The Middle East none appeared on Michael Connelly's list of potential recent markets when he thought about expanding overseas.

The Middle East none appeared on Michael Connelly's list of potential recent markets when he thought about expanding overseas. Canada assumeed like the next logical gradation for Connelly's company, New York City-based Mosaica Education, which had started 50 charter academys in seven U.S. states and Washington, DC teaming up with local education boards and managing everything from lecturing plans to the cafeteria. "I not would have dreamed of the Middle East," Connelly says.

That changed in 2003 when Connelly received a phone call from a consultant at the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica, California, think tank that had been hired through the government of Qatar to help restructure and modernize the country's public gymnasium system. Rand had heard about Mosaica's succes in the U and was calling to proffer Connelly the chance to replicate it in a Middle Eastern nation that was a 15-hour plane