Dear CBIE members, partners, friends, and colleagues in international education,

It was our pleasure to host you at CBIE2020 – Canada’s international education conference – and our first-ever virtual conference.

In 2020, we found ourselves at a critical juncture globally and locally. Societal challenges abounded and were increasingly becoming more complex and intertwined. All the while, inequalities, vulnerabilities, and cleavages continued to deepen among citizens of the world with each passing day. There was and remains considerable work to be undertaken globally to build societal resilience for the future. As part of this dynamic global environment, international education has an important role to play, in particular, as it relates to contributing to Canada’s and the global community’s recovery from the pandemic.

CBIE2020 was about creating a space for all – each of us leaders within our institutions and communities – to come together to chart the path forward for inclusive and sustainable internationalization within Canada and beyond.

Our CBIE team worked hard for many months on CBIE2020 with the objective of creating an inclusive virtual space where we could gather, connect, share, and learn from one another as we work collectively to harness the work of international education to help make the world a better, more inclusive, more sustainable, and resilient one for all global citizens.

Canada’s international education conference featured over 70 plenaries and concurrent sessions that offered a diversity of voices that celebrate our lived experiences and perspectives. We sought to create safe and supportive conference spaces that were more accessible to a greater breadth of delegates. This year for the first time, our conference delegates experienced closed captioning and sign language services for many of the sessions presented at the conference.

Over five days, our virtual program showcased all the elements of our face to face conference, including:

• Braindate
• a virtual exhibition hall
• presentation of the Excellence Awards
• the Gala (space where delegates shared song, dance and laughter virtually in real time around the globe)
• Immigration Update sessions (that helped us keep up with the quickly evolving policy frameworks)
• meetings of all CBIE Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), and
• networking for all (a great opportunity to connect with Canadian and international colleagues from near and far), including facilitated networking specifically for new professionals in international education

We so appreciated engaging with you all at virtual CBIE2020 as we all seek to make a positive difference in this world through international education.

The CBIE2020 conference website will remain online as an archive of last year’s conference experience. We look forward to engaging with all of you at CBIE2021 in November!

Larissa Bezo

President and Chief Executive Officer, CBIE