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
Babbel develops and operates an ecosystem of interconnected online language learning experiences and is driven by the purpose of creating mutual understanding through language. This means building products that help people connect and communicate across cultures. The Babbel App, Babbel Live, Babbel Podcasts and Babbel for Business products focus on using a new language in the real world, in real situations, with real people. And it works: Studies by linguists from institutions such as Michigan State University, Yale University and the City University of New York demonstrated the efficacy of Babbel’s language learning methods.
The key is a blend of humanity and technology. Babbel offers more than 60,000 lessons across 15 languages, hand-crafted by nearly 200 didactics experts, with user behaviors continuously analysed to shape and tweak the learner experience. This results in constantly adapting, interactive content with live classes, games, podcasts and videos that make understanding a new language easy, from Spanish to Indonesian.
Because Babbel is for everyone, its team is as diverse as its content. From its headquarters in Berlin and its U.S. office in New York, 1000 people from more than 75 nationalities represent the backgrounds, characteristics and perspectives that make all humans unique. Babbel sold over 10 million subscriptions by creating a true connection with users.
More information: www.babbel.com
