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The Home of Culture Research: The Business of Culture I 2026 I Download Now
Core Education Built Its Culture for Work That Has to Last
I DEEP DIVE INSIDER PROFILES
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Core Education has shaped its workplace around the same long-term thinking it brings to helping colleges and universities remain independent and resilient.
Core Education works with colleges and universities on a challenge that sits beneath many of higher education’s biggest pressures: how institutions protect their mission while building the operating strength required to sustain it.
As a mission-critical operating partner, Core works alongside institutions on the systems and decisions that influence their long-term resilience. The work can reach across strategy, finance, technology and operations, with the aim of helping colleges and universities remain independent and capable of serving students for generations.
That long-term view has also shaped how Core thinks about its own workplace.
Rather than treating culture as something that sits around the work, Core has built it into the way the organisation operates. The belief is that people do stronger work when they understand why it matters and have enough context to make meaningful decisions themselves. Culture, in that sense, becomes part of how the company performs rather than something designed primarily to make the workplace feel good.
“Our culture rewards people with meaning, mastery, and momentum,” says CEO Kamalika Sandell. “When people know their work strengthens institutional independence and long-term resilience, purpose becomes a performance advantage. Every improvement compounds.”
That connection to the mission gives employees a clear view of what their work is ultimately supporting. A change to an internal system or a recommendation to a partner institution may become part of a much larger effort to help that university operate more effectively years from now.
Core wants people to be able to see that connection. Clarity has therefore become an important part of the employee experience. As the company has grown, leadership has paid close attention to whether people understand what Core is building and how their own work fits into it. The aim is to give employees enough context that they can make decisions without constantly needing direction from above.
Employees lead initiatives and shape the internal systems they use rather than simply working within processes designed for them. Some of Core’s ways of working began with someone inside the business noticing an opportunity and taking responsibility for improving it, with support from colleagues and leadership as the idea developed.
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That approach means culture is continually being shaped by the people experiencing it. Transparency gives employees more information to work with. Each month, Core shares financial information and company priorities in open forums, giving people a clearer understanding of what is happening across the organisation and why certain decisions are being made.
Feedback is treated as part of the same process. Regular pulse surveys and open channels give employees ways to raise what they are seeing, with leadership expected to come back to the organisation with updates on what has changed as a result.
Core’s employee net promoter score reached as high as +59 last June, which the company says has remained above benchmarks for higher education and professional services. Internally, the significance is less about the number itself than whether employees continue to feel that the organisation is moving in a direction they understand.
Core’s teams are often solving problems that do not have quick or obvious answers. Decisions around an institution’s operating model can have consequences that play out over years, which creates space for employees to think deeply about the problem rather than simply move to the next task.
People are expected to refine their thinking and take responsibility for the quality of the decisions they help shape. That makes collaboration particularly important because the problem rarely belongs neatly to one discipline. A financial decision might have implications for technology. An operational change can affect leadership priorities. Understanding the institution requires people to think beyond the immediate boundaries of their own expertise.
“We look for people who think across boundaries — who can see connections between finance, technology, leadership, and mission,” says Chief People Officer Dr. Maria Wayne. “We attract them by being the kind of company they have been searching for: transparent, trusting, and mission-aligned.”
That expectation also influences how people develop once they join. Growth at Core often comes through taking on work with greater complexity and learning from the people around it. Shared learning and peer conversations give employees ways to build their judgement while staying connected to how the wider organisation is evolving.
As the business grows, Core is trying to preserve the conditions that allow people to take on that responsibility without losing sight of the broader mission.
The company’s work with higher education is ultimately about endurance. Core helps institutions think beyond immediate pressures and build systems capable of supporting them over a much longer horizon.
Employees are given context so they can understand the bigger picture, responsibility so they can influence what happens next, and the space to develop through work that has consequences beyond the immediate moment.
For Core Education, that is what connects the culture to the mission. The company is helping institutions build for the long term, and it wants the people doing that work to feel that they are building something durable too.