GU-Q’s Contribution to Values-Centered Dialogue at WISE Humanity.IO
The energy surrounding this year’s WISE Humanity.IO Summit began days before the opening session, as Georgetown University in Qatar’s atrium filled with students visiting WISE sign-up booths, and preparing to engage in one of the most anticipated global conversations on the future of learning. That momentum carried straight into the summit, where GU-Q emerged as an important voice.
Bringing Human Insight to Global Education Reform
GU-Q’s contributions opened with the launch of Taʿleem: The Arabic and English Higher Education Periodic Review, a forum examining empathy, equity, and human dignity in higher education systems shaped by AI. On a panel with Francisco Marmolejo, President of Higher Education at Qatar Foundation, GU-Q’s Dr. Mohamoud Adam, Director for Student Academic Success offered key insights on value-based learning from his article co-authored with Anne Nebel, Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, and James Olsen, Associate Director for Pedagogy and Innovation. The article offers a framework based on Georgetown’s Jesuit values, including cura personalis or care for the whole person and the Islamic concept of adhab, or good manners. In the context of advancing technology, Dr. Adam said “higher education’s response must be adaptive, not technical. A value-based framework offers a path that neither retreats from technology nor abandons our fundamental mission.”
Dr. Adam on multiversity panel for launch of Ta’leem
Throughout the summit, GU-Q alumni contributed to sessions on community-driven education, culturally fluent AI, and technology’s role in bridging learning divides, emphasizing that innovation must serve humanity, not supersede it.
A Faculty-Led Conversation at the Summit’s Core
The centerpiece of GU-Q’s impact was the faculty panel “Centering the Human Experience: Educating for Empathy, Ethics, and Justice in International Affairs,” moderated by Faculty Chair Dr. Jeremy Koons, and featuring GU-Q Practitioner-in-Residence and international law expert Diana Buttu, alongside professors Dr. Gabor Scheiring and Dr. Anjana Jacob.
The panel explored how to teach in a way that cultivates “A world where we can all be winners, a world in which we recognize the humanity in one another,” as Buttu put it. Dr. Scheiring emphasized cultivating a culture that encourages students to bring their lived experiences to the classroom: “If you want to create a world where there is more justice, less violence, and more understanding, we need to create more spaces for the human being with their own experiences.”
Dr. Koons noted that teaching history can make students “aware of the way in which memory is used to justify current injustices,” cautioning that “misinformation requires a societal response, not just an individual one.” In a summit focused on AI and global disruption, the panel offered a grounding reminder that human beings remain the most essential agents of justice.
Alumni Heading Education Innovation
This message of education at the heart of societal approaches to the challenges of the day was carried forward by GU-Q alumni leading education initiatives around the world. Former WISE Education Award winner Haroon Yasin (GU-Q’15), CEO of Taleemabad, joined Dr. Sohaira Siddiqui, Executive Director of Al Mujadilah Center, on a panel about “Technology, Community and Trust: Bridging the Education Divide.”
Dr. Siddiqui and Yasin on “Technology, Community and Trust” Panel
Drawing from his work educating over 10 million Pakistani children, Yasin said “We think of trust as binary, but it is a spectrum, it evolves over time.” He discussed meeting communities where they are and advised: “We must rise to meet the moment in the format that the user prefers it.”
Hamza Al Sioufy (GU-Q’24) echoed this approach in his workshop “Deep Tech in Everyday Learning.” As Co-founder and CEO of CamelCode Academy, he drew on his experience developing Arabic-first technology education to offer advice on accelerating learning through hands-on education in Qatar.
Sheikha Al Jawhara Al Thani (GU-Q’13), Manager of Safeguarding and Wellbeing at Qatar Foundation Pre-University Education (PUE), offered a masterclass on cultural climate surveys called “Measuring What Matters.” She called for collecting stories about the human experience at schools to be “prepared to go up against the big numbers and big spreadsheets with real information about the human life,” to help make education ecosystems welcoming for all.
Al Jawhara’s PUE colleague Aisha Al Sultan (GU-Q’13), Performing Arts Specialist and Founder of Karaoke Belaraby, an initiative promoting Arabic language and music, shared her insights on using creativity as a bridge to identity during a panel on “Language, Storytelling, and the Power of Culturally Rooted Education.”
Reem Al-Sulaiti (GU-Q’14), Manager of Research and Policy at WISE, organized and hosted a ministerial roundtable during the event featuring 14 ministers from four continents discussing inclusive and future-ready education strategies. While showing the ministers and HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser around the WISE exhibits, she also hosted a WISE on Air Podcast on “Who Pays for Education’s Future” featuring Sheikha Haya Al Thani (GU-Q’13), Director of Strategic Partnerships, Qatar Fund for Development, and a panel asking the question “Can AI Be Bilingual in Both Code and Culture?”
Reem on air with Sheikha Haya, and walking HH around the WISE exhibit.
Other alumnae working behind the scenes at WISE to make it a success included Dana Al Anzy (GU-Q’17), Manager of Strategic Partnerships at Education Above All, Kholoud Al Shiba (GU-Q’18), Head of Advocacy and Community Development at WISE, and Dayana Amandossova (GU-Q’24), Partnerships Associate, WISE.
Sheba George (GU-Q’17), Senior Consultant at SEEK Development, the Berlin-based sustainable development consultancy, moderated “Reimagining Global Education Financing in a Shifting World,” examining donor priorities and funding gaps with panelists from Qatar Fund for Development and Education Above All. Her leadership helped reframe financing as a moral commitment: “When we think about how we finance education, we are really thinking about how we are financing our progress as a human society,” she said.
Sheba moderating panel on global education financing
Student Voices Shape the Future
Students also contributed to understanding how to keep humanity at the center of education. In the WISE Youth Studio, students offered perspectives shaped by their coursework and community engagement at GU-Q.
Moza Al-Hajri (GU-Q’26), Reigna Dukhan (GU-Q’26), Nikole Irakoze (GU-Q’27), and Hayaa Al-Mannai (GU-Q’ 27) discussed how teaching IELTS, traveling, and participating in local internships helped develop soft skills such as communication, empathy, and a service mindset.
The week prior, GU-Q hosted a student-focused panel discussion on “GU-Q Alumni Shaping the Future of Education,” featuring Chaïmaa Benkermi (GU-Q’21), Advocacy and Community Development Associate at WISE, and Reem Al-Sulaiti, along with WISE Speakers Hana Elshehaby (GU-Q’22), Education Above All Youth Advocate, and Al Jawhara Al-Thani (GU-Q’13). This early activation helped students see how values-centered leadership translates into real-world impact—setting the tone for GU-Q’s presence at WISE.
Across WISE Humanity.IO panels, youth dialogues, and journal launches, moral clarity was the take-home message from GU-Q speakers. Their clarion call from nearly 250 years of Jesuit education was simple: center human dignity, and academic excellence becomes inseparable from moral purpose.