Featured Events

The ASU+GSV Summit is the world’s preeminent platform for the entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, educators, workforce leaders, policymakers, and industry professionals transforming the $8 trillion education and skills sector.

Over four days, more than 7,000 global leaders gather for 500+ sessions, roundtables, labs, networking events, and experiences featuring 800+ world-renowned speakers. From main-stage keynotes and breakthrough ideas to hands-on demonstrations and collaborative discussions, ASU+GSV explores the most important and transformative forces shaping the future of learning, work, and human potential. The Summit also serves as one of the world's largest marketplaces for innovation in education and workforce development with 220+ partners, bringing together emerging startups, growth-stage innovators, and leading global enterprises to showcase new products, technologies, and solutions. Through thousands of formal and informal meetings, the Summit creates opportunities for partnership, investment, collaboration, and impact across the global education and skills ecosystem.

Each year, GSV honors global Innovators of Color who are making a true impact in lifelong learning. The winners have impacted thousands and left an indelible mark on the ecosystem through innovations in learning and skills.

Nominations will open for the 2027 Innovator of Color Awards on November 9th.

We're looking for rising leaders making a meaningful impact on how organizations develop talent, build skills, and prepare their people for the future.

Nominate managers, directors, department heads, and VPs working in L&D, Talent, HR/People, Workforce Development, or Organizational Capability; current C-suite leaders (CLOs, CHROs, & CPOs) are not eligible. Nominees should lead this work for their own organization’s people.

Submit your nomination by October 30th!

Behind the buzzy headlines lies an unsung truth: as much as we rely on human connection in education, we rely just as much on the technologies that quietly make so much of it possible — often without realizing it. The right EdTech tools enable scale, accessibility, personalization, and more in ways that expand and elevate student experiences. 

In conversation with GSV’s Deborah Quazzo, leaders from Cambium Learning Group, InnovateEDU, and New Haven Public Schools will explore how operators can make the case for purposeful, research-backed technology by leading with evidence and demonstrated outcomes. They’ll cover the nuances of delivering excellent education at scale, the innovations that technology is uniquely equipped to amplify, and the opportunity for EdTech to drive student outcomes as the bar for impact rises.

Nominations for the 2027 GSV Cup 50, presented by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and GSV Ventures and supported by Pearson, are open — and we’re looking for the early-stage companies building what’s next across learning and work.The GSV Cup gives 50 promising pre-Series A startups a platform to get noticed; build meaningful relationships; and connect with the investors, education and workforce leaders, buyers, operators, and partners who can help move their companies forward.

Know a company we should be watching? Building one yourself? Nominate a startup before December 1st!

Join GSV Co-founder Deborah Quazzo for a candid conversation with Phil Regier, University Dean for Educational Initiatives and CEO, EdPlus at ASU, about the journey of building one of education's most influential innovation organizations, helping reshape online learning and the role of technology in higher education. Together, they'll reflect on the early vision, the bold bets, the failed experiments, and the decisions that helped transform online learning and redefine what's possible for higher education. More than just a success story, this conversation offers founders, operators, and investors an inside look at how enduring innovation actually happens: testing ideas, learning from setbacks, scaling what works, and staying relentlessly focused on impact.

The first sales hire is one of the most consequential bets an early-stage founder makes — and most get it wrong. AI is reshaping what great sellers actually do, which means the old playbook on when to hire, who to hire, and what to pay them no longer applies. In this candid session, EdTech founders share how to structure equity and comp for a market with long cycles and complex procurement, when to cut your losses fast, and how AI is changing the math on headcount.

This conversation is part of the ASU+GSV Summit Startup Academy, presented by Cooley—a webinar series designed to support early-stage EdTech entrepreneurs across PreK to Gray. Startup Academy brings industry leaders into honest, practical conversations about what it really takes to build, fund, and scale impactful companies, with insights across growth, fundraising, product, and people.

As AI becomes embedded in classrooms, workplaces, and daily life, the conversation is shifting from possibility to impact. New research from Walton Family Foundation and Gallup on how teachers are using AI, taken together with Gallup, Walton Family Foundation and ASU+GSV’s research on Gen Z’s perspectives around these new tools, point to a growing tension: while AI offers enormous potential, many Gen Z learners are expressing rising levels of anxiety, uncertainty, and concern about how these tools may affect creativity, critical thinking, and future job opportunities. So what should education and workforce leaders do now?

Join us for a forward-looking conversation featuring leaders across education, workforce, and AI innovation as they unpack the signals emerging from this moment and what they may mean for the future of learning and work. Rather than predicting the future, this discussion will explore how thoughtful leaders are responding today: what they’re watching for, how they’re adapting, and where they see the greatest opportunities and risks ahead.

As students and families increasingly question the value of a college degree, one issue sits at the center of the debate: Why is it so difficult to understand what college will actually cost? Pricing confusion is no longer just an enrollment challenge—it is becoming a trust issue, and perhaps one of the most critical questions facing higher education today.

Join Ruth Watkins, President of Strada Education Foundation, as she shares findings from Strada's groundbreaking new report, The Price Transparency Imperative: Rebuilding Confidence in Higher Education. Arthur Levine, President of Brandeis University, will discuss why Brandeis created Faye, its AI-powered pricing transparency initiative designed to provide students and families with clearer, more predictable costs. And John Katzman, one of higher education's most influential innovators and entrepreneurs, will offer his perspective on how institutions can rethink pricing, value, and student decision-making in an era of unprecedented scrutiny.

Together, these leaders will examine the forces that brought higher education to this moment—and, more importantly, the solutions. Can pricing transparency become more than a compliance exercise? Can it become a values-based competitive advantage that strengthens trust, improves recruitment, and better serves students and families?

This conversation couldn't be more timely—or more consequential.

“Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago, according to new, district-level test score data released… by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford.” –The New York Times

A sweeping new report from researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth reveals an urgent reality: nearly every state in the nation is showing declining test scores, and this "learning recession" has been building since 2013 — seven years before the pandemic began. But a handful of bright spots show that progress is possible.

What drove the pre-pandemic decline? What does a genuine recovery look like — at the district, state, and national level? Who's accountable for closing the gap? 

Join GSV's Deborah Quazzo in conversation with Thomas Kane, Christina Grant, and John White for an evidence-driven discussion on what the data demands of education leaders right now.