Meet Yorick, CampusGroups Founder and CEO!

At CampusGroups, we believe that our team is accomplishing incredible things every day. Based in four different countries and just under 20 people, our tight-knit team of technical, business and creative professionals are managing and developing a powerful, feature-rich and customizable platform to support campuses around the world!

Every single member of our team is truly passionate about shaping the future of higher education technology and unlocking the potential of students and student-led organizations to Connect, Engage and Succeed. Our team also closely focuses on each of our campus partners and uses any opportunity to improve based on the feedback that you provide.

In this behind-the-scenes series, we are introducing each of our team members one by one. So let’s start with our CEO!

Our founder and CEO, Yorick Ser.

Yorick, when did you start CampusGroups and why?

Y: I launched CampusGroups in 2005, as I was completing my MBA at NYU Stern. I created CampusGroups to help student clubs run their activities more efficiently and in a more centralized way.

How did you get the idea to create this platform?

Y: I was the president of the Entrepreneurs Club at Stern, and we only had Outlook and a shared folder to run our club activities. So I created a system that would allow me to send targeted emails to my members and to invite them to RSVP to my events. Later on, the Office of Student Activities asked me if I could make my system available to all the other clubs at Stern. I worked on adding features, day and night, for six months, and we launched at Stern in September 2005. This is how CampusGroups was born!

How would you describe CampusGroups to someone who’s never heard of it?

Y: CampusGroups is a central hub for the entire community of a campus. The platform includes numerous features to communicate, collaborate and engage all constituents, including students, school administrators, groups, departments. Our platform also easily integrates external users such as alumni, community partners, local businesses and recruiters.

What’s CG’s best benefit for a campus?

A: Our mission is to develop technology to bring a whole campus community to one central platform, to create lifetime opportunities for them, no matter who they are and what they need. The large amount of features that we develop truly empowers leaders on campus and allows them to create a unique and dynamic experience leading to greater engagement on campus.

Of what are you most proud in regards to CG?

A: I am really proud that we have created such a complex, feature-rich platform while keeping it easy-to-use. I really love to hear our users say how robust CampusGroups is. What I am the most proud of is our team, who has been dedicated to creating our platform. I really admire their drive and dedication to make our platform a powerful solution for our campuses.

How would you describe CampusGroups in three words?

Y: Connections. Opportunities. Results.

How has your team grown over the years?

Y: We were a team of three until 2011, then we reached 10 team members in 2018. We started to grow much faster in 2019, as we now have 18 people on our team.

How do you imagine campuses will change over the coming years? And CampusGroups?

A: I picture more and more complexity, and a greater number of programs offered to students and professionals who are classified as full-time, part-time and/or online. This will definitely create some dissemination across campus, and we want CampusGroups to help keep all the communities of campus users connected. We want to allow them to efficiently communicate, find the resources they need and reach their goals.