Julie Young is an edupreneur, educator, innovator, and visionary leader renowned for her expertise in school design for diverse educational models, including virtual, blended, and technology-enhanced learning. She is also an author. She co-wrote Virtual Schools, Actual Learning with the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research and recently authored Say Yes: How Virtual Became Reality, sharing insights and lessons from decades of leadership in digital education.
Today, Young channels her decades of leadership experience into executive coaching, management consulting, and strategic advisement for organizations navigating the evolving landscape of innovative education. Drawing on a career defined by building transformative institutions from the ground up, she partners with leaders and organizations to design bold, student-centered strategies that drive meaningful change.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with K12 Digest, Julie shared insights into how virtual learning evolved from a $200,000 grant experiment with 77 students into a global movement after parents reported their children “finally love school.” She underscored that mastery-based progression, not just AI tools, will define the next five years as education shifts from seat time to demonstrated learning, and predicted cross-border K-12 online programs will gain mainstream credibility by 2030 through rigorous accreditation and university pathways. On AI, Julie urged leaders to lead with courage not compliance, embracing AI for targeted academic content and teacher support while remaining cautious about student-facing chatbots, insisting that innovation must be guided by discernment, purpose, and the conviction that growth is still possible for every learner. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Julie. You founded Florida Virtual School in 1997 when “online school” was barely a concept, laying the groundwork for an entire industry. Looking back, what was the moment you realized virtual learning could be more than an experiment — it could be a movement?
Honestly, it happened gradually and then all at once. In the early days at Florida Virtual School, we were operating on a $200,000 grant with 77 students and a whole lot of faith. But there was a particular moment when students who had struggled in traditional settings started thriving, not just passing courses but genuinely coming alive as learners, because they could move at their own pace and access content on their own terms. When parents started calling not to complain but to say “my child finally loves school,” I knew this wasn’t an experiment anymore. It was a glimpse of what education could look like for every student, not just the lucky ones. The movement was already happening. We were just building the road beneath it.
You helped normalize virtual school before Zoom classrooms existed. What’s one trend in digital learning today that you believe is being underestimated, but will define the next 5 years?
Mastery-based progression. Everyone is talking about AI tools and personalized content, which matter, but the deeper opportunity is what happens when you stop organizing school around seat time and start organizing it around demonstrated learning. When a student proves they know something, they move forward. When they don’t, they get more time and support, not a grade that follows them forever. That shift, away from the Carnegie unit and toward competency, is where the real transformation lives. Most of the ed-tech conversation is still about delivery. The bigger question is whether we’re willing to change what we accept as proof of learning. That answer will define the next five years.
What’s your prediction for how cross-border, online K–12 education will evolve in reach and credibility?
It will become far more normalized and far more credible, but only if the institutions leading it hold the line on rigor. My experience at ASU Prep Digital and through my consulting work with GEMS Education in Dubai confirmed something I had suspected for years: families around the world are hungry for high-quality, flexible, accredited education that doesn’t require uprooting their lives. The world is shrinking. The question is no longer whether cross-border online learning works. The question is who earns the trust to deliver it. Accreditation frameworks will have to evolve, and so will the mindset of higher education institutions that still view online transcripts skeptically. By 2030, I believe we’ll see far more seamless pathways from globally delivered K-12 programs directly into recognized university admissions. The credibility gap is closing.
Trailblazers need rituals that keep them grounded amid constant change. What’s your favorite way to start a day when you know you’ll be making high-stakes decisions?
I start quietly, and I mean that literally. Before a high-stakes presentation, I need to be completely alone with my own thoughts. I don’t rehearse with others on the day of, and I don’t want feedback in those final hours. What I need is stillness and space to go inward. That’s where my best preparation happens.
And when I’m in that quiet, I’m not thinking about myself. I’m thinking entirely about my audience. Who are they? Where are they in their own journeys? What do they need to hear, not just what I want to say? What is the thing they came into that room hoping someone would finally put into words? Great presentations, in my experience, are not performances. They are answers to questions the audience has been carrying.
High-stakes meetings require a different kind of preparation, though the same instinct for stillness applies. Before I walk into a room that matters, I do my homework on the people across the table. I think carefully about what I’m hoping we walk away with, what the significant hurdles are likely to be, where the resistance will come from, and just as importantly, where our interests genuinely intersect. Those points of intersection are where trust gets built and where real progress becomes possible. If you haven’t found them before you sit down, you’re already behind.
After nearly three decades in this work, I’ve learned that clarity doesn’t come from noise. It comes from knowing your audience, knowing your purpose, and giving yourself enough silence to find both.
The line between K–12 and higher ed is blurring fast. How do you see “high school, college, and career” pathways merging by 2030, and who stands to benefit most?
The lines are already dissolving, and that’s a good thing. What I hope to see by 2030 is a genuinely seamless system where a motivated 16-year-old can earn college credit, explore a career pathway, and demonstrate mastery in real-world contexts, all without waiting for a diploma that says they’re finally ready to start life.
The students who stand to benefit most are the ones who have always been poorly served by a one-size-fits-all, age-graded system: students in rural areas with limited course offerings, working students who need flexibility, and students who learn differently. But I want to name another group that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough: the young people who are currently forced to choose between pursuing their passion and pursuing their education. Our young golfers, actors, musicians, and athletes who are training and competing at serious levels shouldn’t have to make that choice. The idea that a 15-year-old with a professional trajectory in sport or the arts has to walk away from their education, or walk away from their calling, because we haven’t built a system flexible enough to hold both, is one of the quiet failures of traditional schooling. Merged pathways, done right, give those students their lives back.
The risk is that these new pathways become available only to families who know how to navigate them. The work of equity is making sure the design is intentional from the start, not bolted on later.
