Higher Ed & Workforce

Beth is a Research Associate with Compass Collaborative.

A leadership and culture strategist and organizational change consultant, her HGSE studies focus on adult development, group dynamics, organizational change, and learning as a practice of collective healing. Holds Hogan Assessment and Interaction Management certifications; studied social work at UT Austin.

Tessa Forshaw is the Faculty Chair of Workplace and Workforce Learning and Co-Director of Compass Collaborative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

As a cognitive scientist, Forshaw explores how humans develop the cognitive and creative skills needed to learn, work, and create alongside AI as well as how emerging technologies shape learning and development. Before joining HGSE, Tessa was a Lecturer at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school) and spent more than a decade working across Accenture, the IDEO CoLab, and People Rocket, driving innovation in organizational learning and future workforce design. She is the author of Innovation-ish (Wiley, 2025) and a recipient of a Fast Company Design Award and two Core77 Design Awards. She holds an M.A. from Stanford University, a B.A. (Honors) from the Australian National University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Paul is Visiting Professor of Education at HGSE and special advisor to the dean, completing a book on AI and education (Wiley, 2026).

He was president of Southern New Hampshire University until June 2024, and is a former senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education on competency-based education and new accreditation pathways.