María Francisca Elgueta

María Francisca Elgueta, is a Chilean educator, social entrepreneur, and founder and Executive Director of Fundación Escuela Global, a nonprofit organization that supports teachers in creating meaningful and transformative learning experiences for students across Chile. 

She is currently pursuing a Master of Education in Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Francisca has worked in education for more than 14 years, beginning her career as a History and Social Sciences teacher in schools serving highly vulnerable communities in Santiago. Her students included young people who had experienced school exclusion, homelessness, incarceration, violence, and other significant barriers to education. These experiences shaped her conviction that a student’s background should not determine the quality of learning opportunities they receive, and that teachers can be powerful agents of change when they have access to the right tools, support, and professional community. 

In 2022, Francisca received the Global Teacher Prize Chile and invested the award in building Escuela Global. Through the organization, a growing community of teachers work together to expand access to deep learning experiences that develop students’ agency, critical thinking, and sense of purpose. 

As a Social Innovation Fellow, Francisca hopes to explore how Escuela Global can build a stronger ecosystem around teachers, particularly in Latin America. This vision goes beyond traditional professional development: Escuela Global seeks to create meaningful professional learning communities, strengthen the connection between academic knowledge and classroom practice, and bring teachers’ expertise and voices more actively into the conversations that shape education. At the center of this work is the belief that teachers should not only receive or implement educational knowledge, but also produce it, challenge it, adapt it, and contribute to shaping the future of education.