Who runs it
Kevin Lynch · CEO and Managing Director
A serial founding executive and scaler of education businesses. Every venture he has helped build has gone on to a major exit. Skilled Education is his own Oakley-backed platform.
| Era | Company | Role | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000s | Think Education Group | Founding CMO | Sold to SEEK, 2010 |
| 2010-2017 | Open Colleges Group | Founding CMO, then COO | Sold to Apollo Education Group, 2014 |
| 2017+ | UP Education | Senior executive | Continued scaling |
| 2018-2024 | Berlitz Corporation, APAC | COO and CMO | Led marketing across APAC and EMEA |
| 2026 | Skilled Education (OCG Skilled Education Holding GmbH) | CEO and Managing Director | Led the Oakley acquisition of SFU Vienna |
OO has shipped for Kevin before. We delivered the Berlitz multilingual CTR programme, 8 locations across 5 countries. He knows what we ship and how fast.
Tim Knapton · Strategy and Development
The second principal at Skilled Education, working alongside Kevin on the platform build-out and the academic portfolio expansion.
The Oakley structure
The platform sits inside the Oakley education group. Understanding the chain matters, because the proof we point to is already inside the same family of assets.
| Layer | Entity | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Oakley Capital | Peter Dubens (Founder and Managing Partner) leads the firm. Oakley runs 8 education holdings across early-childhood to higher education. Twice named EducationInvestor of the Year. Fund IV and a GBP 240M continuation vehicle are the IU-specific instruments; Fund VI is a EUR 4.5bn hard-cap vehicle. Oakley's education thesis is explicit: international expansion, AI investment, and growth in online higher education. |
| Oakley education operating CEOs | Pattern: one operator per vertical | Kevin Lynch runs Skilled Education (higher-ed). Thomas Rajzbaum (ex-Partner at EQT Group where he founded the French infrastructure office and led Education strategy across Europe, MBA Columbia Business School) runs Affinitas, Oakley's international K12 schools group. The pattern is clear: Oakley installs a dedicated operating CEO per education vertical. Kevin is that person for higher-ed. |
| Platform | Skilled Education (OCG Skilled Education Holding GmbH) | Oakley's new higher-education vehicle. Kevin Lynch = CEO and Managing Director (named publicly on SFU's own announcement, 3 June 2026). Tim Knapton handles strategy, acquisitions and platform build-out alongside Kevin. Steve Rae, an Apollo and Berlitz veteran who overlaps directly with Kevin's career, is a co-founder of the Skilled Education brand entity. The team has collectively scaled, acquired and exited multiple education businesses across Australia, APAC and Europe. |
| First asset | Sigmund Freud Private University Vienna (SFU) | Austria's largest private university. Acquired from its three founding academics: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Alfred Pritz (founding rector since 2005, psychotherapy pioneer), Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jutta Fiegl, and Mag. Dr. Heinz Laubreuter. Current rector is Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johannes Pollak. Legal counsel on the acquisition: Simpson Thacher and Bartlett (Oakley side), Dorda (Austria), E+H (sellers' side). Transaction announced publicly 2 June 2026. |
IU Group and its Syntea AI learning companion are a sister Oakley asset, not the buyer here. IU is the proven model we reference: same owner, same investor, AI teaching already shipped at scale. The CEO who built IU into Germany's largest university and architected Syntea sits in the same Oakley portfolio as Kevin. That is the proof-of-concept already paid for.
The mandate
The owner has stated the direction publicly. It is an investment-and-modernise mandate, not a cost-cut.
| Lever | What was stated |
|---|---|
| Portfolio | Expand academic programs, including sonography and plastic and reconstructive surgery. Goal: a comprehensive health university. |
| Footprint | Expand Berlin and Milan campuses, plus a new campus planned in Western Austria. |
| Teaching | Digitalization and innovative teaching formats. |
| Reach | More international cooperations. |
On-campus and blended, not distance. The owner has signalled it wants better digital teaching formats but is not pursuing distance education. That points the AI work at the classroom and the student-support load, not an online-degree rollout.
Where OO and Tony fit
We are the operating AI layer. The mandate calls for digitalization and innovative teaching formats. Oakley has already proven what that looks like at IU with Syntea. Our role is to bring that result to SFU faster than an in-house build can deliver it, on the university's own course material, with a working demo in weeks rather than years.