About Joanne Pitman – System Leader | System Shaper
Chief Superintendent of Schools, Calgary Board of Education
Joanne Pitman is Chief Superintendent of Schools at the Calgary Board of Education (CBE), one of Canada’s largest public school districts, a role she has held since March 2024. Beginning her education career as a teacher, she progressed through school and district leadership positions with Grande Prairie Public School District, before serving as Assistant Superintendent of Universal Design & Learning in Medicine Hat and Superintendent of School Improvement at CBE. She holds a Master of Education in Educational Leadership from the University of Lethbridge. Her work has centred on building collaborative leadership capacity, using evidence to strengthen school and system improvement, and supporting student achievement, equity and wellbeing. As Chief Superintendent, she provides strategic and operational leadership across a large and growing public education system, with a focus on coherent decision-making, community engagement and sustainable improvement.
The courage to lead beyond the classroom
What has shaped your journey into education system leadership, and what led you to want to influence education beyond a single school or organisation?
As a classroom teacher, I understood that my classroom was a system and that a holistic view of my students was required to understand where I could have greatest impact. I had the privilege of working in schools and school districts that welcomed new ideas and where I was quickly able to gain insight into the impact of quality system decisions in creating both stability and possibility.
Being part of networks within whichever district I was working in as well as engaging in collaboration with teachers and leaders from other systems was also critical to making sure I didn’t rest on ‘certainty’ but was able to see the multiple factors and contexts that may influence the structures and processes that exist.
As system leaders we must be willing to say both yes and no. I have observed leaders who are more willing to say no, not because the request was impossible, but because it generated risk and disruption to an accepted way of doing things. There are absolutely times where the ability to say no is critical to strategic leadership. However, in the crush of decisions that can be brought forward, leaders must understand the assumptions and quick filtering that occur to generate a response. It is perhaps less about ‘yes’ and more about building a culture of agile, coherent decision-making focused on what is possible for the future of education.
Leading at scale, staying connected
Leading across an education system brings a different level of complexity and responsibility. What have you learned about leading at scale while remaining connected to the people and communities your decisions ultimately affect?
The Calgary Board of Education has 252 schools and over 142,000 students. Our city is close to reaching a population of 2 million. This requires us to be clear around the purpose and intent of system decisions and set structures and processes aligned to achieving outcomes at every level. Clarity of shared purpose and a willingness to hold a degree of curiosity into the real and lived experiences impacting success or creating challenge is key. Finding a balance of listening to individual stories, while acknowledging that single stories cannot drive system decision-making is a constant act of discipline.
Ensuring structures and processes that invite voice and experience to be shared are also integral. Our engagement team and focus on student voice drive a design of connection, outreach and engagement across multiple levels of leadership. The value of voice and, indeed taking action, in key areas that show up as trending must exist beyond only one position or role.
Creating the conditions for meaningful change
What do you believe is one of the greatest challenges facing education systems today, and where do you see the greatest opportunity to create meaningful change?
There are many specific challenges one could list, each with the potential to have broad-reaching impact on the trajectory of student learning. However, as I contemplate system leadership, the greatest challenge is maintaining focus and maintaining courage to establish the conditions to make a material difference on student achievement and well-being over time. The pressure to make simplistic purchases of programs or lure of responding to complex challenges with a defensive posture where one overpromises in public, but the lived realities in classrooms are entirely disconnected are real.
Clarity of shared outcomes is critical to spending time, expertise, and financial resources on meaningful change. The current public discourse on AI, the world of work and global, national, and local relationships create the conditions for system education leaders to engage in the core values of learning and relationships aligned to student agency, voice, and purpose.
Making principled decisions amid complexity
System leadership often requires balancing different priorities, perspectives and stakeholder expectations. How do you approach making difficult decisions when there may not be one clear or universally supported answer?
Clarity of values that guide all decision-making is integral to balancing the range of perspectives and expectations. I, along with my executive team, need to ensure that we are consistently returning to the shared values that guide our work and the context within which decisions are made. Once values are clear, then possible immediate, medium- and long-term outcomes must be tested and considered. Additionally, once this careful work is done, measured and intentional communication planning is central to generating trust and understanding.
The capabilities of future system leaders
What does effective system leadership look like to you, and what capabilities do you believe the next generation of education system leaders will need?
Effective system leadership looks like connected, visionary, and focused actions and decisions that truly honour the public institution being served. It requires leaders to clearly articulate values, demonstrate aligned actions, and a discipline and commitment to not chasing a short-term outcome at the expense of deep and meaningful progress.
The next generation of system leaders will need to have deep data literacy and a recognition that while Artificial Intelligence intensifies and solidifies values at a speed and depth that many haven’t truly contemplated, as system leaders, they need to understand where to disrupt, where to enable, and fundamentally, how to make sense of disparate perspectives across the communities they serve.
Building a system that outlasts its leaders
When you think about your own leadership legacy, what impact do you hope will remain beyond your time in your current role?
I’m unsure I would frame it as a legacy, but the impact I want to have is ensuring that the system I serve is more resilient, responsive, and capable than when I started. That our staff and students recognize their individual and collective roles in being engaged community members and see the agency created to take on complex challenges that can feel overwhelming and divisive. This means being willing to engage in foundational work behind the scenes, the decisions that may not be public facing but that internally will create a strong foundation at a policy, data, and labour relations level. It is my hope that on many of these fronts, while I may not experience the immediate benefit of this work, it will support the next leader to continue a focus on improvement and care in a manner that our students, families and city deserve.