Randy Best is the founder of Best Merchant Partners (BMP) and, in higher education sector specifically, Academic Partnerships (AP), American College of Education (ACE), Ilumno Holdings and Higher Ed Partners Africa (HEPA) as well as a co-founder of Higher Ed International (HEI). He began his business career in college and built more than 100 companies across a broad range of industries, including healthcare, defense and aerospace, publishing, agriculture, food, oil and gas, real estate and education. For more than 20 years, Randy has been solely committed to mission-driven businesses in the education sector, focusing on the welfare of children and expanding access to higher education globally.

Randy’s own challenges with dyslexia made him passionate about reading and its importance on children’s education and life. As a result, in 1995 he founded Voyager Expanded Learning, a national initiative, which helps annually more than 4 million mostly inner-city children, learn to read. In 2005, Randy turned to higher education and founded Whitney University System (today Ilumno), a network of high-quality universities across Latin America, which serves 150,000 students. Subsequently, in 2007 he founded Academic Partnerships, a higher education service provider, which assists public universities increase access through technology-aided learning and gives them global reach.

Randy serves or has served in the following capacities: board member of James B. Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy; advisory board member of Education Commission of the States; board member of NEA Foundation; advisory council member of College of Education Foundation for the University of Texas at Austin; board member of National Urban Alliance for Columbia University, the development board member of University of Texas at Arlington; board member of Academic Partnerships, American College of Education, Ilumno Holdings, Higher Ed International and Higher Ed Partners Africa. He also served on the White House Millennium Committee and is a benefactor of the Smithsonian Institution on and numerous philanthropic endeavors, mostly in Africa.

Randy holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Lamar University.