Henry Faber & Walter Kerr, Oppidan founders, on 10 years of mentoring, mistakes and dads in dressing gowns
“Everyone needs a mentor. It’s needs blind. It’s context blind.”
This week marks Oppidan Education's 10th birthday, and for a special episode of Heads & Tales, we're turning the microphone around. Chief of Staff Adam Goodbody, who has worked alongside the founders for eight years, puts Henry Faber and Walter Kerr in the hot seat. It's an honest and heartwarming conversation about starting a business from a kitchen table (with Walter's dad wandering through in his dressing gown), the summer camps that were "magic but financially ruinous" and the moment a phone call to a prep school headteacher changed everything.
Henry and Walter reflect on a decade of highs and lows: from interviewing childhood heroes like Gianfranco Zola during lockdown to watching a boy climb 80 feet up a tree on the final day of their last summer camp. They share what they've learned about children from every background, and why the needs of a student from an affluent family and one from an underserved community are more similar than you'd think. Looking ahead, they discuss Oppidan's global expansion into Korea, Thailand, Portugal, the US and further afield, and what the next 10 years might hold.
🎙️ Episode highlights
The real origin story: Walter's kitchen doubling as an office, with his dad in a dressing gown ushering past prospective families
The phone call that launched everything: ringing a headteacher on a Friday and running their first school programme that Monday with 10 boys
Why the founders believe mentoring is "needs blind": every child benefits from an independent voice outside the family and school hierarchy
The glorious summer camps that defined early Oppidan: "Swallows and Amazons meets Dead Poets Society"
The Wuxi disaster: arriving in China with a cricket bag full of bats to teach poetry, only to find nobody spoke English
Henry's controversial opinion: after years of worrying about serving different types of students, he's realised children from every background have remarkably similar needs