SKOLL CENTRE WORLD EDUCATION SERVICES CASE STUDY

Exploring how a mature social enterprise continues to evolve its impact strategy over five decades

WORLD EDUCATION SERVICES: EXPANDING PATHWAYS TO IMPACT

A Case Study by the Skoll Centre, University of Oxford

Dr Susanna Kislenko Professor Marya Besharov

This case was prepared by Dr Susanna Kislenko, Skoll Centre Postdoctoral Fellow, and Professor Marya Besharov, Skoll Centre Academic Director and Professor of Organisations and Impact at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. It was reviewed and approved before publication by a company designate. The case was developed for research and learning purposes. It is not intended to serve as an endorsement, source of primary data, or illustration of effective or ineffective management. Copyright © 2025 Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship

WORLD EDUCATION SERVICES: EXPANDING PATHWAYS TO IMPACT

Executive Summary This case study documents the evolution and transformation of World Education Services (WES), a North America-based non-profit social enterprise that supports the educational, economic, and social inclusion of immigrants, refugees, and international students. The case shows how long-time leaders developed the organisation and unpacks key decisions made by a new leadership team to strengthen and expand the pathways through which WES creates positive social impact. Adding to WES’s historic focus on academic credential evaluation services, the new team expanded programming, policy and advocacy initiatives, philanthropy, and investment strategies aimed at facilitating economic inclusion for immigrants, refugees, and international students. The case unpacks the leadership and organisational work involved in this transformation, shedding light on challenges as well as successes, and offers practical insights for social entrepreneurs and innovators seeking to expand their organisation’s pathways to impact.

1974-1999: Becoming a Category Leader in International Credential Evaluation World Education Services (WES) was founded in 1974 as a 501(c)(3) (non-profit and tax-exempt) organisation by returned Peace Corps volunteers, including Steven Fisher and Josef Silny, in partnership with Jim Frey, Ivan Putman, and others at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the State University of New York (SUNY). Appreciating the common challenges faced by immigrants, refugees, and international students in getting their education and qualifications recognised and accepted in their new country, the founding group set about developing a practical solution: credential evaluation. The service focused on assessing educational degrees earned abroad and confirming their US equivalent (and later, their Canadian equivalent). These evaluations enabled individuals to gain recognition for their international education for the purpose of continued education, employment, licensing, or immigration. The price for a credential evaluation was intentionally kept low to ensure that people who were already grappling with moving to or integrating into a new country did not also face financial obstacles in having their credentials evaluated. The fees paid by individuals covered WES’s operating costs, so donor funding was not required. Seven years later, in 1981, Mariam Assefa started working at WES, initially as a credential evaluator employed on a part-time basis. Originally from Ethiopia, Assefa had studied at the University of Montpellier in France and then immigrated to the US to attend SUNY at Buffalo. Through these experiences she developed a deep understanding of the challenges facing immigrants, refugees, and international students, as well as a passion

Mariam Assefa, former Executive Director, New York, 1999

for helping them find better futures. At the time that she joined WES, the organisation had just undergone multiple leadership changes, and its future was uncertain. Shortly thereafter, the board of trustees asked Assefa to step in as interim Executive Director, and she eventually took on the permanent role. Recognising that there was significant demand for WES’s credential evaluation product but a lack of organisational capacity to meet this demand, Assefa led the development of a new, more efficient process: rather than working through intermediaries such as universities, WES would directly connect with the individuals who needed their services. This change improved the delivery and quality of the credential evaluation product and expanded its reach. Assefa then worked to ensure that WES’s credential reports would be accepted by educational institutions, employers, licensing bodies, and government agencies, thereby establishing WES as a global expert on credential evaluation and international education. This required significant internal capacity building as well as strong external outreach and communications. WES invested in training its employees on how to stay up to date on various education systems around the world and also launched a newsletter, World Education News & Reviews, still published today. The newsletter illustrated the depth of research that WES undertook to conduct its evaluations and educated client institutions about different education systems around the world. Assefa also set out to find other ways to get WES on the map and ensure that its unique evaluation product was accepted both by those that needed it and by institutions that received it, such as universities and employers.

