In Conversation with Sabba Quidwai, Founder of Designing Schools and Aurora Institute Symposium 2024 Keynoter

Aurora’s Communications Director Chiara Wegener recently had the chance to sit down to talk about education and AI with Designing School’s Sabba Quidwai, who will be keynoting at the Aurora Institute Symposium 2024 in New Orleans this November.

CW: You began your career as a high school teacher, have worked in higher ed, and held positions at Apple. That’s quite the career! Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and how it led you to creating Designing Schools?
SQ: It was all an accident; but now being on the other side of the accident, I’ve realized that it didn’t need to be an accident! When I graduated in 2007, so many pieces of what we know in the technology space today, from Facebook to the iPhone, to AirBNB, were all launching at that time. At that moment, I didn’t know that I was entering an inflection point.

When I got to that moment, I always wondered – why didn’t anyone ever talk to me about these things, especially in school? What might my career have looked like in an era like that? I got my first layoff in 2008 during the recession. I had gotten good evaluations, gone to a great schools, and it was very shocking. I was always lucky to get another job, and marketing was one of the careers I was exploring. That’s when I came across Linchpin by Seth Godin. He basically argues: “The world has changed; here’s what you need to do instead – you need to tell people why you’re the person who can solve their problems, and you have to show them.” And that really launched me down my career path. 

I was recruited by USC and Apple simply because I was showing people how I was doing things. We’re often told ‘this is your job, this is what you do.’ But when you start to look at yourself through skills, the sky’s the limit. And if you can show people your skills, others can find you. And that’s a lot of the motivation behind Designing Schools. We create environments where young people and adults get access to those experiences and can find their pathways. 

CW: That’s amazing. If you think about it, many of today’s K-12 students are likely to hold jobs that don’t yet exist. Wow!
SQ: Yes! I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Reid Hoffman, but he’s predicted many of the tech trends; he just put something out with the prediction that in ten years, the 9-5 job will basically be gone. But we’re not preparing young people for that future right now!

CW: Can you share more about the work that you do at Designing Schools?
SQ: In 2014, there were two first grade teachers at a school called Design 39 that were talking about how they were using design thinking at their school. I was really intrigued by that, and this notion of empathy as it relates to design thinking really resonated with me. Fast forward to when I was at Apple six years later, I wanted to go back and look at design thinking through a research lens and apply it to AI. Everything we do at Designing Schools is based upon this notion of applying design thinking to complex challenges. AI in education is such a great example. You can’t afford to spend five years coming up with your business or organizational strategy, because by the time you do, things have dramatically changed. A design sprint condenses this into five days, and it helps you identify your problem, prototype, and it’s all empathy driven. Innovation really begins with empathy. That’s a core learning from all of my experiences. The quote from Don Norman really resonates with me: “A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.” Many AI education apps we see are brilliant solutions to the wrong problem. 

CW: The AI landscape is evolving so quickly, especially in the education space. What advice do you have for educators and school leaders as they navigate this?
SQ: The first one is that you have to ask yourself “Why am I in this place?” It’s this idea that instead of incremental innovation, we’re constantly reacting to inflection points. Assessment is an example that I can’t get past. If you think about the past ten years, if people had focused on incremental innovation in assessment, we would be in a much different place. Without the reflection of “Why am I in this place?” you’re likely to just keep repeating the status quo. 

The second thing is a structured learning experience for adults. There’s a lot of one off opportunities, but a structured experience is really important. My favorite thing we do at Designing Schools is the AI Bootcamp, and we get to hear from folks in incremental ways. It’s self-paced and hybrid. It’s coaching that’s structured. Personalized, competency-based education has to happen for adults too! 

CW: You’re joining us as a keynoter for the Aurora Institute Symposium. Can you give our attendees a little preview of what they can expect?
SQ: First, during the pre-conference I’m leading we’ll be doing a design thinking exercise. I hope folks will be coming with a problem in mind! In my pre-con and keynote, we’ll be thinking about how you HIRE your AI team. You get to have as many chatbot assistants that you delegate tasks to as you want! Especially when you’re in education, this sort of help can be instrumental. Then, we’ll be talking about how you give instructions to your team! We’ll be walking through a human-centered framework, the SPARK framework. It’s the only framework that asks you to talk with a human before going to AI. And finally, we’ll be talking about communications strategies that reduce fear and build cultures of safety and trust around AI.

CW: As you know, the Aurora Institute’s focus is around transforming education systems through personalized, competency-based education. From your perspective, how can personalized, competency-based education serve as an equity lever?
SQ: First, when we talk about personalization, it’s about what energizes you. The people who understand more about what gives them meaning and purpose are able to find many places where they can leverage that. Then, being able to have a pathway that nurtures that is super important. Everyone has a different way of learning; the idea that everyone has to do the same thing is so obsolete. We talk so much about lifelong learning, but if there’s one takeaway you can have with AI in the last two years, there’s so many people that don’t know how to learn! 

Personalized, competency-based learning means you know your strengths, you know how to learn, and you can figure things out yourself. When we think about equity, we need to widen the frame. If you can give people the right skills and opportunities, the possibilities are limitless of what people can create for themselves. I’ve been looking up to Alex Cattoni a lot – she runs the online copywriting bootcamp called Copy Posse. She’s a writer that teaches others to become writers for business in eight weeks. A lot of folks in the leadership space are in the old economy, but if you’re entering today’s economy it’s very different.

CW: Anything else you want to add that we haven’t covered yet?
SQ: I hope folks will bring something they want to solve for at Symposium that we can work through together!

CW: Thank you so much for your time, Sabba. We look forward to seeing you in November!