Beyond Compliance: Building a School Worth Belonging To
Keynote
Friday, January 22, 2027 | 1:30-2:20PM
Join Joy Qiao for a keynote on building a school community where people feel they belong. Full session description to be announced.
Facilitator
Joy Qiao
Founder & Chair
Wellington College Education (China)
Joy Qiao founded Wellington College Education (China) in 2009. Under her leadership, the group has developed a growing network of bilingual schools and international schools recognised for their academic excellence, deep integration of Eastern and Western pedagogies and a strong commitment to human flourishing in the age of AI.
Joy has become a leading voice in rethinking education for the age of AI, advocating for a model that prioritises human flourishing—the lifelong capacity to understand and appreciate the world, navigate complexity with adaptive intelligence and ethical judgment and act with purpose to shape a better future for oneself and others. Her work explores how schools can remain deeply human in an increasingly technological world, ensuring that young people are not only future-ready, but also grounded and purposeful and able to build meaningful connections across differences.
Central to this vision is the belief that education should bridge cultures. Joy has been instrumental in shaping schools where Eastern and Western philosophies do not simply coexist but meaningfully inform and challenge one another. She believes the best education draws meaningfully on both Eastern and Western traditions—combining depth, discipline, and respect for learning with an emphasis on individuality, creativity, and critical thinking. In a world increasingly shaped by technology, she believes navigating across cultures and value systems is among the most essential skills that young people can develop.
Originally from Shanghai, Joy earned her BA in Computer Science at the University of Oxford, which led to a decade-long IT career in the United Kingdom, Germany and China. Joy and her British husband have two sons who attended Wellington College International Shanghai.
