How Sylvan Learning's Corporate Culture Inspires Innovation and Brand Evolution

For more than 40 years, Sylvan Learning has been focused on building academic confidence, igniting intellectual curiosity and inspiring a love for learning—all of which make a big impact in school and in life. Since its founding in 1979, Sylvan Learning has come to be the leading supplemental and enrichment education franchise in the U.S. and has created one of the strongest corporate cultures in the industry thanks to its strong emphasis on a mission-driven philosophy, educational technology, community-oriented approach and strong franchisee support infrastructure.

“When I think of Sylvan’s corporate culture, three words come to mind: mission-driven, collaboration and teamwork,” said CEO John McAuliffe. “All of our employees believe in our mission, which is to help every child who enters our doors succeed academically. In addition, our franchisees are passionate about what we do and find it extremely rewarding, in particular when they hear the emotional stories about how Sylvan Learning has inspired children and given them the confidence to learn. We change lives every day. The collaboration and teamwork comes into play as we have many different departments in our organization, including operations, marketing, technology, education and administration, that have to work effectively together to deliver the best product possible to our customers and support to our franchisees.”

Chief Marketing Officer Amy Przywara agrees, noting that the Sylvan Learning corporate culture is about helping students, helping franchisees and helping each other. “When you work for a company that does so much good in the world for kids, it can’t help but be part of the corporate culture,” she said. “So much of what we do on a daily basis is helping people find solutions. We are problem-solvers, and we empower our team members to do that—find solutions and come up with ideas on how to make things better.”

Sylvan Learning’s Corporate Culture Inspires Innovation for Students

“As long as there are students, there will be students who need Sylvan Learning,” said Emily Levitt, Vice President of Education. “The ways in which they need us, though, may evolve over time. We have education and marketing teams who stay focused on the needs that are important to families and the academic goals that are required by schools. Our teams work together to make sure we always know who families are, what they want and what students need to be successful at school and beyond.”

The Sylvan Learning team’s relentless focus on this mission is what drives innovation. “Our team members understand that while we are the premier brand of supplemental and enrichment education with proven results of which we are very proud, we must continue to enhance our tutoring platform to better serve our students,” said Chief Technology Officer Monica Nicolau. “We use data to understand program effectiveness and continuously adjust our tutoring delivery platform to further streamline the process so that students can focus on learning.”

Sylvan Learning’s investment in products and technology and its collaborative culture has allowed the brand to bring all facets of the company together to drive innovation and creativity. “Our operations and education groups are consistently looking ahead when it comes to education advancements, and our technology and marketing groups bring those ideas to life,” said McAuliffe. “A perfect example is our proprietary technology delivery platform, SylvanSync. Our education and operations teams had a vision to deliver a personalized program for every child that would not need to be developed, updated or adapted by the teacher. They wanted the teacher to focus on what they do best—teach. SylvanSync is a cloud-based platform that handles all of the administrative tasks related to delivering the programs and allows the teacher to focus on teaching, motivating and building confidence. Our marketing group then was responsible for presenting this to families so they understood the differentiation between us and our competition. The technology group has now made enhancements that allow us to not only deliver in the center but also in home and online.”

In addition, the Sylvan team makes sure to communicate transparently with customers. “We create an open dialogue because we believe it’s important to be honest, but also because you never know where a good idea is going to come from,” said Przywara. “The beginnings of a marketing idea may come from our technology team, but those team members are also mothers and fathers who have friends that are parents. We are all consumers, too, so ultimately, we all have friends who could be served by our centers.”  

Overall, the growth potential of the brand is directly linked to the value it offers to communities. “We only hire people at the corporate office who have a passion for learning and helping students,” said Vice President of Finance Jacob Jones. “This passion is shown through our brand activities at the center level and in our local communities.”

Franchisees Benefit from Sylvan Learning’s Corporate Culture

“At the corporate office, we are always focused on the franchise owner,” said Przywara. “We understand they are small business owners in their communities and have joined the Sylvan Learning brand to be part of something bigger. We all want to be connected to other human beings—it’s what makes life worthwhile. We listen to franchisee ideas and know they are on the front lines. We then brainstorm and try to come up with solutions that can help them grow their business or be more efficient.” 

This collaborative culture with franchisees allows the Sylvan Learning team to bring them in on just about every enhancement or innovation at a very early stage so they have influence and input in everything the brand does. Whether it is innovative marketing or program variety, this collaboration improves the enhancements and allows for tremendous buy-in for each franchisee by providing access to multiple revenue streams.

“Sylvan Learning’s corporate culture is one of open communication, which builds trust and respect among our corporate team members and with our franchisee community,” said Nicolau. “We embrace change, which is particularly important for established brands like ours, and we do it by continuously challenging our assumptions and testing proposed changes against our mission to educate children and cultivate their love of learning.”

Across the Sylvan Learning team, each department has a shared understanding that technology can and must be used to enable franchisees and their staff to run centers more effectively.

Levitt points to Sylvan Learning’s response to the COVID-19 school closures as a perfect example of how the brand’s innovative culture allows franchisees to evolve. “Our franchisees had to close their doors, but we knew we still wanted and needed to serve our families and keep the businesses going,” said Levitt. “The corporate team worked in lockstep to find a remote teaching solution and to implement it quickly. I’m proud to say that we enabled remote learning for approximately 100,000 students in less than a week. We couldn’t have done that without a strong corporate team or an innovative franchise community that could pivot quickly to meet new demands. I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished together in such a short period of time.”

“To cultivate Sylvan Learning’s amazing brand culture, we have monthly meetings with all of our employees where we discuss everything that is going on in the company and share success stories and best practices with our franchisees,” said VP of Finance Jacob Jones. “We also take feedback from all of our employees to help improve Sylvan Learning and our franchisee operations.”

Further, Sylvan Learning’s innovative corporate culture creates a robust support system. Franchisees have a franchise business consultant (FBC) from the moment they sign on through their lifetime as a franchisee. Additionally, franchisees have access to support mechanisms from every department at corporate headquarters as well as a franchise community to help support them along the way. “Franchisees have access to everyone at corporate for whatever they need,” Jones added. “There’s no additional charge for reaching out to corporate and asking for help; we are here to help in any way we can.”

With over 750 points of presence, Sylvan Learning has become the premier choice in supplemental and enrichment education franchises. “There are a lot of companies out there that claim to be more like family than a company, but in my experience, Sylvan Learning is the only one that really fits that description,” said Levitt. “In my 10 years with the company, I’ve had the joy of working with franchisees and colleagues who are smart, kind, generous, industrious and passionate about our mission. We are all driven by a common goal—to help children learn. When you have such a wonderful and committed group of people behind that goal, you can accomplish amazing things together.” 

The startup costs for a Sylvan Learning franchise range from $68,680 to $159,085. The franchise fee is $24,000. To learn more about franchising with Sylvan Learning, visit https://sylvanfranchise.com/.