2025 IBSC Annual Conference
Belmont Hill School
Belmont, Massachusetts, United States
June 22-25
Speakers
As educators and leaders, we realize our greatest potential through moments of reflection, growth, and fellowship—grounded and inspired by the idea that we are Better Together. Hear from these galvanizing speakers to kickstart our conversations.
Noubar Afeyan
Noubar Afeyan is founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, a company that creates bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. An entrepreneur and biochemical engineer, Afeyan holds more than 100 patents and has cofounded more than 70 life science and technology startups during his 37-year career. He is cofounder and chairman of the board of Moderna, the pioneering messenger RNA company.
Afeyan entered biotechnology during its emergence as an academic field and industry, completing his doctoral work in biochemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1987 after completing his undergraduate studies at McGill University. He served as a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management from 2000 to 2016 and lecturer at Harvard Business School until 2020. Afeyan currently serves as a member of the MIT Corporation, the institute’s board of trustees. He teaches and speaks around the world on topics ranging from entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development to biological engineering, new medicines, and renewable energy. Afeyan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022.
He has received multiple awards for his passionate advocacy for the contributions of immigrants to economic and scientific progress, including the Great Immigrant honor from the Carnegie Corporation in 2016. Afeyan cofounded the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative and Prize and several other philanthropic projects.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh
While a student at Middlebury College in 2008, Shabana Basij-Rasikh cofounded the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) to provide access to quality education for girls across her homeland. SOLA remained a priority throughout her college years and became her lifelong commitment upon graduating Middlebury magna cum laude with a degree in international studies and women and gender studies in 2011. Basij-Rasikh has since earned a master’s in public policy from Oxford University and received honorary doctorates from SOAS University of London, Cedar Crest College, University of Scranton, and Roger Williams University.
At Middlebury, Basij-Rasikh garnered a Davis Peace Prize, which she used to build wells outside of Kabul, and the Vermont Campus Compact 2011 Madeline Kunin Public Service Award for leadership and service to others. Glamour magazine named her to its Top 10 College Women of 2010.
In 2014, Basij-Rasikh won spots on CNN International's Leading Women and National Geographic's Emerging Explorers lists. She serves as global ambassador for Girl Rising, a call to action seeking investment in girls' education worldwide.
In 2018, Basij-Rasikh garnered the Malalai Medal—one of Afghanistan's highest national honors—for her work promoting girls' access to education. In 2019, Forbes named her to its 30 Under 30 Asia list in the social entrepreneurship sector. In 2021, she became a contributor to the Global Opinions section of The Washington Post. In 2023, she received the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year Award.
In August 2021, days after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Basij-Rasikh led the evacuation of the SOLA community from Afghanistan to Rwanda, where SOLA now exists as the only boarding school for Afghan girls. Today in Afghanistan the Taliban profoundly restricts women’s rights and forbids girls from completing their education. Basij-Rasikh remains committed to the girls of Afghanistan, whether still in their homeland or scattered in the worldwide diaspora. She feels driven to make SOLA a place of hope and promise—a place where Afghan girls will always be free to learn.
Niobe Way
New York University Professor of Developmental Psychology Niobe Way founded the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity. She serves as creative advisor of agapi and principal investigator on the Listening Project, an ongoing, empirically grounded, school-based curriculum that fosters curiosity and connection among students and teachers in schools in New York City. Previously Way served as president of the Society for Research on Adolescence. She received her B.A. from University of California, Berkeley, and her doctorate from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Way was a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow at Yale University in the psychology department.
Her work focuses on social and emotional development and how cultural ideologies shape families and child development in the U.S. and China. Way is a principal investigator of a 20-year longitudinal study of 1,200 families that examines how the changing economic, political, and social contexts in China shape families and children in Nanjing, China. Researching social and emotional development of adolescents for almost 40 years, she has written over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and seven books.
Her latest book, Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture, explores the toxic culture that undervalues human connection and contributes to boys' mental health struggles. Based on her longitudinal and mixed-method research over 35 years, Rebels with a Cause is a true call to action to change the culture so we stop the vicious cycle of violence and blame.
Her latest coedited book is The Crisis of Connection: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solution. She also coedited with Judy Chu, Adolescents Boys: Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood. Her last single-authored book, Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, inspired the movie Close, which won the Grand Prix Award at Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar nomination for best foreign film.
She is regularly featured in mainstream media speaking on the topics of boys, friendships, loneliness, teenagers, gender stereotypes, masculinity, and the roots of violence.
Gus Worland
Family man. Friend. Sports fan. Founder. Australian radio host and TV personality Gus Worland is the driving force behind Gotcha4Life, Australia’s leading mental fitness charity. Worland set up the nonprofit foundation in 2017 to help people develop the emotional muscle, resilience, and social connections needed to build mental fitness and prevent suicide.
The foundation teams with expert partners to deliver presentations, workshops, and sustainable training programs that engage, educate, and empower schools, sporting clubs, workplaces, and community groups. It focuses on prevention through connection because we are stronger together. As champions of meaningful mateship, Worland and his team want everyone to have a Gotcha4Life Mate—a go-to person to rely on and talk to about anything when times are tough, so no one has to worry alone.
A compassionate bloke, Worland wears his heart on his sleeve. That heart was shattered the day news arrived that his friend, mentor, and father figure Angus had taken his own life. Angus seemed to have it all—a beautiful family, home, great job, the respect and friendship of many. But he had something else too: inner worries that were eating away at him. Angus never told anyone about it. The stigma around mental health stops too many people from reaching out and asking for help when life throws challenges our way.
Worland felt compelled to act. In 2016, he hosted the three-part documentary series Man Up, lifting the lid on the relationship among masculinity, social isolation, mental health, and suicide. The attention it received created awareness, but Worland knew more was needed. “It is time for action—time to draw a line in the sand to engage, educate, and empower people about mental fitness.”
Gotcha4Life was founded.