Born in Dublin, Ireland, Ken Carroll has been a resident of Shanghai for 12 years. In 1996, he co-founded the Kai En English Language Training Center in Shanghai and grew it into a successful chain with outlets throughout the city. He also co-founded Praxis Language in 2005, with its brands www.chinesepod.com and www.spanishsense.com, and On Demand Training in 2006.

Ken has wide entrepreneurial experience in the areas of language training, PR, and marketing. As marketing director for the Kai En schools, he helped build the brand into a household name by relying mainly on effective PR and low-cost marketing strategies.

In recent years Carroll has been focused on melding traditional training with technology, particularly with 'Web 2.0' technologies, such as podcasting, blogging, and RSS syndication. He believes the internet will radically transform corporate training (as well as the disciplines of marketing, PR, etc, and just about everything else) in the next 5 years.