December 2, 2025 • 27 mins
What if a 110-year-old textbook company decided it wasn’t in the textbook business anymore?
We sit down with Steve Brown, CEO of Nelson Education, to talk about how a legacy brand chose to blow itself up—on purpose. From a “great bowl of vanilla” to a bold new flavour, Steve walks us through Nelson’s reinvention and the birth of Edwin, a curriculum-aligned platform built to put everything teachers and students need in one trusted space.
We dig into the skills that matter most in an uncertain world—literacy and numeracy as bedrock, but also equity, empathy, and the courage to debate. For Steve, when students learn to question well and lead with understanding, societies thrive. His north star isn’t just better classrooms—it’s a measurable lift in national GDP powered by engaged, creative graduates.
On AI, he draws a firm line: tool, not product. Instead of leaning on public models that hallucinate, Nelson built its own large language model trained on rigorously vetted content. The payoff? Faster development, smarter assessment, and genuinely personalized learning—without trading away trust.
Along the way, we talk naysayers, the five whys, and the “humble arrogance” it takes to make big bets and hold steady when things get rough.
If you care about modern learning, teacher time, and scaling what works without losing soul, this one’s worth your hour. Subscribe, share it with a colleague who needs a spark, and tell us—what would you disrupt first?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Colley (00:15):
Welcome back everyone to another episode of
ShiftED Podcast coming to you.
Today I'm I'm have theprivilege of having Steve Brown,
uh CEO of Nelson Education,coming and uh chatting with us,
sharing s some of his evolutionwith the uh with his company and
also where he thinks the futureof all of this uh new
(00:37):
technology AI is gonna bring us.
Steve, thanks so much forhopping on here and and joining
us for a chat about educationand kind of looking at the big
picture a little bit today.
Steve Brown (00:49):
My pleasure, Chris.
Happy to be here.
Chris Colley (00:52):
So, Steve, when you were first like I've been
doing a little bit of deepdiving on on kind of your
journey in education so far.
And I mean, when you werebrought into Nelson to lead and
kind of maybe shift thedirection a little bit, what was
the mindset that you werebringing in?
Because I know that you've hadleadership roles before in other
(01:14):
organizations.
What was that mindset that youfelt necessary that had to come
with you when you were gonna tryto shift a 140-year-old company
into a little bit of adifferent direction or a
different approach that theywere gonna have to get their
heads around?
How does how does a leaderapproach that challenge?
Steve Brown (01:33):
You know, it's a great question.
And even that that that commentof it's a great question is one
of the things I hate becauseeverybody's sort of leaked to
that.
But I I truly mean it is agreat question.
You know, first of all, I camefrom outside the industry.
And when I was approached totake over CEO of Nelson, for the
(01:54):
first three conversations Ihad, the first conversation was
very short.
Steve, we're looking for a newCEO.
We'd like someone to, you know,lead the company through
change.
We've been around well over acentury.
My act was, yeah, notinterested.
Thank you.
I don't know anything about theeducation space.
I I applaud the you know, theresilience of the board.
(02:15):
They came back again.
We had some discussion.
And then the third time theycame back, I'm like, look, and
by which time they'd already gotan executive search out with
Spencer Stewart, one of thelargest search companies in the
world.
And I sat down with a couple ofmembers of our board, the
chairman at the time, and I satdown and I said, Look, I'm happy
to sign an NDA.
(02:36):
I'd really like to have a lookat the following and gave them a
laundry list.
I wanted to do a deep dive onthe company.
And what I saw was a great bigbowl of vanilla.
I mean, really nice vanilla,well, vanilla, but it was
vanilla.
And then we continued to talk,and I'm like, look, if I'm gonna
come, these are kind of mynon-negotiables.
I don't like asking forpermission.
(02:58):
I think that slows downmomentum.
And I said, I want to be ableto change whoever I want in the
management team because frankly,if they had the ability to make
and drive that change, theyprobably would have done it
already.
So that means I'm I likely willneed a new executive team.
So when I came in, I looked atit.
I actually agreed to join inlate March, but I didn't join
(03:22):
until September.
So I'd been asking forinformation and I continued to
ask for information during thattime.
And the one thing really stuckout to me, and that was the
relevance of a textbook.
You know, I had two high schoolage kids at that point.
They were being taught onNelson materials.
But every other aspect of theline, if you if you sort of
(03:44):
divorce education from what itis at its core to a
habitualization, relevance isreally important.
And a lot of people hate itwhen I say this, but I I figured
at that point that learning orteaching or education was no
(04:05):
different than golf or tennis orcooking.
If you do it, you know, twice ayear, you're not going to be
very good at it.
If you do it every day, you getbetter at it, and the better
you get at it, the more engagedyou are, and you know, then
you've got what I call theheaven spiral of continued
improvement rather than thedeath spiral spiral of what in
(04:27):
education is disengagement.
It was really about drivingrelevance, and that was by
focus, and quite frankly,everybody thought I was crazy.
Not only inside Nelson, butinside the empathy people is
this guy who knows nothing abouteducation who thinks he's gonna
change everything.
Chris Colley (04:45):
Right.
And I mean, I guess that kindof disruption in the system is
what uh can push forward anykind of change.
Because I mean, I was kind ofthinking about education, uh you
know, like the public educationversus you know company uh
organizations, but they're stillin the same kind of they feel
still feel the same pressures ofrelevancy and staying up to
(05:09):
date.
But I've noticed in educationit's this change is uh, I mean,
probably you have as well, isslow to happen.
And it's it's hard to to notonly get a school board to start
moving in one direction, but uhuh you know, a multinational
organization getting them tomove in the same direction.
I mean, what a challenge, but Iguess it is through that
(05:32):
disruption.
Could you talk to that a littlebit more about the positive
aspects of when you disruptsomething?
Steve Brown (05:40):
So my view was that if we didn't disrupt ourselves,
somebody else would disrupt thespace.
