Overseas Educators

When it comes to selecting our Overseas Educators, we don’t mess around. Safety is our priority, but other attributes are essential in Overseas Educators including cultural competence, understanding group dynamics, mentoring, and strong problem solving/communication skills.

All Overseas Educators have in-country experience, wilderness first aid certifications and participate in an extensive in-house training prior to each semester. We’re amazed by our Overseas Educators, and are sure you will be too!

Andrew Ryan

Overseas Educator

Ryan goes by his last name, an unusual thing for an American, but it is actually the norm for several cultures around the world including Japan, where Ryan once lived. He’s originally from Rhodes Island, but promptly took off after high school to Washington State for undergrad at Whitman College where he majored in English Literature and minored in Education. During his summers in college, Ryan worked as a backpacking guide in New Mexico at Philmont Scout Ranch. Ryan served as an AmeriCorps VISTA summer school teacher in Chicago immediately after graduating, but opted to take a Gap Year following that experience to expand his understanding of the many ways in which you can live a life. After asking hundreds of friends and strangers throughout his travels for advice, in the end he decided he really did want to choose a life as an educator. Ryan went on to receive his Master’s in Teaching from Columbia University’s Teachers College, then returned to Washington to begin his career as an English Language and Literature Teacher. After two years in public schools, he began teaching internationally -- first at the American School of Quito in Ecuador where he developed his Spanish skills and later at Nagoya International School in Japan where he taught a course in the IB curriculum called Theory of Knowledge and served as a Gay Straight Alliance advisor. The pandemic caused Ryan to return to the US, and he spent the 2020-21 school year teaching remotely in the San Francisco Unified School District. After a year of Zoom classes, Ryan returned to his outdoor education roots as a Multi-day guide in Yosemite National Park. He is now beyond excited to be in his second year with Carpe Diem Education as an OE, where he can combine his four great passions of teaching, traveling, the outdoors, and super tasty fruit.

Ariana Agrios

Overseas Educator

Originally from Florida, Ariana grew up in the land of alligators, swamps, and springs. She learned to swim before she could walk and always found it strange when people reacted to the wildlife that she was used to seeing every day. She grew up in a family that loved to travel and encouraged her to find opportunities to see the world. She attended the University of Florida as a Lombardi Scholar for her first two years of undergrad and spent her summers exploring Mexico and Peru, studying Spanish and tropical ecology. Ariana transferred to Columbia University for her junior year of college where she majored in political science with a focus on American policy and international relations. As a part of the Model United Nations there, she had the opportunity to travel internationally competing and winning awards with her team.

A frequent traveler, Ariana also studied abroad in Italy and Greece during these years. With family still located in both countries, there was always a reason to visit and explore (and eat lots of food like any good Greek granddaughter!)

After college Ariana attended the London School of Economics and obtained her Master of Public Administration with a concentration in social impact. Her research areas included criminal justice reform and social mission in the private sector. Ariana loved the international perspective that her LSE offered and was sad to leave the UK when covid struck.

During the summers Ariana led high school travel programs in Europe and returned to the US to teach political science courses for high schoolers during the pandemic. She went on to lead a gap year program centered around climate change and sustainability, before taking a full time job at a startup accelerator, focusing on innovation in supply chain and sustainability. Ariana is very excited to share her favorite traditions and foods with her students!

FUN FACTS

Andy lived in a converted short bus and rock climbed his way around The West.

He has a passion for silly contraptions. He recently spent 3 weeks and countless hours, likely better spent sleeping, building a ghost that swings down from the rafters of an old barn for the chance at a mild jump scare on a scavenger hunt at his job on the Blackfeet. Worth it.

He has a very important life mission. Find the best chocolate in the world. With the help of his lovely motorcycle, Lola (o Lolita, con cariño), he recently completed a motorcycle trip through the Ecuadorian Amazon to find just that chocolate. Not saying the work is finished but it beats out Guatemala, Belgium, Switzerland, and Colombia in his not-so-humble opinion.

