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ESL Haitian Immigrant Leads with Inquiry, Persistence and Joy of Figuring Hard Things Out: Meet Exceptional Leader Award Winner in K-12, Jean-Claude Brizard, CEO of Digital Promise Global
GlobalMindED is proud to introduce the 2026 Exceptional Leader Award winners daily over the next two weeks. Read about these leaders and role models who stand out in their respective fields, inspiring their peers and the next generation that GlobalMindED serves. Meet them in Denver on June 10th at the awards dinner and hear them speak as part of 400+ speakers, 1,000+ attendees, and students at the GlobalMindED 2026 Conference, "Dimensions of our Democracy: Architecting the Next 250+ Years and Beyond," on June 11-12.
We are honored to recognize Jean-Claude Brizard as the Exceptional Leader Award winner for K–12 Education. Jean-Claude leads Digital Promise Global at a pivotal moment for education. As President and CEO, he brings together educators, researchers, policymakers, and technology leaders to ensure innovation strengthens schools, centers learners, and advances equity. Grounded in decades of leadership across classrooms, districts, and global initiatives, Brizard champions learner agency, curiosity, and belonging, driven by the belief that powerful learning happens when all students are seen, supported, and challenged.
What is your personal story? How did you find your purpose and your passion?
My parents first came to the United States in the 1970s, fleeing the cruelty and violence of Haiti’s dictator. Their experience and push for social justice shaped my life and entire perspective on education. When my siblings and I finally reunited with them in New York, I was 12 and didn’t speak English. To say life was challenging was an understatement. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. My school didn’t have classes for non-English speaking students, and I was overwhelmed trying to learn a new city and navigate public transportation. I didn’t have friends, and there was a lot that I simply didn’t understand. I began making progress in junior high school with the help of an amazing teacher, Mr. Chesarsard, who was both demanding and supportive. Thanks to his efforts, I graduated from high school at age 16. Years later, I was looking for a job, and New York City was desperate for teachers, so I accepted a position teaching kids at Rikers Island—an experience that tethered my life’s work to teaching and learning.
What led you to the leadership role for which you are being recognized?
Across nearly four decades as a teacher, principal, superintendent, funder, and now leader of a global education non-profit organization, the experience that most shaped my view of learning wasn’t a grand reform or a shiny new program. It was a Friday physics lab in Brooklyn. Watching the process of confusion, debate, trial, error, struggle, and—finally—discovery that my students cycled through during an experiment taught me more about how learning really happens than any policy memo ever has. That’s what school should unlock every day for every student: inquiry, persistence, and the joy of figuring something out yourself. Learning is only powerful if it combines agency, purpose, curiosity, and connection to empower students for the future. For the last two decades, leveraging the power of technology and digital learning platforms to equip all students with powerful learning experiences has been my driving motivation.
As we celebrate America’s 250th, what is your highest hope for our democracy?
To sustain our democracy, we must expand education beyond just academics to truly support the whole learner. My highest aspiration is that our schools fulfill their essential role to nurture a common civic purpose in every individual, recognizing that the success of our democratic society is dependent on the mutual well-being of all its people.
How can GlobalMindED inform, advance, and/or multiply your mission?
I think about the groundbreaking work GlobalMindED is doing to close equity gaps and guarantee resources to students who need them, and how powerful that type of support would have been in my life when I first came to the U.S. Today, more than one in 10 students in the U.S. are English learners, and in some places like Texas, it’s almost one in four students—and their numbers are expected to climb. We have an important opportunity to harness emerging digital technology, including AI, to help these students reach their full potential. In ways we couldn’t imagine when I was a student, we can meet them where they are and support educators as they seek to provide deep, unique, and transformative learning experiences.
GlobalMindED can help us in this mission by ensuring that edtech developers involve these students in the development process and invest in research on learner variability—a critical part of being able to harness AI’s potential for the benefit of the fastest-growing population of schoolchildren today. Involving a wide array of students will ensure that we’re addressing every student’s needs and solving any other hurdles they may encounter.
You can celebrate Jean-Claude Brizard and the other honorees at the Exceptional Leader Awards Dinner on June 10th in Denver and hear insights from him during the conference that follows. Read our newsletter each day and register for the conference by January 31 for the Early Bird rate!
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