Dr. Nicole Bien is Chief Schools Officer at the International Baccalaureate (IB). She is responsible for delivering services to the global network of IB schools including educator professional development, school authorisation, evaluation, and implementation excellence. Since joining the IB in 2016, Nicole has also served as Global Director of Learning and Teaching. After a career in strategy, marketing and product development at Fortune 500 companies, Dr Bien began her work in the education sector as an advocate for at-risk youth from disadvantaged backgrounds. She holds a PhD and MA in education from the University of Sydney and an MBA from Columbia University Business School.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with K12 Digest, Dr. Bien shared her professional trajectory, insights on the initiatives and programs undertaken by IB to promote lifelong learning and increased access to education, significant career milestone, future plans, words of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Dr. Bien. Please share your personal story. How have you gotten to where you are today?
My journey to the field of education is a circuitous one. Ever since high school, I have always had a passion for achieving equity in education. At university, I tutored students from low SES neighbourhoods. After I graduated, I worked in the corporate world to pay off my student loans. However, I never stopped focusing on economically disadvantaged students including those in juvenile halls. I contributed my strategic and marketing expertise to help start a non-profit called Fresh Lifelines for Youth which provides mentorship, leadership training and community service opportunities to youth to disrupt the pipeline to prison. When my student loans were paid off, I made the career transition into education. I combined my doctorate degree and research experience in education and leadership experience in the corporate world to grow a Regio-Emilia inspired primary school in the San Francisco Bay Area. When my family relocated to Europe, I found the International Baccalaureate (IB). Having lived, studied, and worked in multiple countries, the IB’s global education and mission to create a more peaceful world through intercultural understanding really resonated with me and continue to inspire me in my current role.
What does it mean to be IB’s Chief Schools Officer? What challenges does your role throw at you day-to-day?
As Chief Schools Officer, my job is to look after schools’ journeys with the IB. We support schools in creating the right conditions and engaging environment to develop holistic and life-long learners. Additionally, we provide professional learning opportunities to support effective implementation of the IB programmes. Some of the day-to-day challenges include working across multiple time zones, because the IB has schools in over 160 countries, and ensuring that the IB curriculum and resources are accessible in as many languages as possible. Another challenge which is also an opportunity is to ensure that the IB community is well supported with resources and tools to enable their students to thrive by actively sharing research informed practices and creating learning hubs for members of the communities to come together to share promising practices.
What do you feel are some of the biggest challenges that the educational system is still facing when it comes to effectively educating our youth?
The two most important challenges for students today are the changes brought about by technology and the need to address wellness more strategically.
Technology has transformed educational systems for years and the speed and magnitude that adaptive Artificial Intelligence (AI) has impacted teaching and learning is undeniable. The big question is how to leverage AI’s potential and to understand its limitations as we adapt educational programs and assessment practices to deepen student competencies for an increasingly complex future. An important place to start is supporting students using AI tools ethically and effectively.
The other issue, especially in a post-pandemic world, is student and educator wellness. A large body of research indicates a drop in both student and educator well-being over last few years. We also know through research that student well-being is one of the most effective means for students’ academic outcomes and teacher well-being is a predictor of student well-being. For this reason, the IB has partnered with leading foundations, universities, and educational systems worldwide to develop and share a well-being framework to create a safe and supportive environment for learning and teaching. This framework consolidates a broad overview of factors in four themes: health, people, environment, and skills. Because there is no single solution to effectively address well-being, investing time, money, and resources on a combination of initiatives across these different themes to support well-being will likely also lead to improvements in academic attainment and flourishing.
What initiatives and programs has IB launched to promote lifelong learning and increased access to education across all ages, and how are these efforts impacting communities worldwide?
For students, the Festival of Hope and the Global Youth Action Fund are ways that we promote education beyond the classroom and inspire action. The Festival of Hope brings together diverse voices and experiences to explore what it will take to inspire and transform humanity and address the complex challenges young people face today.
The Youth Action Fund offers grant money to support social entrepreneurship and the opportunity to develop skills that will support their entrepreneurial journey, demonstrating how in-class learning can have real and positive impact to their local communities and beyond.