Andy Renz

Overseas Educator

Andy grew up in Jackson, Wyoming doing very un-Jacksony things. He spent his winters in batting cages and the summers playing baseball around the state, not having much of anything to do with the outdoors. On the back of “big fish, small pond” confidence, he went to play a year of college baseball at a university in Texas. The difference in cultures and grumpiness of his shoulder (he was a pitcher) led him to get into rock climbing and transfer to the University of Utah. Unfortunately, the rocks continued to be out of his reach as his physics degree took the majority of his time. Luckily for our intrepid calculator jockey, he had the opportunity to backpack across western Europe between his Junior and Senior years. This removed much of the fear of travel and made him realize the power and independence one can hold in a 65 liter backpack.

Graduating with a passion to not be a physicist, he had the lucky opportunity to run an NGO in Uganda. This experience truly opened his eyes to what poverty can look like and the value of a good-hearted person who’s willing to care, learn, and put forth effort. Shortly thereafter, he moved to the jungle of Guatemala to teach high school math. He learned quickly learned the language and gained a love for Spanish-speaking cultures. This love led him to live in Spain, running the rock climbing program of a Barcelona-based NGO, and Ecuador, where he led service trips in the Kichwa communities outside Otavalo. Somewhere in these travels he picked up an EMT certification because he wanted to be there for the most important moments in people’s lives (and still does). He ended up aiming this ideal towards kids as he immediately began a several year stint leading rock climbing and adventure sports trips for kids in Colorado and Wyoming. He is currently leading service trips on the Blackfeet Reservation.

After the program in Guatemala and Costa Rica (he’s so excited to go back to both countries) he’ll be studying to become a nurse. The dream is to become a travel nurse so that he can spend half the year in Latin America, helping those in need. And rock climbing. And dancing bachata. And studying jiu jitsu. With empanadas abounding!

Fiona Weingartner

Overseas Educator

Fiona believes her gifts and strengths were provided so she can serve as a bridge for people between places, times, cultures, worlds.

Fiona's matriarchal line lived as tea shop keepers in Guangdong Province, Southern China. Her father's line grew grapes near Hesse-Kassel, Germany. Her mother's people immigrated to Fiji in the 1930s, her father's to New York in the 19th century. Her parents settled on Kickapoo ancestral lands in Illinois in the 1980s.

Fiona spent her youth playing with cats, eating cheese and bok choy (never together), and taking extra biology classes. Around her, agribusiness expanded to dominate the midwestern landscape, international families moved to the University of Illinois, Fiji underwent two coups, and the US waged wars on drugs and terror. She wrote her first school essay on a floppy disk, got her first iPod in middle school, and dismissed the iPhone in high school, preferring her T9 Nokia.

Fiona entered a biomedical engineering program that was fascinating, technologically robust, and lacking in relational ways of being and knowing. She spent increasing amounts of time leading rock climbing trips, which kept her grounded, connected to land, yet also apart from full community service and integration.

The push to relate and integrate came in in the late 2010s. Fiona skipped the office job phase altogether and moved straight to Hawai'i. She labored on farms through 2016, staffed a young adult wilderness therapy and rites of passage program through 2018, and worked in elementary, intermediate, and high school education through 2022.

Fiona has resided in Pa'alaea, Honoka'a, Hawai'i since 2020. She spent the pandemic reviving / remembering the Honoka'a Elementary School Garden program as a site of hands-on, culturally relevant learning. She also supported the revitalization of the high school farm as a site of rites of passage for individuals, intergenerational knowledge transfer for families, and resource sharing for the community.

