By E.D. Ileana Albareda
For sustainability and education leaders, this spring offered a clear reminder: young people should not only be prepared for the future. They should help shape it.
That idea stayed with me after participating in two very different but deeply connected gatherings: the New Schools Summit and the B Lab Champions Retreat.
One focused on the future of education, AI, student agency, and systems redesign. The other brought together purpose-driven business leaders exploring climate, governance, wellbeing, accountability, and the future of business.
Across both experiences, one question kept coming up for me: What becomes possible when students are invited to help build what comes next?
At the New Schools Summit, student leader Azeemah Sadiq captured this beautifully:
“Build with us, not for us.”
That sentence became the thread connecting both convenings. For sustainability and education leaders, it offers an important invitation: to design systems, partnerships, and learning experiences with young people, not simply for them. Here are five lessons I am carrying forward.
1. Build with students, not just for them
Education systems have often been designed by adults, for students. Adults define success, create the structures, choose the tools, and make most of the decisions.
But students are not passive recipients of learning. They are thinkers, designers, advocates, and problem solvers.
This is especially important in sustainability education. Climate resilience, community wellbeing, and systems change are not distant concepts for young people. They are part of the world they are already experiencing.
If we want future-ready schools, students need meaningful opportunities to help design, lead, and improve the systems around them.
2. Innovation should stay deeply human
At the New Schools Summit, conversations about AI in education were everywhere. There was excitement about personalization, feedback, and new learning systems. But there was also an important tension: how do we innovate without losing the relationships that make schools matter?
Technology can support learning, but it cannot replace trust, care, belonging, or purpose.
A system can become more efficient and still fail to meet the deeper needs of students, educators, and communities.
For sustainability and education leaders, this is a critical reminder. The future of learning should not feel overly automated or disconnected. It should feel more connected to people, place, and purpose.
3. Let education lead the technology
One phrase from the summit captured this clearly:
“The Ed comes first, the tech comes second.”
As AI and digital tools become more present in schools, it can be tempting to start with the tool. But the better questions come first:
- What kind of learning are we trying to support?
- What capacities do students need to develop?
- How do we strengthen critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and civic responsibility?
Technology should serve a clear educational purpose. It should not define the purpose for us.
The same is true in sustainability work. Data tools, dashboards, and frameworks can help schools track progress, but the deeper work is still human: building trust, listening to communities, and moving from awareness to action.
4. Give students earlier access to purpose-driven leadership
At the B Lab Champions Retreat, I was surrounded by people working to build organizations that are better for people, communities, and the planet.
There were powerful conversations about climate action, governance, employee wellbeing, accountability, and business as a force for good. Young people are rarely in these rooms. During the intergenerational changemaking session GSNN facilitated, one question kept surfacing:
When was the last time you meaningfully engaged a young person in your work?
Not as a token voice. Not as an audience member. But as a collaborator.
Students deserve earlier access to conversations about leadership, ethics, sustainability, innovation, and community impact. They should not have to wait until adulthood to discover that business, education, and leadership can be rooted in purpose.
5. Build stronger bridges between schools and purpose-driven organizations
Schools and businesses often operate in separate lanes. But many of the challenges they are trying to solve are deeply connected.
Schools are thinking about student wellbeing, future readiness, civic learning, sustainability, and community resilience. Purpose-driven organizations are thinking about climate, equity, accountability, ethical leadership, and long-term impact.
There is so much shared ground.
Stronger partnerships can create more relevant, real-world learning experiences for students. They can help young people see how sustainability shows up in actual decisions, systems, careers, and communities.
Across both convenings, one message became clear: young people are not simply preparing for the future.
They are already asking better questions, imagining new possibilities, and pushing adults to build systems that are more just, human, and sustainable. For sustainability and education leaders, the invitation is not only to design better programs for students.
It is to create the conditions for students to help shape what comes next. If we want learning systems that are truly future-ready, we need to stop asking only what students need to know.
We also need to ask: What can we build with them?