In the latest episode of Higher Ed Chats, Keystone Education Group sat down with Dr. Fanta Aw, Executive Director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators. With NAFSA 2026 just around the corner in Orlando, Fanta joined us to talk about her own path through international education, the state of the field, and why this year’s theme, Global by Design, is the one she felt the field needed to hear right now.
Fanta describes herself as a “global nomad” and “a proud product of international education.” She left Mali, West Africa, at the age of seven, first for Liberia and then for the United States, eventually arriving as an international student in Washington, D.C. She speaks warmly about the international educators who helped her find her footing on campus: people who helped her adjust to a new curriculum, a new language, and her first winter.
“I know how important it is for students to leave their home countries to go to a different country,” she told Scott. “What it means to have that support system, what it means to be in the midst of professionals who are there to care for the well-being of the students.”
Her work today at NAFSA, she says, is her way of paying that forward.
NAFSA is 78 years old, with over 10,000 members across roughly 5,000 institutions in more than 150 countries. Fanta is clear that the association is bigger than student mobility alone. It spans collaborative research, intensive English programs, credential evaluation, recruitment and enrollment partners, workforce development, and the wider exchange of ideas that international education sits at the centre of.
She frames the association’s work around four pillars: training, learning and development; knowledge development; public policy and advocacy; and partnership. Underneath those sits a set of twelve professional competencies the field has refined over time, with input from people doing the work on the ground.
Asked how she navigates advocacy in a moment when visa policy and geopolitics can shift overnight, Fanta returns to something she clearly believes deeply: storytelling.
“Part of advocacy is effective storytelling of the impact of this work and why this work is of shared interest,” she said. International students bring entrepreneurial energy, innovation, and economic contribution to their host societies, and they take learning back home. That is a societal benefit, not just an institutional one.
She is also realistic. Public policy, she notes, is a long game. You work on things for years before you see results. The job, in her view, is to keep finding the language and the common ground that lets people who disagree still hear the same story.
The 2026 conference theme came from listening to where the field is right now. Climate, migration, the economy, and the environment are challenges no single country can solve alone, Fanta argues, and a more interconnected world is a better one.
The “by design” half is the part she wants people to sit with. None of this happens by accident. “We have to be the architects of that,” she said. The theme is a call for the field to be intentional, to experiment, and to keep moving even when the answers are not yet clear.
Two threads from the conversation feel especially worth flagging for anyone heading to Orlando.
The first is the conference’s focus on building a culture of care. Fanta is candid about what she is hearing across the world: fatigue, burnout, reductions in force, and rising turnover. You cannot put student well-being at the centre, she argues, without doing the same for the educators charged with that mission. “You can’t work harder if your cup is empty.”
The second is AI. Her view is neither alarmist nor naive. AI is here, it will keep accelerating, and it will change jobs and institutional responses. The useful question, she says, is not just “what can AI do” but “what should it do.” Her conviction is that international education will remain a people-to-people field, because empathy and human connection are not things this technology replaces.
When Scott asked about the next five years, Fanta did not hedge. The golden days some colleagues are waiting to return to are not coming back. Destination countries are shifting, financial models in higher education are under real strain, and transnational education is re-emerging in new forms.
“This is a time of true disruption,” she said. The question for the field is whether it drives that disruption or is driven by it.
If this conversation resonates, NAFSA 2026 in Orlando is where it continues at scale. Keystone will be there, and we would love to see you. Whether you are coming for the policy conversations, the AI sessions, the culture of care track, or simply to reconnect with colleagues from across the field, this is the moment Fanta is asking all of us to rise to.
You can listen to the full episode of Higher Ed Chats on your favorite podcast platform. For more resources on international education, recruitment, and the future of the field, visit keg.com.