“Knowledge sharing was part and parcel of our growth strategy. In order to reach universities in the early days, we had to overcome their scepticism. They said, you’re not based on campus, what is your knowledge base? What do you know? So we decided that the best way to do this was to become active in the field and to also show them what we can do by publishing and sharing our expertise. And we never stopped doing that. It was very important for WES to be active as a thought leader because we felt it was our responsibility to make sure that credentials were evaluated properly, not only by us but by others as well, and that there was wide understanding of what that meant.” Mariam Assefa, former Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer Building on this early work, Assefa continued to solidify WES’s position as a leader in the international education space throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to growing WES’s core credential evaluation product, she developed the organisation’s board of trustees and built a strong network of relationships in the field. Drawing on this expertise, in 1998, WES launched its Automatic International Credential Evaluation System (AICES), a proprietary database that housed details about the content of educational qualifications around the world. By creating a continually expanding database from which WES could draw when evaluating credentials, AICES significantly accelerated the evaluation process and laid a foundation for scaling the operation beyond the US in the early 2000s (see Exhibit A). “We had been going through the process of innovation through technology to make the evaluation process smoother, and always keeping quality as a decisive factor. There is a lot of risk with credential evaluation that if you compromise quality, you challenge your integrity. That was one of the reasons why WES became the leader in credential evaluation in the United States, because we were faster on the one hand, and at the same time, we were still providing a quality product.” Hans de Wit, former Chair, Board of Trustees

2000-2018: Scaling Up and Experimenting Expanding the Credential Evaluation Enterprise In the year 2000, WES was selected by the provincial government of Ontario, Canada to support credential evaluation for the government itself. This was the start of a new era for WES: for the first time, it would be working outside the US, with Tim Owens providing leadership in Canada. While the other Canadian credential evaluation services operating in Ontario at the time viewed WES as a foreign competitor, the Assistant Deputy Minister at the Ontario Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities, Shamira Madhany (who would become the Managing Director of WES in Canada nearly two decades later), was supportive of the WES partnership. This support proved to be critical in helping WES to enter a new country. The terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 prompted another major shift in approach and operations, as WES added additional layers of checks into its credential evaluation process. The changes meant that verification with an individual’s academic institution in their home country sometimes took more time, prolonging the overall length of the process. Despite initially losing some market share to competitors, WES stayed the course with the more reliable approach. Eventually, this enhanced attention to verification gave WES a competitive advantage in terms of the overall rigour of its process, which further deepened trust with stakeholders.

WES staff in the Toronto office, 2014

Over the next decade, WES developed a strong presence in Ontario and strong ties to the government, positioning the organisation for further expansion in Canada. In 2013, WES submitted a successful bid to become one of six preferred credential evaluation providers for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), as IRCC introduced requirements for an Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) for skills-based economic immigration applicants to Canada. The IRCC contract represented a turning point not only for WES Canada, but also for the entire organisation. Up to this point, WES had been operating as a smaller non-profit organisation, generating revenues to cover operational expenses. Taking on the IRCC opportunity in Canada led to exponential growth in a short period of time and entailed significant changes to existing systems to deliver at scale. It also created new dynamics for WES to navigate, with so much of its work now oriented around a government contract outside of the US.

Exhibit A: WES Credential Evaluations Business Operations, 1974-2024 1974 WES is founded 20 credential 2001 WES begins authentication (in addition to 2018 347,700 credential evaluations completed 2013 WES becomes 1998 WES launches its Automatic International 2020 450,300 credential evaluations completed

2022 Business transformation & R&D in India begins 431,500 credential

2024 WES celebrates 50 years 473,000 credential

provider of Educational Credential Assessments for government of Canada 70,000 credential

