Naresh Gulati has been in international education since the mid-90s. He helped build one of the largest education agencies in India, then founded BPO Intelligence, and now is driving the rise (pun intended) of Ascent One, a modular ecosystem designed to reduce admin chaos by helping systems talk to each other.

But instead of giving you a standard “here’s how I scaled” playbook, this conversation offers something more human: a philosophy for staying steady when business, and life, get messy.

It's a very personal conversation with one of Australian international education's leading entrepreneurs.

In this episode, we get into:

• Naresh’s early story, including failing Year 10, selling candles on the roadside, and what those years taught him about resilience

• Why he makes decisions largely on gut feel, and how that’s shaped every business he’s built

• The “leaf on the river” metaphor, float, bump into rocks, rest when you reach shore, then move again

Rob also brings in something many listeners will recognise, that 3am spiral where your brain turns into a to-do list machine. Naresh’s response is simple, practical, and surprisingly hard to argue with: stress rarely solves the problem, it usually just doubles it. From there, they explore the difference between happiness and contentment, why we get used to carrying tension, and what awareness actually looks like when you are in the middle of a tough season.

You’ll also hear:

• Why schools teach competitiveness, but rarely teach stress management, and what that costs later

• A grounded take on collaboration, and why “me versus them” thinking leaves opportunities on the table

• A personal COVID-era moment that reminds you everything changes, even the hardest chapters

If you want an episode that feels like a deep breath, without pretending the world is easy, this is it.

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Angelo Ablao.

Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host. The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website. This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets.

For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au

Who would have guessed?

Out of the blue on Sunday, the Government announced the doubling of the cost of one of the key student-related visas. Dirk Mulder and Tracy Harris from The Koala News were right on it, with the breaking news hitting inboxes within hours. It just shows why industry news is so important!

This week is a bumper episode of the podcast, including our special guest Michael Holaday from Prometric. Prometric are the administrators of the Celpip English test, one of the new English language tests approved by the Department of Home Affairs last year for visa purposes. It's a great conversation about Michael's career trajectory through international ed, as well as a dive into this new offering (in Australia, at least) in the English language testing market.

And alongside that, we've got the mission critical news that you simply can't miss. Thanks for joining us!

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Angelo Ablao. Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host.

The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website.

This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets.

For guest suggestions and feedback, email ⁠podcast@globalsociety.com.au

When I sat down with Ainslie Moore, I thought we’d spend 45 minutes doing what we’ve almost never done in the past 25 years: talk without an agenda.

We made it about 30 seconds.

Because Ainslie opens with the kind of confession that tells you exactly what sort of episode this is going to be, she has a “flight home story” she “will not tell the rest of the world”… and then casually admits she once booked a train from London to Brussels because she thought that’s where The Hague was.

From there, we’re off. Travel disasters, sliding-door moments, and the deeper thread underneath it all: how someone goes from being a 17-year-old international student with a life-changing exchange experience, to becoming a proper policy operator who can move a whole system with the right alliance, the right incentives, and the right message.

This conversation keeps flipping between the “romance” of international education (travel, language, identity, becoming more yourself) and the machinery that makes it possible (policy settings, incentives, and the behind-the-scenes work nobody sees). It’s two sides of the same coin, and Ainslie lives right at the centre of it.

This episode is a cracker.

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Angelo Ablao. Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host.

The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website.

This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets.

For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au