Dana Mortenson is Co-Founder and CEO of World Savvy, a national education nonprofit committed to “building inclusive, adaptive and future-ready education systems” for over 18 years. World Savvy’s overarching goal is to integrate “cultural and global competence into the ethos and foundations of what we define as quality education.”I can draw a direct line from my first association with World Savvy as a participant in their Global Competence Certificate Program to the work I’m doing today to promote changemakers working to realize the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.  Her work and the work of her team at World Savvy have been hugely influential in the way I’ve thought about teacher and leader preparation ever since. This is Part I of my two-part conversation with Dana as she shares her own journey as a changemaker and leader committed to developing global competencies across the United States.  This piece focuses mostly on the first three quadrants of the Blue Roads Changemaker Journey – Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World.  Of course, it’s difficult to separate the quadrants because they naturally interact with one another, but as you’ll see, by attempting to deal with them one at a time, it becomes easier to see how roots, passions and openness to diverse perspectives work together to support the changes our world will need to function well for everyone.Please read, watch and listen below for a glimpse into how Dana reflects on her homegrown “Jersey girl” beginnings that fueled an early drive to find solutions to address injustices around her.  You’ll see how her perspective and openness to the world have allowed her to learn from others with a sense of curiosity and genuine humility that she hopes to make contagious.






















HOMEGROWN DANADana’s childhood and youth were spent in a New Jersey suburb across from Manhattan that, on the surface, would not have exposed her to a lot of diversity.  In reality though, her father’s background as an internationalist who’d done extensive work in Africa, along with his passion for sports, opened the world to her in ways unavailable to some of her peers.  As a sociology professor turned high school teacher, her dad encouraged curiosity about the world and critical thinking about civic issues that were always open to discussion at home. Education was front and center and team sports were rallying points for the family.  Dana started playing basketball at the age of 5 and her dad insisted she be allowed into camps and experiences with the boys before the days of the WNBA.  She credits sports with developing her capacity for collaboration as well as her first exposure to peers from a wide range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.In this setting she became aware of injustices and inequalities that didn’t sit well with her from the very beginning.  While she speaks respectfully, and even fondly, about her own teachers and schooling experiences, she also recognizes that she is a product of a very flawed system of education.  It really was a byproduct of a lot of the systems that are more rote memorization and kind of an industrial schooling model.  I was in high school during Desert Storm and I remember just sort of rolling in the TVs to look at the battles, but there was no discussion of root cause of conflict or any of the more complex elements of what it means to be at war or why we got there in the first place or  who and how we were involved as an actor on the global stage.Although her interest in complex world issues was encouraged at home, if schools talked about other countries at all,