Salzburg Global program energized education expert Patricia Vazquez to provide multiple multinational educational solutions during the pandemic
With her daughters splashing loudly in a swimming pool behind her on a balmy Mexican summer day, Patricia Vazquez wistfully recounted on a call with Salzburg Global Seminar how her time at Schloss Leopoldskron in December 2019 – as the Austrian winter set in – was “just magic.”
“It’s delicate, it’s elegant, it’s not about just formal settings and the conversations – which are of very high quality – but it’s also something that happens in the informal settings,” she said. “Suddenly, we connect, and we see each other, and our connection is not about resources; it’s about thoughts and feelings.”
Vazquez’s time in Salzburg was the global education consultant’s last great adventure before the pandemic hit, but despite the many disruptions posed by COVID-19, she has kept very busy. The connections Vazquez made when attending the program, Education and Workforce Opportunities for Refugees and Migrants, part of the multi-year series, Education for Tomorrow’s World, have been some of the key collaborators she has worked with on various projects in the months since.
She partnered with Jennifer Adams, editor-in-chief of Knowledgehook, an educational technology company, to translate teaching platforms into Spanish and expand them into Mexico and Latin America. She also included Danielle de la Fuente and Daniela Labra in training programs she headed for preschool teachers in Mexico, which benefitted 5,000 teachers during the pandemic.
Vazquez counts Adams and global new measures director for New Pedagogies for Deep Learning Joanne McEachen – “Jojo” – as very good friends after they got along famously in Salzburg and bonded over a shared passion for women’s empowerment. “I love them; they are amazing women,” said Vazquez, who is currently in talks with McEachen to look at “ways to replicate Jojo’s methodology in Mexico.”
With global education strategist Giancarlo Brotto, Vazquez founded the Global Online Learning Alliance (GOLA), a multinational initiative that led to four global and regional conferences. “I think if I had to say what the most impactful results are post-Salzburg, it would be building the Global Alliance,” she said.
Both “connectors,” Vazquez and Brotto used their networking skills to build the Alliance, inviting 89 ministries of education from all over the world to talk to each other during the pandemic. They managed to lead four global and regional conferences, compiling reports and connecting stakeholders across education systems. “We brought local ministers in Mexico to do the same thing and talk to each other, and then we tried to emulate the example to some Latin American countries,” she said. “It was amazing; we co-created everything.”
The two co-authored a paper on GOLA for Revista, the Harvard Review of Latin America, called "Building New Types of Conversations in Education During COVID-19." Having done what they could, for now, they have paused work on the project. “We responded to a need where ministers and countries needed to speak to each other, and we opened that window, and we are very good friends, now we are looking to the future.”
Adams, McEachen, Brotto, and their fellow program delegate, Louka Parry, also invited Vazquez to join the Karanga Global Alliance’s global steering committee. Born out of an earlier program in Salzburg Global’s Education for Tomorrow’s World series, the Alliance is a global network on social and emotional learning.
Currently pursuing her second master’s – a degree in international education policy at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education – Vazquez also holds qualifications in politics, international relations, global governance, and a master’s in comparative public policies from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences. She was born and raised in Mexico City by parents who always gave of themselves to others, lessons ingrained in her which she is now trying to instill in her young children. “I’m always confronted with social problems and poverty in Mexico, but I see a lot of energy,” she said. “Origins should never be destiny – you have all the time and possibility to improve yourself.”
Recommended to Salzburg Global by former director of education of the Mexican Competitive Institution, Alexandra Zapata, Vazquez was able to speak at the program on the importance of learning through play – a topic she was passionate about and already recognized for, as a Play Ambassador for the LEGO Foundation. “I loved how my entry to Salzburg was through speaking out on something I have been practicing for a while,” she said.
Her time in Salzburg energized her after a tough 2019. “Even though my base is in Mexico and Latin America, I am always looking for new practices and new examples and learning from others,” she said. “And that’s why I love to be part of global conversations because I always learn a lot about others. Salzburg is an inspiring spot to build community.”
Vazquez is confident that had the group known that the pandemic would come, they would have “then and there” designed models to think differently about teaching and learning. “It’s about being part of the team of this human chain in which if we ensure that if we have the best human beings, we have the best world,” she said. “What can we offer with all our expertise?”
