Milwaukee-based Crisis Prevention Institute Inc. has acquired UK company Pivotal Education Ltd. The terms of the transaction, which closed March 16, were not disclosed.
Crisis Prevention Institute provides training in behavior management, including crisis prevention and de-escalation, as well as therapeutic dementia care, on a global scale. It has about 250 employees. More than 10 million human service professionals from around the world have been trained at CPI in safely resolving situations in which those in their care display anxious, hostile or violent behavior.
Pivotal Education is an education training consultancy, specializing in behavior and classroom management. Its reach is also international. It has about 10 employees, all of whom will remain onboard at the UK office in the integration, said Anthony Jace, chief executive officer of CPI.
With the addition of Pivotal’s capabilities, CPI will expand its focus beyond special education educators and provide more actionable training for general education teachers, Jace said.
“He’s a global thought leader, Paul Dix, the guy that founded the company and has been running it,” Jace said. “We’re working around making sure that kids and…any educator are safe on the school grounds. Paul comes at it from a different perspective, so it’s more of a continuum of care. He works a lot with the classroom management side of it.”
“CPI and Pivotal are a perfect match,” said Dix, CEO of Pivotal. “Our values, expertise and commitment to safer environments for young people are beautifully aligned. The whole team at Pivotal are excited. We are determined to take Pivotal behavior programs to thousands more schools and colleges. With CPI we know that more teachers and students than ever will benefit from calm focused classrooms that manage behavior brilliantly.”
In December, CPI was sold by Boca Raton, Florida-based private equity firm Brockway Moran & Partners Inc. to San Francisco-based private equity firm FFL Partners and CPI management.
CPI has been growing rapidly, expanding its revenue in the low teens each year for the past eight years, Jace said. It adds dozens of new positions each year, and is evaluating five to 10 acquisition targets at any one time.
