Babbel Strengthens Management Team With New CLXO and CFO
Kathleen Radford to oversee Babbel’s product development as CLXO (Chief Learning Experience Officer)
Dr. Christian Baier named CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and Managing Director of Babbel Group AG, taking responsibility for Babbel’s finance, legal and strategy teams
Both appointments complete the Babbel managing board in a time of strong growth and product expansion, reporting to Babbel CEO Arne Schepker
Berlin, April 28th 2023: Babbel, the world’s top-selling online language learning platform, is announcing the appointment of two executives to its management board: Both starting their Babbel journey in April 2023, Kathleen Radford joins the Berlin-based company as CLXO while Dr. Christian Baier joins as CFO and Managing Director of the Babbel AG.
Kathleen Radford is a veteran product leader with proven customer focus, having worked in six different countries and at prominent tech corporations like Microsoft and Amazon, brought startup products & businesses to life at Blinkbox, and recently led product & innovation at comparethemarket, HSBC and Entain. Having been a former language teacher, she is passionate about building out Babbel's ecosystem of various language learning experiences to help its millions of language learners succeed.
“I am thrilled about my new role at Babbel, a company that truly puts its learners first”, says Kathleen Radford, CLXO at Babbel. “Language learning is a deeply social activity to accomplish interaction with other humans. And while there is this common goal, the different types of learners are highly individual - something I find extremely intriguing. I cannot wait to build products that help all of them succeed.”
Dr. Christian Baier is an experienced business leader, having most recently served as CFO and COO at Ströer, Germany’s publicly listed advertising giant. Christian brings extensive finance know-how, deep operations skills, and strong investor relations experience to Babbel. He was also MD at Zalando’s private label organisation zLabels and worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey. Christian will join Babbel Group AG’s management board and take its Finance, Legal and Strategy functions to the next level.
“Based in my hometown Berlin, Babbel has not only invented the category of online language learning but has made it an international success”, states Dr. Christian Baier, CFO and MD at Babbel. “Growing the company to +1,000 team members and generating over 200MM Euros in revenues is a huge achievement. But I am convinced that Babbel is just getting started. I am proud to now contribute to this success story.”
Both Kathleen and Christian will report to Babbel’s CEO Arne Schepker.
“Kathleen and Christian join Babbel at a time when the company is experiencing unprecedented growth and interest in language learning”, says Arne Schepker, Babbel CEO. “I believe in investing into your future when things are going well and we have great ambitions to help more language learners learn more successfully. With talent like Kathleen & Christian onboard, I am absolutely confident that we will take Babbel to the next level in creating mutual understanding through language.”
About Babbel
Driven by the purpose of creating mutual understanding through language, Babbel has been building digital language learning products for consumers and businesses since 2007. The Babbel app helps people connect and communicate across cultures, whether for travel, friendship, or career advancement. Based on a deep knowledge of how we learn languages, Babbel aims to make learners conversational as fast as possible. And it works: Studies from institutions like Michigan State University, Yale University and the City University of New York demonstrate the efficacy of Babbel's language learning methods. Millions of language learners agree.
Babbel's secret sauce is the blend of true expertise, understanding of how humans learn, and the latest technology. Starting with one of 60,000 lessons across 15 languages hand-crafted by experts, the learner experience constantly adapts through behavior analysis to provide high quality interactive content that makes understanding a new language easy, from Spanish to Indonesian.
Because Babbel is for everyone, its team reflects this diversity. Across headquarters in Berlin and New York, a team from more than 80 nationalities represent the backgrounds and perspectives that make humans unique. With over 25 million subscriptions sold and an industry-leading retention rate, Babbel creates genuine connections with learners worldwide. For more information, visit www.babbel.com or download the apps in the App Store or Play Store.