Fiona's dreams include introducing globally-minded Carpe Diem students with place-based Polynesian students. Could you imagine the blossoming?

sushi Au

Overseas Educator

sushi (she/her & they/them) is in constant search of adventure and growth, finding home wherever she goes. She loves experiencing new cultures and connecting with people, which means leaving pieces of their heart around the world. At a young age, her intercultural upbringing meant navigating between her Chinese and Vietnamese families and communities and their U.S. American world. In college, she studied abroad in two countries, spending one semester in her mother's homeland to better understand their cultural background and engage with their own intersectionality as both Chinese and U.S. American, and spent the second semester in the UK, for the fun English accent. Her year abroad taught her countless lessons on empathy, identity, and global citizenship (all of which they are still learning!).

sushi's pursuit of social justice has led them to work with young adults, children, trafficked survivors, the impoverished, and domestic violence survivors through community organizing, education, and program management. Eventually, she moved to Hong Kong to serve with migrant domestic workers in policy advocacy for a couple of years. Upon their return, sushi stumbled into outdoor education, which she couldn't believe was a career option! She began her career at Outward Bound California as an intern... and someone decided to put them in charge of the logistics department as a manager! Still, their passion was in facilitating and instructing lessons that inspired students to be their best and empowered them with skills to be compassionate global citizens. After 4 years in logistics, sushi left her home in the High Sierra to spend time instructing in the wilderness and traveling for four months, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Combining her travel experiences, love for teaching, and desire to build empathy in the world, sushi is very excited to join Carpe Diem as an overseas educator!

Chelsea Van Eck

Overseas Educator

She grew up near the expansive Lake Michigan shore where she spent summers swimming and winters huddled under blankets to stay warm with hot chocolate and a book. (She does NOT have midwest tolerance for cold!) With a huge family nearby, she stayed close for college and dabbled in many fields until landing in Sociology.

Fortunately for her, she was able to study abroad in Australia during her third year in search of my surf girl dream. While that didn’t work out, she had many incredible experiences traveling on her own for the first time: SCUBA diving the Great Barrier Reef, surf camp in the Australian countryside, joining an international travel adventure club, and making life-long friends. Having only experienced such a small part of the world until then, studying abroad brought learning to life mostly outside of the classroom. Conversations with Australian housemates and other international students opened the door to vastly different experiences, values and outlooks on life. She's never thought so deeply about the world and her place in it until then! Her time in Brisbane came to an end too quickly, but it was long enough to know that her life trajectory had changed. She declared that international education was her career path forward and hasn’t looked back since!

Shortly after her BA, she earned her MA in Cross-Cultural & International education and hopped on a plane to live and teach English in a girls’ middle school in Busan, South Korea. During her two years there, she became enthralled with Korean bbq and karaoke while also gaining Korean language and teaching skills with formal classroom experience. Her adventurous side also loved Korea’s efficient transportation network and easy access to east Asia!

After some personal travels throughout South America and the States, Chelsea was fortunate enough to continue working with college students studying abroad, first with a semester program in England with first year students, and then in an advising capacity with older students. Never enjoying desk work for too long, she twisted her boss’ arm to start leading short-term pilgrimages and retreats in Europe over the five years in this role, including the Camino de Santiago in Spain and around Assisi in Italy. These communal spaces offering opportunities to connect mind, heart and body have been some of the most meaningful opportunities she's had to date.

In the past couple of summers, Chelsea has led traveling high school programs in Costa Rica focused on sea turtle conservation and service learning. Never a dull moment, these programs have continued to grow her love of learning that incorporate conservation efforts with local partners, adventure and community living. She is stoked to continue working alongside gap year and college students with Carpe Diem! Her hope is that new experiences throughout these travels take everyone outside of their comfort zones, offering opportunities for growth and learning on how to make this world a better place.

When not working, you can find her running around with nine nephews and nieces, taking spontaneous trips to friends all over the world, joining a Zumba class or playing a rousing game of Dutch Blitz.

