About me
Kelly Harding
Educator | Green Schools Alliance Program Director |
Founder of Ripple Effect
Over the course of my career in education, one question has shaped my work more than any other: What does it mean to truly prepare young people for the future?
I spent the first ten years of my career teaching in classrooms across South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and Australia. Like most teachers, I’ve always taken the responsibility of teaching seriously — I wasn’t just responsible for teaching content; I responsible for helping shape young people’s confidence, capabilities, values and sense of what was possible for their lives.
But the more I paid attention to the world beyond the school gates, the more I realised something important: the world my students were entering was changing rapidly, and in many ways, the education system had not yet caught up. The curriculum, the structures, and sometimes even the goals of education were still shaped by the past more than by the future.
Schools cannot just prepare students for the world as it used to be — they must prepare students for the world as it is becoming.
Today’s students are entering a world defined by climate change, environmental pressures, technological disruption, and complex global systems. The risks and opportunities facing this generation are fundamentally different from those faced by previous generations — and education must evolve once again in response.
Schools have both an extraordinary opportunity and a responsibility: not only to educate students for exams and careers, but to prepare them to navigate, contribute to, innovate for, and lead in a rapidly changing world.
This is where my work sits.
In 2019, I combined my passions for education and sustainability by joining the Green Schools Alliance, an international nonprofit that develops and provides tools and programs that help schools lead in sustainability, education innovation, and future-focused learning. During my time there, I have worked alongside school leaders, sustainability coordinators, built environment experts, and educators across the United States and internationally, supporting schools to build comprehensive, whole-school sustainability programs.
Now based in Melbourne, I currently lead the START Program (Sustainability Tracking, Analytics & Roadmap Tool), the world’s first Whole School Sustainability benchmarking and planning tool. Through this work, I have helped schools assess where they are, identify opportunities, and build strategic, whole-school approaches to sustainability across campus operations, curriculum, culture, and community engagement.
My passion for sustainability and climate action was ignited by a deep dive into climate science, particularly the sobering reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (digestible summary here), and the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Reports, which distill the findings of thousands of climate scientists, researchers, academics, and business leaders worldwide. Exhaustive research makes it clear that the consequences of inaction—ranging from drought-induced food insecurity to the devastating impacts of extreme weather on supply-chains, economies and lives—are too dire to ignore. This urgency is not mine alone; it resonates across instutitions and society at large, from the Australian government and financial institutions to consumers and students, all of which recognize the necessity of adapting to the greatest challenge— and opportunity —of our time.
The need to adapt our systems is urgent, and schools have a unique role to play in this transition. Schools are where students spend the most time outside of home. It’s where they learn the norms and expectations that shape our communities, where they develop knowledge and skills necessary to problem-solve in the 21st century.
What happens in schools ripples far beyond their school walls. It ripples into the wider community as attitudes, behaviors, ideas and innovations.That’s why schools have both a profound opportunity and a responsibility to educate and empower their students to actively contribute to— and thrive in —a sustainable future.