Career Climber: Reach Your Goals at SXSW EDU 2025

Ready to take your career to new heights? SXSW EDU is your springboard for growth, fresh opportunities, and game-changing connections.

Whether you’re looking to sharpen your skills, expand your network, or find inspiration from industry leaders, SXSW EDU 2025 is where ambitious professionals like you come to thrive. Get ready to level up, explore new career pathways, and unlock the next stage of your professional journey!

Level Up Your Career:

Stepping into leadership? Faculty Leadership Beyond the Classroom is your chance to connect with fellow educators navigating this path. Whether you're balancing leadership with teaching or supporting faculty growth, join this Meet Up to share insights, ask questions, and expand your network.

Discover how mindfulness can strengthen school leadership in Mindful Leadership: Cultivate Resilient & Present Principals. This session, designed for principals, teachers, and education leaders, explores real-world strategies for fostering resilience, improving decision-making, and creating supportive school environments. Get a preview of The Aware Educator program and walk away with practical techniques to integrate mindfulness into your leadership practice.

Get expert career and workplace advice straight from the co-presidents of Amy Poehler’s Paper Kite Productions. In Million Dollar Advice: Navigating the Workplace with Amy Poehler’s Top Execs, they’ll tackle boundary-setting, workplace dynamics, and learning from Gen Z—all in a live recording of their hit podcast, featuring real audience questions.

School leaders are navigating increasingly complex political landscapes. Tomorrow's Principal Podcast: Leading Through Political Turmoil will dive into the challenges principals and superintendents face, offering real stories and actionable strategies for leading through resistance while fostering inclusive, thriving school communities.

Networking shouldn’t feel forced. In Building Authentic Relationships: Networking, you’ll define your personal value proposition, learn how to make genuine connections, and develop strategies to maintain meaningful professional relationships skills you can put to use immediately at SXSW EDU.

Keeping staff motivated while leading with enthusiasm isn’t easy but you don’t have to do it alone. Level Up Your Leadership: Energize, Empower, & Elevate equips educational leaders with strategies to reignite energy, build leadership capacity, and cultivate future leaders from diverse backgrounds. Explore career pathways, develop key leadership skills, and learn how to maintain a positive, impactful leadership style, even in the face of challenges.

Beyond Compromise: Mastering Negotiation to Advance Women brings together experts and allies, including Dr. Susana Córdova, Dr. LaTanya McDade, and Alberto M. Carvalho, to share strategies for strengthening negotiation skills, navigating complex decision-making, and advancing women in leadership. Gain the tools and confidence to advocate for yourself and drive meaningful change in education leadership.

Other Sessions to Attend:

• The Major Doesn’t Matter. What Does?
• From Service to Success: Empowering Veterans to Enter Tech
• Future-Proofing America: Building a Strategy for Talent
• From Daunting to Doable: How to Empower the Next Generation
• Alternative Trade School for People Facing Systemic Barriers

Build Your Network 

• Taking the first step to leveling up your career can be scary and exciting – and so can attending SXSW EDU for the first time. Join us at the First-Timers Meet Up or Solo Attendee Meet Up to network with our advisory board members and other attendees kicking off a great start to SXSW EDU!
• Learn from some of the amazing career climbers here at SXSW EDU at our one-on-one Mentor Sessions and Roundtable Discussions. Stay tuned, RSVP opens soon.
• Schedule a Braindate to connect with attendees in person. Suggest a topic and find exactly who you're looking for to advance your career. (Coming soon!)
• Want to be in the know about what's happening in education today? Attend the Expo to connect with 70+ innovative companies exhibiting and discover what's next and new in education.

Try These Tips

• Step Out of Your Comfort Zone – Learn something new and add a session that you wouldn’t normally explore to your schedule. You could even attend a pop-up dinner with other attendees and become lifelong friends.  
• Bring Business Cards – You never know who you’ll meet at SXSW EDU, so you’ll want to come prepared. Have business cards on you so you can easily share your contact information.
• Plan Your Schedule – Start saving sessions you’re interested in to your personal schedule. Learn more on how to save your favorites in the SXSW EDU Schedule and SXSW EDU GO mobile app presented by NAF.

See You at SXSW EDU 2025

Registration is open for SXSW EDU 2025! Book your hotel early for the best rates and hotel options March 3-6, 2025 in downtown Austin.

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Photo by Caleb Pickens