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Meg Hamel is Vice President, Education at HolonIQ platform, where she leads global insight and thought leadership on the future of education, skills, and learning innovation.

With more than 15 years of experience across education, research, and strategy, Meg brings a systems-level perspective on global education markets. Her work focuses on identifying emerging trends, translating complex market signals into actionable insights, and convening leaders across government, education, industry, and investment to advance innovation in learning and workforce development.

At QS, Meg shapes the organization’s global research agenda and leads the development of data-driven insights on the evolving education and edtech landscape. She has played a key role in building several of HolonIQ’s signature research frameworks, including the Global Learning Landscape and Digital Transformation Frameworks, which are widely used by institutions, investors, and policymakers to understand the structure and direction of the global education sector. Prior to joining HolonIQ, Meg held leadership roles at International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and EdSurge, where she led research initiatives and grant-funded programs focused on edtech markets, procurement, and education innovation ecosystems. At EdSurge, she helped build the organization’s research practice and contributed to the development of the early learning and edtech innovation beats. Earlier in her career, Meg worked as a school leader and educator, an experience that continues to inform her work bridging research, policy, and practice across education systems. Meg holds a B.A. in Art History from Denison University, and both a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Teaching from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Dr Mary Styers is the Director of Evidence and Impact Strategy at Instructure, where she leads the integration of rigorous research and learning sciences into Instructure’s global narrative and product ecosystem.

With over 25 years of research experience—19 focused on education and curriculum evaluation—Mary is an expert in bridging rigorous academic research with practical applications. A certified What Works Clearinghouse reviewer holding a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from NC State University, Dr. Styers actively presents at national conferences and advocates for evidence literacy to help educators make data-informed decision.

Dr Daniel Stanhope was the founding researcher at LearnPlatform and now serves as a Sr Business Advisor at Instructure. Daniel received his PhD in I/O Psychology from N.C. State University, taught at a Tier 1 research university, and has authored, reviewed, and edited scholarly publications in numerous outlets. Dr. Stanhope has served as Principal Investigator on multiple federally funded grants, provides research consultation and strategic advisory for both education institutions and solution providers, and has served on multiple advisory committees, including the EdTech Genome Project, EdTech Evidence Exchange, CoSN, and LEAP Innovations Research Advisory Council.

Dr Benjamin Motz is Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and a member of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University. His research is characterized by large-scale experiments and analyses on students from real education settings, and examines the nexus between cognitive theories of learning, psychological theories of engagement, and what goes on in education settings. Additionally, Dr. Motz founded Terracotta, an LMS plugin that makes it easy for teachers and researchers to embed studies directly in their course sites, and  he co-founded ManyClasses, a collaborative research model for orchestrating experimental research studies across diverse learning environments.