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About the Episode

The what's what...

Ardis grew up in a rural farm town in Albania. He has always been a tinkerer — if you were to ask Ardis what he wanted to be as a young child, he’d tell you that he wanted to “build stuff.”  He figured out how to build antennas and electrical circuits long before he could drive!

Albania was a communist country when Ardis was growing up, so his parents weren’t able to pursue higher education until much later in life.  But in their minds, education was the greatest of priorities.  

So, when an opportunity presented itself for Ardis to leave Albania as a 14-year-old and move to the states, there was no discussion or consideration — they helped Ardis pack his bags and he was on the next flight to JFK. 

Tune in to access some of the most significant vignettes of Ardis’ life that propelled him from tinkerer, to engineer, to businessman, to entrepreneur, to founder of one of higher ed’s most powerful CRMs, Element451.

About the Podcast

Zach Busekrus

Host

Zach Busekrus

Zach is the Founder of Enrollify. He thoroughly enjoys building new brands, developing and executing content marketing strategies, and hosting podcasts. When he's not working on Enrollify, he enjoys discussing life's quandaries over coffee (or a good bourbon) with friends, building Sponstayneous (his travel brand side hustle), trying out new HIIT workouts, and adventuring across the globe with his wife!

Ardis Kadiu

Interviewee

Ardis Kadiu

Ardis Kadiu is the CEO and founder of Element451, the intelligent admissions marketing and CRM platform. Element451 grew out of Ardis’s passion for creating solutions that empower admissions and enrollment teams to work more efficiently as they develop stronger, more personalized engagements with prospective students. AI and great design are two of the most important ingredients at the core of any great user experience.

Starter Stories

Starter Stories is a podcast that explores the stories behind the world’s leading education technology companies and education consultancies...and the people who created them. In each episode, you’ll hear about the grit, the strategies, the wins, the failures, and the serendipity that transpired to take a half-baked idea and bring it to life. 

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