Penn Foster has been teaching distance learners since 1890, when founder Thomas Foster began mailing accounting and engineering courses to coal miners in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Today, CEO Kermit Cook leads a 135-year-old institution that graduates more than 93,000 learners a year. If Penn Foster were a school district, it would be the third largest in the country.

On this episode of The New Normal, hosts Ruben Harris and Timur Meyster sit down with Cook to talk about reinventing a legacy company for the AI era and what a year-plus partnership with OutRival has produced: proactive learner outreach, AI writing coaches, and internal tools the company uses to build its own courses.