Credential Evaluation System (AICES) 10,000 credential

determination of equivalency) for credentials 40,000 credential

evaluations completed

1984

2000 Toronto office opens 34,000 credential

2005

2017

2019 7% of documents transmitted digitally 407,900 credential

2021 70% of documents transmitted digitally 485,900 credential

2023 86% of documents transmitted digitally 488,000 credential

4,700 credential evaluations completed

58,600 credential evaluations completed

255,500 credential evaluations completed

evaluations completed

“WES’s reputation as a global leader in the field of credential evaluation helped us secure this critical contract with the IRCC, which in turn allowed us to significantly scale up our operations and impact. This growth would ultimately help WES evolve into the social enterprise we are today: the provider of a powerful service, the revenues from which we are able to re-invest into changing lives and systems for the better.” Shamira Madhany, Managing Director, Canada, and Deputy Executive Director In 2000, WES completed 3 4 ,000 evaluations. That number had doubled by 2013, and in 2018, WES completed close to 350,000 credential evaluations across the US and Canada and nearly 85% of all ECAs for IRCC. Experimenting with Other Pathways to Impact Around WES’s 35th anniversary in 2009, Assefa and the leadership team concluded that credential evaluations were necessary but not sufficient to help people to realise their full employment and economic potential. In parallel with growing and strengthening the credential evaluation business, WES started to experiment with other ways to foster economic inclusion for immigrants, refugees, and international students, incubating several key initiatives over the next decade. Deputy Executive Director Paul Feltman led the way in conceptualising these new areas of work. IMPRINT (which incorporates the first letters of the words ‘immigrant professional integration’) started in 2011 with five core partners. It focused on policy, advocacy, and programmatic approaches for removing barriers to economic mobility for immigrants and people who had experienced forced migration. Global Talent Bridge (GTB) launched in the US in 2012 and expanded to Canada in 2015 to work with advocacy organisations and policy groups to raise awareness around the challenges that internationally educated professionals faced in integrating into the North American employment landscape. Building on these efforts and operating under the GTB umbrella, the Skilled Immigrant Integration Program (now known as the Strengthening Immigrant Inclusion Program, or SIIP) was created

in 2017. SIIP offered technical assistance, coaching, and network building to support state government agencies and other organisations in scaling promising practices for fostering immigrant and refugee workforce inclusion. The historic WES credential evaluation business remained the organisation’s primary focus throughout the 2010s. WES’s reserves reached over USD 100 million by the end of 2018, driven by the growing customer base of immigrants to Canada. The new programmatic efforts enabled broader engagement in the field and were important steps in expanding the organisation’s impact.

WES staff in the New York office, 2017

For example, in 2018, the WES Gateway programme was initiated in Canada and over time expanded to the US. Cited by UNESCO as a model of best practice, the programme facilitates the recognition of displaced individuals’ education and enables academic institutions, employers, and licensing bodies to make informed decisions with this information. The programme has been instrumental in allowing WES to serve applicants from regions affected by war or natural disasters, in which university operations have been impacted. In 2018, other critical steps involved changes in leadership at both the board and organisational levels. Many board members transitioned out, and new members with a broader range of expertise were recruited, creating a group that spanned international education, business, philanthropy, and social impact. At the same time, Assefa made the decision to begin the process of retiring from WES, recognising that the organisation was well positioned for a new leader.

WES staff, World Refugee Day Walk, New York, 2019

2019-2024: A Change in Direction By the start of 2019, with the continued growth of the credential evaluation business (driven by demand in Canada) and with the accumulated financial reserves, the board of trustees were keen to build on WES’s experiments with other pathways to impact. Motivated by the overarching purpose of fostering global mobility, they considered how to best use the organisation’s now substantial resources to help individuals and communities most in need of support. Thinking beyond credential evaluation, the board committed to using WES’s surplus to support immigrants, refugees, and international students through a broader array of social impact initiatives. Over time, this decision led the organisation to develop a philanthropic arm; expand its programming, policy, and advocacy initiatives; rethink its investment strategies; and ultimately, incorporate addressing systemic barriers to economic inclusion for immigrants, refugees, and international students as a key pillar within its 2021-2025 strategic plan. To help expand its social impact activities, WES launched a philanthropic initiative and hired a new Senior Director, Monica Munn, to launch and run it. The initiative, named the WES Mariam Assefa Fund in honour of the organisation’s longtime leader, would become a key part of WES’s impact and approach to driving systems change.

