Equity Champion: Reach Your Goals at SXSW EDU 2025

SXSW EDU is more than a conference and festival! Every year, educators, innovators, and changemakers gather in Austin to exchange ideas, spark conversations, and inspire action back in their own communities.

This March, you can walk away as an Equity Champion by attending sessions and workshops focused on equity, and take advantage of the unique opportunities SXSW EDU offers to deepen your understanding, amplify marginalized voices, and take steps toward a more inclusive future. 

Take Action

Attend the Keynote Session Screening Bias: Breaking Down Barriers for Women in STEM on TV with Emily Calandrelli about the inefficiencies that exist in science television for adults and for children. With STEM industries in a recruitment crisis, representation is essential for solving future challenges and maintaining a competitive edge globally.

Join Elisa Villanueva Beard and Dan Porterfield in the Featured Session Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Conversation on Leadership as they reflect on their lessons, challenges, and impact after 27 years of leadership in the education ecosystem. Together, they will explore the challenges and opportunities facing the K-12 education system. This conversation will inspire and challenge educators and advocates to think about what is possible in the future of education.

Attend the Panel Alternative Trade School for People Facing Systemic Barriers to learn how alternative tuition-free trade schools can provide a career pathway when traditional four-year college is not a viable option. Alternative trade schools provide access to education and wraparound services, closing complex gaps and benefitting people facing systemic barriers. Through comprehensive professional training and holistic support, alternative schools can lead young adults down a transformative pathway to economic prosperity.

Find what conditions are essential to allow us to experience a deep sense of belonging in the Solo Session Belonging: A Neurological Imperative for Ed Equity. Belonging is not only “nice to have”, but more importantly, a neurobiological necessity for learning and participation. Students who feel they belong fully engage in their education. Fostering belonging is about transforming the system to serve all students. Address persistent gaps in educational outcomes by prioritizing belonging as an essential condition.

Challenge the STEM community to rethink its inclusion strategies in the Solo Session Engineering a New Perspective: Indigenous Wisdom in STEM. STEM is largely missing an opportunity to learn from Native American knowledge in ways that will make it more innovative and productive. Joseph Bull will advocate for a system that values and integrates the unique perspectives and practices of Indigenous peoples. This call to action is about infusing STEM with the assets that are desperately needed to improve the discipline and successfully tackle the challenges facing society today. 

Learn how to create environments where cultural divides are safely bridged, global students are made welcome, and inclusive, respectful discussions are cultivated in the Panel Free Speech in a Polarized World: Giving Everyone a Voice. In today’s highly polarized world, it feels challenging to maintain an open dialogue for opposing viewpoints and still make progress. Nayeli Vivanco, Vice President of UC Berkeley’s International House, will provide her strategies and tactics for navigating these conversations.

Explore Other Sessions

• Artivism: The Power of Art to Inspire & Change the World 
• Beyond Compromise: Mastering Negotiation to Advance Women 
• Centering Equity amid Declining Enrollment 
• Digital Counterspaces for Black Women & Girls Post-DEI 
• Elevating the Teaching Profession with Latinx Educators 
• Equity-Centered AI in Holistic Student Support Functions 
• Economic Mobility & Belonging for Undocumented Students 
• Why is the Industrial Model of School So Hard to Change? 

Spark Conversations

Join us for an engaging Meet Up, Local Youth Innovation Coalition Building Meet Up, to explore how to shift from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance. In this Meet Up, participants will discuss strategies for fostering collaboration among local STEAM and entrepreneurial education organizations to increase knowledge, power, and resource sharing.

Study the deeply seeded issues of equitable access to and success in STEM pathways in the Meet Up Math Pathways: Achieving System Change in Varied Context. Meet with others who are looking to change mathematics experiences for all students. Come ready to discuss successes and challenges!

Join us for an in-depth discussion on the importance of making experiential international education programs fully immersive and more equitably accessible to college students in the Meet Up The Passport to Equity. Leave this conversation with an understanding of the domains of impact that high-quality immersive educational experiences can have for students, and the systems-level shifts that need to be made to make these experiences more immersive and more equitable.

In the Meet Up Unlocking Access: Education & Integration Through Culture, we’ll explore pathways to economic and social integration from an intersectional lens and highlight the significance of language learning and cultural exchange in creating more diverse, equitable societies. The primary focus will be access and approaches to opening new doors for learners and educators. Curriculums don't have to be resource-intensive, can withstand external shocks and create a new generation of leaders.

Participate in Workshops

Participate in the Workshop Activating the Power of Communities for Radical Change to experience the power and impact of high-quality relationships and inter-community collaboration on the advancement of educational equity. This workshop will cultivate a brave, inviting, and authentic space to surface and discuss educational equity challenges and barriers.

Participate in the Workshop Creating Anti-Racist & Liberated Early Learning Environments to be introduced to RISE’s unique approach to liberating the early childhood space. Participants will experience key parts of our signature early childhood anti-racist educator training, by immersion. We will introduce the historical roots of racism in our country and how it operates in our social systems, especially in early childhood education. Together, we’ll engage in rich discussion and key activities that steep attendees in the RISE Center's anti-racist pedagogy and co-create ways we can work now to liberate early childhood education for young children everywhere.

Tackle how to translate awareness into concrete support in the Workshop Developing a Whole-School Approach to LGBTQ+ Inclusion. Learn through real-world roadblocks faced by school leaders in implementing inclusive practices. Through interactive activities and collaborative discussions, we'll unpack commonly encountered barriers, including bridging the gap between policy and implementation, optimizing limited resources for maximum impact, and navigating community concerns. You'll leave equipped to enact real, lasting change, fostering schools where everyone can thrive.

Tips & Tricks

• Plan your schedule
• Sign up for mentor sessions ahead of time
• Speak up in Roundtable discussions

Don’t Miss Out On SXSW EDU 2025

Register and book your hotel today to break new ground in education through compelling sessions, in-depth workshops, mentorship, film screenings, trailblazing competitions, a dynamic expo, networking opportunities, and so much more at SXSW EDU from March 3-6, 2025.

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Photo by Patrick Quiring.