Pablo Fetter

Board & Executive Committee Member at RAK Academy American University of Ras al Khaimah

Dr Pablo Fetter is an expert in education with a track record of leading merger & acquisition transactions in education companies worldwide, as well as running international private school operators and serving on boards.

Dr Pablo brings in three decades’ worth of experience in education, investments, and industry, and he has been a member of 15 Boards of Directors. Currently he is a member of the board and the Executive Committee, as well as the Chairman of the Human Resources Committee of RAK Academy, a private chain with 5 schools and ~3K students. He is also a member of the board and the Executive Committee of the American University of Ras al Khaimah, a private and fully accredited American university with ~1K students.

As an expert consultant in education investments, Dr Pablo participated in the world’s largest Education transactions including TA Associates’ investment into InspirED, the sale of Cognita and the reshuffle of GEMS’ private equity investors.

As Capital School CEO, he led the turnaround of the company, both academically and financially: from “Satisfactory” to “Good” according to the British government’s BSO and from “Acceptable” to “Good” according to KHDA, as well as from declining to increasing profitability.

Previously, Dr Pablo was CEO of Kings’ Education, an operator of premium schools in the Middle East. As CEO and board member of GEMS Africa, he was instrumental in building GEMS operations in Africa to a $250M partnership with the world’s largest development-oriented fund. As Commercial Director & Head of Investments at GEMS Global, Dr Pablo was responsible to expand the company’s international footprint both through joint ventures for new green-field projects, and through acquisitions of existing schools.

Before that, Dr Pablo was Head of Private Equity & Direct Investments at Mumtalakat, Bahrain's $8B sovereign wealth fund, as well as Managing Director and Partner at the private equity and venture capital operations of Istithmar World (Dubai) and Neuhaus Partners (Germany). Dr Pablo was a member of 10+ Boards of Directors and held multiple senior executive roles.

Previously, Dr Pablo had a successful business-development career with Telecom Denmark, Daimler, EADS/Airbus and Mercedes Benz. He contributed to the development and market introduction of the world’s first speech recognition system for the car environment for the Mercedes Benz S-Class in 1996. The further development of this product (“Linguatronic”) is still commercially available across the Mercedes Benz line of cars.

Dr Pablo resided and worked in seven countries in Europe, South America, Asia and Middle East, and is proficient in four languages.