Douglas Becker

Founder & Chairman

Douglas Becker serves as Founder and Chairman of Cintana Education in the United States, a global company focused on enabling universities worldwide to raise programme quality and expand scale in partnership with Arizona State University. Becker founded Cintana in 2019 in consultation with Dr. Michael Crow, President of ASU, with the aim of connecting millions of students globally to high-quality educational systems through innovative programme design and academic partnerships. Becker's record of leadership in the global education industry spans more than four decades. In 1983, he co-founded Sterling Partners, which has since become a leading investor in the education sector, with over 80 investments. He led Sylvan Learning Systems as Chairman and CEO, growing it into North America's largest pre-college tutoring company with more than 1,000 centres and 200,000 students, and founded Prometric, a global leader in computer-based testing. In 1999 he founded Laureate Education and led it as Chairman and CEO until 2018, building it into the world's largest higher-education company with more than one million students at 70 institutions; it became the first publicly traded company organised as a Public Benefit Corporation and the world's largest Certified B Corp. Becker maintains an extensive non-profit footprint, serving on the Board of Trustees of Johns Hopkins Medicine and Johns Hopkins International, and chairing the board of the International Youth Foundation for 16 years across operations in more than 100 countries. His philosophy is anchored in the conviction that universities play an indispensable role in the development of nations, communities, and individuals, and that more students deserve access to the resources of the world's top-tier universities.