Mary Chasen

Overseas Educator

While at the University of Vermont, Mary focused on Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Agroecology, studying the intersection of cultural conservation and environmental conservation. During her studies, she spent time in Botswana, where she conducted research in the Okavango Delta and worked with local communities on human-wildife conflict. After school she traveled throughout Europe, Central America, and Southeast Asia, to understand the diverse ways in which culture impacts the land, and assist in wildlife conservation efforts. Mary first came to know the profound impact of student travel in 2017, when she received a National Geographic Student Expedition scholarship to study wildlife throughout Australia. While there, she served as editor for a student magazine, and contributed with an article on Indigenous perspective on preserving the Daintree Rainforest. Mary has also learned an array of healing traditions and folk medicine, having studied with teachers in Mexico, the U.S., and her own lineage in Italy. Aside from her interest in the confluence of tradition and land stewardship, Mary is passionate about working with youth of all backgrounds. For many years she has taught social skills groups to youth on the spectrum, mentored in low-income communities, and taught art through an immersive curriculum. Mary went on to serve as Project Coordinator for an organization that connects Indigenous Elders around the world, co-creating solutions for global issues of today. She helped facilitate a conference of the elders in Hawaii, centered on Native perspectives related to climate change. This past summer Mary led two student travel programs, from the city streets of Japan to the vast greenery of Iceland. She had an incredible time, and she is thrilled to carry her passion for adventure forward into the Overseas Educator role!

Lauren Gilhuly

Overseas Educator

Originally from the Bay Area, Lauren spent her early childhood running around in the sunshine and forests of Northern California where she developed a love for adventure in the great outdoors. At the age of nine, she and her family moved to England, which instilled in her an insatiable curiosity about the world and a deep respect for all you can learn from immersing yourself in a new place and different culture. Since then, Lauren has sought out opportunities to do just that all over the U.S. and abroad.

Lauren headed to New Hampshire for college, where she studied Geography and French (she loved learning French so much and took so many French classes that by senior year, she realized she could just add it as a second major). Thankfully, she only endured two northeastern winters… during one of those Januaries, it got so cold she could toss a bucket of boiling water out the window and watch it turn to snow before it hit the ground! She was lucky enough to escape the freezing temps twice over and spent one winter working for a salsa dance company in L.A. and another studying abroad in France.

After graduating from Dartmouth, Lauren hit the road to begin work as an English teacher in Arizona. She quickly became passionate about integrating experiential learning into her curriculum and expanding access to enriching educational opportunities. This has led her to pursue work as an educator in many different capacities and environments, from Phoenix, Arizona to Grenoble, France, in summer travel programs and the outdoors, and with students of all different ages and backgrounds. For the past five years, Lauren has been working in Denver Public Schools as a founding teacher of World Literature, French, and Senior Projects and developing the first travel abroad program at her school. She’s excited to continue her mission to provide fun and engaging educational experiences and learn alongside Carpe Diem students!

In her free time, you can find Lauren backpacking and backcountry skiing in the Rocky Mountains, reading fiction on the porch, trying to cook all of Ottolenghi’s recipes with varying degrees of success, and spending time with her friends and family.

Malcolm Brown

Overseas Educator

Malcolm was born and raised on a high school campus in Delaware where both his parents were teachers, so he was raised by a community of educators with fellow faculty kids as his neighbors and best friends. He went to a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York when he was 11 years old, and he’s only taken one summer off since. He was a counselor, he led trips to Spain for the camp, and in recent summers he’s worked in the outdoors department as a rock climbing and ropes course facilitator. His experiences at camp fostered a love for trying new things and building community with people from different backgrounds, as well as a passion for outdoor adventure and working with young people.

He went on his first international trip to Nicaragua while in high school, and that’s when he caught the travel bug and decided he wanted to learn Spanish so he could continue to travel and build relationships with people from other countries and cultures. He went to Sewanee for college, a small school in rural Tennessee, because of their incredible outdoors program and beautiful campus. In addition to all of the outdoor adventures he embarked on while there, he went on and led trips to Ecuador and Costa Rica, studied in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a semester, and minored in Spanish to continue his Spanish-learning journey.

