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Interview with Lorena B. Smigielska, CEO

Tell us your story. How did Advanced Global Skills get started?
Advanced Global Skills launched in 2016 to cater the demands of its sister company – Apicius Culinary Arts and Hotel Management. Ever since, Apicius has a good number of graduates going international for Internships and further study. With this, AGS initiated the idea to assist the needs of these graduates who are committed to enhance their knowledge and skills, worldwide.

What makes Advanced Global Skills different from your competitors?
AGS does not focus on offering the programs only. One of its concerns also is to see the parallelism of the students’ chosen career to their future plans, as well as to their personalities. Our goal is not only to give several international options to the students, but also help them make sure that the option that they will be choosing will positively affect their career in the future.

What is your favourite success story from your organisation?
Every student achieving their goals with AGS is a success story for us. What we really love about our company is we prioritise the service that we give to each client. We are motivated and excited with each positive outcome that our programme participants experience after completing the programme.

What can we expect to see from Advanced Global Skills in the future?
AGS works hard to be a model of hospitality and on the job training service with enhanced philosophies by producing globally competitive and successful graduates with highly developed knowledge, skills, and attitudes to excel in this specific industry.

Which trends do you see in educational and youth travel?
We see experiential learning as an opportunity to be able to provide a quality educational experience using internships. It integrates and applies the knowledge that students have learned in school through hands on activities in a professional setting. AGS believes that internships abroad will give the students valuable experiences that will make them ready to face any challenge given to them.

How do you work to ensure the health and safety of young travellers involved with Advanced Global Skills?
First, we ask for the background of the host company that offers the programme. We need to know the location, who will be supervising the students, their assignment and the tasks. Most importantly, we make sure that our participants have travel and health insurance that they can use while they are studying or having their internship abroad.

What is an industry challenge your organisation is facing currently?
The challenge we are currently facing is the Visa denial of our applicants. With the embassy strictly enforcing the requirements, we have allotted more time in checking the documentation of our applicants. However, we still experience denial even if their documents are complete as it is still based on the decision of the consuls.