Unsure about AI? We can help.
We are Ty Williams and Erica Queen, a husband-and-wife consultancy for international schools.
We've heard that schools are adopting AI, but that standards differ from classroom to classroom. Many teachers we know have had no real training, yet are being asked to lead AI initiatives at their schools. And nobody can say with certainty what AI is doing to student outcomes.
We want to help your school figure AI out together, and then act on it.
Start a conversationWhere international schools are
AI investment is going up. Consistency is not.
What's happening
Schools are hiring AI staff, licensing tools, and funding training. Good AI training material is free and public. Students are already ahead: 54% of US teens say they use AI chatbots for schoolwork.*
What's getting in the way
Adoption is uneven. Teachers set their own rules subject by subject. Admin licenses go unused. Nobody agrees on what is permitted, so the school carries the trust, safety, and ethics risks.
* Pew Research Center, February 2026. US teens aged 13–17. No equivalent international-school figure exists that we have found.
International schools need help setting their AI strategy, training their staff, and driving adoption that lasts.
The gap
New AI hires are a good first step, but not a guarantee.
Making AI work in a school takes three things: a strategy people stand behind, training that fits the job, and adoption that lasts. We have seen schools ask one new hire to carry all three, across hundreds of people. AI is misunderstood, mistrusted, and misused, which makes it harder still.
Strategy
Where AI belongs, where it does not, and what the school will stand behind.
Training
Every member of faculty and staff able to use AI well in their own work.
Adoption
Hundreds of people changing how they work, and keeping it up after launch.
Case study
A pattern we keep seeing
One large school group recently created a single group-level Data and AI role reporting to the CIO, covering strategy, roadmap, and governance across every school. That role can set direction for the group. It cannot train every faculty member or drive adoption in every school.
Recognize your school in any of that?
Tell us where you areWhat we offer
We guide schools through AI strategy, training, and adoption.
We focus on what matters most to your school. A first conversation shows us where you need help, whether that is one of these or all three.
AI strategy
We help your leaders decide where AI belongs and where it does not, then turn that into a vision, principles, and policy your school will stand behind.
AI training
We teach faculty and staff how to use AI well, grounded in the work they actually do and the uses to avoid. Wherever someone is starting from, we bring them along.
AI adoption
We bring AI into daily practice across the school, used effectively and sustained long after the engagement ends.
How we're different
Free resources don't add up to a strategy or adoption.
There are good free frameworks for AI in schools, and any leader can download them tomorrow. Getting hundreds of faculty and staff to agree on a position, then work that way, is the hard part.
We build on
- TeachAI's AI Guidance for Schools toolkit, from Code.org, ETS, ISTE, Khan Academy and the World Economic Forum
- UNESCO's AI competency frameworks for teachers and students, 2024
- OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026, on generative AI in education
What we add
- Service design and system audits, to map the tools you already have
- Design thinking and co-design, so decisions are made with faculty and staff, not for them
- Hands-on training grounded in the work your people actually do
- Change management, to address blockers and incentives
- Improvement science, so experiments test the worries instead of debating them
What we believe
Schools get the most from AI when faculty and staff decide together how to use it. The methods that make that happen are proven outside education, and we bring them in.
The evidence on what AI does to children is still forming. Our job is to make sure a school uses AI responsibly while that impact is investigated.
Why us
We bring AI and change management expertise to international schools.
Between us we have more than 20 years in technology and innovation, the last five spent putting AI to work inside the tech industry. We know what works and where the pitfalls are, and we bring that to your school.
Erica Queen
Adoption and change
As Associate Director of Insights & Experience Innovation at HelloFresh, Erica advised senior leadership and the C-suite on global innovation investments. Her work carried more than €330M in documented business value. Over the past decade she has led hundreds of workshops that move large organizations from disagreement to funded decisions, including a loyalty program that reached 40% opt-in in its first year. She has taught these methods to graduate students at the University of St Andrews.
Ty Williams
AI and youth safety research
Ty led research and strategy engagements at Reddit for AI adoption and youth safety online, improving workflows for content moderators and increasing safety on the platform. He shaped Reddit Safety's first production LLM and led Reddit's first youth safety research program for teens. Before that he was a Global 500 strategy consultant, and spent four years running operations at a US branch of Search Associates, working with more than 750 international schools. He is a guest speaker on online trust and safety at the University of Washington.