Malcolm moved to Miami after college and worked as an assistant teacher and interventionist in an ESL classroom, and loved it so much that he became a teacher just like his parents. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he taught for 3 years and earned his Masters in Education, and then decided that although he loved teaching, the traditional classroom may not be for him. Malcolm left his school and used his time away from the classroom to travel and explore a variety of seasonal jobs in the nonprofit and education worlds. He then found his way to Carpe Diem Education, which is a perfect melding of his love for students, education, travel, and adventure!

FUN FACTS

Her childhood was strikingly similar to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” (minus the windex thing). She’s hoping that her six years of Saturday morning Greek school will resurface while in language immersion classes this fall. Admittedly, most of it has since blended into Spanish.

Since moving to Ireland, unseasonable rain has followed Mara everywhere she goes. This has led to some crazy adventures, ranging from thunderstorms in the desert on camel safaris to city wide shutdowns!

Mara’s undergrad degree is in theatre. Though no longer actively performing, she relies on her improvisation, non-verbal communication skills, and ability to laugh at herself daily while traveling.

Mara Santos

Overseas Educator

Born in Chicago, Mara’s first steps were taken during her first international trip in Vancouver, Canada. At the time her family underestimated how much foreshadowing had occurred. Mara grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, strongly influenced by her mother who was incredibly passionate about culture, travel, and local experiences. When internationally traveling was out of the budget, they explored and learned about different cultural neighborhoods throughout Chicago. She was empowered to switch subway cars while the trains were moving, create plans by reading guidebooks, and rely on local maps to navigate.

Cobblestone streets, walks along the Charles River esplanade, Nutella milkshakes, and a vibrant student scene drew Mara to Boston for college. After graduating from Emerson College, she moved to Dublin, Ireland on a Working Holiday Visa for what was anticipated to be a gap year… Six and a half years years later, she is still living and working abroad on the road the majority of the time! After her Irish Visa expired, she backpacked across Europe and India. Inspired by her international friends and roommates, Mara wanted to improve her Spanish. The following year, she taught English in Madrid. Before leaving Spain, she hiked 600 miles along the Cantabrian Sea on the Camino de Santiago del Norte as a fundraiser for refugees in Greece. This experience came full circle when she volunteered with an NGO outside of Thessaloniki throughout the Spring of 2020.

In 2018 Mara began working in experiential education, which she believes is the perfect intersection of her passions for mentorship, travel, and community. Fostering an environment that encourages growth, connection with local communities, and support within the group is the most rewarding part of the job. She is a huge believer in the power of connection and storytelling to create a more empathetic and inclusive world. Trip leading has taken her to Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, Thailand, India, Nepal, and Hawaii across three gap semesters and four summer programs. She is thrilled to be leading her first program in Europe, especially because her grandmother, “Yiayia,” immigrated from a small island in Greece.

In between trips, Mara has continued her personal travels - both solo and with friends old and new - across five continents. Some favorite memories include motorbiking through Vietnam, dancing through Brazil, and “van-life”-ing through Hawaii. Her travel style is slow - opting to spend as much time in each country as her visa allows. She loves hiking and wandering through museums, remote areas and live music, reflecting in her journal and meeting every single guest in a hostel, which typically causes her time to be split between cities and nature. She spends most of the year living out of her backpack unsure where she will be in a few months, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Matt Carl

Overseas Educator

Despite his parent's best efforts, Matt has managed to avoid settling down and getting "a real job with a 401(k) and dental plan", and has no plans to change his wandering anytime soon. His love for an alternative lifestyle, as well as a desire to live anywhere outside the US, began when he was in University and enrolled in study abroad programs to Nicaragua and Peru. With his interests sufficiently piqued by the fact that a whole different world existed outside the safe confines of his own country, Matt only lasted a year and a half in his first and only "real job" (with a 401(k)!) and instead took off to see the world. Starting with Latin America - it was the cheapest to get to - and loving it to the point that he's never really left, he has spent about 90% of the last six years in the region.