And if if you look atcataclysmic change and you look
at, you know, a massive paradigmshift in disruption in any
sector, normally the disruptioncomes from outside.
I knew we had the knowledge andwe had the relationships.
(06:03):
So I thought if we didn'tdisrupt ourselves, somebody else
would come and disrupt us, andpretty much that would be the
end of Nelson.
And so I decided we'd go on ajourney of self-disruption, and
it took a lot to get the team onboard and the majority, like
there's nobody on my team, onthe executive team, who was
there when I started.
(06:24):
And it wasn't because theyweren't great people, because
they were tremendous people, buttheir skill sets were backward
looking, not forward-looking.
And if they couldn't quite getthe emotional journey to build
the wherewithal to say the waywe've been doing it wasn't
wrong, but it isn't right forthe future.
So we decided to self-disrupt.
(06:47):
And I think we got itabsolutely right when I look at
our Edwin platform today, whichis the you know the largest
platform in education in Canadaand is also used now in 11 other
countries around the world.
We got it right.
So I'm I'm I'm proud of that.
You know, it was my idea, andit was one platform with all
your learning all in one place,a safe sandbox of learning,
(07:09):
curriculum aligned.
What I absolutely got wrong wasthe speed.
I thought in what we'veachieved in nine years, I'd
achieve in five.
Now, true enough, there was athere was a global pandemic in
there.
But you're right, educationmoves slowly.
And you know it's it is it'sstarting to accelerate now.
(07:35):
There's still resistors inthere, depending on which
provinces you look at.
But generally, everybody'srealizing education has to
change, teaching practice has tochange, the pedagogical
alignment still has to be there,it has to be tried and trusted,
it has to be saved.
But the methodology ofdelivery, I knew had to change
(07:56):
to be relevant to the studentand to give teachers back the
one thing that they so sorelyneed, which is time.
I love that.
Chris Colley (08:05):
I love that.
Steve Brown (08:05):
So by doing that, people are now starting to
believe, and it was it was along journey, but it it took a
lot of stubbornness.
It took the belief that if yougot it right, eventually
everybody would come around, andwe're well on that journey now.
But changing a company orchanging a market sector is the
same.
You've got to choose thedestination, not the route,
(08:28):
because the route will change.
You know, you're gonna turnleft, you're gonna turn right,
but if you never take your eyeoff the prize, which is the
ultimate destination, you canachieve anything.
Chris Colley (08:38):
I love that.
That's amazing.
And uh Steve, when you're whenyou're kind of like you're
making me think of all thesethings now, but just talking
about like what we need our kidsto have when they're leaving,
you know, uh their K-11 or K-12,depending on provinces again,
because education's allprovincial here in Canada.
(08:58):
But what what skills do youfind that your material can
help?
Because we always hear this ineducation that we're we're we're
we're teaching our kids for anun you know certain future.
Like what is their future?
Who knows?
What companies will exist, whatjobs will exist.
Well, but one of the thingsthat we felt like in our mindset
(09:19):
here at Learn and and what wepush with our PD and our
development is that if we canget them thinking and get them
problem solving andcollaborating and build their
resilience, that in the end, allthe continent content in the
world, you can't uh you can'treplace that, that those soft
skills, what employers arelooking for.
(09:41):
How do you guys approach whereI know that you're you started
as a content company withtextbooks, but how are you
shifting a little bit so thatthat you're getting kids to also
develop themselves and how tohave these soft skills that are
so sought after right now?
Steve Brown (10:00):
It's I mean, it's probably never been more true
than than it is today when youlook at the advent of AI and
what's going on.
But my my personal belief isthat the fundamentals of
numeracy and literacy arebecause ultimately, no matter
what problem solving you'regonna do or what creativity
you're gonna garner, you do needthose skills.
(10:21):
So I I do genuinely believe inthat.
But my view is one that I'vebeen on record of saying before
is one of leadership.
So I think if you can createequity and equality in
education, the absence of equityand equality, you could be
leading, leaving the leader ofthe free world behind because of
social economics or religion orwhatever geography.
(10:44):
And I think if we can trainleaders that have the skill sets
of numeracy and literacy andalso have the ability to
understand that there isn't aright or a wrong million
difference, so you have societalunderstanding and empathy, then
you can you can create it.
You can create a future thatdoesn't exist today.
(11:07):
And I'd like to be able, ifthere's one legacy I'd love to
leave behind, it's to leavestudents behind with the ability
to debate.
Often, no, if you take thedinner table, you know, when
you're my age at least, youknow, it was like be seen and
not heard, and you don'tquestion your elders and all of
those things.
You know, I'm I'm an old guy,but but sometimes there's
(11:29):
bigotry around the table.
And that can that came fromeducation.
If you you take, you know, whatwas believed to be correct or
what was believed to be history,whether it be right or wrong,
we're teaching kids today, uhparticularly in Canada and in
other parts of the world, thatparts of the history of this
country are not particularlysomething to be proud of.
(11:52):
But their parents may have beentold that residential schools
or whatever it may be, there'sthere's a various, you know,
different nuances to that, wasgood or right.
Or, you know, religion was goodor right.
And I'd like kids to be able todebate their parents, and then
you're talking about reverseeducation.
And that's real leadership.
(12:12):
You don't being a leader isn'tabout gaining a position.
You're only a leader when youhave the ability to change
people's direction for the good,and you're only a leader when
you're followed.
So if we can do that, myultimate measure when I look
back after I'm retired will bethe legacy that we've left with
Edwin and what we've doneshaping the future of Nelson for
(12:35):
the next hundred years, themeasure is going to be GDP.
Yeah.
And if you can create greatleaders and thought leaders and
visionaries and creativeleaders, you'll drive the GDP of
this nation up.
And ultimately, that's themeasure of everything.
So I think that if you canengage kids and let them see
(12:56):
that questioning isn't rude oror controversial, but it's about
trying to find the answer to aquestion that isn't asked yet,
then we're going to create abetter future for this
generation.