You co-wrote Virtual Schools, Actual Learning and recently authored Say Yes: How Virtual Became Reality. Beyond your own work, what’s one book that fundamentally shifted how you think about education or leadership?
Carol Dweck’s Mindset is one of those books that reframes something you thought you already understood. Her research on fixed versus growth mindsets didn’t just influence how I thought about students. It changed how I thought about institutions, school boards, legislators, and the adults who hold the keys to whether innovation lives or dies.
One of the hardest parts of building Florida Virtual School wasn’t the technology or the funding model or even the politics, though there was plenty of all three. It was convincing people that a fundamentally different kind of learning was not only possible but worthy of their trust. I sat across from superintendents, lawmakers, and education leaders who had spent their careers within a system with a very fixed idea of what school was supposed to look like. A building. A bell schedule. A teacher at the front of a room. Anything outside that shape wasn’t just unfamiliar to them. It felt illegitimate. That, I came to understand, was a fixed mindset operating at an institutional scale, and it is one of the most powerful forces working against progress in public education.
I encountered that same fixed mindset in a different form when I moved to Arizona State University to help build ASU Prep Digital. President Michael Crow and our leaders, Jim Rund and Beatriz Rendon, were firm believers from the start, and that kind of leadership support is rarer than people realize. But within a large research university, there were plenty of skeptics who simply didn’t believe that high school students could do genuine post-secondary work. Our goal was never dual enrollment, Advanced Placement, or International Baccalaureate. Those models, as valuable as they are in their own right, still operate under the traditional assumption that post-secondary learning is something students enter at a prescribed age and stage. We believed something different. We believed that any student who was academically ready, regardless of age, deserved a real shot at being challenged by post-secondary coursework, and that the university ought to be the place that made that possible.
So we did what innovators have always had to do. We proved it. We showed them. We placed academically ready students in rigorous postsecondary coursework and watched them rise to meet it. And over time, the skepticism gave way to evidence. Today, it is mainstream at ASU Prep for students to begin their college experience not at eighteen because a calendar says it’s time, but when they are academically ready. That shift, from “we don’t think they can” to “of course they can,” is exactly what Dweck is writing about. It doesn’t happen through argument. It happens through results.
Dweck’s work gave me both language and compassion for that resistance. She helped me understand that people don’t dig in because they’re obstinate. They dig in because they genuinely believe that what exists is what’s possible. The most transformative thing a leader can do, whether you’re working with a struggling ninth grader or a skeptical university dean, is create the conditions for someone to believe that growth is still available to them. That conviction carried me through seventeen years at FLVS and into everything we built at ASU. Believe it’s possible. Then help everyone around you believe it too.
You’ve hired and mentored hundreds of educators and leaders. What’s one non-negotiable skill you look for in professionals who want to innovate in education?
Intellectual curiosity that survives disappointment, and a genuine love for students that makes the extra effort worth it. I know the question asks for one thing, but in my experience, these two qualities are inseparable. You cannot have one without the other and truly move education forward.
Anyone can be curious when things are going well. The professionals who genuinely move education forward are the ones who hit a wall, a policy barrier, a skeptical board, a failed pilot, and instead of retreating, they ask why. They stay genuinely interested in the problem, even when it resists them. But curiosity alone can become an intellectual exercise. What keeps innovation honest, what keeps it human, is caring deeply about the students on the other end of every decision you make. Innovation in education is hard work. It takes more effort, more patience, and more resilience than most people anticipate. The leaders who sustain that effort over time aren’t doing it for the idea. They’re doing it because they cannot stop thinking about the kid who isn’t being reached by what already exists.
I’ve hired a lot of talented people over the years, and the ones who made the biggest difference were rarely the most credentialed. They were the ones who couldn’t stop thinking about the question even when they went home at night, and who woke up the next morning still caring about the answer because a student somewhere needed it.
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
I see myself doing exactly what I’m doing now, but with more intention and probably more joy. I’m advising organizations I believe in, including GEMS Education and the Cox Science Center and Aquarium, through a partnership with ASU. I’m coaching leaders who are navigating the same kinds of complex, high-stakes decisions I faced for decades. And with Say Yes now published, I’m hoping to shape conversations in colleges of education and entrepreneurship about what it actually takes to build something that has never existed before. I don’t need a title or an institution to do meaningful work. What I need is the right question and the right people to think alongside. I have both.
Your work proves that bold leadership creates new realities. What’s your core message to education leaders about leading with courage, not just compliance, through the AI shift?
Don’t wait for permission. I’ve watched too many talented leaders slow down at exactly the moment they needed to accelerate, because they were waiting for policy clarity, or board approval, or a pilot study that would finally make the case. AI is not a future problem. It’s a present reality, and your students are already living inside it.
That said, leading through this moment requires real discernment, not just enthusiasm. I am cautious, and I think appropriately so, about AI in direct interaction with students. We don’t yet know enough about how to ensure that the technology serves the student rather than the other way around. A chatbot that a young person turns to for guidance, feedback, or connection carries risks we haven’t fully mapped out, and I don’t think moving fast and figuring it out later is acceptable when children are involved.
Where I do see tremendous and immediate promise is in how AI can deliver highly targeted academic content, serving each student precisely what they need at exactly the right moment in their learning. That is the “any time, any place, any path, any pace” philosophy taken to a new level of precision. I also believe AI’s power to support teachers, giving them faster, richer feedback on student progress so they can intervene earlier and more effectively, is one of the most underutilized opportunities in front of us right now.
The leaders who will matter most in the next decade are the ones who hold two things simultaneously: deep conviction about what education is for, and genuine discernment about how new tools get used. Compliance will not carry you through this moment. Courage will. And part of that courage is being willing to say, not yet, when the stakes involve students.