“We were excited for the new world. And we were excited to wrestle with what that meant and how to get there.” Sidney Hargro, Chair, Board of Trustees A second critical step involved finding a new CEO as Assefa retired. Seeking a candidate who aligned with the board’s new ambition for WES and who would be capable of leading the organisation across a broader range of activities in pursuit of this mission – which now included a base of social impact initiatives alongside the core credential evaluation business – the board selected Esther Benjamin. A ‘tri-sector global leader’, Benjamin had built an expansive 25-year career working across the private, non-profit, and public sectors, including two stints in the White House under the Clinton and Obama administrations. Before joining WES, she led African operations for Laureate Education, the largest global higher education company. Benjamin also brought a deep understanding of the problems WES was trying to address, rooted in her own lived experience. Having come to the US from Sri Lanka when she was 13, Benjamin and her family left their homeland to seek safety, education, and other opportunities in a new country, much like many of the individuals whom WES serves. In the year prior to becoming the CEO, Benjamin had taken a year-long sabbatical to recharge and to focus on new opportunities to drive even greater impact.

“I inherited a strong organisation thanks to Mariam Assefa’s remarkable leadership. And from the beginning, the team and I also saw opportunities for transforming WES and taking it to the next level of impact. We envisioned a credential evaluation business that operated efficiently at an even greater scale. And we concluded that, to truly achieve our mission, WES would need to evolve so we could engage more levers of change. Completing this transformation successfully while maintaining our financial independence would require a strong plan and a talented, experienced team.” Esther Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director The Challenges of Forging New Pathways Benjamin started as CEO nine months before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a halt. As she got to know the organisation in those first few months, Benjamin focused on understanding how existing operations could be streamlined, while also planting seeds for an organisational transformation that would enable WES to forge new pathways to impact – developing a more expansive social impact portfolio while also driving new efficiencies in business operations. In 2020, the organisation initiated a restructuring, largely driven by a decline in demand during the pandemic (which ultimately turned out to be temporary). The restructuring was also informed by awareness of the forthcoming business and technology transformation on the horizon; the need for greater automation in WES’s work; and a recognition of skills needed to support WES’s credential evaluation work. As restructuring began, organisational and cultural challenges arose, with some staff questioning why WES’s financial surplus could not be used to maintain staffing levels on the credential evaluation side, despite the declines in demand that WES was experiencing. To help address these challenges and to manage continued organisational transformation, WES hired its first Chief People Officer, Abbie Cowan, who joined WES in 2022, bringing extensive experience from operating in the corporate and public sectors.

CEO and Executive Director Esther Benjamin at the Economic Inclusion Forum, Washington, D.C., 2023 (Copyright David Trozzo)

“When it comes to WES’s mission, there’s huge alignment among staff. Everyone in the organisation is incredibly thoughtful and an amazing advocate for WES’s work. But the nuanced work and operational realities of integrating different elements of WES’s portfolio as a social enterprise can be difficult to align.” Abbie Cowan, Chief People Officer While some employees ultimately departed the organisation as a result of the restructuring, those who stayed began to embrace the new direction while also helping WES to uphold the valuable aspects of its history. Alongside the restructuring, WES’s board approved a new five-year strategic plan in 2020. The plan recognised that the credential evaluation business and the social impact activities were inseparable in driving the mission, and it positioned WES as a self-funded and financially independent social enterprise.

Working Toward Systems Change In 2023, WES further extended the organisational transformation by forming a Social Impact division. The division enabled WES to build on its earlier experiments with new pathways to impact, bringing these activities together under one roof and facilitating the development of a coherent and intentional systems change strategy. Monica Munn, who had previously served as Senior Director overseeing the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, was tapped to lead this work in the newly created role of Chief Social Impact Officer. Under the leadership of Benjamin, Munn, and Madhany in Canada, WES became more proactive and intentional about fostering systems change through awareness building, network development, programme delivery, policy change, thought leadership, and capital allocation (see Exhibit B).