Chris Colley (13:10):
I love that.
You know, when I when I saw youtalk, um, we first met at the
AI summit and you did a keynotethere, which I found
fascinating.
And I and it's something thatyou just mentioned that I
couldn't stop thinking about wasthe GDP point that you made.
And thinking that long termdown the road as a measurement
that that it might not changewithin the next year or two.
(13:33):
But if we have that long termwhere we're looking at the D the
GDP of our country, it reallystarts to make it real as to
what we can actually do.
Steve Brown (13:45):
Right.
If you think short term, you'llachieve short term.
You know, in my view, inleadership, I've been in three
industries.
I've been a CEO of GlobalBusinesses now for 30 years.
My job isn't about the fieldI'm studying.
My job's the next field and thenext field and the next field.
Your success as a CEO or as aleader is about the people that
(14:06):
you bring up, the careerdevelopment, the leaders of the
future, and creating thatjourney to the destination.
So, like I said, if you thinkshort term, you'll achieve
short-term goals.
Right, great.
If you think long term, you canactually change society.
You can change a multinationalcompany, you can change a sector
because you laid out a vision.
(14:28):
And when people believe in thatvision, when you're gone, the
destination's still the same.
So you've got to have a degreeof the ability to embrace
discomfort.
You know, there's no there's nofailure, there's a there's a
right and there's a learning.
You just don't take your eyeoff the prize, and when people
believe, you create evangelists,and long after I'm gone,
(14:50):
they'll still be going the samedirection.
Chris Colley (14:52):
Right.
Love that.
And what do you do with thosenaysayers?
Like in every system, there aresome that the ones that just
are like, no, no, we've beendoing this this way for a long
time.
There's a reason for it, youknow.
Like, how do you get becauseoftentimes they can off-rail
things, you know, because theyhave a stronger voice, or you
know, their opinions are thoughtto be more important because
(15:15):
they've been there longer orwhatever it might be.
How do you counter that?
Or how do you address peoplethat have these concerns about
moving forward and change?
Steve Brown (15:26):
I I'm trying to avoid all major eye on this.
You you've got to haveself-belief to create the
destination.
You either change the mindsetor change the person.
It's pretty binary.
And it doesn't mean they're notgood people, but if they can't
get on board with the new way,then you've got to change the
person.
(15:46):
Normally, when you have someonewho is not a believer and
doesn't believe in thedirection, when you change them
and you change their mindset byshowing them, they end up being
the best evangelists becausethey weren't believers at the
beginning.
They didn't just fall in linebecause it was going to be
easier for the career.
But they normally are the oneswho are the big stalwarts.
(16:09):
But some you can't.
Some think that some peoplethink they know better.
And with every decision, Ialways tell everybody one of us
is right, one of us is wrong.
Time will tell.
Of them still here.
And, you know, we used todeliver content in paper, print,
and bind in textbooks.
Everybody thought we were atextbook company.
We weren't.
(16:29):
We were a content company, wewere a learning company.
We never owned a paper mill.
So why are you in the paradigmof the textbook?
The only thing that changed isthe delivery mechanism.
So the second called the fivewhys, which is if you ask why
five times, you normally end upat the root cause or the root
(16:50):
problem or the root solution.
So don't just take the firstwhy.
Like we're a content company,why?
Because we've been in educationover a century.
Why?
And eventually you get down tothe nucleus of what's really
important.
But there's people who gottahave some self-belief, a bit of
doggedness.
You've got to have the you'vegot to have a sprinkling of
(17:12):
humble arrogance.
And if you don't believe in ityourself, who else is gonna
believe in you?
Chris Colley (17:17):
Totally.
I love that.
Yeah, absolutely.
And and that's in in a way thathelps get more than not enough
to you know see that vision downthe road and where you're
aiming for.
I I'm drawing the parallelsbetween organizations and school
boards.
And they I mean they justthey're very similar in in
(17:40):
approaches.
Trying to moment, you know,change cultures in a school is
similar to changing a culture inan organization where you're
you have this vision, you'retrying to bring them to it.
What do you think the the dawnof AI is is is gonna have an
effect on?
I mean, it's a tipping pointagain, right?
Like printing press, internet,you know, like there are these
(18:03):
moments in time that shifted theway we have to start to adjust.
I think AI is one of thosewhere it's a tool that's very
powerful.
How do you guys approach it atNelson?
Like, how are you leveragingthe power of it at the same time
recognizing that educationmoves slowly and this moves so
(18:23):
quickly?
Like balancing those two, likeit's I think it's every seven
months AI turns over now, right?
It's such an accelerated pace.
I mean, teachers maybe not asquick seven months of turning
over.
How do you address that, thespeed of AI versus you know,
addressing your clientele andwhere they're at?
(18:44):
And how do you kind of navigatethat balancing act?
Steve Brown (18:48):
I think that you know, you start off at 100,000
feet.
You first of all, anybody who'sdenying AI is real is is you
know, they're they're kiddingthemselves.
It's not something that's gonnago back.
But I look at AI as a tool, notas a product.
I think that's the first forkin the road.
(19:08):
That's the first point ofdifferentiation.
People who look at AI as aproduct, I feel are gonna cause
a lot of problems in education.
You know, that you've got someboards now who are just saying
to AI, a generative engine, giveme a lesson plan of X.
And the misinformation that'scoming out of that is hugely
problematic.
We talked about creating asociety of betterment and of
(19:29):
understanding and of empathy.
Well, the biases and thehallucinations coming out of AI
when you don't use a safesandbox are problematic.
We use AI and have been.
We've got a tremendouslytalented tech team.
They've been using AI incontent development for a long
time.
But it's where that contentcomes from that's important.
So we did something that I'mnot sure anybody else has ever
(19:50):
done.
We built our own large languagemodel.
So to put it in a way for thelisteners and viewers to
understand, we basically tookall the content we had and shook
the words off the pages into anLLM, knowing that that's all of
our material and we can changeit and update it and alter it to
new curriculum and so forth.