Matt initially began working in alternative education as a way to fund his travels, but soon came to love the impact he was able to have on guiding young people in their first experiences with other cultures, languages, environments, and all the challenges and excitement that those experiences bring. When not working with youth travel programs, Matt has led multi-day hikes up volcanoes and across mountain ranges in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Bolivia. Through various jobs he has been lucky enough to lead tourists sandboarding down volcanoes, chat with former guerilla leaders, ride on the roof of chicken buses, and visit Machu Picchu nine times. Not so bad for someone without a dental plan is it, Mom and Dad?

Matt does occasionally return to visit his home state of Michigan (only somewhat begrudgingly) and catches up with one of the few things he misses from the States - American football. A long-suffering fan of the woeful Detroit Lions, his dream is to live long enough to see them one day win a single playoff game.

Megan Nyhuis

Overseas Educator

Megan’s love for travel, adventure, and service learning began when she convinced her nervous parents to let her participate in a leadership service program in Tanzania when she was 16 years old. Though she grew up in New Jersey (where she also attended undergrad to earn a degree in Public Health), she took every opportunity to go abroad and learn about the world beyond her east coast city life. She spent a semester studying and traveling in Australia and took a summer course in Greece during her college years.

After graduating, she started a two year stint with AmeriCorps NCCC to gain leadership and program management skills in a federal volunteer program for young adults in the Pacific Region of the US. Her experiences in AmeriCorps included learning to construct houses for victims of devastating floods in West Virginia, planting trees throughout Eugene, Oregon with the Parks and Rec Department, and overseeing her team's efforts to distribute covid vaccines to vulnerable populations in Oakland, California in 2021.

After completing these service years, she spent time living and working in Alaska working as a sled-dog handler! She spent her free time learning to backpack over glaciers and chasing the northern lights. She then lived in Hawai’i for a year, working on organic farms across the islands. While in Hawai’i, she began to pursue the experiential education field that she had loved as a teen. She became a mentor for a teen leadership program focused on sea turtle and coral education, and led a gap semester for college students on the Big Island. In the summer of 2023, she led high schoolers on a camping trip through Yellowstone NP and The Grand Tetons, as well as a program in Costa Rica!

An avid reader, gardener, and mediocre vegan chef, Megan continues to avoid the "big girl job" but looks forward to one day continuing studying her academic interests in Public Health. She is excited to support her gap year students in their journeys of becoming global citizens who are aware of their role and responsibility to society and the natural world.

Megan Schnberg

Overseas Educator

Curiosity has been a driving force in Megan’s life, and nature served as her first classroom. She had an exploratory childhood along California’s Pacific Coast and in the Sierra Nevadas, where she camped and skied with her family. Her imagination led her to create characters for short stories, examine new flora and fauna to add to her collection of dioramas, and read voraciously—notably National Geographic magazines. It wasn’t until she began teaching that she realized the importance of inquiry and discovery in education, and she built her teaching philosophy around holistic and experiential learning that would nurture life skills and instill global values in students.

After teaching English in public high school for four years and completing her graduate work at Pepperdine University, she felt the relentless urge to explore this spectacular planet, and began teaching in international education. This life-changing journey took her on adventures across dozens of countries, while having the opportunity to live in France, Indonesia, Lebanon and Argentina over the past 13 years. A few of her most unforgettable moments include bungeeing off a bridge in New Zealand, hang gliding over Brazil’s gleaming coastline, whitewater rafting down the Nile, trekking Indonesia’s vast jungles and volcanoes, and rappelling into Vietnam’s labyrinth of ancient caverns.

Megan recognizes the importance of adapting to foreign surroundings, learning with an open mind about cultures different from her own, and understanding how to travel as a local, while embracing the challenges and fulfillment of living life abroad. Working with teenagers to help guide them on their own journeys is an experience that she truly values and she can’t imagine a better job than combining two of her favorite things: education and travel. During the pandemic, she virtually connected with other educators and teenagers around the world by launching a weekly global discussion forum about topics ranging from cultural celebrations, political strife, economic crisis, top travel destinations and boosting student morale.

