Dr. Wojcicki is the recipient of a number of teaching awards and sits on the Board of leading educational organizations, including PBS Learning Forum and Creative Commons. She serves an advisor for EdTech companies, non-profits, foundations, and the U.S. Department of Education. Wojcicki has taught at Palo Alto High School since 1984, where she currently teaches journalism and English. There she began the journalism program which has grown to become one of the largest in America. She has worked as a professional journalist for multiple publications and blogged regularly for The Huffington Post. She is now a contributor to Thrive Global.
She is the founder of the Journalistic Learning Initiative at the University of Oregon (2016) and holds honorary doctorates from Palo Alto University (2013), Rhode Island School of Design (2016) and the University of Central Brazilia (2018). Esther has been intimately involved with GoogleEdu and the Google Teacher Academy since its inception and remains a guiding force. She is the author of Moonshots in Education (2014) and How to Raise Successful People (2019).
Sample Topics
Leadership Development for a Rapidly Changing World
Most organizations tend to treat leadership as a skill – something singular, specific and focal based on principles of the industrial era. As such schools and corporations try to learn leadership in the same way students learn algebra in school – by sending leaders to courses where they learn the skills required to be “a leader.” This approach does not create successful leaders in a world that is moving faster than ever before. Dr. Esther Wojcicki will distinguish management from leadership and share strategies for future-proofing your leadership skills.
Service & Purpose: A Meaningful Life
To live an examined and meaningful life, you need to stop and reflect on what you are doing to make the world a better place. A meaningful life is one in which you are aware of your actions, your purpose, and your impact. You want to live with compassion. One clear way to do that is to work to make your community the best it can be. The Godmother of Silicon Valley shares her insights on how individuals and organizations can foster a culture of compassion and purpose in the 21st Century especially in this age of Coronavirus. In this series, you will be empowered to do something outside yourself to repair tears in your community. Purposeful organizations empower their members to be of service and create compassionate and successful communities.
Trust in the Age of Digital Transformation
As more corporations adopt remote working strategies there is a need to re-imagine the future of work in the Digital Age. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated organizations into the Age of Digital Transformation. We are experiencing the viral spread of fear and companies reinventing themselves with this new reality. In change management, organizational leaders and consultants put a lot of emphasis on things like clear vision, incentive systems, and metrics. This approach does not work to build a successful, resilient and future-proof enterprise. Dr. Wojcicki helps organizations build successful, resilient businesses by using her TRICK framework — scaling trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness. Dr. Wojcicki’s corporate training program goes deep into interpersonal interactions and how technology integration can help organizations be successful with remote work. In this series, participants are empowered with tools that help them focus on building long-term relationships, not short-term transactions.
Leadership: Leading with Trust & Kindness
How can leaders overcome chaos in uncertain times? One of the world’s most admired leaders, Dr. Wojcicki lays out the secrets to cultivating effective and ethical leaders in her new book, How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results. Her tried-and-tested formula boils down to TRICK, a catchy acronym that stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. In this series, Dr. Wojcicki covers the following topics:
- Navigating ambiguity is an essential skill for uncertainty in all its forms.
- Building deep trust and fostering an adaptive team culture starts with knowing the strengths each team member has and leveraging them appropriately.
- Embracing new ways of working should be accompanied by new tools and KPIs – simply adapting old ways to be “digital” keeps us from true transformation.
- Specific strengths and weaknesses are not relegated to certain roles and levels, so transparency and humility between team members at all levels is vital for success.
