Julia Fallon is the Executive Director of SETDA (State Educational Technology Directors Association), where she leads a national network of state EdTech leaders working to turn policy into practice. With over three decades at the intersection of education, technology, and policy — including 17.5 years with Washington State’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction — Julia operates in what she calls “the unglamorous middle,” the space where good ideas either fail quietly or become real.
At SETDA, Julia focuses on operationalizing values rather than writing rules, developing quality indicators for EdTech procurement and building state-level capacity for responsible technology adoption. She frames the EdTech landscape through three divides — access (nearly solved), design (teacher capacity), and use (active vs. passive tools) — and makes the case that AI isn’t creating new problems, it’s exposing the ones education has been ignoring. Her work on responsible unadoption challenges leaders to get as clear about where not to use AI as they are about where to use it.
