Leadership, Innovation, and the Future of Education with Dr. Paul J. LeBlanc

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Dr. Paul J. LeBlanc is the Board Chair for Human Systems, a new AI and Education company he co-founded with noted researcher George Siemens.

Until June 2024, he served as President of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). He remains at SNHU as a researcher, writer, and advisor. Under the 20 years of Paul’s direction, SNHU has more grown from 2800 students to over 250,000 and is the largest non-profit provider of online higher education in the country, and the first to have a full competency-based degree program untethered to the credit hour or classes approved by a regional accreditor and the US Department of Education.

Paul is considered one of America’s most innovative educators. In 2012, the university was #12 on Fast Company magazine’s “World’s Fifty Most Innovative Companies” list and was the only university included. Forbes Magazine has listed him as one of its 15 “Classroom

Revolutionaries” and Washington Monthly named him one of America’s ten most innovative university presidents. He was named 2022 Citizen of the Year in his home city of Manchester, NH.

In 2018, Paul won the prestigious IAA Institute Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education, joining some of the most respected university and college presidents in American higher education. He is a frequently requested speaker internationally and often quoted in the media. He is the author of Students First: Equity, Access, and Opportunity in Higher Education (2021), winner of the 2022 Phillip E. Frandson Award for Literature, and Broken: How are Social Systems Are Failing Us and How We Can Fix Them (2022).

He served as Senior Policy Advisor to Under Secretary Ted Mitchell at the US Department of Education, working on competency-based education, new accreditation pathways, and innovation. He also served on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Board on Higher Education and Workforce, the AGB President’s Council, the NEASC (now NECHE) Commission, and the Board of the American Council on Education, which he chaired, as well as various corporate boards and advisory committees.

Paul will step down from his current role on June 30th to lead Human Systems, a new AI and Education start up co-founded with George Siemens and funded by SNHU.

Paul’s family immigrated for an impoverished rural farming community in Canada, settled in the Boston area; the youngest of five, he was the first in his extended family to graduate from college. His wife Pat is an attorney, now retired, and they have two daughters. Emma is a Rhodes Scholar with a D.Phil from Oxford and will soon graduate from Yale Law School. Hannah has a PhD from Stanford and is a History teacher at the Francis Parker School in San Diego. Paul is a passionate traveler, having visited over 65 countries and all 7 continents, rides motorcycles (too fast), reads a lot (too slow), and is most excited about becoming a first-time grandfather in June.

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