international-education
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Edwin van Rest
Edwin van Rest is the co-founder and CEO of Studyportals, the Eindhoven-based platform that helps students compare study programs across borders. He started the company in 2007 with two engineering friends after his own year abroad in Japan showed him how hard it was to find information about international study options. Today Studyportals lists hundreds of thousands of programs, reaches millions of students a month, and van Rest is a recognized voice in international education, a former EAIE Rising Star Award winner, and chair of the EAIE Marketing & Recruitment Expert Community.
CL Global Academy
CL Global Academy is an independent international education company that runs academically rigorous, project-based short courses in the heart of Cambridge, UK. Founded in 2009 by Allen Hao and Katrina, it hosts residential programmes inside historic Cambridge colleges - taught by University of Cambridge-affiliated lecturers - covering fields from AI and data science to innovation and entrepreneurship. The Academy welcomes over 1,500 students a year and counts more than 24,000 alumni across 16 years, having grown into a multi-million-dollar business without institutional venture funding.
Edorer
Edorer is a San Francisco- and Bengaluru-based edtech company building an AI-powered learning, assessment and proctoring platform alongside a global university network. Its software lets universities, enterprises and governments run online courses, AI-proctored exams and talent assessments, while its SPICE network and blockchain-based CredX credits exchange aim to let students pick courses across institutions worldwide and carry verifiable, stackable credits between them. The company's stated mission is to internationalize universities and make affordable international education and exposure available to every higher-education student.
PalmDrive, Inc.
PalmDrive (棕榈大道) is an education-technology company that connects students - mostly Chinese students aiming for top overseas universities - with a network of thousands of mentors who have themselves attended those schools. Founded by Stanford, Berkeley, and Harvard alumni in 2013, PalmDrive pairs one-on-one mentorship in admissions, cultural integration, and career planning with an online platform that has drawn a community of more than a million students. The company operates across China and Silicon Valley and has raised over US$10 million in venture funding.
Allen Hao
Allen Hao is the founder and CEO of CL Global Academy, an international education company he co-founded in 2009 with Katrina Hao after the two met in Cambridge. From offices in the UK, Shanghai, and the US, the academy runs its 'OxCam Programmes' - short, project-based academic courses taught in Cambridge colleges by University-affiliated faculty. Hao has called himself an entrepreneur since age 16 and built the company without external funding into a profitable business serving over 1,500 students a year, with a claimed 24,000-plus alumni. Internally he goes by the title 'Chief Student-Centered Officer.' Born in Shanghai and splitting time between Cambridge and Madison, Wisconsin, he completed a Master's at the University of Cambridge from 2023 to 2025.
Tina Sheng
Tina Sheng is the CEO of PalmDrive USA, the North American arm of PalmDrive, an international education and mentorship company. A Stanford-trained educator who grew up in Beijing, she built her career inside Bay Area high schools as an admissions officer, teacher, and college counselor before founding PalmDrive's undergraduate department in 2015. Under her leadership the team has guided hundreds of students into top-20 universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT, and helped grow PalmDrive into a venture-backed company serving thousands of students annually.