We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Sheila Jagannathan, renowned expert in digital upskilling, education, artificial intelligence, and international development, has joined Saylor Academy as its new Deputy Director of Global Strategy this Spring. Dr. Jagannathan is the former head of the Open Learning Campus at the World Bank.
A key part of Dr. Jagannathan’s role at Saylor Academy is to generate partnerships with large-scale organizations, particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa as well as other areas. If you represent an organization and wish to partner with Saylor Academy, please contact us here.
As part of this outreach, Dr. Jagannathan led the Saylor’s outreach team to this Spring’s e-learning Africa conference in Dakar, Senegal. During the conference, she was a panelist on artificial intelligence.
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Dr. Sheila Jagannathan’s Bio
Sheila Jagannathan is a lifelong learner and was Global Head of the Open Learning Campus at the World Bank in Washington DC for the last 25 years. She served as the organization’s focal point on digital learning and issues at the intersection of technology use and capacity building in emerging countries. She is an internationally recognized thought leader, advisor, author and a forward-thinking senior education leader with over 35 years of experience in leading capacity building, knowledge management, data, social learning and transformation change across public and private organizations.
She has been responsible for designing and implementing world-class solutions in challenging global environments, resulting in performance and productivity improvements. Sheila also provides policy advice and technical assistance to World Bank country-level capacity building programs (both government and training centers of excellence seeking to introduce technologies in their educational systems) in East Asia, China, the Middle East and North Africa, Africa and South Asia.
A recent MOOC designed under her leadership on Future of Work (World Development Report-WDR 2019) was nominated for the prestigious EDX prize for 2020. Her current areas of interest and activity include: Skilling and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, 60-year curricula, corporate talent management, diversity & inclusion, organizational development, MOOCs, experiential pedagogy, online/hybrid strategies, multimodal and social learning environments, immersive learning (AR/VR), use of artificial education in education, big data analytics, LXPs, LMS, and learning ecosystems.
Sheila has written articles for various peer-reviewed publications and journals learning publications in technology-based learning. Her seminal book, ‘Reimagining Digital Learning for Sustainable Development: How Upskilling, Data Analytics, and Educational Technologies Close the Skills Gap’, by Routledge, New York (2021) is recognized as a landmark in the field of digital capability building and sustainable development, a topic that has now become center stage in promoting alternative pathways for jobs and employment among millions of low income youths in different parts of the developing world.
She is on the advisory board of major professional associations of learning such as the UN-SDG Learn, Canadian Foreign Service Institute, Global Distance Learning Network, Indian National Skills Development Council, George Mason University, E-learning Africa, (Annual International Conference for developing E-learning capacities in Africa), International Conference on e-learning (ICEL), and Skills Development Councils, IQPC’s Chief Learning Officer (CLO Exchange).
Selected as 100 Executive Women in Tech to Watch in 2022
Sheila was awarded top 15 global leaders for furthering SDGs, and invited to join 15 global leaders for an UN Executive Leadership Program for Sustainable Development, and is currently a UN Master Mind for providing leadership advice to the organization on sustainable development issues.
We are very excited to have Dr. Jagannathan on board the Saylor Academy team!