In the US, WES supported the bipartisan Bridging the Gap for New Americans Act, which was passed by the US Congress with strong bipartisan support in 2022, and led the response to the Act itself in 2023. This was particularly significant for WES and its partners, given that this act was the first time Congress passed a bill of this type (with the legislation being made at a federal, rather than state, level), and the first time WES had worked with its network of partners to advance a national policy initiative. WES also took a leadership role in coordinating recommendations that informed the White House Task Force on New Americans, which provided a roadmap for federal agencies to promote policies and practices that bolster the economic and social inclusion of newcomers. In 2023, WES joined a select group of organisations with aligned policy goals to form the US for Success Coalition, a partnership focused on elevating the US as a top destination for international students. In Canada, WES was instrumental in supporting policy change, particularly in the health sector. It successfully advocated an end-to-end strategy for the integration and skills utilisation of internationally educated health professionals. The organisation also played a leading role in bringing Practice Ready Assessments to Ontario – a significant regulatory milestone in providing internationally trained physicians a pathway to licensure.

“How can we leverage our different capabilities – policy and advocacy, programmatic solutions, philanthropy,

partnerships, and products – to meaningfully dismantle structural barriers experienced by

immigrants and refugees? Getting those capabilities to become more than the sum of their parts is essential to our vision of what a social enterprise can accomplish, but it is also a complex undertaking.” Monica Munn, Chief Social Impact Officer

Exhibit B: WES Social Impact, 2011-2024 2011

2015 WES Global Talent Bridge launched in Canada

2018 WES Gateway Program launched (CA) SIIP expands to 8 communities

2020 In-house US Policy team expands Internationally Educated Health Professional (IEHP) initiative expands during pandemic (CA) SIIP expands to 24 communities First MAF co-funding partnership secured First impact investments made

2022 Social Impact Division established US Bridging the Gap for New Americans Act WES Gateway Program reaches 3,000 people WES convenes 1 st WES Economic Inclusion Forum , with 150+ partners, immigrant leaders, and govt reps

2024 WES expands policy focus to 29 states WES Gateway Program reaches 15,000 people SIIP expands to 45 communities MAF celebrates 5 year anniversary reaching 143 partners with USD 37M grants and impact investments since inception

IMPRINT Coalition launched

2012 WES Global Talent Bridge established in US

2017 Skilled Immigrant Integration Program (SIIP) established

2019 WES Mariam Assefa Fund (MAF) launched and first grants made SIIP expands to 16 communities

2021 Global Talent Leadership Network launched with 11 leaders (US) #ImmigrantsWork employer mobilisation program initiated (CA) SIIP expands to 32 communities First staff-led donations made by Fund Ambassadors

2023 WES convenes 2 nd WES

Economic Inclusion Forum , with 220+ partners, immigrant leaders, and government reps SIIP expands to 40 communities WES commits to 100% mission-aligned investing

In addition to the policy work, programmatic initiatives expanded rapidly. Since its founding in 2017, SIIP had grown to reach 16 communities by 2019 and expanded to 40 communities by 2024. The Gateway program, launched in 2018, reached 15,000 people by 2024. During this period, the WES Mariam Assefa Fund grew from a small philanthropic commitment to a strategic funder in both the US and Canada. By 2024, the WES Mariam Assefa Fund had disbursed over USD 37 million (through both grants and impact investments) to 143 organisations working in 20 US states and eight Canadian provinces. With over five years of activity in the philanthropic sector, the Fund has begun to see how catalytic support for organisations that are working to build equitable access to opportunity, wealth, power, and justice can drive impact and build replicable solutions. For example, one of the Fund’s first Canadian grantee partners, the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia, ran a successful pilot programme, Bridging the Gap for Internationally Educated Early Childhood Educators, which later received government funding to scale the programme throughout the province. “WES’s decision to seed a new philanthropic initiative was a key step in the organisation’s evolution as a social enterprise. Engaging as a grantmaker and investor enabled WES to bring a deeper level of support to organisations serving immigrant and refugee communities, creating space for experimentation and partnership with the ultimate goal of shifting systems.” Dewayne Matthews, Former Trustee The Fund was equally focused on how it could influence philanthropic practices to shift resources and power to those most proximate to the issues that connect to WES’s mission, especially immigrant and refugee leaders and leaders from communities of colour. Through a strategy which WES called aligned funding (which included co-funding, pooling funding, and matching funding with other philanthropic partners), an additional USD 50 million had been unlocked from other funders during the first five years of the Fund’s operations.

