DF: I oversee all operations including academics, real estate, HR, and finance for Kaplan’s two language schools in Canada and 18 in the US. I also manage sales and marketing for North American destinations.

In addition, I’m also responsible for our Latin American business development and sales efforts. We have direct sales offices in Venezuela and Colombia and we work with agents in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and a number of other countries in Latin America.

The PIE: Venezuela is an interesting market at the moment because there is a lot of political upheaval, that must be quite a challenge to deal with?

“The economy has a number of challenges but there are a lot of people who are still prioritising education for their kids”

DF: It is. But we are very fortunate in Venezuela because we have a fantastic team that is being very smart and innovative about how they approach the market. Of course, the economy has a number of challenges but there are a lot of people who are still prioritising education for their kids – those who, by and large, have the ability to travel. It is not easy, but we are still managing to find some success there.

The PIE: People often talk about education as a recession proof product.

DF: That theory is certainly being tested in this period. The macroeconomic conditions in the world economy have certainly been a challenge in the past few years. But I suppose to a certain extent, it is true that education spending is something that is generally prioritised by students and parents, so I would perhaps call it “recession resistant”… not necessarily recession proof.

The PIE: Where are the really exciting student markets for you right now?

DF: China, Japan and Vietnam are very exciting markets, to name only a few. The Chinese market is very higher education focused, and we have developed a compelling package of programmes with US community colleges. Students do 10 weeks of English at one of our schools, then they go on to a community college, which gives them, after they complete two years successfully, the ability to go to the University of California system, for example. Theoretically, this means they could come start with Kaplan and end up getting a degree from Berkeley. So that is one model you will definitely see us continuing to cultivate.

I have to say, after being at ICEF and just in general, this year, starting 2017, feels a lot more positive than it did last year at this time. The buzz at ICEF was very positive, I felt.

The PIE: The strength of the dollar could be a challenge for the US. How have you been tackling that? 

“Students are booking shorter courses – which I imagine is a trend across the industry”

DF: We have been focusing on the value of what we provide and the quality of our schools. In contrast to some other organisations where the focus isn’t necessarily on academic quality and more on fun and having an international experience – which is valid in its own right – we at Kaplan want to continue to focus on our teaching and student outcomes.

But it is true that you just see a natural change in destination trends. For example, while our US business is down, our Canadian business is up. Our two schools in Toronto and Vancouver are doing extremely well.

The PIE: Toronto and Vancouver are already popular destinations, aren’t they?

DF: They had been, but it’s counter-cyclical, right, so when the US is down, Canada tends to be up and vice versa. This tends to follow the fluctuations in the strength of the dollar.

The PIE: Have you noticed much change in the demographic of your students in light of these economic trends?

DF: We are seeing trends in nationality, but I don’t know if we have noticed any appreciable changes in the age of students, for example; that is probably pretty consistent.

We are noticing a trend in the length of booking, so in light of the economic downturn in a lot of countries, students are booking shorter courses – which I imagine is a trend across the industry, quite frankly.

The PIE: Are you taking any steps to address that?

“It’s counter-cyclical, so when the US is down, Canada tends to be up and vice versa”

DF: This is where the relaunch of our longer term academic programmes comes into play, as a way to address that and engage students in a longer course.

The PIE: What other plans are in the pipeline in terms of differentiating yourself for the next year?

DF: One of the big areas is more focus on university preparation in the US. That’s something that we are hearing from our agents and our students that they want. Our UPS [University Placement Service] programme helps students with an English foundation to go on and study in a US university. We are reaching out to more universities to expand our number of university agreements, and doing more to promote these kinds of programmes. We think this service is going to be a very compelling proposition as we move forward.

We will also continue to roll out a new way of assessing our students’ learning. KITE, or Kaplan Integrated Test of English, is a proprietary adaptive test which we developed and launched. It puts all of our placement testing, level testing, in an adaptive testing environment, so it is a much better way to assess students and to make sure that their outcomes are what they want. We’re using that across all of our schools now.

Finally on the agents’ side, we are launching a portal which offers agents training and other support, which we launched at ICEF.

The PIE: What kind of training are you offering agents?

“Agents want to know how we do what we do with our marketing. It becomes a value add”

DF: We’ve found that agents want to know how we do what we do with our marketing. So it made us start to think we should develop a portal where agents could go to learn about different approaches to marketing and use this information to do their jobs better. It becomes a value add – why should agents work with us? Because we provide this technical support.

This is also a way to give agents destination training, to get to know the difference between Washington and Boston in the nitty gritty details. It is a really cool platform and we will continue to roll it out. There are more innovations coming.

The PIE: The other part of your role, working with Latin America – what are the key focuses of your role at the moment there?

DF: It’s in developing our marketing and sales efforts. Some of our work is in improving infrastructure – for example, we’ve established a position based in Bogota to support our agent network there. We’ve also implemented some really creative initiatives: we brought an instructor down from one of the US schools to a big fair in Sao Paolo with all the bells and whistles we have in our US schools to recreate the classroom environment and then we taught a small group of 15 students. It was broadcast over Facebook Live and it was the hit of this particular fair.

In each market we are doing everything we can with creativity, structure, energy, and positive attitude to build momentum. The sales part of me loves these initiatives — sales is where creativity comes into play.