimism and core belief: humans are wired to help each other
achieve extraordinary things. This drives her mission: to help leaders Solve Tomorrow's Problems™ by
teaching them to ask better questions today.
July 23 | 8:00 AM
Join UPCEA’s Senior Director of Research and Consulting, Bruce Etter, for an enlightening presentation on UPCEA’s 2025 Benchmarking Online Enterprises Survey. This year’s survey further refines what an effective, sustainable online enterprise looks like right now and includes a special topic near and dear to everyone’s hearts: Artificial Intelligence in Online Education. This session will also highlight a new per capita benchmarking variable that makes the 2025 version of the survey even more valuable to online leaders! After the data is shared, select online leaders will share their thoughts on the research and what it means for institutions like yours.
July 23 | 11:45 AM
Many Chief Online Learning Officers (COLOs) are unicorns on their campus. They exist without institutional peers, and yet this unique role requires a great deal of internal and external collaboration reliant on well developed skills and competencies. Join us for a fireside chat with the co-editors of The Chief Online Learning Officers’ Guidebook (Routledge 2025) and UPCEA’s 2025 Schroeder Award Recipient. Our speakers will share perspectives on the ever-changing role of COLOs, key themes and messages from this very important new book, and insights into ‘what’s next’ for many online leaders and their institutions.
July 24 | 8:00 AM
Never before has the higher education landscape been more volatile nor has online education been so central to the conversation. Join four experienced online education leaders from a variety of institution types as they discuss trends that are shaping the future of higher ed. Panelists will provide their perspectives on the current state of higher education and discuss potential implications and imperatives for institutions of higher education.
July 24 | 11:00 AM
The National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE) is a research institute funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Accenture through NSF. Led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, AI-ALOE has developed an AI-based transformative model for online adult learning. This model simultaneously uses AI for transforming online adult learning and online adult education to transform AI. These innovative transformations are not “just doing things better” but “doing better things” in effectiveness, efficiency, access, scale, and personalization.
Join the AI-ALOE team and UPCEA Senior Fellow, Ray Schroeder, for an enlightening presentation on AI-ALOE’s work on AI theories and techniques for enhancing the quality of adult online education. Their use-inspired fundamental research into AI is grounded in theories of human cognition and learning, supported by evidence from large-scale data, evaluated on a large variety of testbeds, and derived from the scientific process of learning engineering.