As WES’s approach to systems change expanded and evolved through this period, its credential evaluation business continued to grow as well, providing a critical source of revenue to fuel its social impact work. In 2024, WES completed credential evaluations for 475,000 individuals, who brought the organisation nearly 620,000 qualifications to be evaluated, with Canadian IRCC reports making up more than half of the total. Under the leadership of Benjamin and Cheryl Toto, Chief Operating Officer, WES’s credential evaluation business adopted a commercial, operational, and customer-centred mindset, aiming to maintain quality and continuously increase efficiency, serve more people, and grow revenues. In 2024, annual revenues were over USD 100 million, and cash and investment reserves reached USD 255 million. As WES’s core business continued to grow, it also expanded its global reach. In 2023, WES began a partnership with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) to provide qualification verifications for applicants immigrating to New Zealand, creating a more streamlined pathway for newcomers to quickly enter the country’s workforce and contribute to its economy. In 2024, WES began establishing a new office in India to enhance its on-the-ground capabilities in a highly dynamic and innovative market critical to both WES’s current operations and to new strategic initiatives.

Managing Director, Canada and Deputy Executive Director Shamira Madhany and Chief Social Impact Officer Monica Munn at WES’s 50th Anniversary Celebration, New York, 2024

Building an Integrated Organisation While both sets of activities – credential evaluation and systems change – coexisted under the WES umbrella, figuring out whether and how to integrate them created a continual challenge. What should the relationship be between the legacy WES, with its more traditional non-profit focused exclusively on credential evaluation, and the new WES, in which the credential evaluation work generated revenue supporting a much broader range of social impact activities? “A social enterprise integrates the best of traditional non-profit and business models, helping organisations like WES drive sustainable, scalable progress. But a social enterprise must also be able to balance its priorities around revenue generation with its priorities around social impact and systems change, which are sometimes at odds. Ultimately, for our team, it comes back to the mission – and if the actions of today will make us better stewards of our mission tomorrow. That doesn’t make balancing these priorities easy or straightforward – it requires ongoing conversation and adaptation at every level of the organisation.” Esther Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director In 2024, WES launched a rebrand which was intended to unite the organisation internally and refresh its image externally. Even as the rebrand aimed to capture and convey WES’s enhanced focus on social impact, the communications team decided to leave the WES logo largely intact, given how synonymous WES’s branding and reputation had become with quality credential evaluation to its longtime partners.

Through this continued growth, WES continued to explore how to leverage its social enterprise model for maximum impact. In 2022, WES began considering how to use capital allocation as a lever for systems change, by rethinking the organisation’s investment and cash management strategies. Leveraging learnings and organisational capabilities that had been developed under the WES Mariam Assefa Fund’s impact investing initiatives, Benjamin, Munn, and Smitha Das, then Director of Impact Investing, pushed for a new mission-aligned investment policy, which was approved by the board in November 2023. The policy committed WES to invest its financial surplus in assets that met certain social impact criteria. To ensure support and expertise for this new approach to investing, WES created a Senior Director of Investments position reporting directly to the Chief Financial Officer, and Das took on this role. WES also engaged an external partner who advised on creating an investment policy that fully aligned with WES’s mission, selecting Bivium Westfuller from 25 potential firms. “Often within the impact investing landscape, ‘impact’ is defined by who we invest in and what we invest in. To truly create systems change and drive greater impact, we must evolve our definition of impact to also reflect how we invest in and support our partners. Ultimately, we have to dismantle inherent power dynamics and shift power to the communities we invest in. That’s part of what we’re trying to demonstrate at WES.” Smitha Das, Senior Director of Investments

