Peter Barnes

Peter recently joined Studyportals in November 2020 as Chief Operating Officer.  As a people-oriented leader he is passionate about supporting this fast-growing, international, and innovative company in delivering on its growth ambitions.  In his role he is enabling Studyportals to make fact-based decisions, while ensuring a solid financial and strategic foundation. 

Peter is a CIMA qualified Accountant with 20 years of experience in Digital businesses and a strong focus on execution and results.  Starting out in online recruitment, he spent 10 years with Jobsite and quickly became a key part of the senior team in this fast-growing business. His key areas of focus were, setting up and leading the business intelligence function, integrating acquisitions and guiding strategy and planning.  

Subsequently he served initially as Finance and Operations Director at the Student Room Group growing a small business into a highly respected company by both students and Universities, whilst retaining profitable growth. In the next phase he served as Chief Operating Officer and as Managing Director being responsible for the design, development and delivery of The Student Room’s strategy and guiding the transition from advertising into a data driven business in the ever-changing Education space. These have been the basis for a deep, life-long interest in the power of education. 

Peter is an experienced, strategic, data driven leader with strong management skills and many years of Board level experience. He deeply understands the measures of success and the approaches to bringing teams together through shared goals, recognition, ownership and responsibility.  

We are therefore extremely happy that Peter joined our mission at Studyportals, forming a strong addition in the company’s strategic growth.  

Peter is a strong believer in equal and ubiquitous access to high quality education and finds it inspiring to enable students to choose for themselves the education that best fits their needs. This aligns nicely with Studyportals’ mission to ‘empower the world to choose international education.’  

His favorite Studyportals element is the shared purpose of making international education transparent to the world among the passionate colleagues with over 25 different nationalities and playing a part in connecting Universities with students from around the globe, whilst growing this exciting entrepreneurial business.’