Areas of expertise

• Applying strategic foresight to education technology
• Designing experiential futures
• Gamifying futures thinking

In her role as director of strategic foresight projects, Maria Crabtree (formerly Romero) makes substantive contributions to KnowledgeWorks’ international thought leadership around the future of learning and conducts key strategic foresight activities. She manages projects, directs and carries out strategic foresight research and collaborates with colleagues to author publications and other assets exploring the future of learning and its implications for education stakeholders. Maria’s personal background as a first-generation immigrant Latina intersects with her futurist professional experience to focus on inclusion and equitable foresight research practices. She is also available to accommodate Spanish-speaking participants, if necessary.

My goal is to help others create better futures for themselves.

Before joining KnowledgeWorks, Maria’s recent experiences as lead researcher and co-facilitator include NASA’s Langley Research Center future of work in 2050+, Kimberly Clark’s future of the circular economy and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research’s future of cancer research. Maria is a coauthor and coeditor of the books Beyond Genuine Stupidity and The Future Reinvented, and she is a contributor to the upcoming Unleashing Human Potential – The Future of AI in Business. She is a recipient of the 2020 Emerald Literati Award.

Maria holds a B.S. in Sociology from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, advanced studies in Communications from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and an M.S. in Foresight from the University of Houston. She is an International Baccalaureate alum and a member of the Association of Professional Futurists and the Project Management Institute. She is also a member of the CoSN advisory board, helping to shape CoSN’s Driving K-12 Innovation initiative, selecting the most important Hurdles (challenges), Accelerators (mega-trends), and Tech Enablers (tools) Driving K-12 Innovation for the year ahead.

Featured content

Leveraging her interests in technology and board games, Maria applies strategic foresight for education in interesting and engaging ways. Her work in experiential and playful learning helps education changemakers and constituents make future-ready decisions and strategies and helps engage young people in decision-making for their own futures.

Maria’s expertise has led her to be keynote speaker at Ed-Fi Summit 2023, Toronto Metropolitan University’s Learning and Teaching Conference 2023 and eCampus Ontario’s Technology and Education Seminar and Showcase (TESS) 2022. Maria has presented and facilitated conversations and workshops to help groups grapple with forces of change and explore future possibilities in their contexts for SxSW EDU, Learning Planet Festival, University of Houston Strategic Foresight, Games 4 Change, Connected Learning and more.

• Envisioning Educator Roles for Transformation: Maria led a national workshop to generate ideas for what became Envisioning Educator Roles for Transformation. In it, we look ahead 10 years to imagine future educator roles that promise to help education systems support students in pursuing learning experiences that enable them to uncover their passions and thrive in an evolving world.
• IMPACT: Learning Edition: Maria led the creation of our board game that uses futures thinking to help you imagine and think critically about changes that could impact the future of learning.
• How Engaging with the Future Impacts Strategic Planning Today: When an immersive futures experience Maria co-designed for SxSW EDU, an attendee from Avonworth School District in Pennsylvania asked KnowledgeWorks to recreate for their district to help participants explore possible futures of learning for their learning community – and what is possible today.
• Futures Triangle: A Tool for Examining Interactions of Drivers of Change: Maria explains a simple but effective tool for thinking about futures, the Futures Triangle. It helps us grapple with the convergence of drivers of change anchoring the past, developing the present and shaping the future.
• Futures for Liberating Learners and Technology: As keynote speaker at eCampus Ontario’s Technology and Education Seminar and Showcase (TESS) 2022 Conference, Maria asked attendees to take key considerations to help ensure that education technologies are designed and deployed to liberate learners, using insights from KnowledgeWorks’ sixth anchor forecast. Watch the video below.