GCV Powerlist 2016: Katelyn Donnelly, Pearson

There is a well-trodden path for the global elite from presidency of a top university’s union through consultant at a top management consultancy, having time at an investment bank to advising and setting strategy at a large corporation.

Katelyn Donnelly, managing director of the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (Palf), ticks these boxes. But after a year in Lahore, Pakistan, advising recycled insulation materials company Ghonsla as part of her time at McKinsey, Donnelly picked up insights into the emerging markets that proved invaluable for running the Pearson fund.

Lahore is the main publishing and educational hub for the Punjab region, and having left Ghonsla in July 2011, she joined Pearson as chief of staff in September that year.

Her main challenge was to build the office of the chief education adviser set up for Sir Michael Barber, who also joined Pearson in September 2011 after leading McKinsey’s global education practice and spending nearly a decade serving the UK government.

This role included setting up Palf in January 2012 as Pearson reorientated from education and media to focus on education, particularly in emerging markets.

In nominating Donnelly initially as a GCV Rising Star in January, and now for the Powerlist 2016, Sir Michael, who also chairs Palf, said: “Katelyn has built the fund from idea stage to a world-leading investment vehicle that is exploring a new market. In the past three years, the fund has professionalised and demonstrated a new model for corporate learning and innovation.

“When we started, other investors and corporates thought this space was too risky, now they are racing to catch up and follow Katelyn’s lead.”

Pearson committed $15m to Palf in 2012. Donnelly said there had been a “successful deployment of Fund I of $15m in 10 investments in six countries – all companies are growing significantly”.

She is a non-executive director of four of these companies – Spark Schools in South Africa, Omega Schools in Ghana, Avanti Learning Centres in India and Apec (Affordable Private Education Centre) Schools in the Philippines.

Donnelly said: “Our portfolio companies have had breakout growth – Spark schools has grown in the past two years from one school and 131 students to eight schools with over 2,400 students. Apec has gone from a small pilot school to 23 schools with 3,250 students and set to get over 9,000 students for the new school year.

“Both Apec and Spark are in the midst of large follow-on funding rounds at significant up valuations.

“We held the first Global School Forum to bring together the biggest, most influential school chains in the world, along with investors. We hope to be at the centre of forming a trade union here. We executed a large investment in Karadi Path, an English Language Learning company based in India, that has shown success. Avanti Learning Centres raised its series B round – again at an up valuation.”

Avanti grew from 400 to 2,000 students in 20 cities across India and admitted its first student to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Donnelly said in January.

The other portfolio investments are UBongo, Zaya, Bridge International Academies, Experifun, Sudiksha and Lekki.

John Fallon, Pearson’s global CEO and a member of Palf’s investment committee, said the results were so encouraging that “we are tripling our investment in the next fund to $50m because we know this approach works and critically informs our long-term business strategy”.

Donnelly’s ties with Pakistan remain. She is also a consultant for Delivery Associates, a public sector advisory group focused on implementation of large-scale reform and establishment of delivery units, including working on the Punjab Schools Reform Roadmap which has resulted in nearly 1.5 million extra children enrolled in school.

Donnelly’s venture expertise means she is also in demand as an adviser to Synergy Innovations, which invests in startups only in the field of education and technology and is based on the infrastructure of Synergy University, Russia’s oldest business school.

It all seems a long way from that well-worn path for rising stars of spending a few months at an investment bank, Morgan Stanley in her case, during her time at Duke University. Naturally, she followed the rest of the classical trajectory, graduating with distinction in economics and becoming president of its debating society and student union.