Megan is extremely excited to join the Carpe Diem team! She resides with her partner in the Patagonian region of Argentina, where she teaches English and math, explores the hiking trails of the Andes mountains, practices her Argentinian Spanish with her running team, and surfs the southernmost beaches in the world.

One of Megan’s favorite quotes: “I think about the hands I have held, the places I’ve seen, the vast lands whose dirt is caked on the bottom of my shoes. The world has changed me.” -Amelia Earhart

Jasmin Gonzalez

Overseas Educator

Jasmin always loved learning about different cultures and doing what she could to contribute to causes bigger than herself. While growing up in New Jersey, she held lemonade stand fundraisers for the Sheldrick wildlife trust, trick or treated for UNICEF, and worked at her middle school store to sell bracelets for relief aid after Hurricane Katrina. Years later, that passion still thrives, this time with the intention of bringing the attention and talents of young people to the challenges we face as a global community.

As a student at Johns Hopkins University, Jasmin began her journey as an experiential educator while working as a kayaking leader with JHU Outdoor Pursuits, exploring the connection between experiencing the natural world and the motivation to protect it. Through her five years completing a BA in Global Environmental Change and Sustainability and then an MS in Environmental Science & Policy, Jasmin paired her studies with opportunities to hike, run, and bike in Baltimore, Copenhagen, and Washington D.C. The opportunity to pursue a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Villa Maria, Argentina after graduate school was an excellent way to enter the international education field and to have an immersive experience in a new country and region of the world. Teaching English provided a new perspective on the power of languages and who gets the privilege of knowing multiple. Learning Spanish (and now attempting French!) has led to immeasurable conversations, connections, and memories that wouldn’t have happened without that ability, especially talking to her family members from Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Jasmin has continued her work in outdoor, environmental and experiential education as a field trip instructor throughout the U.S. and Latin America. After a brief break to work as a distance learning educator during the pandemic, Jasmin wanted to dive deeper into long term field programming, and began her journey as a Gap Semester educator in 2021. She has led three other Gap programs in Hawaii, South America, and the Northwest U.S, as well as many summer and school programs to locations like Alaska, Panama, Kenya, and Tanzania. These programs are filled with physical challenges, learning new skills, goofy moments, and lots of laughs which is what keeps her coming back.

Jasmin is so excited to share her passion for the outdoors, desire to connect with new cultures, and motivation to protect our planet with her students this semester, and to be a part of the Carpe team!

Soumya Nadabar

Overseas Educator

Growing up between Japan, India, Argentina, and the United States, Soumya danced between cultures, languages, time zones, and belief systems from an early age. She spent her formative years on ancestral Lumbee lands in the sweet, sticky Southern city of Raleigh, North Carolina, and she went on to graduate with a B.A. in International Studies and a B.A. in Economics from North Carolina State University. In college, Soumya focused as much on extracurricular activities as her classes, and she got involved in gender equality efforts, interpersonal violence prevention, animal rights advocacy, environmental direct action, Buddhist philosophy, and outdoor education, just to name a few interests. Her pursuits have led her to explore environmental justice in southeastern North Carolina, conduct ethnographic research in Quito, Ecuador on culture and gender, and serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA in Portland, Oregon where she worked to make experiential international education accessible with Carpe Mundi. She has also led college students to Guatemala to study gender issues, interned at a community development NGO in Delhi, and spent a year teaching English on a Fulbright grant in the Himalayan foothills of northern India. Some of her favorite moments abroad have been riding a motorbike through the hills of northern Vietnam, celebrating a friend's wedding dancing the night away in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and celebrating Holi with her students in India. Most recently, Soumya has brought her passion for facilitation to her roles as an overseas educator and as a field instructor for wilderness courses for NOLS. She is passionate about the power of embodied learning and collective liberation and hopes to unite the two by making experiential education a catalyst for personal growth, cultivation of critical consciousness, and engagement & advocacy. In her free time, Soumya can be found playing outdoors, nursing a cup of tea and a good book, dancing at a concert, slurping down veggie ramen, bouldering at the climbing gym, and pondering how to better cultivate radical community, loving-kindness, and joy.