But everything in there hasbeen tried true and vetted, it's
(20:13):
been through a rigorouseditorial process, and then we
add to it and change it.
Well, when you just go out intothe wild, wild west of public
LLMs, you know, if if you don'task the question right, you get
a lot of misinformation, andthen you ask for citation, and
it makes up the citation tounderline why it's true.
I think that if we we look atit from a content development
(20:36):
standpoint to drive speed andagility, but ultimately when
when you have a reputation likeNelson, you can't dilute that
with misinformation.
People know when they getsomething from Nelson that it's
been through a rigorous process.
And they can it's true and theycan believe in it and they can
feel comfortable with it.
So we don't we we're nevergonna give that away.
(20:58):
And you know, ultimately, anycompany is as strong as its
people, but you've got to haveguardrails, you've got to have
the ability to ensure thatreputationally you won't dilute
what it took over a century tobuild, but now we can do it
quicker.
Now we take the content withinEdwin and we're we're building
(21:20):
out assessment by takingindividual learning journeys.
And I've been hearing aboutpersonalized learning journeys
for the nine years I've been ineducation.
We're just seeing it now.
We're just seeing before it wasa mythical beast.
I think now it's slowly rearingits head.
So I think we're approachingideology to to delivery which
(21:45):
has taken a decade.
I I think that there are twothere are two things in life.
And I I say this, my kids aregrown now, but when you're
making a decision, a lifedecision or a change decision or
a sector decision, there arethere are two the first question
is which is important,direction or speed?
Sometimes it's speed andsometimes it's direction.
(22:07):
If you're gonna get toValhalla, it doesn't really
matter how long it's gonna take,you take direction.
But if you've got a burningplatform, you've got to go with
speed.
So you've got to choose whichone.
And, you know, people choosecorrectly or incorrectly.
Proud of what my team aredoing, they all believe out.
I was literally before we goton this, I was just walking
(22:28):
around our office, and the theexcitement, the belief is
palpable, you know.
After around the coffee pot,you know, people stood around.
I just had a conversation withone of our editors talking about
football.
I'm a huge soccer fan.
And my team who won everythinglast year are doing terrible
this year, Liverpool.
It's okay, whatever.
(22:50):
It is what it is.
But the the camaraderie, thebelief, the trust in each other
is akin to that of you know,people on the high wire or the
trapeze.
I know that my team, whether itbe in sales or marketing or
technology or contentdevelopment, know that when they
let go of that trapeze, the guyon the other trapeze is going
(23:12):
to be there to catch them.
And when you've built that,you've created an immovable
object and an unstoppable force.
And that's what teamwork'sabout.
Chris Colley (23:21):
Yeah.
I love that though.
That as you walk through, youfeel that that energy.
I mean, that's you know, it'sit's hard to describe, but it's
you know what is happening, youknow.
Steve Brown (23:32):
You know, people in the education sector know that
we're a fun shot.
You know, a lot of people inour sector feel like every day
is another day at the saltnines.
It's like, oh my goodness, themarket this, the market that.
And we, you know, we walkthrough, you know, whatever
event it may be, whether it's,you know, op solar or cass or
(23:54):
whatever the major education, wehave a lot of fun.
We work, we work very, veryhard, but we enjoy what we're
doing because we're making adifference.
And I always say to everybody,the only thing you need to
promise me is that you'll be thebest Chris you can be every
day, because I'll be the bestSteve Brown I can be every day,
and all I expect is the same foryou.
(24:16):
And if you can do that, you cancreate brilliance.
Chris Colley (24:19):
Yeah, totally.
I love that.
Such a good I love that visionthat you're laying out.
And speaking of vision, kind ofto wrap things, Steve's again,
thanks so much for this.
Like, I'm gonna be thinkingabout this conversation for a
while to come, where you've justopened a few doors and exposed
some thoughts that I didn'thave, which I really appreciate.
(24:42):
But your long term, if you'relooking, you know, when you
first came and you had thatlong-term five, eight-year
vision.
What is that now after you'vebeen there for a while and and
keeping that vision going ofthings that you could tell us
about anyway?
What does that vision look likefor you, Steve, down, you know,
another five to eight yearsdown the road?
Steve Brown (25:03):
The the vision for me is that every educational
community in every country inthe world will be learning on
Edwin or something like Edwin,because there will be people who
are going to try and copy us tomake to make education fun
again.
To have kids who enjoylearning.
I I love learning.
I love everything I do.
(25:24):
I've got a couple of realpassions in my life and I love
learning.
I mean, I you know, I studiedwine and I'm still learning
every day, and it's not abouthow I tell you.
So if you actually enjoylearning, I look at it and I
look at the educationallandscape globally and think,
you know, if we can get teachingto again be fun, because let's
(25:47):
face it, teachers went into theteaching profession it for a
noble reason.
And now we've got teachershortages because they're not
enjoying it.
Because so many things that arebeing thrust upon them have got
nothing to do with teaching orlearning.
So give teachers the tools tosave them time and let them have
fun.
Because there's nothing likebeing in a classroom looking at
a teacher who's having a greatday.
Because that kid then has agreat day.
(26:09):
And they go home and they say,Well, I had a great day at
school today.
Look what I learned.
So to create an atmosphere, acommunity, an environment of
thirst for knowledge.
If we can achieve that, then wecan change the way from
Socratic methodologies to uh youknow a 21st century method of
(26:30):
learning, then we'll look back.
And no one's gonna say SteveBrown, it I don't care about
that.
I I honestly like give a damn.
I don't care about that.
What I care about is when Ilook back on it thinking I made
a difference.
And if you if you have thatpassion and your personal goal
is to make a difference, whetherit be professionally, whether
(26:52):
it be personally, whether it beas a partner, a husband, a
father, then if you leave, youknow, if you leave a legacy of
difference, we're gonna havethat heaven spiral and not the
death spiral that society's beenon for a while.
