CEO, Bennett Schoolplacement Worldwide By Andrew Kittell
With this year’s merging of two of America’s leading international educational consulting firms, we decided to profile Bennett Schoolplacement Worldwide CEO Elizabeth Sawyer.
Having grown up “here and there,” from an early age, Elizabeth Sawyer was drawn to all things international. That childhood experience and gift for languages later found Elizabeth teaching English, French, and Spanish. Although a career start Elizabeth enjoyed very much, she took time away from helping other parents’ children to care for her own.
What came next was both unexpected and life-defining. Elizabeth explains, “I was looking to return to work and wasn’t sure about going back to the classroom. I was then introduced to Georgia Bennett and the world of relocation and education consulting, helping relocating families figure out education as they move from place to place, and I found my new niche! It was still about education, but from a new angle, a new perspective, and offered new challenges in that it combined both education and business, and I’m still enjoying it more than ever.” Elizabeth firmly believes that education consulting is good work, helping people with something that can make a difference for them in so many ways.
In 2009, Elizabeth became the sole owner of Bennett, the education consulting company Georgia Bennett founded, and this January she acquired her peer and competitor, School Choice International. As she works towards integrating the two companies, Elizabeth comments on how much she appreciates working with a solid team of colleagues. “I enjoy working with colleagues who are smart and kind and imbued with integrity,” she says, “and I’m honored to be in a role where I can support them on their individual professional journeys.”
Combining companies that provide education consulting to corporations, their employees, and also private client families presents some significant challenges.
The services Elizabeth’s company provides multinational corporations are unique, including evaluating the match between various national school systems’ curricula, an effort aimed at paving the way for students’ successful transitions between different countries’ education systems. Sometimes it works better than at others, she explains, but planning ahead is always a good idea.
And sometimes her consultants are asked to make onsite evaluations of schools both international and domestic. Elizabeth cites going to Bangalore “to visit international schools on behalf of a large corporate client. Our directive was to assess these schools for the needs of the company’s specific demographic and to create a handbook for them, given an imminent group move.”
With the acquisition of School Choice International, Bennett has grown significantly. Elizabeth looks forward to blending the two companies while still offering the best practices of both to corporate clients, their employees, and families engaging services privately.
Elizabeth relaxing
As one might expect, education consulting is a deeply personal service, no more so than when internationally mobile families are involved. In detailing the range of services that families may receive, she explains that “the kind of support that families need varies from family to family. Families who have never been on an assignment outside of their home country may have no idea, for example, what an international school is, and may need to have international education explained to them, using their home country system as the reference point. People moving into the U.S. may have no idea what a charter school is or a magnet school or the fact that the U.S. public system provides English language support. Or a family moving internationally may have no idea of how to access support for a child with special educational needs. So these are the kinds of things we help families with, in addition to recommending specific schools for their children, wherever they are going, and helping them to navigate admissions processes. Our practice is not limited to supporting relocating families, by the way; we work with lots of private clients who come to us for boarding school placement, therapeutic assistance, etc.”
Given that she and her colleagues have evaluated so many schools around the world, Elizabeth has a few ideas on what makes a school better than most. Hers is an answer again beginning with a child-centered philosophy. “An outstanding school is different depending on who the student is; for some kids it’s a school that pushes hard, is academically rigorous and competitive, and urges students to achieve in typical terms. For other kids, it’s a gentler environment where academic rigor is less of a focus. So, in some ways, I suppose an outstanding schools is one that is very clear about its mission, conveys it well to its students, and delivers well what it has set out to deliver,” Elizabeth concludes.
With decades of experience in the education field, Elizabeth also has suggestions for anyone considering becoming an education consultant. “It’s very much ‘people work’ and is wonderfully varied and rich,” she says. “It’s also complicated because people and families are complicated, and one needs to enjoy problem-solving and trying to help families sort out complex situations. For the very reasons that it can be stressful, education consulting is also incredibly rewarding.”
When she’s not facing a to-do list a mile long and dealing the complexities of blending two companies, and the day-to-day challenges of education consulting with a world view, Elizabeth enjoys running, cycling, yoga, reading, and the odd attempt at writing. If you take the time to read her blogposts, you’ll agree that writing is just one more skill that this devoted mother, triathlete, educational counsellor and entrepreneur has mastered.