HZ: I probably started way back with my father, who was a German immigrant. I got interested in different cultures simply because of growing up in 1950s Western Australia. Back then the staple meal was ‘meat and three veg’, but my father had these funny foods in the fridge which I loved. I went on to study Asian studies and Indonesian at ANU and spent a lot of time in Asia, finally becoming an ESL teacher in Indonesia and Australia.

That was around the time of the fall of Saigon and there was a huge demand for English language teachers. I worked in refugee and migrant education until the 90’s when I became a consultant. In 1994 the Australian Centre for Languages, ACL, approached me to be Director of Education. It was a fascinating and challenging time at ACL because the industry was experiencing a major downturn in Chinese students post Tiananmen Square.

“I think that we have not engaged well with Australian communities about the benefits of international education”

The PIE: What was your role there?

To take on the academic direction and leadership and also re-build ACL after the industry downturn. I saw our core purpose as working with people across cultures to build futures, whether they be international students or migrants and refugees.

The PIE: You were quite a pioneer in the industry, tell me how ACL expanded internationally.

HZ: When I joined, ACL was the specialist in academic English and study skills preparation for university. We had a centre at the University of Western Sydney as well as ‘pathwaying’ students into undergraduate and postgraduate programmes for many of the Sydney-based universities.

We were also successful in winning labour-market contracts for preparing migrants and Australians to get back into the work force. Then the Government put out to tender the Adult Migrant English Programme in the mid-90s and we were spectacularly successful in winning about 20% of the national delivery.

We went from a reasonably small organisation with two campuses, to having colleges across Western Sydney preparing migrants and refugees with the English language for effective settlement, work and further study. Around that time we also entered into a partnership with Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh to run the Australian University Studies Program.

In 2004 we acquired the Australian College of English, ACE, which up to then had been our largest competitor. ACE focused mainly on language travel/gap year students from Europe and Japan. At the time the ACL international student mix was probably 90% from Asia. It was very complementary.

“Before selling to Navitas we turned over around AUS$75 million, with a staff of about 500”

The PIE: Before you sold to Navitas, how big were you?

HZ: We turned over around AUS$75 million, with a staff of about 500. ACL had primarily operated in New South Wales, with offshore operations in Vietnam, Thailand and China. In the early 2000’s we began to move into online English language resource development and tertiary education in conjunction with an Australian university. The ACE colleges gave us a presence in Perth, Brisbane, Cairns, and additional colleges in Sydney, as well as strong teacher training expertise.

The PIE: And all these operations are still running through Navitas?[More>>]