The Be Podcast Network was officially launched in 2022, but its origins trace back more than 11 years. That’s when Jethro Jones introduced Transformative Principal—a series that recently published its 650th episode—and became one of the first “principal podcasters” focused on school leadership. Jones eventually co-founded the network with Ross Romano, who was gaining parallel experience in education podcasting. Romano first created ASCD’s podcast series, “Learn Teach Lead Radio,” in 2016, and over the next few years created, produced, and hosted podcasts for organizations including CoSN, Osmo, Soundtrap, and several others. While the two were developing their skills in parallel, they also got to know one another. Romano at the time was managing director at an education-focused PR and marketing agency and frequently shared guest recommendations for Transformative Principal. The consistent relevance of his recommendations and the care he put into delivering content that would make for valuable episodes made an impression on Jones, and formed the foundation of a lasting collaboration.
Forming and expanding a network about transformational learning and leadership
“I had long been interested in tying together my various podcast projects into a cohesive network,” says Romano. “I felt there were a lot of shared goals among creators—and more than a few shared challenges—and it made no sense for everyone to work in isolation. Once I went the ‘solopreneurship’ route and had the freedom to really explore the idea, I shared the concept with Jethro and found out he’d been thinking along similar lines. With the great platform he built through Transformative Principal, along with the Cybertraps series he was cohosting, he knew there was an opportunity for expansion of original content as well as collaboration with other education podcasters.”
The first new show in the network was The Authority, Romano’s first podcast to be “all his,” rather than created on behalf of a client. The series got its name from the fact that its episodes feature interviews with authors about their latest books. Now more than 140 episodes deep, guests have included some of the most influential voices in the world of K-12 education—Michael Fullan, Katie Novak, Baruti Kafele, Peter DeWitt, and Carol Ann Tomlinson among them.
“I’ve worked with authors for the entirety of my career in education, so I felt it would make for a good show. But we actually decided to move forward with it based on an audience survey from Transformative Principal. Listeners shared that author interviews was a type of content they wanted more of,” explains Romano. “We determined it would be most beneficial to make this its own series, to go deeper in conversation and explore topics the authors don’t often get to discuss.” Next, the network began inviting education podcasts to join. Some of the early members were SEEing to Lead hosted by Chris Jones, De Facto Leaders hosted by Karen Dudek-Brannan, Rebel Educator hosted by Tanya Sheckley, Tell Me This hosted by Carey Borkoski and Brianne Roos, The Principal’s Handbook hosted by Barb Flowers, and The Fabulous Learning Nerds hosted by Scott Schuette, Daniel Coonrod and Zeta Gardner. Each of these shows stays consistent with the network’s mission of supporting transformative change in formal and informal learning environments, but each brings its own unique flavor. For example, Jones and Flowers address school leaders from different angles, with Flowers sharing her insights as a principal and life coach, and Jones mixing interviews about supporting, engaging, and empowering educators with shorter episodes featuring his own reflections. The Fabulous Learning Nerds look at learning and development in all types of businesses and organizations, and Tell Me This centers its conversations on belonging in different environments.
Collaborating to enhance shared value for creators, listeners, and partners
Romano describes a “triangle” of parties that all have pain points related to the growing podcasting medium, which are best addressed when viewed holistically. First, there are the creators, who struggle when working in isolation, particularly in a niche genre. Mainstream podcast platforms make it hard, if not impossible, to search according to a niche (even a large one like K-12 education), so it’s difficult for individuals to get their show discovered by relevant audiences or even to keep track of what others in their genre are doing. Podcasting requires a lot of work, so the sense of isolation and slow progress gaining traction lead most creators to abandon the medium—according to estimates, only 50% of podcasts last beyond three episodes, and only 10% make it to the 20-episode mark. Listeners suffer from similar challenges. The lack of discoverability of relevant niche content is a common frustration, as is the limited reliability and quality control of independent series. Rather than putting in the effort to find a new show that may not end up being worthwhile, or may even stop publishing after a few episodes, listeners often have to wait for word of mouth or until a show becomes successful enough to force itself onto their radar. Sponsors and advertisers are the third audience that benefits from the network model. With millions of podcasts out there, it can be a full-time job for a marketer to work on partnerships: discovering shows, learning about their audiences, connecting with hosts, working out agreements. After building the network, the founders and their collaborators found they could make it simpler for companies to reach a wider swath of their target audience, with the ease of a single partnership instead of several. The Be Podcast Network is much more than an infrastructure for content discovery and ad delivery, however. It is a true collaboration between like-minded creators with a passion for education. “The hosts in the network do an amazing job working together,” says Romano. “They appear on each other’s shows, recommend guests to one another, and share ideas for improving their podcasts. If something’s working well for one host, it’s likely to be successful for plenty of others.” One large-scale collaboration on the network was a partnership with Reading Is Fundamental for National Literacy Month, during which nearly 20 of the network’s shows produced more than 50 episodes on the science of reading, fostering a love of books, building a culture of literacy, and more. Each show selected guests and topics relevant to its core listenership, while working together to amplify conversation about a critical issue.
Exploring Al’s present and potential impact on education
Artificial intelligence is another topic around which the network has organized its editorial efforts. In fact, the 2023 “Summer of AI” series on Transformative Principal (still a good listen) marked one of the earliest, most expansive explorations of AI’s impact on education in the new media space. As the first show in the network, and with an audience ranking in the top 1.5% of all podcasts globally, Transformative Principal is still in many ways the network’s flagship series. Jones also does a variety of other work with AI, including his AI Leader masterclass. In that context, it makes perfect sense for Jones and his show to be leading discussions on this theme.
Summer of AI included conversations with founders, experts, and practitioners on topics including safe technology tools, AI and homework, improving productivity, and instructional design. For many listeners, it was their first exposure to meaningful conversations about AI and education.
According to Romano, “I think what we’ve tried to do is embrace conversation about AI. That doesn’t mean we advocate rushing into any particular technology, or just saying ‘yes’ to AI before figuring out what you want from it, or what it’s good at doing for educators and students.
But, especially when ChatGPT first became available to the public and AI became a mainstream topic, there was a lot of fear initially, which many times led to disengagement. So what we said is, The longer you avoid learning more about these technologies, the further you may fall behind.
And with that, your students may be falling behind, as well.” We still have more questions than answers when it comes to AI, says Romano, which is why the conversations are important. The Be Podcast Network continues to speak with people who are directly involved in AI innovation, as well as practitioners who are using different tools in schools and classrooms. This is an ongoing effort to find evidence of what works and share those findings with an audience who can benefit. The EdTech Startup Showcase is another podcast series through which these conversations take place. The series features a cohort of up-and-coming companies in edtech, and episodes include conversations with their founders, partners, and educators who use their solutions. Two participating startups are innovating in AI: Scholar Education, whose AI-powered platform helps to implement and track accommodations for ESE, 504, and ELL students; and Pedagogy.Cloud, whose suite of services help educators integrate AI tools and access professional development. Other startups featured on the series are CareerViewXR, Connected Class, Classroom Mosaic, Inkwire, and Class Composer.
No end in sight for podcast growth
The Be Podcast Network continues to grow, with no plans to slow down. The network has 40+ shows now, 33 of which rank in the top 10% among all podcasts globally. They also work with companies in the education space to produce shows that engage and inform educator audiences. Each series goes one step further in ensuring there is a podcast—and often much more than one podcast—for every educator.
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