Just after the completion of its acquisition by American Public Education, Inc. (NASDAQ: APEI) earlier this month, Graduate School USA (GSUSA) has appointed two new executive leaders. Steve Somers joins GSUSA as acting President and CEO, and Mary Bartlett assumes the role of Senior Vice President, Operations.
Prior to joining GSUSA, Mr. Somers spent almost 10 years in the education industry, serving most recently as Vice President of Corporate Development at Kaplan, Inc. for five years, where he executed over 15 deals as a strategic partner across Kaplan’s various business units. Previously, he was Vice President of Corporate Development, Investor Relations & Treasury at Rosetta Stone, where he helped expand Rosetta’s language business through two acquisitions and enter the literacy business with the acquisition of Lexia Learning. Before his time in the education space, Mr. Somers led M&A and IR at two public companies — first in the wireless industry with SunCom Wireless, where he led its sale to T-Mobile and then at GSI Commerce, in the e-commerce industry, where he helped grow GSI before its sale to E-Bay. Earlier in his career, Mr. Somers was an equity research analyst at DLJ. Mr. Somers is a Charted Financial Analyst (CFA) and earned a Bachelor of Science in Business and Economics with a concentration in Finance from Lehigh University and an MBA from Villanova University.
Ms. Bartlett led the integration of Graduate School USA into American Public Education, Inc., where she was the Vice President of Acquisitions. As Graduate School USA’s SVP of Operations, Ms. Bartlett will be responsible for building the objectives and values and ensuring the company has the proper operational controls and metrics, organizational structure, administrative and reporting procedures, and people systems in place to provide a foundation to effectively grow the organization. She has spent over 16 years in various operational capacities focused on optimizing operations, growing revenue, improving customer loyalty, streamlining processes, integrating change, and building high-performing teams as the COO in the shared office space industry at The Reserve and as Vice President and General Manager at Arise Virtual Solutions, a global virtual workforce solutions company. Earlier in her career, Ms. Bartlett was a Director of Operations with Accenture. She graduated from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts in both Marketing and Communications.
GSUSA’s new leadership team will work to ensure that the common thread and shared missions of GSUSA and APEI will give students a greater breadth and depth of content, as well as technological advantages that will facilitate a more sophisticated learning environment and assist federal agencies in building an even better mission-ready workforce.