Chris Colley (27:05):
Amen.
Amen, man.
Steve, this has been absolutelywonderful.
Thanks so much for your timeand your thoughtful reflections
on education and where we're atand where we're going.
I feel more optimistic talkingwith you.
And I think disruption in theend really spurs on this
excitement of, you know, we'renot done yet, and we have our
(27:27):
eye on the prize, and that's ourkids and their future.
So thanks for looking at thatbig picture and also giving us
some really concrete, beautifulexamples.
I really appreciate it.
Steve Brown (27:38):
My apologies, Chris, it was great to chat.
Welcome back everyone to another episode of
ShiftED Podcast coming to you.
Today I'm I'm have theprivilege of having Steve Brown,
uh CEO of Nelson Education,coming and uh chatting with us,
sharing s some of his evolutionwith the uh with his company and
also where he thinks the futureof all of this uh new
(00:37):
technology AI is gonna bring us.
Steve, thanks so much forhopping on here and and joining
us for a chat about educationand kind of looking at the big
picture a little bit today.
Steve Brown (00:49):
My pleasure, Chris.
Happy to be here.
Chris Colley (00:52):
So, Steve, when you were first like I've been
doing a little bit of deepdiving on on kind of your
journey in education so far.
And I mean, when you werebrought into Nelson to lead and
kind of maybe shift thedirection a little bit, what was
the mindset that you werebringing in?
Because I know that you've hadleadership roles before in other
(01:14):
organizations.
What was that mindset that youfelt necessary that had to come
with you when you were gonna tryto shift a 140-year-old company
into a little bit of adifferent direction or a
different approach that theywere gonna have to get their
heads around?
How does how does a leaderapproach that challenge?
Steve Brown (01:33):
You know, it's a great question.
And even that that that commentof it's a great question is one
of the things I hate becauseeverybody's sort of leaked to
that.
But I I truly mean it is agreat question.
You know, first of all, I camefrom outside the industry.
And when I was approached totake over CEO of Nelson, for the
(01:54):
first three conversations Ihad, the first conversation was
very short.
Steve, we're looking for a newCEO.
We'd like someone to, you know,lead the company through
change.
We've been around well over acentury.
My act was, yeah, notinterested.
Thank you.
I don't know anything about theeducation space.
I I applaud the you know, theresilience of the board.
(02:15):
They came back again.
We had some discussion.
And then the third time theycame back, I'm like, look, and
by which time they'd already gotan executive search out with
Spencer Stewart, one of thelargest search companies in the
world.
And I sat down with a couple ofmembers of our board, the
chairman at the time, and I satdown and I said, Look, I'm happy
to sign an NDA.
(02:36):
I'd really like to have a lookat the following and gave them a
laundry list.
I wanted to do a deep dive onthe company.
And what I saw was a great bigbowl of vanilla.
I mean, really nice vanilla,well, vanilla, but it was
vanilla.
And then we continued to talk,and I'm like, look, if I'm gonna
come, these are kind of mynon-negotiables.
I don't like asking forpermission.
(02:58):
I think that slows downmomentum.
And I said, I want to be ableto change whoever I want in the
management team because frankly,if they had the ability to make
and drive that change, theyprobably would have done it
already.
So that means I'm I likely willneed a new executive team.
So when I came in, I looked atit.
I actually agreed to join inlate March, but I didn't join
(03:22):
until September.
So I'd been asking forinformation and I continued to
ask for information during thattime.
And the one thing really stuckout to me, and that was the
relevance of a textbook.
You know, I had two high schoolage kids at that point.
They were being taught onNelson materials.
But every other aspect of theline, if you if you sort of
(03:44):
divorce education from what itis at its core to a
habitualization, relevance isreally important.
And a lot of people hate itwhen I say this, but I I figured
at that point that learning orteaching or education was no
(04:05):
different than golf or tennis orcooking.
If you do it, you know, twice ayear, you're not going to be
very good at it.
If you do it every day, you getbetter at it, and the better
you get at it, the more engagedyou are, and you know, then
you've got what I call theheaven spiral of continued
improvement rather than thedeath spiral spiral of what in
(04:27):
education is disengagement.
It was really about drivingrelevance, and that was by
focus, and quite frankly,everybody thought I was crazy.
Not only inside Nelson, butinside the empathy people is
this guy who knows nothing abouteducation who thinks he's gonna
change everything.
Chris Colley (04:45):
Right.
And I mean, I guess that kindof disruption in the system is
what uh can push forward anykind of change.
Because I mean, I was kind ofthinking about education, uh you
know, like the public educationversus you know company uh
organizations, but they're stillin the same kind of they feel
still feel the same pressures ofrelevancy and staying up to
(05:09):
date.
But I've noticed in educationit's this change is uh, I mean,
probably you have as well, isslow to happen.
And it's it's hard to to notonly get a school board to start
moving in one direction, but uhuh you know, a multinational
organization getting them tomove in the same direction.
I mean, what a challenge, but Iguess it is through that
(05:32):
disruption.
Could you talk to that a littlebit more about the positive
aspects of when you disruptsomething?
Steve Brown (05:40):
So my view was that if we didn't disrupt ourselves,
somebody else would disrupt thespace.
And if if you look atcataclysmic change and you look
at, you know, a massive paradigmshift in disruption in any
sector, normally the disruptioncomes from outside.
I knew we had the knowledge andwe had the relationships.
(06:03):
So I thought if we didn'tdisrupt ourselves, somebody else
would come and disrupt us, andpretty much that would be the
end of Nelson.
And so I decided we'd go on ajourney of self-disruption, and
it took a lot to get the team onboard and the majority, like
there's nobody on my team, onthe executive team, who was
there when I started.
(06:24):
And it wasn't because theyweren't great people, because
they were tremendous people, buttheir skill sets were backward
looking, not forward-looking.
