TRANSFORMED Live 2027
FREE VIRTUAL EVENT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERS
TRANSFORMED Live 2027
How Will You Lead Your Institution in the Age of AI?
AI is expanding what’s possible. Capacity is finite. How do we choose what matters?
Hosted by Higher Digital
THE CHALLENGE
More Opportunity Than Capacity
The number of things institutions could do is growing much faster than their ability to do them. AI is creating enormous opportunity while raising expectations from students, boards, governments, faculty, staff, and institutional leadership. At the same time, institutions are managing tighter budgets, workforce constraints, legacy technology, fragmented data, manual processes, organizational silos, and increasingly complex portfolios of work.
Every new priority consumes something:
- Money
- People
- Time
- Technology
- Leadership attention
- Organizational capacity
Every yes has a cost.
TRANSFORMED Live 2027 brings together higher education leaders from the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and beyond to share how their institutions are making those choices, and what they are learning while doing the work. The focus is leading and executing now.
WHY ATTEND
Leave With Better Answers to the Decisions in Front of You
Three and three-quarter hours with peers from around the world, focused on real institutional choices.
- Where AI is creating meaningful value today, and where the evidence is still emerging
- How institutions are funding new priorities inside budgets that are already committed
- How student experience reveals where institutional complexity creates friction
- The data and architecture foundations institutions need before AI can scale
- How leaders prioritize across competing initiatives with limited capacity
- How leaders decide what gets funded, delayed, changed, or stopped
- How Presidents, Vice-Chancellors, CIOs, and executive teams are working together in new ways
- What peers around the world have tried, what worked, and what they would do differently
Our editorial standardEvery session answers one question: what can an institutional leader do differently after hearing this conversation?
THE DECISION FRAMEWORK
A Framework to Take Back to Your Leadership Team
For every proposed initiative, ask five questions.
Strategic Value
Which institutional priority does it advance?
Impact
What will improve for students or the institution, and what evidence supports that expectation?
Total Cost
What will it require in money, people, technology, data, operations, and leadership attention?
Readiness
Are data, governance, skills, and change conditions in place?
Capacity
Who will do the work, and what must be delayed, reduced, or stopped?
- Yes
- Test
- Defer
- No
- Stop
Tests need a clear hypothesis, owner, measures, and decision date. Deferrals state what must change before the decision is revisited. The framework supports executive judgment, and leaders make the call.
THE PROGRAM
Run of Show
Wednesday, January 6, 2027. Times shown in US Eastern and UK time.
How Will You Lead Your Institution in the Age of AI?
Framing the challenge: student needs are changing, AI is expanding what’s possible, and institutions must choose. Introducing the decision framework.
Wayne Bovier, CEO, Higher Digital
What Should Higher Education Do in the Age of AI?
How AI is reshaping work, expertise, and the capabilities students will need, and what universities should change, preserve, and decide now.
Daniel Susskind, economist and author of What Should My Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI
Everyone Wants AI. What Is Worth Funding?
Real AI investments and experiments: the need they addressed, where the resources came from, what was delayed or stopped, and what evidence is emerging.
US and UK presidents, vice-chancellors, and digital leaders. Speakers announced soon.
Change for the Student, Not for the Technology
What changing student habits reveal about institutional processes, policies, and systems, and how leaders chose between technology, process redesign, and human support.
Moderated by Amy Shaw, Higher Digital
California at Scale: Building the Foundation for Better Decisions
The data, architecture, governance, and organizational choices behind California’s multi-institution work, and the lessons that transfer to the US, UK, and Europe.
Moderated by Toby Carroll, Higher Digital
Too Much to Do. Not Enough Capacity.
How leaders see work across silos, connect priorities to capacity, and decide to fund, test, defer, or stop, with Strategic Portfolio Management as the discipline that links it all.
Moderated by Colleen Baker, Higher Digital
Who Leads Institutional Change?
How executive partnership turns priorities into action: the tradeoffs made, who owns AI, data, and execution, and how leaders will know it is working.
A president or vice-chancellor in conversation with their CIO. Speakers announced soon.
Take the Decision Back to Your Institution
Apply the framework to a live decision: which priority it serves, what evidence, cost, and capacity are clear, what must give, and when you will revisit it.
Short breaks between sessions. Program subject to change.
A GLOBAL CONVERSATION
Shared Challenges, Different Systems
US and UK institutions face many of the same structural pressures through different operating environments. Sessions bring those perspectives together.
United States
Demographic pressure, affordability, public confidence, workforce constraints, technology modernization, and financial sustainability.
United Kingdom
Financial sustainability, tuition economics, international student dependence, workforce costs, regulatory demands, and new institutional operating models.
Global
AI, changing labor markets, student expectations, competition, technology economics, data, and the rising cost of institutional complexity.
What can institutions in one market learn from what’s happening in another?
I know we need to change. Expectations keep increasing. Resources stay flat. Our people, processes, technology, and governance make moving quickly difficult. Help me figure out where to focus and how to make progress.
The leader we designed this event forWHO SHOULD ATTEND
Built for Institutional Leaders
Presidents & Vice-Chancellors
Responsible for institutional performance amid financial pressure, workforce challenges, and rising expectations.
CIOs, CDOs & Digital Leaders
Asked to deliver AI, data, cybersecurity, modernization, and student experience with constrained capacity.
Provosts, CFOs, COOs & Strategy Leaders
Chiefs of Staff and transformation leaders responsible for institutional priorities and execution.
You will leave with practical examples and a decision framework to use with your leadership team.
Save Your Place
Free and open to all. Join higher education leaders worldwide on Wednesday, January 6, 2027.
11:00 AM–2:45 PM ET | 4:00–7:45 PM UK | Virtual