Guests mingle at WES’s 50th Anniversary Celebration, New York, 2024

Looking to the Future On 15 October 2024, WES celebrated its 50th anniversary with past and present partners, staff, and board members in New York City. It was an opportunity to honour WES’s history of success as the leading credential evaluation provider in North America, its accomplishments in facilitating economic inclusion for immigrants, refugees, and international students, and the individuals who made these accomplishments possible. Yet those assembled for the evening were aware of the challenges that lay ahead. Some of these challenges were operational, as WES grappled with unexpectedly high and varied application volumes that would stretch the organisation’s capacity. This included more complex educational files as well as more Canadian immigration files from people who were already in the country, such as former international students, temporary foreign workers, and others seeking a path to permanent residency. To compound matters, a restructuring of the credential evaluation team and the ongoing digital transformation had strained organisational capacity. Other challenges were organisational. While WES had made progress toward integrating its systems change work with its core business, the leadership team continued to grapple with critical questions about how to maximise WES’s impact and how to best structure the organisation to deliver this impact. They recognised that the credential evaluation business and the systems change work were distinct and sometimes in tension. At the same time, they also increasingly saw the power in having the two divisions work together to tackle economic inclusion for immigrants, refugees, and international students, albeit with different tools. Still other challenges extended beyond the bounds of the organisation, including the increasingly politicised context in which WES operated. In the autumn of 2024, the US was in the final weeks of a heated presidential election, and the future of Canada’s longstanding Prime Minister, a strong supporter of immigration, was in doubt. These dynamics created considerable uncertainty about political support for immigrants, making WES’s work both more critical and more complex.

After the 50th anniversary event concluded, Benjamin and the entire leadership team sought to capture the energy of the evening and this landmark year. Mindful of the operational, organisational, and political uncertainties facing WES, they were fuelled by a sense of urgency and driven to move forward with WES’s work of fostering global mobility for immigrants, refugees, and international students.

WES 50th Anniversary Staff Retreat, Philadelphia, 2024

In the weeks following the 50th anniversary event, the WES Board would go on to approve a new ten-year strategy with the ambitious goal of helping enable and accelerate equitable access to good work for immigrants. Created over the course of 2024, in close conversation with WES staff and partners, this strategy aimed to help WES maximise its impact in the long term and stay ahead of the curve amidst a rapidly changing external landscape with significant headwinds for serving immigrants, refugees, and international students. “The decision to develop a ten-year strategy was an important decision for us. We have a powerful, broad mission and an ambitious vision. There is so much work to be done, and as an organisation, we want to respond to this demand for change. Our ten-year strategy gives the focus to invest in diversifying our revenue sources while helping prioritise our impact driven initiatives.” Megan Blackburn, Senior Director, Strategy and Planning The new strategy will require yet another significant organisational transformation, as WES continues to build upon its legacy and works to help build inclusive economies that enable immigrants to thrive.

About the Skoll Centre Based at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, the Skoll Centre equips entrepreneurial leaders to catalyse systemic change within and beyond business. Over the past 20 years, the Centre has become a global hub for social entrepreneurship, innovation, and impact. We bring researchers and practitioners together to generate insights on leading and organising, financing, measuring, and scaling impact, and we incorporate these insights into learning programmes for entrepreneurial leaders at Oxford and worldwide. https://www.skollcentre.org/ About WES WES is a non-profit social enterprise that supports the educational, economic, and social inclusion of immigrants, refugees, and international students in the US and Canada. For 50 years, WES has set the standard for international academic credential evaluation, supporting millions of people as they seek to achieve their academic and professional goals. Through decades of experience as a leader in global education, WES has expanded its mission to pursue and scale social impact. https://www.wes.org/

We thank Esther Benjamin, Megan Blackburn, and Rokaya Helfer for involvement and feedback on the case study, as well as all the WES staff and board members who were interviewed as part of the research. We also thank Skoll Centre staff members Jessica Jacobson, Sarah McGill, and Sarah Tuke for their input and support during the case research and writing process. This case study is dedicated to the memory of Dewayne Matthews.

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