Jordan Tinney is Superintendent and CEO of the Surrey School District in British Columbia, Canada, overseeing roughly 75,000 students across 135 schools, making it one of the largest school districts in the country. Known as an accessible, engaged listener, Tinney has been influenced by physicist Ursula Franklin's idea of organizations as living systems rather than rigid mechanisms, an outlook that shapes his emphasis on relationships and culture alongside operational decision-making.
During the pandemic, Tinney's widely read blog post on COVID-19 and equity drew attention to how isolation disproportionately affected low-income families, and he helped develop "Surrey Blended," a hybrid learning model the district adopted in response. He also championed digital portfolios for student assessment and built "Surrey Schools One," a shared digital resource repository that has since been used well beyond the district.
Tinney has led district-wide adoption of Power BI analytics for data visualization, work that has drawn national and international recognition, and helped articulate a "Learning by Design" vision centered on creative thinking, communication, and care for self and others. He often describes the district's culture in collaborative terms, noting that whatever the team does, it does together.
