What position do you hold at Reach Cambridge? What has been your career path so far?
Jenny: I am the Director of Operations at Reach Cambridge and have held the post since 2009. I originally worked as an EFL teacher at Reach after having spent 2 years teaching English as a Foreign Language in Barcelona, Spain. Before that, I studied English Literature and Cultural Criticism at Cardiff University and then worked in marketing for a few years.
Did YOU study abroad?! If so, where and what inspired you to go?
Jenny: When I was 16 years old, I completed my Duke of Edinburgh's award expedition in New Zealand. We spent 3 weeks traveling around the North Island, meeting and helping local people and climbing the mountains there. It was an experience I will never forget. More recently, I have had the privilege of teaching abroad in Barcelona and in Zambia, which were both incredibly rewarding and memorable experiences where I met people from all over the world who shared the same goals and learned from the inspirational students and people living in each place.
As part of the year-round Reach Cambridge team, I am very lucky as I have the opportunity to visit our partner schools and collaborators all over the world each year and talk to students about our programs.
What does the future hold for Reach Cambridge - any exciting new programs to share?
Jenny: We always want to adapt and develop in response to what students are looking for and deserve in a pre-university program. It’s also exciting to introduce new academic courses and develop existing courses to include new fields of discovery.
As well as our summer programs in Cambridge, our online one-to-one courses are an incredible way to benefit from our expert tutors and learn more about your chosen academic subject(s). This learning journey is unique and can be completely tailored to suit the needs of each individual student – including their schedule, time-zone and learning objectives. We offer these all year-round as well as the summer.
What about the future of the high school abroad industry? How do you think international education will change over the next 10 years?
Jenny: Due to the nature of communication and travel today, the world seems to be getting smaller. This allows us to have access to so much more than we ever could have imagined. Having said that, it is crucial that in doing so we try to understand so many other cultures and traditions, and traveling abroad in high school is one excellent way of doing this.
I would like to think that international education will continue to grow and adapt to these changes to allow students to experience life outside of their own comfort zone and find inspiration and understanding by meeting other people from across the world..