Joseph South

Role: Chief Innovation Officer Organization: ISTE+ASCD Email: jsouth@iste.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/southjoseph/ Profile: https://iste-ascd.org/staff/joseph-south Relationship Depth: External Partner

Professional Background

• Chief Innovation Officer at ISTE+ASCD (after ISTE/ASCD merger)
• Previously Chief Learning Officer at ISTE for nearly 6 years
• Former Director, Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education (Obama Administration — presidential appointee, adviser to the Secretary of Education)
• Design Resident at IDEO
• Runs consulting firm Learning Accelerant
• PhD (institution TBD)
• Led learning product development teams at startups, museums, nonprofits, corporations, and higher ed

Current Focus

• Leads GenerationAI — goal of 200K+ educators becoming leaders in safe, ethical, transformational use of AI for learning
• Steering committee: TeachAI, EDSAFE AI Alliance
• Advisory committee: AI4K12.org
• International AI literacy frameworks development
• Cross-sector work on quality indicators for edtech solutions (better buying decisions for schools)

Working Relationship with Reuben

• Senior decision-maker on the ISTE side of the Flash Lab partnership
• Jessica Garner reports to / works alongside him
• Engaged and forward-thinking — proposed the revenue-share model and Google funding angle himself
• Comfortable talking business: pricing, IP, distribution channels

Key Interactions

Date	Context	Notes
Jan 20, 2026	ISTE partnership meeting	Walked through ISTE ecosystem with Jessica and Josh
Feb 25, 2026	Partnership scoping meeting	Agreed on authorized provider model, rev-share, Activation Stage at conference, Google funding angle. See below.

Feb 25, 2026 Meeting Notes

Key positions Joseph took:

• ISTE has appetite to train their trainers — just need to formalize the relationship
• Proposed: pay a fee to get trained, share a fee, funnel participants into Tinkery network
• CLS (Custom Learning Services) charges $7,500/day for all topics. Faculty are 95% contractors.
• Model: ISTE teaching & learning offering at $7,500/day, add Flash Lab for $X, rev-share back to Stanford
• If funneling back to Stanford programs, rev-share would be lower
• On IP: ISTE wants to be authorized provider, not IP co-owner. IP stays at Stanford.
• Google funding idea: “Through the generosity of Google, we’re going to offer that Flash Lab experience” — ISTE as distribution channel
• On research: could run articles in EL magazine translating research to practice. Chris Agnew is the contact. Also expanding stretchAI (their RAG tool).
• Re: AI + research contextualization: “If only there were some people at your organization who knew something about how to use AI to contextualize research…”

Tags

[BRIDGE-BUILD] [SCALE-MOMENT]

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Last updated: Feb 25, 2026