MacKenzie Price is the co-founder of Alpha School, a Stanford graduate in Psychology, and the host of the Future of Education podcast. She created her first school after her daughters said what too many kids feel: “School is boring.” That moment sparked what has become a national movement to redesign the school day to help kids thrive. With more than 250M views on her Future of Education Instagram, she is showing people around the world how kids can love school, learn faster in a fraction of the time, and develop life skills.

MacKenzie’s AI-powered, personalized, mastery-based model helps students crush core academics in just two hours a day, freeing up time for learning critical life skills, passion projects, and deep personal growth. Today, Alpha classes score in the top 1–2% nationally, and more than 95% say they love school. Momentum is building for this fresh, forward-thinking approach, and it is now offered in a diverse range of schools coast to coast.

Based in Austin, Texas, MacKenzie is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and an advisor to the University of Austin. 

Visit alpha.school and thefutureofeducation.org to learn more.

Rebecca Winthrop is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on education globally, with special attention to the skills young people need to thrive in work, life, and as constructive citizens.

Winthrop works to promote quality and relevant education, including exploring how education innovations and family and community engagement can be harnessed to leapfrog progress, particularly for the most marginalized children and youth. She advises governments, international institutions, foundations, civil society organizations, and corporations on education issues. She currently serves as a board member and adviser for a number of global education organizations and lectures at Georgetown University.

She currently leads the Brookings Global Task Force on AI in Education and co-leads the Family Engagement in Education Network. She has served as the chair of the U.N. Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative’s Technical Advisory Group, helping to frame an education vision that focuses on access, quality, and global citizenship. With UNESCO Institute of Statistics, she co-led the Learning Metrics Task Force that involved inputs from education professionals in over 100 countries to identify how to measure what matters in education systems. She has been a member of numerous other global education initiatives including the G-20 Education Task Force, the Mastercard Foundation’s Youth Learning Advisory Committee, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils on education, and an education adviser to the Clinton Global Initiative.