Two Leaders Setting A Higher Bar For Online Education Without Borders

By Laurel Donnellan, originally published at Forbes.com

I met Penelope Barton and Brittanie Bates the way you meet the most interesting people: in a coffee line. It was South by Southwest EDU (SXSWEDU), and within minutes, I knew these weren't typical school administrators. They were builders — the kind of quietly revolutionary leaders who don't wait for the system to change but build something new alongside it.

Barton is the CEO of Crimson Global Academy (CGA), and Bates is its Senior Vice President. CGA is a fully online, international high school serving nearly 3,000 students from 72 countries — and it's growing fast. But here's what makes it worth your attention: it's not an "online school" in the way that phrase tends to make parents nervously clear their throats. It's something genuinely new.

Born From a Simple, Powerful Question

CGA grew out of Crimson Education, a global college admissions consultancy. Working with students all over the world, the team kept seeing the same pattern: talented, ambitious kids whose futures were quietly constrained not by their ability but by their zip code. I have had the honor of teaching students across borders through Learn with Leaders, which was both exhilarating and challenging. Kudos to the CGA teachers!

"Students who might be rurally based, for example, didn't have specialist teachers nearby," Barton told me. "They didn't get to do physics, or they didn't get to do some of the science subjects." The compounding effects downstream — on university options, on career trajectories, on life — were significant.

So the team asked a question that sounds simple but demands a great deal of courage to act on: What if student outcomes and geography were uncorrelated? Six years later, they've grown from a 20-student cohort to nearly 3,000 students, with a September intake approaching. 

Flexibility as a Philosophy, Not a Feature

One of the things that struck me most in our conversation was how CGA has operationalized flexibility — not as a convenience, but as a core pedagogical belief. Students can choose between the US and British curriculum. They can attend live synchronous group classes, capped at 15 students, or opt for one-on-one or asynchronous learning. They can be full-time students or take a single specialized course to supplement their existing school. They can organize their school day around midday or spread classes across seven days. The schedule bends to the student, not the other way around.

"What if students had flexibility on what they studied, where they studied, how they studied, and when they studied?" Barton explained. That question didn't remain theoretical — it became the school's architecture.

And in the classroom, Bates and her team of educators are just as adaptive. CGA teachers are trained in responsive teaching approaches — flipped classrooms, Socratic method, project-based learning, direct instruction — and are empowered to read the room and shift accordingly. "One model doesn't fit one school," Brittanie said. "It definitely doesn't fit one student."

The Social Question (And Why It's the Wrong One)

Every time someone hears "online school," the first concern is the same: What about the social side? I get it. I raised it too. But Barton stopped me with a story. She’d asked one of CGA's head students the same question — 

"That is not even something we worry about," he told her.

CGA students form genuine, lasting friendships across borders. They build clubs around shared passions — astronomy, fashion, music — rather than around who happens to live within a five-mile radius. They collaborate on art projects and music videos that span continents, with students in different countries contributing instruments, perspectives, and creative environments.

"You're talking about global citizenship," Barton said. "You're talking about humanities, literature — all of these students bring different backgrounds and different things into the classroom. The richness of that discussion well exceeds what you might be able to create in a school whose catchment is a five-mile radius."

At regional in-person meetups, the adults in the room are the ones who worry about awkward icebreakers. The students walk in, find each other, and are off talking before the adults have poured their coffee.

AI as Amplifier, Not Replacement

CGA's approach to artificial intelligence deserves its own conversation — and probably its own article. But the short version is this: they are not afraid of it, nor are they naive about it.

"When we think about technology in education, it's often shunned," Bates told me. "Whether it be a calculator, a cell phone, the personal computer — we push technology to the side." CGA is choosing a different path. Their AI philosophy is not restriction; it's empowerment.

There's a data point circulating among educators that when AI is used effectively in the classroom, it gives teachers approximately five hours a week back. CGA is building toward that. And Bates is clear-eyed about what her passionate teachers do with that time: they give it back to students.

"I don't want my teacher to have busy work that's not meaningful to students or themselves," she said. "I want them to have time to do the real work that human beings should be doing in education."

That distinction — AI handling the monotony so humans can do the meaning-making — is one I believe every organization, not just schools, will be wrestling with in the next decade.

What Great Leadership Looks Like in Practice

Beyond the school itself, I was struck by the leadership philosophies these two women carry.

Bates leans on a Nelson Mandela quote that I'm now carrying with me: "I never lose. I either win or learn." For a school that is essentially running a live experiment in the future of education, that orientation isn't just inspiring — it's operationally essential.

Barton’s leadership lesson is one that I think every founder and executive should print out and tape to their monitor: transparency creates psychological safety. "In the absence of information, people make up their own," she said, paraphrasing a well-known principle from the world of organizational culture. Her response is to over-communicate, to share as soon as she can, regardless of someone's role or level. "Everyone needs context to make decisions."

That kind of leadership — one that trusts people with information rather than protecting them from it — builds cultures where people actually want to do their best work.

The Future They're Building Toward

When I asked Barton to look into her crystal ball, she didn't hesitate. Online education isn't an alternative anymore — it's becoming a mainstream option. And the next frontier isn't just access. It's personalization.

"Every single thing that students interact with these days is largely personalized," she said. The expectation is already being set — by games, by social platforms, by every app on a teenager's phone. Education will have to meet that expectation. Not someday. Soon.

CGA is already building toward it — tailoring class structures, learning modes, curricula, and even the time of day students engage. And they're doing it within a growing network of sister schools across the globe, each serving different student populations, sharing best practices, and piloting new approaches.

I walked away from our conversation thinking about all the teens navigating academic and mental health challenges in traditional or large classroom online school settings right now. And I thought: the future Barton and Bates are building couldn't get here fast enough.

To learn more about Crimson Global Academy, visit cga.school or connect with Brittanie Bates on LinkedIn.