Timothy Stiven

Timothy Stiven is a fourth-generation educator who has spent over four decades turning history, ethics and civic responsibility into lived experience for young people around the world. Inspired at age ten by a family story about the US Civil War, he realised that history does not live in textbooks but in people’s choices – and has devoted his life to helping students understand that how they live shapes who they become as individuals, as nations and as a planet.

He began his career at the same junior high school where his grandfather taught fifty years earlier, before moving to Brentwood School in Los Angeles, where he helped establish a pioneering, year-long Humanities curriculum for seniors. The programme became recognised as an innovative model for college preparation and university-level research skills, with graduates frequently returning to credit it as pivotal to their success. 

In 2013, Timothy founded the Envision Conservatory for the Humanities at Canyon Crest Academy, a rigorous three-year, application- and project-based programme in philosophy, theology, ethics and civics. Designed to take learning beyond the classroom, the Conservatory has driven real-world change: students have worked with the San Diego Mayor’s office and City Council to secure a dedicated left-turn signal and lobby for a safe bike lane; created an international comic book on environmental stewardship and the migration of the hummingbird; taught CPR to women in Uganda; built a community centre for the Maasai in Amboseli National Park, Kenya; lobbied in the US Senate and House on behalf of Afghan girls’ education; and presented at both the UN ECOSOC Youth Summit and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, Stiven launched Flowers for the Future, which has grown from a small book club into Flowers for the Future International (FFFI) – a global, peer-to-peer educational network for Afghan girls living under gender apartheid. FFFI now supports around 500 Afghan girls in Kabul, providing live instruction through ten branches in five countries. In partnership with High Bluff Academy in San Diego, the programme has enabled 40 Afghan girls to earn California high school diplomas, making it the only peer-to-peer education programme in the world currently providing high school diplomas to Afghan girls.

Under his guidance, Flowers for the Future has raised nearly $300,000 in four years, covering rent, utilities, teacher salaries, security, and laptops and Wi-Fi for 150 girls, helping to prevent forced marriages and maintain a 95% student retention rate. Stiven’s students, many of whom are themselves privileged, learn to “give purpose to that privilege” by teaching peers who are literally risking their lives to be educated. 

Timothy has been able to connect students around the world through his work with Sister Cities International and the Alliance for the Education of Women in Afghanistan. His students collaborate with partners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Kenya and beyond, integrating Sustainable Development Goals into their projects and building global citizenship through cultural exchanges, Indigenous partnerships and ongoing work with the United Nations. Through it all, Timothy Stiven’s teaching blends Socratic dialogue, technology, AI, and project-based learning to inspire courageous, compassionate world citizens.