Joanne McEachen, Waitaha, Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu, CEO + Founder of The Learner First, a global education consultancy operating in New Zealand Australia and USA. A bestselling author with 35 + years of experience as a teacher, principal, a Ministry of Education country wide leader, and now a globally recognized pioneer, sought after in the fields of educational design, assessment and well-being. McEachen uses indigenous wisdom to influence her work for all of humanity.

An award winning educator, McEachen has also founded the Kia Kotahi Ako Charitable Trust, focusing on how indigenous knowledge can inform to transform education and environmental solutions, is on the Executive Committee for Karanga: The Global Alliance for Social Emotional Learning and Life Skills (Austria), on the Education New Zealand: North America Advisory Board Manapou ki te Ao, The People for Education Canada Board, an Edmund Hillary Fellow, a Fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar, and co-founder of New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPDL). Through these roles she creates opportunities for students, educators, and communities to learn who they are, how they fit into the world, and how they can contribute their gifts to humanity.

McEachen embeds a social, emotional, and cultural commitment to all students and educators, reflecting their identities, cultures, and aspirations in what, how, and where they learn. She developed the Contributive Learning framework to help school communities design purposeful learning experiences, measure the outcomes that matter, and guide every student to academic success and well-being.

McEachen is a best-selling author whose works include: "The Depthvale Detectives and the Great Education Crisis: A Guide to Contributive Learning in Schools" (2020), "Dive into Deep Learning" (2019), "Measuring Human Return" (2018), "Deep Learning" (2017), and "Making the Important Measurable, Not the Measurable Important" (2015).

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