It was 1985 when Bill Gertz first joined the American Institute for Foreign Study (AIFS), fresh off the back of his travels through Europe and several years building up industry experience.
Stepping into the role of president in 2005, and then chairman in 2018, Gertz says he’s “seen everything” at AIFS.
From 9/11, to the Pan-Am 103 plane crash, economic crises and Covid-19, Gertz has witnessed the sector bouncing back from enough global disasters to be certain that “what we do is not going away”.
Yet Gertz is all too aware of the uncertainty the sector currently faces, particularly surrounding the government’s ongoing freeze on the scheduling of new visa interviews.
What’s more, while AIFS doesn’t receive direct federal funding, he shares colleagues’ grave concerns about President Donald Trump’s FY26 “skinny” budget, which proposes cutting international exchange programs by 93%, including the US’s flagship Fulbright Program.
But Gertz is inherently positive and says that he expects Congress to push back on next year’s proposed budget.
“There’s a long history of Republican administrations doing the right thing. Even if I didn’t agree with them politically, they understood cultural exchange is bipartisan,” said Gertz.
While acknowledging the current climate “is a little different situation,” he has faith that the benefits of international education for public diplomacy, American businesses and labour market shortages are too stark for policymakers to ignore.
“I’m thinking that cooler heads will prevail and people that are not afraid to challenge the budget are there… so it just takes five or six to make a difference in Congress,” he said.
Meanwhile, at AIFS, both inbound and outbound exchange programs endured the pandemic and are “getting closer and closer to 2019 which was peak of peaks,” said Gertz, with the organisation now serving 40,000 participants each year.
And the secret to its success?
“There’s no magic. There’s no secret sauce,” Gertz said: “You’ve got to work hard, have great programs, have great staff, and make them stay.”
Gertz’s own 40-year-long career at the same organisation is testament to AIFS’s mission-driven philosophy, with the current CEO having been by his side for nearly 30 years.
You’ve got to work hard, have great programs, have great staff, and make them stay
AIFS, Bill Gertz
A key part of building that culture has been getting people back into the office, said Gertz, expressing nostalgia for the days when study abroad was a field rather than an industry.
“It was tiny – kind of homey, but things were going to change,” he recalled: “So study abroad has grown, but it’s pretty flat now, only growing by 2-3% per year.”
Despite Gertz’s personal preference for semester or year-long programs, recent years have seen the rise of short-term exchanges increasingly favoured by students.
And he’s been in the game long enough to know the importance of adapting to demand, maintaining: “You can’t make the market, the market makes you.”
As for technological developments, Gertz said he used to be a fan, remembering AIFS and Harvard as the first major industry players to launch an online website.
Nowadays, while he loves to trigger a heated discussion or two on LinkedIn, and reaps the efficiency benefits of technological change, he’s sceptical about AI and the edtech companies flooding the industry.
The way he sees it: “[Study abroad] is still a people business”.
“There’s been a lot of changes, but consistency is what makes success… it’s having a great program with great people. Technology is just a tool.”