Forrest Ott

Overseas Educator

Raised in a small town in Arkansas, Forrest never really had a choice about whether he would fall in love with the great outdoors. From 8 am until 2 pm he and his brothers would be locked out of the house and told to “play outside” by their mother. Due to these fortunate circumstances Forrest grew up camping in cow fields, playing dungeons & dragons in tents, and practically living at the lake.

This love for the outdoors continued through high school and into college. His weekends filled with hiking, kayaking, camping, and airsoft. These experiences culminated in Forrest working at a boys & girls sleepaway camp in NE Pennsylvania halfway through college. He would continue working at this camp for many years which would lead to friendships with people all over the world and a furious passion for outdoor education. After college Forrest told his parents that he had saved to take four months to travel before starting a career in the world of camp. Six years later Forrest realized that he had lost track of time. These years involved hiking the Camino de Santiago, living in Germany, vandwelling in Australia, backpacking across SE Asia, and bikepacking up the coast of Tasmania along with many months of seasonal work in the US.

During the beginning of the pandemic Forrest found himself living in his van while studying for a graduate degree in central Illinois. When he wasn't freezing in the van he spent this time taking undergraduate students on adventure trips for his graduate position. After graduation he started as an instructor with North Carolina Outward Bound where he currently spends his summers. He is excited to join the Carpe Diem team! When Forrest isn’t outside he reads, plays board games, and uses every scrap of spare time to visit his partner in Germany.

Doug Zaideman

Overseas Educator

Born and raised in suburban Chicago, Doug’s family laid the groundwork for a love of nature at an early age, thanks to their keen interest in escaping the suburbia to the northwoods of Wisconsin, the Boundary Waters, and road trips all over the country. His mother always had him helping out in the garden, and Doug is thankful that he has inherited her green thumb as a result. As a teenager, he participated in a few summer adventure travel camps that first showed him the power and benefit of group experiential travel and education, not to mention giving him his first glimpses of the American west. Doug studied at Indiana University, majoring in Sport Marketing and Management, while also getting degrees in Spanish and Business. After school, Doug found himself working in the front office of a minor league baseball team, yet he always maintained a strong passion for travel and the great outdoors. While working for a baseball team may have felt like a dream job at times, it wasn’t quite quenching his thirst for adventure; soon friends and mountains lured Doug west to Colorado, where he has lived, on and off, ever since.

During a solo adventure throughout South America, Doug made the decision to head back to his roots and pursue work in outdoor experiential education and adventure travel, where he had had so many strong role models and positive memories from years before. He loves to show people all of the beauty in the world and his passion for education and travel is ever growing. It continues to amaze Doug how powerful and impactful the right kind of travel can be, for both the traveler and host, offering you an entirely different style of learning that can not be found in a classroom. Trying to be a good role model both as a traveler and human being is something Doug tries to bring to his trips and he genuinely appreciates all of the enthusiasm and eagerness to learn that students bring onto a program.

Doug is thrilled to have the opportunity to lead his 6th program for Carpe Diem in Hawaii this spring. Since joining Carpe Diem in 2016, Doug has led semester programs in South America, the South Pacific, Central America, and India. For the past two years, Doug has served as the Latitudes Year program coordinator, working with students to find them volunteer opportunities in their field of choice.

In addition to his work with Carpe Diem, Doug pursues his interests in permaculture, teaching English, cooking, sustainable local development, SCUBA, meditation, and environmental tourism across the globe. While at home in Colorado, you can find him backpacking, kayaking, snowboarding, or fly fishing in the beautiful Rocky Mountains with close friends and family. Some of the most amazing things that have come during these adventures have been swimming with swarming manta rays and a whale shark in the warm Indian Ocean; tuning in to the rhythm of the Amazon traveling down its waters by boat; and exploring mystical caves in Laos and Vietnam!

Overseas Educators

Overseas Educators