Where it began
A question, not a business plan.
"It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question."
Eugene Ionesco
It started in Shanghai. We were both living there, watching families from across the world make some of the most consequential decisions of their children's lives, often with very little guidance and no independent voice in the room.
The question we kept returning to was this: why are so many children handed a path rather than helped to find one? That question became Learning Journey.
What we believe
Education should draw out, not fill in.
The word "educate" comes from the Latin root educere, which means to draw out. That is the philosophy at the heart of everything we do. Every child arrives with something to offer. Our job is to find it, name it, and build the conditions in which it can grow.
Our approach is grounded in lived experience, not theory. Between us, we have sat inside British, American, IB, African national, and Asian educational systems, as participants. We know what it feels like to make educational decisions under uncertainty.
Then we became parents. And the mission took on a different kind of weight. The questions our clients bring to us became the same questions we were asking about our own children. That convergence, professional knowledge meeting parental love, is what Learning Journey is built on. It sharpened everything. It made us more honest, more careful, and far more committed to the work.
"We began with a question. We are still asking it, on behalf of every family we work with: who is your child, and what does that child actually need?"
The founders
Two paths. One mission.
Nargis
Principal Advisor & Co-Founder
Nargis's cross-cultural and cross-industry journey across consultancy, management, and research has continually reframed her understanding of education and why it matters. Working across countries and systems has led her to look beyond immediate academic outcomes and ask a more important question: what kind of future will today's children inherit, and how can we prepare them to navigate it with confidence, curiosity, and purpose? As a parent, the work became personal in ways she had not anticipated. That convergence is what drove her to found Learning Journey. She founded The Learning Journey to help families make thoughtful educational choices that respond not only to who their children are today, but also to the world they are growing into.
Abbie
Head of Practice & Co-Founder
Abigail brings a background in economics and a career in education spanning classroom teaching, curriculum design, and the operational realities of running educational programmes across different countries. Her economic training gives her a rigorous, analytical lens on educational systems. Her teaching experience gives her something rarer: a deep, practical feel for what children actually need. As a parent, she brings the same analytical care to her clients that she brings to her own family.
Our principle
We are not a business that tells families what they want to hear. We are built on the belief that the most valuable thing we can offer is an honest assessment, of the child, of the options, and of the gap between where things are and where they need to be.