Lifelong learning is also something the IB promotes for educators through professional development. The IB Exchange initiative is an interactive platform for educators to share promising practices in their classrooms, to connect with and learn from peers, and to build teacher capabilities. Furthermore, localised IB Day events across the world and regional IB Global Conferences bring IB educators and the wider IB community together in person to learn from each other.
IB Educator and Leadership Certificates (IBEC) is another credential available to develop teaching pertaining to inquiry, research, and project-based learning among other topics. It is designed to encourage educators to continue challenging themselves, growing as a professional, and modelling lifelong learning to their students.
We are also proud of our support to teachers from underserved communities to strengthen their teaching qualification and prepare for leadership roles. Since 2018, the IB awards 75 grants annually to teachers around the world to pursue an MA in education from the University of the People. In total, we have supported more than 350 teachers through this programme over the past five years.
Can you please tell us about IB’s Global Youth Action Fund? Why is it important to educate our youth about Sustainable Development?
At the IB, we encourage students to think boldly, inquire bravely, and take action to create a better world. Beyond offering an education focusing on intercultural understanding, we create opportunities for students to be heard and to apply their interests, knowledge, and competencies to turn complex challenges into positivity and hope.
The Global Youth Action Grant is an award open to students or student groups ages 12 through 19 in support of projects or ideas they believe will make an impact in their community. Each project must be aimed at supporting one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Since the grant’s inception in 2018, the IB has provided over $1.0 million USD to support more than 200 student projects globally focusing on improving education, health, climate challenge, and reducing inequality and hunger. In addition to the grant, student awardees also receive training from our partners such as the United Nation and other experts on social entrepreneurship.
In today’s rapidly changing technology-driven world, how can we strike a balance between preparing students for success while also nurturing their emotional, social, and ethical development?
One way that education systems can prepare students to thrive in an uncertain and increasingly complex future without sacrificing their well-being is to foster a holistic approach to education. An education that does not only focus on knowledge acquisition but also equipping students with skills, competencies, and values has a greater chance of increasing learning engagement and well-being while preparing students for adulthood and flourishing in their life’s endeavours. This type of education requires that we honour student agency to collaborate with teachers to define their learning journey, to inquire authentic issues, to embrace technology, and to think and engage globally and locally. When learning is purposeful, connected, and enjoyable, students have greater chance to develop cognitively, emotionally, socially, and ethically.
Taking a more balanced approach beyond academic metrics and educating the whole student ensures that they not only excel academically but also become the compassionate leaders of tomorrow. For that reason, the IB stopped disclosing its highest top marks in 2023 to discourage the use of assessment results for comparisons among students, schools or communities. This move demonstrates a renewed prioritisation of students’ holistic wellness.
What is your definition of a great leader and what does leadership look like to you?
A great leader is one who can inspire others to reach their highest potential.
What is your number one tip for managing people?
To be an effective manager, it is most important to be inclusive because diversity brings richness to the organisation and creativity to solutions. Being inclusive means being open to multiple perspectives, respecting different ways of working and knowing, and creating a safe space for these differences to be expressed and heard.
Tell us about an accomplishment of yours that makes you feel very proud.
I am proud of the curriculum design effort that I led to enshrine the concept of student agency prominently into the IB programmes. Acknowledging that students have voice, choice, and ownership in the learning process is key to encouraging lifelong learning. Furthermore, when students have agency in their own learning, the relationship between the teacher and student becomes a true partnership, enabling both students and teachers to flourish.
As the Chief Schools Officer, what are your plans for IB in the next 5 years?
With many teachers retiring or leaving the profession, building teacher capacity and capability is a challenge of the education sector. Our hope is to be able to contribute to raising teaching quality broadly by creating a variety of learning experiences to support teachers’ continuous professional development and capability building. We plan to partner with ministries to offer microlearning credentials to teachers to expand their skills in areas such as AI or climate education amongst other emerging topics.
We also believe that AI has the potential to positively transform education. To that end, we plan to pilot with AI learning and teaching assistance in support of deeper student inquiries to build critical thinking skills while creating more capacity for teachers to spend time facilitating student learning.
Our engagement with youth has been energizing and we plan to harness their passion and activism by expanding our engagement activities to elevate, connect, and invest in young people’s skill development and collective action towards the sustainable development goals.
What is one word of advice you can offer to young women who want to reach your level of success?
My advice for young women is to find good mentors.