Headliners announced for the 2025 Families Learning Conference
Planning is in full swing for the 2025 Families Learning Conference, happening November 2-5, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. This year, NCFL is thrilled to have three of the nation’s leading family learning experts with us on the mainstage!
The conference opens with Dr. Rebecca Winthrop, senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at The Brookings Institution and professor at Georgetown University. Dr. Winthrop works to promote quality and relevant education, including exploring how education innovations and family and community engagement can be harnessed to leapfrog progress, particularly for the most marginalized children and youth. Dr. Winthrop has authored numerous articles, reports, books, and book chapters, including her latest book, The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.
Day 2 begins with Harvard Professor of Practice and family engagement expert Dr. Karen Mapp, who will share what we know, given the extensive research on family engagement, about the powerful impact of effective family–school partnerships on students, parents, teachers, and schools. Dr. Mapp will discuss what we have learned from over 50 years of research about the critical role of home-school partnerships to support student success and school improvement. She will also highlight findings from her newly released book, Everyone Wins!: The Evidence for Family-School Partnerships and Implications for Practice.
To close out the conference, we’ll hear from Iheoma U. Iruka, Ph.D., award-winning tenured professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Founding Director of the Equity Research Action Coalition at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an applied developmental psychologist, Dr. Iruka is focused on ensuring that minoritized children and children from low-income households thrive during the prenatal through early childhood period by attending to their sociocultural assets and contexts. Her specialty is in early childhood development, adult-child interactions and relationships, and health, wealth, and education policies and programs that disrupt inequities and advance equity. Dr. Iruka has authored over 100 books and papers including her latest book, We Are the Change We Seek: Advancing Racial Justice in Early Care and Education.
We’re excited to welcome these keynote speakers and over 100 additional experts in family learning to present this fall. Learn from a dynamic group of speakers all in one place—secure your spot at the 2025 Families Learning Conference today!