2016 AdvancED Latin American Conference: Discover, Improve, and Succeed!

The annual AdvancED Latin American Conference was recently held in Atlanta. A total of 264 participants representing 27 countries across the Caribbean, Central America and South America were in attendance. The event was held from December 5-8 at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta, Georgia. This year’s attendance was the largest in the past four years.

The theme of the Latin American Conference 2016 was “Discover, Improve and Succeed.” The venue consisted of a variety of both Pre-Conference and Main conference Strand Sessions focused on the new AdvancED Performance Standards and Protocol to guide institutions through a personalized and meaningful continuous improvement experience. The AdvancED Latin American Conference also offered an opportunity for an array of exhibitors to provide valuable information on products and services to key leadership and decision makers within the Latin American education community. A total of 28 exhibitors were in attendance.

Conference Strand Sessions included presentations by both AdvancED staff, as well as school representatives from a variety of AdvancED schools from the Latin American region. In total, there were 54 sessions presented within this year’s conference program. These included, for the first time, several sessions in Spanish. Each day of the conference was opened with a Keynote presentation that was aligned with the conference theme, “Discover, Improve and Succeed.”

The Conference is jointly sponsored each year through the support of various educational organizations, including the Association of American Schools of South America, the Tri-Association of Schools (institutions within Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America), and the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Overseas Schools. All of the Executive Directors were in attendance as well as the Regional Educational Officer from the Office of Overseas Schools, Washington, D.C.

Senior Associates Ralph Jahr and David Cramer attended the conference which proved to be a great opportunity to connect Search Associates with schools and administrators in Central America, South America and the Caribbean.