And if they couldn't quite getthe emotional journey to build
the wherewithal to say the waywe've been doing it wasn't
wrong, but it isn't right forthe future.
So we decided to self-disrupt.
(06:47):
And I think we got itabsolutely right when I look at
our Edwin platform today, whichis the you know the largest
platform in education in Canadaand is also used now in 11 other
countries around the world.
We got it right.
So I'm I'm I'm proud of that.
You know, it was my idea, andit was one platform with all
your learning all in one place,a safe sandbox of learning,
(07:09):
curriculum aligned.
What I absolutely got wrong wasthe speed.
I thought in what we'veachieved in nine years, I'd
achieve in five.
Now, true enough, there was athere was a global pandemic in
there.
But you're right, educationmoves slowly.
And you know it's it is it'sstarting to accelerate now.
(07:35):
There's still resistors inthere, depending on which
provinces you look at.
But generally, everybody'srealizing education has to
change, teaching practice has tochange, the pedagogical
alignment still has to be there,it has to be tried and trusted,
it has to be saved.
But the methodology ofdelivery, I knew had to change
(07:56):
to be relevant to the studentand to give teachers back the
one thing that they so sorelyneed, which is time.
I love that.
Chris Colley (08:05):
I love that.
Steve Brown (08:05):
So by doing that, people are now starting to
believe, and it was it was along journey, but it it took a
lot of stubbornness.
It took the belief that if yougot it right, eventually
everybody would come around, andwe're well on that journey now.
But changing a company orchanging a market sector is the
same.
You've got to choose thedestination, not the route,
(08:28):
because the route will change.
You know, you're gonna turnleft, you're gonna turn right,
but if you never take your eyeoff the prize, which is the
ultimate destination, you canachieve anything.
Chris Colley (08:38):
I love that.
That's amazing.
And uh Steve, when you're whenyou're kind of like you're
making me think of all thesethings now, but just talking
about like what we need our kidsto have when they're leaving,
you know, uh their K-11 or K-12,depending on provinces again,
because education's allprovincial here in Canada.
(08:58):
But what what skills do youfind that your material can
help?
Because we always hear this ineducation that we're we're we're
we're teaching our kids for anun you know certain future.
Like what is their future?
Who knows?
What companies will exist, whatjobs will exist.
Well, but one of the thingsthat we felt like in our mindset
(09:19):
here at Learn and and what wepush with our PD and our
development is that if we canget them thinking and get them
problem solving andcollaborating and build their
resilience, that in the end, allthe continent content in the
world, you can't uh you can'treplace that, that those soft
skills, what employers arelooking for.
(09:41):
How do you guys approach whereI know that you're you started
as a content company withtextbooks, but how are you
shifting a little bit so thatthat you're getting kids to also
develop themselves and how tohave these soft skills that are
so sought after right now?
Steve Brown (10:00):
It's I mean, it's probably never been more true
than than it is today when youlook at the advent of AI and
what's going on.
But my my personal belief isthat the fundamentals of
numeracy and literacy arebecause ultimately, no matter
what problem solving you'regonna do or what creativity
you're gonna garner, you do needthose skills.
(10:21):
So I I do genuinely believe inthat.
But my view is one that I'vebeen on record of saying before
is one of leadership.
So I think if you can createequity and equality in
education, the absence of equityand equality, you could be
leading, leaving the leader ofthe free world behind because of
social economics or religion orwhatever geography.
(10:44):
And I think if we can trainleaders that have the skill sets
of numeracy and literacy andalso have the ability to
understand that there isn't aright or a wrong million
difference, so you have societalunderstanding and empathy, then
you can you can create it.
You can create a future thatdoesn't exist today.
(11:07):
And I'd like to be able, ifthere's one legacy I'd love to
leave behind, it's to leavestudents behind with the ability
to debate.
Often, no, if you take thedinner table, you know, when
you're my age at least, youknow, it was like be seen and
not heard, and you don'tquestion your elders and all of
those things.
You know, I'm I'm an old guy,but but sometimes there's
(11:29):
bigotry around the table.
And that can that came fromeducation.
If you you take, you know, whatwas believed to be correct or
what was believed to be history,whether it be right or wrong,
we're teaching kids today, uhparticularly in Canada and in
other parts of the world, thatparts of the history of this
country are not particularlysomething to be proud of.
(11:52):
But their parents may have beentold that residential schools
or whatever it may be, there'sthere's a various, you know,
different nuances to that, wasgood or right.
Or, you know, religion was goodor right.
And I'd like kids to be able todebate their parents, and then
you're talking about reverseeducation.
And that's real leadership.
(12:12):
You don't being a leader isn'tabout gaining a position.
You're only a leader when youhave the ability to change
people's direction for the good,and you're only a leader when
you're followed.
So if we can do that, myultimate measure when I look
back after I'm retired will bethe legacy that we've left with
Edwin and what we've doneshaping the future of Nelson for
(12:35):
the next hundred years, themeasure is going to be GDP.
Yeah.
And if you can create greatleaders and thought leaders and
visionaries and creativeleaders, you'll drive the GDP of
this nation up.
And ultimately, that's themeasure of everything.
So I think that if you canengage kids and let them see
(12:56):
that questioning isn't rude oror controversial, but it's about
trying to find the answer to aquestion that isn't asked yet,
then we're going to create abetter future for this
generation.
Chris Colley (13:10):
I love that.
You know, when I when I saw youtalk, um, we first met at the
AI summit and you did a keynotethere, which I found
fascinating.
And I and it's something thatyou just mentioned that I
couldn't stop thinking about wasthe GDP point that you made.
And thinking that long termdown the road as a measurement
that that it might not changewithin the next year or two.
(13:33):
But if we have that long termwhere we're looking at the D the
GDP of our country, it reallystarts to make it real as to
what we can actually do.
Steve Brown (13:45):
Right.
If you think short term, you'llachieve short term.
You know, in my view, inleadership, I've been in three
industries.
