Edgar Kelly-Garcia (MBA 1998) is founder and dean of Universidad of San Sebastian in Mexico. In this interview from June 2018 he discusses the origins of the idea to launch a school in one of the poorest areas of his country along with cofounder and Kennedy School alumnus Javier Salido (MPA 1997).

“Universidad of San Sebastian is located in Culiacán, Mexico. Culiacán happens to be one of the most violent places in Mexico, and by now, in the world, and the education level in our country, in general, is really low. So a friend of mine, who happens to be a Kennedy School grad, we got together and started to talk about how we could improve the situation.

“We ended up with an idea of starting a smaller university focused to low-income students coming from the really poor families who were high achievers during high school. We launched the university in 2009; the first class was in 2010, and we attracted 180 students. By now we have over 1,200 students, from elementary school to college.

“The way we modeled the school was about getting the students engaged in the learning process and discussing things, which was pretty much what I learned [at HBS]. The other thing we learned is that attracting the best professors and paying the professors as high as possible within our social model, we would be able to make a difference by having professors willing to learn as well as the students.

“So it was a combination of what we learned in the US and techniques that we were researching through learning about education. By now we have about 400 students throughout the university. We have eight bachelor degrees and two master's degrees. And one of them is education. So we're also teaching teachers to teach better.

“I think what I got out of HBS that helped me to launch the university was a set of technical skills and, particularly, marketing leadership. We basically branded our story: Two Harvard grads coming back to our hometown, trying to build a better education system. That was our sales pitch. We took a business approach to market the school, to create a positioning of the university name. And we took the leadership concepts we learned here to position ourselves and the professors to have the models to pursue from the students.

“Over time, when the parents of the kids started to see the difference on their critical thinking, on their actual basic skills, we became a word-of-mouth institution, and an institution that by now-- we have more students than we can accommodate, and we're attracting the talent we want to have.”

[Editor’s note: Since this interview was conducted in June 2018, the Universidad of San Sebastian is fully vertically integrated, with schools from preK-12 to bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. In 2019, the system had 1,250 students, with 370 students at the university level. Since its inception, the university has graduated 408 alumni; 292 completed a bachelor’s degree and 116 completed a master’s program.]

(Published January 2020)

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