Advisory

With decades of experience in independent and international schools, Westlake Global supports US independent school brands considering expansion into the international school market. Following British independent school brands that have been expanding abroad for almost 20 years, US independent school brands have favorable opportunities to establish campuses overseas, with the benefit of lessons learned from independent counterparts.

Anchored in an understanding of why your school brand is considering international expansion, we identify opportunities and possible routes to market based on our extensive market knowledge, intelligence, key partnerships, and unparalleled network. We provide insights into regulatory environments, demographic influences, government controls and protocols, and more, and we work with your legal partner on your brand protection strategy as well as corporate structuring options that will be available to you.

We also assist with due diligence efforts, when it comes time to vet potential partners and their track record(s), as well as provide you with risk analysis in order to satisfy your governing board and any other related parties.

As you move forward, we can provide further business development support, research, and coordination services with your on-the-ground legal team, the construction and/or architectural team, and are happy to support recruitment of your founding head of school and your first cadre of teachers. 

Strategy compels us to ask, research, and discover ‘what would have to be true’ about our school, our sector, and current and prospective families for our strategy to work. Then, as we watch the world unfold, if we see that something is not working out as we had thought, we can tweak, tone, and refine. In other words, strategy is iterative: it seeks adjustment according to real-world conditions. Educational institutions are like live organisms that respond to their environment; we treat strategy in a similar way.

Across our portfolio of work, we advise relentlessly on strategy because we understand that strategy gives a school or university the chance to do something great, something that involves a family wanting your product or service enough that they will pay for it, allowing you to deliver your mission now and in the future.

For institutions that have a history of strategic planning, but have no history of strategy-making, we work with you to identify the integrated set of coherent choices that will result in the competitive outcome you wish to achieve, equipping and empowering you to win with the customers who matter—families who desire deeply what you have to offer.

Client schools would expect their advisor not only to identify additional expertise required for a transaction, they would expect the advisor’s input on financial strategy, on the marketing position and profile of the organisation, on the nature of the deal, and more.

Less obvious, but nevertheless critical, roles include playing operational consultant to help prepare an organisation for sale, integration manager to assist in combining two organisations, or other. The successful transition of an organisation normally takes a multidisciplinary team where one member assumes the lead role—this is the Certified Merger & Acquisitions Advisor®.

Closing down (winding down) a school and subsequently dissolving the corporation is a highly emotional, tedious process whose parameters never fail to surprise board members and heads of school with respect to the level of execution and compliance that is required. Too many institutions ignore the precipitous state of their financials until the ‘nuclear option’ has to be put on the table as an acknowledged choice, usually alongside other efforts such as seeking a mission- aligned merger opportunity, a heart-wrenching community fundraising effort, and others.

We prefer to help institutions place this option on the table sooner rather than later, educating the board and institutional leadership on what this choice entails, so that eyes are wide-open as the organisation moves forward with an exploration of other opportunities to keep the doors open, yet aware of how to proceed with closure and dissolution in a way that provides dignity and grace for students, families, faculty, and staff.

Dissolution may seem an odd choice for a firm that specialises in innovation and growth. We believe that organisations faced with dissolution should simultaneously consider how dissolution may represent a singular opportunity to invent something new. Sometimes outdated structures need to be removed, in order to make room for new ones that are designed to thrive in the future.