I've been a CEO of GlobalBusinesses now for 30 years.
My job isn't about the fieldI'm studying.
My job's the next field and thenext field and the next field.
Your success as a CEO or as aleader is about the people that
(14:06):
you bring up, the careerdevelopment, the leaders of the
future, and creating thatjourney to the destination.
So, like I said, if you thinkshort term, you'll achieve
short-term goals.
Right, great.
If you think long term, you canactually change society.
You can change a multinationalcompany, you can change a sector
because you laid out a vision.
(14:28):
And when people believe in thatvision, when you're gone, the
destination's still the same.
So you've got to have a degreeof the ability to embrace
discomfort.
You know, there's no there's nofailure, there's a there's a
right and there's a learning.
You just don't take your eyeoff the prize, and when people
believe, you create evangelists,and long after I'm gone,
(14:50):
they'll still be going the samedirection.
Chris Colley (14:52):
Right.
Love that.
And what do you do with thosenaysayers?
Like in every system, there aresome that the ones that just
are like, no, no, we've beendoing this this way for a long
time.
There's a reason for it, youknow.
Like, how do you get becauseoftentimes they can off-rail
things, you know, because theyhave a stronger voice, or you
know, their opinions are thoughtto be more important because
(15:15):
they've been there longer orwhatever it might be.
How do you counter that?
Or how do you address peoplethat have these concerns about
moving forward and change?
Steve Brown (15:26):
I I'm trying to avoid all major eye on this.
You you've got to haveself-belief to create the
destination.
You either change the mindsetor change the person.
It's pretty binary.
And it doesn't mean they're notgood people, but if they can't
get on board with the new way,then you've got to change the
person.
(15:46):
Normally, when you have someonewho is not a believer and
doesn't believe in thedirection, when you change them
and you change their mindset byshowing them, they end up being
the best evangelists becausethey weren't believers at the
beginning.
They didn't just fall in linebecause it was going to be
easier for the career.
But they normally are the oneswho are the big stalwarts.
(16:09):
But some you can't.
Some think that some peoplethink they know better.
And with every decision, Ialways tell everybody one of us
is right, one of us is wrong.
Time will tell.
Of them still here.
And, you know, we used todeliver content in paper, print,
and bind in textbooks.
Everybody thought we were atextbook company.
We weren't.
(16:29):
We were a content company, wewere a learning company.
We never owned a paper mill.
So why are you in the paradigmof the textbook?
The only thing that changed isthe delivery mechanism.
So the second called the fivewhys, which is if you ask why
five times, you normally end upat the root cause or the root
(16:50):
problem or the root solution.
So don't just take the firstwhy.
Like we're a content company,why?
Because we've been in educationover a century.
Why?
And eventually you get down tothe nucleus of what's really
important.
But there's people who gottahave some self-belief, a bit of
doggedness.
You've got to have the you'vegot to have a sprinkling of
(17:12):
humble arrogance.
And if you don't believe in ityourself, who else is gonna
believe in you?
Chris Colley (17:17):
Totally.
I love that.
Yeah, absolutely.
And and that's in in a way thathelps get more than not enough
to you know see that vision downthe road and where you're
aiming for.
I I'm drawing the parallelsbetween organizations and school
boards.
And they I mean they justthey're very similar in in
(17:40):
approaches.
Trying to moment, you know,change cultures in a school is
similar to changing a culture inan organization where you're
you have this vision, you'retrying to bring them to it.
What do you think the the dawnof AI is is is gonna have an
effect on?
I mean, it's a tipping pointagain, right?
Like printing press, internet,you know, like there are these
(18:03):
moments in time that shifted theway we have to start to adjust.
I think AI is one of thosewhere it's a tool that's very
powerful.
How do you guys approach it atNelson?
Like, how are you leveragingthe power of it at the same time
recognizing that educationmoves slowly and this moves so
(18:23):
quickly?
Like balancing those two, likeit's I think it's every seven
months AI turns over now, right?
It's such an accelerated pace.
I mean, teachers maybe not asquick seven months of turning
over.
How do you address that, thespeed of AI versus you know,
addressing your clientele andwhere they're at?
(18:44):
And how do you kind of navigatethat balancing act?
Steve Brown (18:48):
I think that you know, you start off at 100,000
feet.
You first of all, anybody who'sdenying AI is real is is you
know, they're they're kiddingthemselves.
It's not something that's gonnago back.
But I look at AI as a tool, notas a product.
I think that's the first forkin the road.
(19:08):
That's the first point ofdifferentiation.
People who look at AI as aproduct, I feel are gonna cause
a lot of problems in education.
You know, that you've got someboards now who are just saying
to AI, a generative engine, giveme a lesson plan of X.
And the misinformation that'scoming out of that is hugely
problematic.
We talked about creating asociety of betterment and of
(19:29):
understanding and of empathy.
Well, the biases and thehallucinations coming out of AI
when you don't use a safesandbox are problematic.
We use AI and have been.
We've got a tremendouslytalented tech team.
They've been using AI incontent development for a long
time.
But it's where that contentcomes from that's important.
So we did something that I'mnot sure anybody else has ever
(19:50):
done.
We built our own large languagemodel.
So to put it in a way for thelisteners and viewers to
understand, we basically tookall the content we had and shook
the words off the pages into anLLM, knowing that that's all of
our material and we can changeit and update it and alter it to
new curriculum and so forth.
But everything in there hasbeen tried true and vetted, it's
(20:13):
been through a rigorouseditorial process, and then we
add to it and change it.
Well, when you just go out intothe wild, wild west of public
LLMs, you know, if if you don'task the question right, you get
a lot of misinformation, andthen you ask for citation, and
it makes up the citation tounderline why it's true.
I think that if we we look atit from a content development
(20:36):
standpoint to drive speed andagility, but ultimately when
when you have a reputation likeNelson, you can't dilute that
with misinformation.
People know when they getsomething from Nelson that it's
been through a rigorous process.
