Jean Stiles has been an educator for 36 years with expertise as a teacher, consultant, principal, and university instructor. She taught and led schools as a principal at all grade levels (1-12) for 25 years.

Jean recently retired from Edmonton Public Schools in Alberta, Canada and is currently an instructor for graduate courses in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. Jean has an extensive background as a consultant working with both adult and student learners. Her work focuses on developing authentic student voice and agency, and developing school leaders’ ability to listen and respond to rights holders’ needs.

Jean’s extensive work as a school leader, university scholar, university instructor, and consultant is focussed on action oriented processes and protocols to assist schools and school systems with the necessary tools to effect progressive change. Over the past 15 years, Jean has led and co-created initiatives locally, nationally, and internationally that focus on change leadership to build the adaptive capacity necessary to support excellence through equity in education. She is well versed in the areas of Social Innovation and Design Thinking.

Jean defended her Dissertation to receive her PhD in Secondary Education at the University of Alberta in 2017. In her thesis “Disrupting School Leadership: A Leadership of Disruption”, Jean imagined and experimented with education reform possibilities to consider how public education is organized and how it might be changed from the inside-out to produce more equitable possibilities in the field of education.

In 2007, Jean received The Learning Partnership’s award of Outstanding Principal.