Artificial Intelligence

Our Work

AI has a wide range of potential applications in education and comes with plenty of risks. At Bellwether, we bring deep research, viewpoint diversity, and pragmatism to help practitioners, policymakers, and funders make sense of this rapidly changing technology. Our only agenda is ensuring that AI does as much good as possible for young people, particularly those furthest from opportunity.

We evaluate how AI is reshaping the education sector by doing what we do best: digging into the nuances, identifying patterns, and distinguishing signal from noise. Our goal is to ensure AI delivers meaningful benefits while surfacing concerns that need attention.

Our focus areas include:

Research and Publications: Our team conducts research, convenes experts, and releases field-facing publications to help ensure education leaders understand how AI is evolving and key issues to watch.

Advising: We partner with nonprofits, ed tech providers, systems, policymakers, and funders to make sense of AI and develop a coherent strategy from vision through implementation. We help organizations think about how AI will impact their work leveraging the best of what our cross-functional team of experts has to offer.

Policy Analysis and Support: We help education leaders and organizations understand the rapid developments in AI — and the policies that come along with them. We provide objective analyses of AI policies and broader trends, translate complex policies into accessible field-facing resources, and partner with organizations to strengthen their understanding of AI’s role in education moving forward.

Our Impact

AI Funder Collaborative: From 2023 through 2025, Bellwether convened a cohort of national education funders in a learning series that explored the trends, opportunities, and challenges of AI in education. This funder collaborative led to multiple publications including our three-part Learning Systems series that takes a holistic approach to help leaders make decisions about incorporating AI, a deep dive on how we can maintain the “productive struggle” of learning in the age of AI, and an overview of how we measure AI in education. 

AI Cohorts: We convene cohorts of mission-aligned organizations — including nonprofits, charter school networks, and others — to help leaders develop an actionable AI plan, pilot high-potential use cases, and build skills on AI usage for their teams.

AI Policy Hub: In February 2026, we partnered with the Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network to create the AI Policy Hub. Through this network, Bellwether provides policy analysis and support on rapidly changing AI policies, connects participating education advocacy organizations with the nation’s leading experts on the applications of AI in education, and facilitates opportunities for shared learning among experts and practitioners.

Our Team

Amy Chen Kulesa
Senior Associate Partner; AI Portfolio Lead

Mark Baxter
Partner

Evan Coughenour
Partner

Daniela Torre Gibney
Senior Associate Partner

Andrew J. Rotherham
Co-Founder and Senior Partner

Juliet Squire
Senior Partner and Head of Emerging Approaches

Christine Wade
Senior Associate Partner

Mary K. Wells
Co-Founder and Senior Partner