Our Leaders, Board Members, Advisors and Investors

Crimson Education — powered by world leaders in education, business and technology

Crimson Education was founded in 2013 by New Zealanders Jamie Beaton, Fangzhou Jiang and Sharndre Kushor, who, inspired by their own academic goals and accomplishments, set out to help other students reach their individual university admissions goals.

With the visions of equalising the university admissions playing field and progressing college admissions support and education technology into the 22nd century, the small team grew to a global staff of experts.

In the years that have passed, Crimson has continued to attract some of the world’s most respected, accomplished and experienced minds in education, business, technology and venture capital as board members, advisors, governors and investors.

Find out more about the executive and advisory teams that power Crimson, and our valued investors below.

Our Board Members and Observers

Apoorv Agrawal

Director and Board Member, Crimson Education Former-Vice President, Softbank Investment Advisers

Fangzhou Jiang

Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Crimson Education CEO China

BS/BCom, Australian National University MS StanfordUniversity Schwarzman Scholar Stanford University Fangzhou Jiang graduated from the Australian National University as the International University Scholar with two Bachelor’s degrees. He then moved to the US for his Masters and studied Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. Born in Shaanxi, China, Fangzhou moved to New Zealand at the age of 16 and attended Rangitoto College. In his final year of high school, he became the first and only international student in the history of NZ to be named a Premier Scholar, the highest academic honor in the country from Prime Minister Sir John Key. In addition to the NZ high school curriculum, he self-studied seven AP subjects and received perfect scores on all of them. He was awarded the AP Scholar of Distinction by the College Board. Fangzhou is a co-founder of Crimson Education and serves as the group’s Chief Business Development Officer as well as the CEO of China Operations. In 2017, he was named New Zealand Student Entrepreneur of the Year and in 2019, he was selected as a Schwarzman Scholar to pursue a Master of Global Affairs at Tsinghua University. Over the last six years at Crimson, Fangzhou has advised hundreds of students around the world to help them access their dream universities and careers. Fangzhou is passionate about sports. In 2019 alone, he raced in three Ironman 70.3 events in the United States and Australia, where he completed 1.9 km of open water swimming, 90 km of cycling and 21.1 km of running in a continuous session in each race. He is also a PADI-certified Advanced Open Water diver and enjoys scuba diving around the world in his spare time.

Jamie Beaton

Co-Founder and CEO, Crimson Education

BA (Applied Mathematics and Economics) Harvard University MS (Applied Mathematics) Harvard University Masters in Education (Education Technology) Stanford University (Youngest ever Arjay Miller Award recipient) DPhil Public Policy University of Oxford Rhodes Scholar Yale Law School (began degree in September 2020) Jamie Beaton graduated from Harvard University, Magna Cum Laude in 2016 (two years ahead of schedule) with a double-degree in Applied Mathematics-Economics and Applied Math. He was also one of the youngest in the world to be accepted to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business at age 20. In June 2019, Jamie graduated from Stanford with an MBA in Computer Science and Education Technology - the youngest ever recipient of the Arjay Miller Award (Top 10% of his class) - having simultaneously begun his PhD as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. As Co-Founder and CEO of Crimson Education, Jamie now helms a company dedicated to levelling the playing field in world leading university admissions. The world’s most successful college admissions company, Crimson now boasts a global student body of 2,000 students who are mentored and tutored by over 2,400 tutors who themselves have graduated from the world’s best universities including all Ivy Leagues, Stanford, MIT, Oxford and Cambridge. Crimson students, who come from over 20 countries around the world, are now 4 times more likely to gain admission to an Ivy League university and 2-4 times more likely to gain admission to Oxford or Cambridge than the global applicant. Since Crimson‘s foundation, some 1000 students have received offers from world leading universities in the US and UK including Stanford, MIT, UChicago, Duke, UCL, Imperial College London, LSE, King’s College London and more. Crimson has also assisted it’s students in securing over $68M USD in scholarship funding and financial aid. In 2019, Crimson Education was named finalist in the Westpac Business Awards in two categories - Innovation and Service Delivery - while in 2017 Jamie and Crimson co-founder Sharndre Kushor were featured on the 2017 Forbes Asia - 30 Under 30 List. Just some of Jamie’s further accolades include New Zealand’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year, New Zealand Innovator of the Year, NZ Hi-Tech Young Achiever, and Young New Zealander of the Year.

Janine Manning

Director and Board Member, Crimson Education

Jack McQuire

Director and Board Member, Crimson Education
Partner, Icehouse Ventures

Alexander Rosenthal

Board Observer, Crimson Education
Senior Principal, Verlinvest

Owen Wurzbacher

Board Observer, Crimson Education, Managing Director & Portfolio Manager, HighSage Ventures

Our Advisors

Ed Baker

Advisor, Crimson Education Former Facebook Head of Intl. Growth Uber VP and elite triathlete

Alexander Rosenthal

Board Observer, Crimson Education
Senior Principal, Verlinvest

Penelope Barton

Advisor, Crimson Education

Apoorv Agrawal

Advisor, Crimson Education Vice President at SoftBank Investment Advisers

Larry Summers

Advisor, Crimson Education Former US Secretary of the Treasury

Rt Hon Sir John Key, GNZM AC

Senior Advisor, Crimson Global Academy Chairman of ANZ Bank NZ Former Prime Minister of New Zealand

Chris Wang

Advisor, Crimson Education Senior Investment Manager SoftBank China Capital

Karen Yung

Advisor, Crimson Education Chief Collaboration Officer Dulwich College International

Prof. Billy Osteen

Advisor, Crimson Education Dir. University of Canterbury Community Engagement Hub & Associate Professor of Community Engagement

David Mansfield

Advisor, Crimson Global Academy CEO and Dean of Buckingham International School of Education & Senior Advisor to Pao School

Dr. Tomohiro Hoshi

Senior Advisor, Crimson Global Academy New Zealand Head of School, Stanford Online High School

Dr. Jian Yang

Advisor, Crimson Education Former Member NZ House of Representatives International Relations Academic

Fraser White

Advisor, Crimson Education Founder, Chairman and CEO Dulwich College International

Barbara Kendall CNZM.MBE

5-Time Olympian in Windsurfing/ Sailing Winner of Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals International Olympic Committee (1996-2016)

A.J Tills

Advisor, Crimson Education

CGA Board of Governors

Keisuke Shibata

CEO Crimson Global Academy

Kevin Park

Head of Admissions Crimson Global Academy

Janine Manning

Director and Board Member Crimson Education

Jamie Beaton

President, Crimson Global Academy

Our Investors

At Crimson we are fortunate to have investors who both appreciate the life-changing value of education and the need to progress global education practices. Our investors range from successful individuals to globally recognised companies who have added Crimson to their portfolios which include other world leading organisations such as Facebook, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Quora, Eventbrite, Stripe and more.