Duncan Douglas
Senior Director, Global Services in Education
Duncan takes a school from a line in a feasibility study to an operating campus. He has led that full arc, design, construction and opening, on projects backed by some of the most demanding investors in the sector.
He joined GSE in 2019 and now leads the firm’s project management as Senior Director. His work runs the length of a development: feasibility studies and ten-year financial models at the outset, classroom design through the build, and the recruitment systems, data and operational detail that carry a school to opening day. He has delivered projects across Southeast Asia, the Gulf and Africa.
Duncan has managed mandates at the top of the market, including a national sovereign wealth fund and a Gulf government entity, where the bar for governance, reporting and delivery is unforgiving. Working to that standard, for stakeholders of that weight, is now central to how he runs a project.
His specialism is the launch of new schools and the design that sits beneath them. He works closely with architects to turn curriculum and pedagogy into buildings that teach well, shaping campuses and classrooms around how learning actually happens rather than a standard template. Few people in the sector have designed and led school projects across as many regulatory and cultural settings.
He built his early career on the commercial side of international education, joining a new school in Kuala Lumpur as its first employee and building its marketing and admissions from scratch. That grounding in enrolment and market reality still shapes how he scopes a project today. Duncan holds a BA (Honours) in Marketing and Economics from the University of Stirling.