Our advisors
International school experts
Two retired international school heads and a working classroom teacher. They pressure-test the material before it reaches a school, tell us where a plan will stall, and keep us honest about what a faculty will actually do with a policy. They advise between sessions rather than joining them.
A sample engagement
What working with us could look like.
Every school starts somewhere different, so this is not a fixed program. It is one example of how strategy, training, and adoption fit together. We size the real thing to your calendar and budget.
Discovery
Weeks 1–2 Strategy
Interviews and a systems review. What is in use, what blocks adoption, and where each person stands before training. The baseline.
Training
Week 3 Training
A shared understanding of the technology, the current research, and the blockers found during discovery.
Workshop
Week 4 Strategy
Built for the group. Surface the objections nobody says aloud, then move to shared principles.
Design
Weeks 5–7 Strategy
Outputs become draft policy and principles, prompt libraries, and classroom experiments.
Apply
Weeks 8–12 Adoption
Test it, find where it breaks, coach the people who struggle. Handover is set for a specific date.
06 · Monitor, from week 12 · Adoption
What the school keeps. The principles carry a twelve-month review date.
Six to eight AI champions across faculty and staff, acting as internal points of contact with a mandate.
A simple way to track adoption and blockers, built into the process you already have rather than new processes to run.
A standing forum for sharing what teachers tried, attached to a meeting that already exists.
Want to see what this would look like at your school?
Start a conversationThe outcome
Tangible benefits to your school.
Faculty write the policy, leadership gets a plan, and the school keeps the capability. Here is what your school holds once the engagement is over.
Teachers making their own call, subject by subject, term by term.
A shared AI vision
One position, reached together by faculty and staff, on when, where, and why AI should and should not be used.
Leaders who know AI matters and do not know what to do about it.
An AI adoption plan
What changes, in what order, and who owns it.
One overloaded teacher informally holding the whole thing.
AI-trained champions
Named people across departments, so the program holds as the technology changes and as faculty move on.
Licenses bought, rolled out, and quietly unused.
A way to keep measuring
Tools in use and blockers tracked against the baseline taken in week one.
Board and accreditation questions about AI with no agreed answer.
A documented AI position
Acceptable use, data protection, and vendor review, ready for your board and for visits from CIS, NEASC, WASC, or the IB.
A new AI lead expected to carry the whole school alone.
A supported AI lead
People in every department driving adoption locally, so your central AI hire isn't the bottleneck.
Scope of engagement
Work with the group that needs to move.
Strategy, training, and adoption can each run with leadership, with faculty, or with both.
Leadership & admin
Run with the head, the leadership team, IT, and additional staff.
You leave with an adoption plan, an implementation roadmap, a position on AI use and data protection, and a named owner with a cohort behind them.
Faculty
Run with the teaching faculty, subjects mixed.
You leave with AI principles the faculty adopted themselves, prompt libraries built for real lessons, assessments reviewed for an AI-present classroom, and documented experiments.
Most complete
Whole school
We run both groups, in sequence, and carry each one's input into the next.
You leave with everything in both other scopes, plus consistency between what leadership wrote and what happens in classrooms.
For school groups
Across a group of schools
We start with one school. What gets built there is tested in every school that follows, which is what produces group-wide consistency and keeps a central AI hire from becoming the bottleneck. Cost per school is based on the number of schools served.
Not sure which of these fits your school?
Talk it through with usLimits
What we will NOT promise you. (We promise.)
Better grades
We make no claim about learning outcomes. We help educators do what they do best, with AI alongside them.
A platform
We sell no software and take no cut from anyone who does. If a tool is the answer, we will say which one.
A never-ending consulting bill
Your school is equipped by the time we leave. We stay available if you want us, priced separately, but that is not the default.
Full adoption
Some people will not come along. We agree with you on what success looks like before we start.
Legal advice
We are not lawyers. Anything touching data protection across your countries needs local review.
AI software integration
We identify where AI can play a role. We are not the engineers who write the integrations, configure the systems, or manage the vendors.
Start here
A conversation about your school, not a pitch.
We'd love to hear how your school is approaching AI. Start with a free 30-minute call: tell us what you have bought, what people are actually doing with it, and what is worrying you.
Book a free call