So making sure that students are happy and really learn, making sure that programmes work, and making sure you follow everything from A to Z. It was amazing because I had the opportunity to refine a lot of skills that you also find in general education nowadays.

What I would say is that EF can bring together different strengths of, not just in language teaching, but also in operational development and a lot of sales knowledge and marketing. I had a lot of knowledge, but it was mostly that you can teach foreign languages at universities, but it can be very different. GI: It was kind of a gamble in a way because, of course, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do (I knew I wanted to do something that would excite me) because I didn’t really know how things worked in the industry, per-se. The PIE: Was there anything in particular, other than your language proficiency, that compelled you to go into the language teaching sector as a whole, after coming straight from research? It’s not just about our division, which is international language campuses – EF offers a full package, which is not just language learning. You can also start as a teacher and then progress through the career ladder or in other departments like our homestay accommodation departments or activities, because the EF offers this full immersive cultural experience. I found it interesting because I speak a good amount of these languages – Italian and Sicilian, my mother tongue, then English, French, German, Spanish and Swiss German – and with EF you usually start either in sales or in operations. It fits with my background because I had been in so many different places and spoke different languages. When there was this position open, I applied mostly because of my love for languages and for language learning and also for international education in general. I was working as a researcher at the University of Zurich, and I’m a linguist originally, so that is what I studied, taught and did research on. My path is, let’s say, not the most typical one, in the sense that I joined a while after finishing my Ph.D. Essentially, I work a lot with development, teacher recruitment, quality control and accreditations. Before the onset of Covid we had opened Portuguese and Russian schools, but due to the pandemic, we had to close them. So I cover two English schools and then all the other non-English schools we have in Europe and Costa Rica – the languages involved are Spanish, French, Italian and German. Giorgio Iemmolo: I take care of the academic operations and development for Europe, South Africa and Costa Rica.

The PIE: Can you tell us more about the nature of your work at Education First? How did you end up there?

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