Jeffrey R. Beard is an American

manager Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a government bodies through business administration, nonprofit management, or the political science sub-field of public administra ...

. He was appointed to become

director-general A director general, general director or director-general (plural: ''directors general'', ''general directors'', ''directors-general'', ''director generals'' or ''director-generals'') is a senior executive officer, often the chief executive officer ...

of the

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), more commonly known as the International Baccalaureate (IB), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the I ...

(IB), based in Geneva, Switzerland, starting on January 1, 2006, following the retirement of the previous director-general, George Walker. Beard gave a speech at

Chautauqua Institution The Chautauqua Institution ( ) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit education center and summer resort for adults and youth located on in Chautauqua, New York, northwest of Jamestown, New York, Jamestown in the western southern tier of New York (state), N ...

in August 2010 on reforming education. Chautauqua Institution officials later discovered the speech was not Beard's original work, as it drew heavily upon a speech given earlier in the year by

Sir Ken Robinson Sir Kenneth Robinson (4 March 1950 – 21 August 2020) was a British author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education and arts bodies. He was director of the Arts in Schools Project ( ...

at a

TED conference TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...

. According to a letter printed in the Chautauquan Daily, Beard used "identical quotes, phrasing and even anecdotes." The Institution issued an apology to those who attended the talk, saying "Beard's behavior in this matter is not characteristic of the work done here at Chautauqua and violates the expectations you should have for that work. We acknowledge to you our genuine disappointment in this event." Beard's explanation was that he had not intended to pass off the work he quoted as his own, but acknowledged that he could and should have made it more obvious that he was citing the work of others, most particularly Sir Ken Robinson, whom he admires greatly and quotes frequently. After his term at IB, Beard was hired in 2014 by

GEMS Education GEMS Education, founded as Global Education Management Systems (GEMS), is an international education company. It is one of the world's largest private school operators, and as of late 2022 it operates more than 60 schools across the Middle East ...

to lead the development and innovation of its education programmes.

References

External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20101124223157/http://ibo.org/dg/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Beard, Jeffrey International Baccalaureate Living people Year of birth missing (living people) United States Naval Academy alumni American chief operating officers University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh alumni