Mo Gawdat's Opening Mainstage Keynote and Q&A with Richard Culatta

Richard Culatta is an internationally recognized innovator and learning designer. As the CEO of ASCD and ISTE, Culatta is focused on supporting education change-makers to create equitable and engaging learning experiences for students around the world. Prior to joining ASCD/ISTE, Culatta served as the chief innovation officer for the state of Rhode Island. In this role, he led an initiative to make Rhode Island the first state to offer computer science in every K-12 school, and created a state vision for personalized learning. Culatta was appointed by President Obama as the executive director of the Office of Educational Technology for the U.S. Department of Education. In that capacity, he led efforts to expand connectivity to schools across the country, promote personalized learning and develop the National Education Technology Plan. He also pioneered new opportunities for engagement between the department, education leaders and tech developers, including bringing top game designers from around the world to the White House to help rethink the design of assessments. Culatta also served as an education policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, and a resident designer for the global design firm IDEO. Culatta’s book, Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World, uncovers the challenges with our current approaches to preparing young people to be effective humans in virtual spaces, and presents a path to a healthier and more civil future digital world. Culatta began his career in the classroom as a high school teacher and has coached educators and national leaders around the world on making learning more equitable. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish teaching and a master's in educational psychology and technology from Brigham Young University.

Mo Gawdat is a bestselling author, chief AI officer for Flight Story, founder of One Billion Happy, former chief business officer for Google [X] and host of the podcast “Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat.” At global marketing company Flight Story, Gawdat guides the agency and its clients on how to both embrace and regulate AI in the marketing landscape. After a 30-year career in tech and serving as chief business officer at Google [X], Google's “moonshot factory” of innovation, Gawdat has made happiness his primary topic of research, diving deeply into literature and conversing on the topic with some of the wisest people in the world.

In 2014, motivated by the tragic loss of his son, Ali, Gawdat began pouring his findings into his international bestselling book, Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy. His mission to help one billion people become happier, #OneBillionHappy, is his moonshot attempt to honor Ali by spreading the message that happiness can be learned and shared to one billion people. In 2020, Gawdat launched his chart-topping podcast “Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat,” a weekly series of extraordinary interviews that explores the profound questions and obstacles we all face in the pursuit of purpose and happiness in our lives.

In 2021, Gawdat published Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World, a road map detailing how humanity can ensure a symbiotic coexistence with AI when it inevitably becomes a billion times smarter than we are. His latest book is That Little Voice in Your Head: Adjust the Code That Runs Your Brain, a comprehensive manual for optimally using the human brain optimally to thrive and avoid suffering.