Danny Bielik, CEO of MCI, knows the value of a good education. He started his career in the IT industry with a degree in computer science. “I’m actually a computer programmer by trade. So I studied at Macquarie University back in the old days, and then I was working in the telecommunications industry for a number of years, mostly overseas.”
Danny worked all over the world in telecommunications in America, Europe, and Asia but ended up coming back to Australia to run his family’s business, the Australasian College of Natural Therapies (ACNT). They asked me if I wanted to come back and run that or they were going to sell it. I ended up coming and running ACNT for about 10 years, and then I sold ACNT to Think Education Group, which is now part of Laureate International Universities.
After 10 years running ACNT, Danny held a number of positions, including being on the board for the Australian Council for Private Education, before he got a call offering him a job as a political adviser. “For about a year and half, I was the policy adviser to the New South Wales education minister, which is one of the largest education jurisdictions in the whole world. I was his policy adviser on vocational education, higher education, international ICT, and early childhood.”