We caught up with Daryl Orts, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Faria Education Group, to explore how he’s helping transform a global EdTech company into an AI-first organisation whilst managing distributed teams across three continents.  

When Daryl Orts stepped into his role as Chief Technology and Product Officer at Faria Education Group just over a year ago, he faced a challenge familiar to many tech leaders: four disconnected products, global teams spread thin, and the pressure to innovate at pace in an increasingly competitive market.  

But rather than shy away from the complexity, Daryl leaned into it. Today, he’s leading one of the most ambitious transformations in EdTech – turning Faria into a fully AI-enabled company whilst building the data infrastructure that could revolutionise personalised learning.  

Taking on the chaos

“You get one chance to be new,” Daryl tells us. “I took advantage of that. Asked lots of questions, didn’t pretend to know things I didn’t, and focused on building the right relationships quickly.”  

His mandate was clear from day one: develop a product strategy aligned with business goals, establish proper organisational structure, and transform delivery into a mature SaaS model. What surprised him most wasn’t the global distribution of teams, but that not a single product team was located in one part of the world.  

“Two teams were spread across Europe, Asia and the Americas. The other two across Europe and Asia. It makes meaningful collaboration nearly impossible.”  

The solution? Strategic restructuring, elevating internal talent to leadership positions, and ruthlessly prioritising what mattered. He expanded the focus on integrations (across the Faria products as well as with 3rd party products), established a team to build a new data analytics product, and restructured the biggest product team into focused squads.  

The AI transformation that actually works

Faria recently announced its transformation into an AI company – but this isn’t another case of AI washing. Daryl’s approach is refreshingly pragmatic.  

“AI is not a feature,” he states firmly. “We won’t sell the AI feature of ManageBac or OpenApply. We sell features that bring value, and some of those we might build to incorporate AI.”  

The AI transformation follows three parallel paths:  

  • Internal transformation: Training everyone in the company to use AI effectively in their current roles – not to eliminate jobs, but to get more from existing investment and people.  
  • Product integration: Building genuinely valuable features powered by AI, focused on solving real problems rather than simply showcasing technology.  
  • Trusted advisory: Positioning Faria as a guide for schools navigating their own AI journey – because some educational institutions are   overwhelmed or   confused, sometimes scared, and need trustworthy partners.  

The data advantage

 One of the areas where Faria stands apart is in its data. As one of the few vendors with a complete view of students from admissions through to graduation, they’re sitting on a goldmine.  

 “We see everything – admissions, enrolment, activities, parent communications, transportation, classroom experience, test results, curriculum alignment,” Daryl explains. “Add demographic information, financials, and location data, and you realize that we have a uniquely valuable dataset.”  

This comprehensive data enables insights that could transform education. Examples include understanding how extracurricular activities impact academic performance, identifying optimal scheduling patterns, and most ambitiously, creating personalised learning journeys for individual student. Of course, having that rich dataset also highlights the importance of keeping the data safe and secure. Daryl emphasises that “We are obsessively focused on ethical and responsible use of technology, including AI. We are fully committed to protecting the security and privacy of the data entrusted to us by our schools.”  

Closing out this topic, Daryl adds “Personalisation is a goal that many every EdTech companies are racing towards. Our advantage will be the data that lets us get the right insights.”  

Quick wins vs long-term vision

Balancing immediate priorities with strategic transformation requires different conversations depending on the audience.  

“When I’m talking to our CEO and executive team, it’s about honest communication regarding trade-offs and options,” Daryl says. “Everyone recognises that big strategic investments take time and money before they pay off, but they need to be done.”  

 Daryl emphasized the importance of the strategic technology vision he was able to put in place, explaining that “This plan guides us in allocating our resources and also informs our M&A strategy.”   The other key is identifying costs – both of doing something and not doing it – and securing buy-in before making decisions. For his teams, the focus shifts to consistent, reliable delivery. Getting regular weekly deployments into production with new capabilities and maintained roadmaps have delivered the biggest ROI.  

Three lessons for new leaders

For anyone stepping into a similar challenge, Daryl offers three pieces of advice:  

  • Leverage being new: Ask questions, acknowledge what you don’t know, establish relationships quickly, and learn the business and domain deeply.  
  • Focus on relationships: Build connections with commercial teams, talk to customers, and coordinate with other leaders in the company.  
  •  Be realistic and honest about the challenges: It’s important to think bigger than your immediate remit.  Important topics, including problems, need to be discussed openly.          

What’s next  

Looking ahead, Daryl has three major priorities: executing the AI transformation across the company, launching Faria’s new data analytics product in the second half of this year, and maintaining the ManageBac + product ‘s competitive leadership position.  

The bottom line  

What makes Daryl’s approach compelling isn’t just the scale of transformation he’s managing, but the thoughtfulness behind it. In a world where many companies bolt on AI features to ride the buzzword wave, Faria is building genuinely transformative capabilities that solve real problems for schools and students.  

As AI becomes integral to every software product, the companies that will win are those that, like Faria under Daryl’s leadership, focus on the problems they’re solving rather than the technology they’re using.  

We help ambitious tech leaders like Daryl build the teams they need to drive transformation. Whether you’re scaling your product organisation, navigating global team challenges, or building AI capabilities, we connect you with the talent that makes the difference.