About the Founder

I am an American English teacher living abroad. There are lots of us, it's nothing particularly unique, but I like it. I was born in Redding California, and spent my early childhood in the middle of nowhere with my grandparents who literally raised horses.

I'm the one on the right, awkwardly trying to pretend to know how a horse works. I moved to Portland Oregon around age 5, but would come back to visit Redding a lot.

I took a trip to Europe in college, which was scary, but fun. I learned a lot about other cultures, and discovered that I could blend in if I pretended to be dutch, so I did that.

After college, I was still interested in travel, so I took a job as a teacher, and learned that I both liked teaching and liked people from other cultures. People are people regardless of location, as it turns out, and while I wanted to leave America and explore the world, many people just wanted to come visit my country. I was flattered! It seemed so normal to me, however, of those people, very few were actually able to go, and I couldn't find a way for many of them to come in as a tourist. I can't help from without, so maybe helping from within can allow these people to see a different side of the world, learn a lot, and ultimately make our lives more global than they ever were before.