And they can it's true and theycan believe in it and they can
feel comfortable with it.
So we don't we we're nevergonna give that away.
(20:58):
And you know, ultimately, anycompany is as strong as its
people, but you've got to haveguardrails, you've got to have
the ability to ensure thatreputationally you won't dilute
what it took over a century tobuild, but now we can do it
quicker.
Now we take the content withinEdwin and we're we're building
(21:20):
out assessment by takingindividual learning journeys.
And I've been hearing aboutpersonalized learning journeys
for the nine years I've been ineducation.
We're just seeing it now.
We're just seeing before it wasa mythical beast.
I think now it's slowly rearingits head.
So I think we're approachingideology to to delivery which
(21:45):
has taken a decade.
I I think that there are twothere are two things in life.
And I I say this, my kids aregrown now, but when you're
making a decision, a lifedecision or a change decision or
a sector decision, there arethere are two the first question
is which is important,direction or speed?
Sometimes it's speed andsometimes it's direction.
(22:07):
If you're gonna get toValhalla, it doesn't really
matter how long it's gonna take,you take direction.
But if you've got a burningplatform, you've got to go with
speed.
So you've got to choose whichone.
And, you know, people choosecorrectly or incorrectly.
Proud of what my team aredoing, they all believe out.
I was literally before we goton this, I was just walking
(22:28):
around our office, and the theexcitement, the belief is
palpable, you know.
After around the coffee pot,you know, people stood around.
I just had a conversation withone of our editors talking about
football.
I'm a huge soccer fan.
And my team who won everythinglast year are doing terrible
this year, Liverpool.
It's okay, whatever.
(22:50):
It is what it is.
But the the camaraderie, thebelief, the trust in each other
is akin to that of you know,people on the high wire or the
trapeze.
I know that my team, whether itbe in sales or marketing or
technology or contentdevelopment, know that when they
let go of that trapeze, the guyon the other trapeze is going
(23:12):
to be there to catch them.
And when you've built that,you've created an immovable
object and an unstoppable force.
And that's what teamwork'sabout.
Chris Colley (23:21):
Yeah.
I love that though.
That as you walk through, youfeel that that energy.
I mean, that's you know, it'sit's hard to describe, but it's
you know what is happening, youknow.
Steve Brown (23:32):
You know, people in the education sector know that
we're a fun shot.
You know, a lot of people inour sector feel like every day
is another day at the saltnines.
It's like, oh my goodness, themarket this, the market that.
And we, you know, we walkthrough, you know, whatever
event it may be, whether it's,you know, op solar or cass or
(23:54):
whatever the major education, wehave a lot of fun.
We work, we work very, veryhard, but we enjoy what we're
doing because we're making adifference.
And I always say to everybody,the only thing you need to
promise me is that you'll be thebest Chris you can be every
day, because I'll be the bestSteve Brown I can be every day,
and all I expect is the same foryou.
(24:16):
And if you can do that, you cancreate brilliance.
Chris Colley (24:19):
Yeah, totally.
I love that.
Such a good I love that visionthat you're laying out.
And speaking of vision, kind ofto wrap things, Steve's again,
thanks so much for this.
Like, I'm gonna be thinkingabout this conversation for a
while to come, where you've justopened a few doors and exposed
some thoughts that I didn'thave, which I really appreciate.
(24:42):
But your long term, if you'relooking, you know, when you
first came and you had thatlong-term five, eight-year
vision.
What is that now after you'vebeen there for a while and and
keeping that vision going ofthings that you could tell us
about anyway?
What does that vision look likefor you, Steve, down, you know,
another five to eight yearsdown the road?
Steve Brown (25:03):
The the vision for me is that every educational
community in every country inthe world will be learning on
Edwin or something like Edwin,because there will be people who
are going to try and copy us tomake to make education fun
again.
To have kids who enjoylearning.
I I love learning.
I love everything I do.
(25:24):
I've got a couple of realpassions in my life and I love
learning.
I mean, I you know, I studiedwine and I'm still learning
every day, and it's not abouthow I tell you.
So if you actually enjoylearning, I look at it and I
look at the educationallandscape globally and think,
you know, if we can get teachingto again be fun, because let's
(25:47):
face it, teachers went into theteaching profession it for a
noble reason.
And now we've got teachershortages because they're not
enjoying it.
Because so many things that arebeing thrust upon them have got
nothing to do with teaching orlearning.
So give teachers the tools tosave them time and let them have
fun.
Because there's nothing likebeing in a classroom looking at
a teacher who's having a greatday.
Because that kid then has agreat day.
(26:09):
And they go home and they say,Well, I had a great day at
school today.
Look what I learned.
So to create an atmosphere, acommunity, an environment of
thirst for knowledge.
If we can achieve that, then wecan change the way from
Socratic methodologies to uh youknow a 21st century method of
(26:30):
learning, then we'll look back.
And no one's gonna say SteveBrown, it I don't care about
that.
I I honestly like give a damn.
I don't care about that.
What I care about is when Ilook back on it thinking I made
a difference.
And if you if you have thatpassion and your personal goal
is to make a difference, whetherit be professionally, whether
(26:52):
it be personally, whether it beas a partner, a husband, a
father, then if you leave, youknow, if you leave a legacy of
difference, we're gonna havethat heaven spiral and not the
death spiral that society's beenon for a while.
Chris Colley (27:05):
Amen.
Amen, man.
Steve, this has been absolutelywonderful.
Thanks so much for your timeand your thoughtful reflections
on education and where we're atand where we're going.
I feel more optimistic talkingwith you.
And I think disruption in theend really spurs on this
excitement of, you know, we'renot done yet, and we have our
(27:27):
eye on the prize, and that's ourkids and their future.
So thanks for looking at thatbig picture and also giving us
some really concrete, beautifulexamples.
I really appreciate it.
Steve Brown (27:38):
My apologies, Chris, it was great to chat.
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