Special Edition: Vote for Colorado Colleagues @ SXSW EDU

Good afternoon!

💡 We are sending a special edition of Boundless Potential this week to encourage readers to vote for our Colorado colleagues who have submitted session ideas for the 2026 SXSW EDU Festival. If you have attended SXSW EDU before, you know it is a high-energy event featuring some of the nation’s most cutting-edge thinkers, doers and leaders. But – one way to increase session acceptance is to ‘up vote’ those topics that are of great interest to you.

It’s easy to vote: create an account on the SXSW EDU Panel Picker Site and then “❤️” each of the sessions below!

Let’s collectively support our Colorado leaders, innovators and educators by voting for their sessions:

• Scaling Skills-First Hiring: Colorado’s National Blueprint featuring Paige Bongiorno, Opportunity@Work, Tony Gherardini, Colorado Department of Personnel & Administration, and Christine Heitz, Colorado Thrives

• Using Fabrications Machines to Make Fine Art featuring Stephanie Woods, Colorado Mountain College

• Rethink Your Pipeline: Grow Teachers with Apprenticeship featuring MK Sagaria-Barritt, CareerWise and Liz Qualman, Colorado Mountain College

• Feedback We Get From Funders & What We Do With It featuring Tania Chairez, Convivir Colorado, Ellie Adelman, The Village Institute, and Kat Ling, Moonshot

• Let’s Teach AI: Building Fluency from Classroom to Career featuring Amy Spicer, Colorado Education Initiative and Peder Hansen, Summit School District

• The AI-Ready District: Leadership, Literacy & Systems Change featuring Karen Quanbeck, Colorado Education Initiative, Adam Hartman, Cañon City School District, Christian Pinedo, aiEDU and Roby Bode, Estes Park School District

• From Divide to Design: Charting a Course for AI in K-12 featuring Michael Ham, FullScale, Jessica Paulsen, LEAP Innovations, Patricia Quinones, Colorado Education Initiative, and Jason Neiffer, Montana Digital Academy

• The Blindspot: Why Neurodiversity Needs More Than Awareness featuring Joy Buckner, Buckner Education, Dane Ray, D&A Consulting Services LLC, Christa Hopp, Connected Pathways, and Janet Buckner, Colorado State Senate

• Preparing Students for Careers That Don’t Exist (Yet!) featuring Eve Lieberman, Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, Gwen Leifer, Lockheed Martin, Meera Raja, P33 Chicago, and Laura Marmolejo, Austin Community College

• Woodshop 2.0: Empathy-Driven Design for Inclusive Learning featuring Brian Jernigan, Littleton High School and Start From The Heart Consulting and Mike Wood, American Printing House

• Age + Impact: Why Women [and Allies] 40+ Are the Future featuring Barbara Brooks, SecondActWomen

• Sealing Our Future: Youth Climate Literacy in Action featuring Sarah Sterling, New Jersey Department of Education – Division of Teaching and Learning, Mary Seawell, Lyra Colorado, Jonathan Klein, Undaunted K12, and Ryan Neumann, Student

🗳️ Vote by the end of the day on August 24th – and let’s have a strong Colorado showing in Austin!

💬 You may have noticed a new look and feel to our newsletter. While we have a new look, the focus on Colorado stories, events and issues remains the same. We would love to know more about our readers as we work to deliver content aligned with your interests. Consider taking this short readers’ survey and tell us more about your connection to the Centennial State.

We will be back in your inbox next week!

Alison