🎙 PORTRAIT OF A LEARNER | When the Portrait Becomes the Culture

Guest: Dr. Jaron Fried

Host: Arvin Ross + Dr. Michelle Ament

Presented by: The Human Intelligence Movement

🔍Episode Summary:

There's a difference between getting people to buy into your vision and getting them to own it. Dr. Jaron Fried has been leading the Anaheim Union High School District for over a decade — a 25,000-student secondary district in Orange County that Roman Stearns of Scaling Student Success plainly names as the most advanced district in the state. Eight years ago, Anaheim stopped teaching to the test, reimagined district benchmarks, and rebuilt its schools around a capstone program grounded in student voice, civic engagement, and authentic performance.This conversation gets into what that actually took: how every single student across all 20 schools now participates in a civic action project each year, and why seniors and eighth graders present portfolios of evidence to panels of parents, community partners, and future employers.When education stops being something done to students and starts being something built with them, everything changes. Portrait of a Learner is a special 4-part series from

Unscripted Intelligence and Scaling Student Success, spotlighting California superintendents leading the shift to whole-child education.

🎙️About the Hosts:

Michelle Ament and Arvin Ross come from different generations, experiences, and disciplines—but their unlikely partnership is built on mutual curiosity, deep listening, and a shared belief in the power of human connection. Their conversations are real, unscripted, and often challenging—in all the right ways.

Dr. Michelle Ament Co-President of the Human Intelligence Movement & Chief Academic Officer at ProSolve.

Arvin Ross Co-Founder of ProSovle, educator, speaker, and adaptability enthusiast.

Jena Crossland ⁠ Production Manager for Unscripted Intelligence and Director of Operations + Marketing for the Human Intelligence Movement.

🔗Join the Movement:Website: ⁠Humanintelligencemovement.org

Email: ⁠members@hi4ai.org⁠

Follow ⁠@HumanIntelligenceMovement⁠ on LinkedIn for live shows and episode updates