HomeLeading Community-Based Change

LEADING COMMUNITY BASED CHANGE

Clarify Purpose. Build Community. Drive Change. Sustain Impact.

Transcend and Big Questions Institute (BQI), in collaboration with AISH and AAIE, are excited to invite international school teams to join a new global cohort focused on leading change in the design of learning environments with their communities, not just for them.

This experience brings together teams from multiple international schools to advance a real design priority - either starting from the ground up or already in motion at their school. Each school participates as a team of three to five people, depending on the initiative, and Transcend will support you in shaping and preparing that team.

Program Structure

The cohort includes five virtual monthly sessions, guided team work between sessions, and a coaching session each month. Each school that is interested in participating will have a conversation with Transcend cohort leaders before registering to help us understand your school’s context, current initiatives, and goals, and to ensure a strong mutual fit.

What Teams Will Explore

What do our students actually experience day to day, and what needs to shift in how we design learning?
What does our community most need from school in a world shaped by AI and rapid change?
What innovative models exist in other places that we could learn and/or borrow from?
How do we move from a compelling vision to designing real changes in learners’ daily experiences?
How do we assess and build the community conditions and coalitions needed to make meaningful change stick?
How can we pilot and learn from innovations to various aspects of learner experiences?

Register Today

The cost of participation is $12,500 per school team. Each team may include three to five participants, depending on the school’s design priority. The fee includes the five-session virtual cohort experience, guided work between sessions, monthly coaching, and access to the cohort’s tools and resources.

If you have any questions, contact office@academyish.org.

HOW

Five virtual cohort sessions. Individual onboarding and preparation meetings with each school team. Guided work between sessions. Monthly Coaching. Access to relevant tools, frameworks, research, and resources.

WHO

School teams to advance a real and meaningful community-based design priority. Three to five participants per team, depending on the school's design priority.

WHEN

June - December 2026: Onboarding, cohort preparation and information sessions ahead of the cohort launch. January - May 2027: Monthly virtual cohort sessions with coaching and support between sessions.

Cohort Timeline

August–September
Individual meetings with interested schools to share cohort details, answer questions, and finalize cohort planning. This is also when we hold fit conversations to understand your school’s context and goals before registration.

October–November
Registered schools begin individual coaching and pre-work. This is a time to set up your design team, identify a focus area, and begin listening to your community so that when the full cohort launches in January, your team is ready to hit the ground running.

January–May 2027
The full cohort experience runs across five monthly virtual sessions. Between each session, teams engage in guided work at their own school, applying what they’re learning, testing ideas, and gathering input from their community. Each month also includes a dedicated coaching session to support your team’s local design work.

Meaningful change involves many stakeholders. School are invited to engage students, educators, and other community members throughout the process. Each school's core design team - the group that will participate regularly in Cohort sessions and coaching - will consist of three to five people.

Session Overview

Session 1: Understanding Learner Experience

Exploring what students currently experience day to day
Making sense of student voices and community input gathered during pre-work
Grounding the team in a shared understanding of the current state

Session 2: Community Vision and Engagement

What does our community most need from school, now and in the future?
Processes for listening to and engaging caregivers, educators, and students as co-designers
Building shared understanding across the school community

Session 3: From Vision to Design

Moving from aspiration to concrete changes in how learning is designed
Models from schools that have redesigned learning environments in powerful ways
Prototyping and testing ideas with learners before full implementation

Session 4: Building Conditions for Change

Assessing what’s ready and what needs strengthening to support lasting change
Building coalitions and navigating hard conversations across stakeholder groups
Tools for productive disagreement and building trust within and beyond your team

Session 5: Sustaining and Spreading the Work

Reflecting on what’s shifted and what’s been learned across the cohort
Planning for continuity and deepening the work beyond the cohort
Celebrating progress and connecting with the broader global community of practice

Meet Your Guides

Accordion Widget

Homa Tavangar

Homa Sabet Tavangar is the CEO and Co-Founder of Big Questions Institute. For over three decades, Homa's work has addressed themes of culture, innovation, leadership, global citizenship and global competence, and deep diversity, equity, belonging and inclusion. She connects timely topics of the moment with the timeless desire to work with purpose and make a difference – whatever one’s circumstances.

Homa’s clients range from Fortune 50 corporations to public, international and independent K-12 schools around the world; from an Ivy League university to Disney Channel and numerous not-for-profit public and multilateral organizations and professional associations. Co-founding the Big Questions Institute represents a natural extension of her work, especially during a time of unprecedented global challenges.

Homa is the author of widely-acclaimed Growing Up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World (Random House, 2009), Global Kids (Barefoot, 2019); The Global Education Toolkit for Elementary Learners (Sage/Corwin, 2014), contributor to Mastering Global Literacy, Heidi Hayes-Jacobs, ed. (Solution Tree, Nov. 2013) and the 3-book Take-Action Guide to World-Class Learners (Corwin, 2016) series with Professor Yong Zhao. Growing Up Global was the inspiration behind NBC-Universal’s animated series Nina’s World, starring Rita Moreno, and has been hailed by international education and business leaders and media ranging from Dr. Jane Goodall to the BBC, NPR, NBC, ABC, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, Boston Globe, PBS, Scholastic, Parents Magazine, Rodale, and many more.

A graduate of UCLA and Princeton University, Homa has lived on four continents, speaks four languages, and has heritage in four world religions. She is an active volunteer in her local community and has served on multiple Boards, including currently for International School Services, the nonprofit leader in international education; and as a judge for the Templeton Prize, an award calibrated to exceed the Nobel Prize purse. She currently resides in Villanova, Pennsylvania, is married and is the mother of three adult daughters.

Accordion Widget

Holly Reardon

Holly Bowen Reardon is a partner at Transcend, a nonprofit that partners with school communities to co-design learner centered models that transform traditional approaches to learning. With more than two decades of experience across five countries as a teacher, principal, and executive director of learning, Holly brings a thoughtful, relational approach to helping teams connect their daily work to a larger purpose.

Beyond this work, Holly actively engages with a global network of educators and innovators to push the boundaries of what’s possible in education. Whether through convening learning communities, facilitating design processes, or partnering on big questions, Holly is fueled by a belief in people and the potential of learner-centered systems to change lives.