Learning Can’t Wait

The episode explores how three co-founders of Building Leaders—Dr. Kalpana Rao, Kyle Conley, and Jennifer Dubey—are reimagining school leadership by centering lifelong learning, psychological safety, and global perspectives for principals who are often “one of one” in their buildings. They trace personal journeys through classroom teaching, turnaround schools, global education, burnout, and recovery to highlight the need for more holistic definitions of success for leaders and students, beyond test scores and rigid accountability systems. The conversation surfaces post-COVID challenges like sustainability, staffing crises, and rising student needs, and shows how Building Leaders creates peer communities, reflective school visits, and coaching to reduce isolation and elevate the expertise of current practitioners. Throughout, they argue for structural shifts—shared leadership models, ongoing coaching, and deeper community engagement—so principals can lead with vulnerability, purpose, and balance instead of exhaustion and compliance.​

The episode follows Paymon Rouhanifard’s journey from an expected career in finance into teaching in West Harlem, where seeing “the Matrix” of classroom realities and systems-level decisions pulled him into education policy and district leadership before founding Timely, an AI-powered master scheduling tool for middle and high schools. He and host Hayley Spira‑Bauer unpack today’s budget and enrollment headwinds, including declining birth rates, growing numbers of students with higher needs, and federal funding uncertainty that makes district leaders cautious even when core dollars remain intact. Rouhanifard explains how master schedules concentrate 80–90% of districts’ budgets and can either hide inefficiencies or unlock major savings and student supports when built intentionally, sharing examples like Lubbock ISD identifying 37 unneeded vacancies and saving over $2 million without increasing class size or cutting electives. The conversation closes by exploring how tools like Timely can free hundreds of hours for school leaders, give teachers schedules before summer, and create the conditions for better instruction and student support, as well as Rouhanifard’s advice that early-career educators should refuse to passively accept the status quo and instead think deeply about root causes and systems solutions.​

This episode of the Learning Can't Wait podcast features entrepreneur and EnlightApp founder Dieumerci Christel, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree whose journey runs from a refugee camp in Tanzania to building an empathy-centered edtech company in the U.S. He shares how his father started the first school in the Nyarugusu refugee camp, how multilingual refugee youth’s talents were often overlooked, and how culturally responsive educators in North Dakota unlocked his potential by seeing his assets and pushing him beyond labels like “ELL” or “C student.” These experiences fuel his mission to translate empathy and student voice into actionable data for teachers, so they can build ongoing, deeply relational classrooms where students feel they belong and can differentiate themselves in an AI-driven world.​

This episode explores how AI is reshaping school-based social work and youth mental health, through the lens of Dr. Marina Badillo-Diaz’s work as a professor and founder of The AI Social Worker. The conversation covers global disparities in access to mental health care, how AI tools and AI companions are already part of students’ lives, and why ethical, human-centered integration of technology is essential. Dr. Badillo-Diaz describes both the risks (from deepfakes to unsafe chatbots and child exploitation) and the possibilities (equity, access, support for neurodiverse learners, and time-saving tools for practitioners), emphasizing that AI should support—not replace—the human relationships at the heart of social work.​

This episode of the Learning Can't Wait podcast features Kunal Dalal, Chief Parentologist at AI Parentology, exploring how generative AI can support parents emotionally and practically while reshaping education and leadership. He traces his path from teacher and principal to startup founder and AI parenting advocate, explaining how tools like ChatGPT can reduce parental stress, deepen connection with children, and inspire creative rituals like AI-generated dream journals. The conversation also unpacks agentic AI as “AI as infrastructure,” examines how schools and leaders might adopt agentic mindsets, and urges parents to slow down, focus on being “present ready” rather than “future ready,” and intentionally model joyful, human-centered uses of AI for their kids.​

The episode explores how games can transform learning when they are used intentionally, highlighting Games for Change’s work to help students and educators harness play, game design, and technology for deeper engagement and social impact. Arana Shapiro shares how she moved from being “not a games person” to seeing games and organized play as powerful tools for student-centered classrooms, purposeful technology integration, and empowering young people as changemakers through programs like the Games for Change Student Challenge and Game Plan.​

This episode of Learning Can't Wait features Transcend Network co-founders Alberto Arena and Michael Narea in a deep, human-centered conversation about what it really means to build in EdTech for the long term. They describe their own journeys—Michael seeking a true “co-pilot” for multi-decade visions, and Alberto being shaped by transformative opportunities like his experience at Minerva—and how these led them to create a founder network that prioritizes soul-nourishing support over short-term wins. They explain how Transcend’s highly personalized onboarding, six-week fellowship, revenue-focused cohort programs, and early-stage fund are all designed to help founders clarify the transformation they want for their users before obsessing over features, capital, or growth hacks. Throughout, they emphasize empathy, global diversity, and the rise of end users (like teachers and school leaders) as founders, arguing that the future of learning will be shaped by humble, collaborative builders committed to decades-long impact rather than quick exits or yet another tool in an already overcrowded tech stack.​

This episode explores how Roberto Vargas, Managing Director of IT and Data Systems at Distinctive Schools, uses technology, data, and AI to better serve students while fiercely protecting their privacy. He shares his journey from Chicago Public Schools student to building tech and network data leader, emphasizing the often-invisible infrastructure and cybersecurity work that keeps modern schools running. The conversation dives into how his team evaluates edtech vendors for student data protection, builds a human-centered AI playbook with real student and staff voice, and pilots AI-powered learner profiles in Notebook LM to give teachers instant, holistic insight into each child. Throughout, Roberto stresses that AI is here to stay, that students are already “AI natives,” and that educators must stay ahead while grounding everything in relationships and deep knowledge of students.

The episode follows Hallie Smith’s journey from two decades in reading intervention and speech pathology to becoming a fractional marketing leader and founder of Hey There Insights, a new marketplace that connects edtech companies with educators for paid, unbiased product feedback. She explains how advances in technology and AI have lowered the barrier to building edtech tools while dramatically increasing competition and making it harder to get educators’ attention and authentic input. The conversation highlights why early, specific, and compensated educator feedback is essential for true product‑market fit, reducing costly engineering missteps, and building tools that actually address on‑the‑ground pain points in schools.​

This episode centers on how the “science of reading” must expand beyond phonics to a broader “literacy science” that spans birth through adolescence, and how systems can better prepare and support teachers so no child learns to read “in spite of” their teacher. Dr. Paige Pullen shares her journey from feeling unprepared as an elementary teacher to leading large-scale professional learning and now launching a startup focused on bridging research to practice across entire district ecosystems. She and host Hayley Spira-Bauer unpack common instructional missteps (like over-relying on 3-cueing and running records), the need for explicit, systematic foundational skills for older struggling readers, and the importance of learning science, instructional science, and literacy science working together. They also examine legislation, district decision-making, and family engagement, emphasizing that reducing stigma for adolescent readers and rejecting teacher shame are essential to ensuring all students gain true literacy, not just early decoding.​