April Peebler

After having left her law practice to ensure her children received a meaningful education wherein real-world problems were addressed, in 2016 April Peebler supported her children in starting Heirs To Our Ocean (H2OO) along with 11 other tweens who were concerned about the planet they are inheriting. April stepped into the roles of both Executive Director and Program Director, donating her time in both capacities, and applied the project-based interdisciplinary, real-world-theme focused learning model she had developed in 2010 to H2OO’s programming.

H2OO serves youth around the world, on all habitable continents, and April works tirelessly to ensure 4/5 of youth participants come from traditionally marginalized circumstances and backgrounds and that they receive full need-based scholarships to participate in H2OO programming. All H2OO programs have an empathetic leadership foundation, are holistic and comprehensive, connect youth across barriers, and prioritize serving youth who are situated most vulnerably at present.

April believes whole-heartedly that the survivability of humanity is dependent upon education shifting away from models that emphasize competitive profit- and status-oriented “success", or away from “I” and “me”. April is a thought-leader in education for the future, sharing that education that furthers humanity has empathetic leadership at its core, with a focus on “we”, where all youth have opportunity to understand the value of intact life sources on our planet, to realize the human impacts on those life sources today, and to develop real-life skills to effectively navigate what they are inheriting. Most importantly, education must provide intentional opportunity for youth today to collaboratively problem solve the greatest challenges their generation faces, starting in middle school, so that a knowledge base is developed and skills are acquired well before they select their career paths and enter university.