ECIS Learning Leader Summit: Leading What Matters Most – Denver: 21 & 22 July 2026
ECIS Learning Leader Summit: Leading What Matters Most – Denver: 21 & 22 July 2026
Denver Language School, Colorado, USA
21 & 22 July 2026
08:30-16:30 (USA Mountain Time)
The Focus
If we want to improve the educational experiences and life chances of children, the most powerful place to act is teaching, learning and assessment. This is the core work of schools. It is where culture is lived, equity is realised, and improvement either takes hold or fades.
This brand new ECIS professional learning experience brings together senior leaders who hold strategic responsibility and accountability for Teaching, Learning and Assessment in schools or across groups of schools.
The Difference
This is not a conference, a qualification, or consultancy-led training. It is a focused, high-trust convening for leaders who are already influencing learning at scale and want to do so with greater clarity, coherence and impact.
Many leadership courses elevate leaders.
This summit changes how learning is led.
Where many courses train leaders to meet standards, this summit develops leaders who shape systems in collaboration with like-minded peers facing similar challenges across the world.
The Work
The two-day summit creates the conditions for leaders to step out of the operational and into the strategic. It brings together an international cohort to build trust quickly, surface shared challenges, and engage in disciplined professional dialogue about what is working, what is not, what is possible, and what needs to change.
Participants are expected to bring a live improvement challenge from their own context, to test change in practice, and to return with evidence of learning and impact, not as performance, but as professional responsibility. The work is grounded in real classrooms, real teams and real systems.
The Discipline
A strong improvement science spine runs throughout the summit. Not as a technical model, but as a way of working that leaders practise together: careful problem definition, developing and refining theories of change, testing and learning through small, intentional actions, and evidence-informed refinement over time.
This discipline enables leaders to move beyond initiative overload and towards sustainable improvement.
The Impact
- Impact is understood in three interconnected ways:
- Practice: observable improvements in teaching, learning and assessment
- Leadership: stronger professional judgement, coherence and influence
- System: sustainability over time, including reduced initiative overload and greater alignment
The Community
The summit does not end after two days. 5 x 1 hour facilitated Leadership Circles across the year provide the professional infrastructure that sustains learning and impact. These are not networking opportunities; they are professional architecture.
They are structured, facilitated spaces where leaders examine evidence, challenge assumptions, refine strategy and hold one another to account. It is here that insight becomes action, and action becomes sustained improvement.
The Commitment
Taken together, this creates a form of professional learning that is rare: rigorous without being reductive, relational without being soft, and ambitious without being unrealistic.
It recognises that leading Teaching, Learning and Assessment at scale is not about doing more, but about leading with greater clarity, discipline and care, and about building the capacity of people and systems to continue improving long after the summit ends.
Facilitator: Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan is Head of Leadership Development and Learning at ECIS. In her role, she collaborates with schools, groups and organisations to design and deliver impactful training, coaching and consultancy. She has a track record of building strong relationships with some of the most innovative and influential international schools in the world.
Prior to her role at ECIS, Helen worked extensively as an independent Educational Consultant with a range of international schools and organisations. These include Cambridge International where she was a Lead Training Consultant, and High Performance Learning where she successfully set up the Fellowship of World Class Schools.
Helen is also an accredited Senior Practitioner Coach with the European Coaching and Mentoring Council, empowering executive leaders to drive improvement. She has a master’s degree in education and holds the National Professional Qualification for Headship.