ACADEMIC TRAVEL ABROAD - <meta name=staff

Journal Content

	Dave Parry Chairman	Dave proves that there is no cure for the itch to travel the world. His most memorable moments include sneaking into Russia twice; standing in Wyoming’s South Pass where so many pioneers crossed; criss-crossing Russia and China in the bad old days; and mornings watching the sun rise over the Alps. Prior to acquiring Academic Travel Abroad in 1973, he was a college professor and university administrator, and congressional staff member. Besides travel, his other passions include hiking in the Alps from France to Slovenia, reading history as well as Willa Cather’s novels and riding trains. He is especially proud of ATA's Grandtravel division and hopes to take his granddaughter on a tour in ten years before she enrolls in one or our CET-Academic Programs study abroad programs.
	Kate Simpson President	Kate, daughter of an American diplomat, was raised an “expat,” living most of her youth in France where she was born. Fluent in French, Kate settled on a more “exotic” language in college, where she fell in love with Mandarin and all things Chinese. Beyond her childhood in France, Kate has lived and studied in Australia, Algeria, Ireland and Taiwan. Kate graduated from Yale with a degree in East Asian Studies and pursued a post-graduate fellowship in Chinese Literature in Taiwan before settling in Washington, D.C. Kate began her career at ATA in 1988 as the China Program Manager and now has her hand in all aspects of Academic Travel Abroad as business, from finance and administration to program design, marketing and customer service. Kate is a member of the National Tour Association’s Leadership Team and the Canadian Tourism Commission’s Leisure Travel Advisory board. Kate loves to travel to hidden corners of the countries she loves most, like Haute Savoie in alpine France or the Ming villages near Huangshan in China. During down time, Kate loves to cook Thai food, bike, hike and read good books.
	Chase Poffenberger Executive Vice President	Chase is a veteran of Academic Travel, beginning work as a China Program Designer just three short months before the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing that redirected her job, and her life! She has since worn many hats during her tenure, including France Program Designer and Assistant Director of the Program and Marketing Departments. Chase currently oversees Academic Travel Abroad's team of Sales and Marketing Managers. As a child, Chase traveled extensively through Asia and Europe during her expatriate upbringing in Taiwan, then lived and studied in both Brittany and Beijing. She earned a degree in Chinese Studies from Wellesley College in 1988 and an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland in 1998.
	Sarah Saleh Vice Presidnet for Financne & Administration	Sarah came to ATA from an unlikely field of study: classical music. A French horn player who received a Bachelor of Music, she got the travel bug on orchestra tours in Europe, and spent a year in Florence, Italy, before joining ATA over twenty years ago. Once a member of Academic Travel Abroad's former Western Europe Department, Sarah now manages our corporate financial strategy, while ensuring ATA stays current with 21st-century technology. She is fluent in Italian and dabbles in French and German.
	Mark Lenhart Director of CET Academic Programs	Mark's association with the organization dates back to 1987, when he traveled to Beijing as a CETstudent for his junior year. Mark has worked as a Resident Director in both Beijing (1991-92) and Harbin (1990-91). As CET's Director, Mark is responsible for staff management, program promotion and CET's finances. Mark has a BA from Bowdoin College (1989), he studied at the Hopkins-NanjingCenter (1989-1990), he earned his MA from Harvard's Regional Studies Program (1995) and his MBA at the University of Maryland (2001).
	Megan Pierce Reservations Center Manager	Megan was born and raised in Peoria, IL, and fell in love with travel and cultural learning at the age of 13 on a school trip to 5 European countries in ten days. After graduating from The George Washington University in Washington, DC with a B.A. in International Affairs (2001), she landed a dream job with Smithsonian Journeys in the customer service and sales department. From her time working at the Smithsonian, Megan has fond memories of a summer swim in the Aegean, a hike up the temples at Tikal, watching the Kirov ballet at the Maryinsky Theatre, and the haunting cries of wolves in the dead of winter in Yellowstone. Megan had a two year stint working for the Discovery Channel & Travel Channel before following her passion back to the travel industry where she truly feels at home as a Manager for the Journeys Service Center.
	Marla Bright Director of AMNH Expeditions	Marla's longstanding interest in other cultures led her to spend her high school junior year abroad in England. After earning a B.A. in international business from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia, she returned to Europe for work and travel in England, Scotland, France, and Belgium. After several years in the book publishing and sales industry in western North Carolina, she relocated to Washington, DC to return to an international sphere. She found a shared passion for international travel, food, and culture when she joined the Academic Travel Abroad team. Between 2000-2008, Marla was a member of the Travel Services Department, having worked in operations, sales, and management. She now devotes her energies to development and promotion of the American Museum of Natural History Expeditions travel program. While she has enjoyed many opportunities to explore the world since then–including Italy, Iceland, Japan, Greece, Russia, and China–her preference for personal travel is to return to Britain as often as possible. Her other interests include cooking and baking, reading, architecture, genealogy, and Scottish Country Dancing
	Emilia Pawlowski Direct Marketing Manager	Emilia began her career at Academic Travel Abroad in 2006 as the Direct Marketing Manager. She is responsible for overseeing the direct mail and web marketing in addition to analyzing and forecasting travel trends. Originally from western Pennsylvania, she graduated from Mt. St. Mary's in Maryland with B.S. in Rhetoric and Writing (1996) and earned minors in Art History and Italian while spending 2 years abroad in Florence and Macerata, Italy. Prior to joining Academic Travel Abroad, Emilia spent seven years in the field of academic publishing which parlayed well into the exciting world of educational and cultural travel. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe and is currently completing her travel planner certification through Temple University and the National Tour Association. In her free time, Emilia enjoys attending exhibits at the museums in Washington, D.C., volunteering, and taking language courses.
	Marie- Rose Lohier Senior Program Manager	Marie-Rose, though American born, spent 15 years in Normandy, France. After graduating from the “lycee”, she returned to the United States for college, graduating with a degree in Political Science. While in France, she traveled extensively throughout Europe, including Romania and Yugoslavia. She remembers a particularly adventuresome family vacation driving from Caen (Normandy) to Athens, Greece and back. Fluent in French, Marie-Rose also learned to speak Lingala while living in Kinshasa (Congo) for a year.
	Steve Muth Creative Manager	Steve grew up mostly abroad as the son of a diplomat. He was born in Manila, Phillippines and has lived and studied in places like Bogota, Colombia, Brussels, Belgium and Paris, France and speaks some Spanish and fluent French. He came back state-side to attend college where he received his B.S. in Political Sciences and a minor in French at the University of North Carolina and later studied graphic design at Wichita State University's School of Fine Arts. Since then, he has traveled to most of the 50 states and now has settled with his family in the Washington, DC area.
	Emma Impavido Senior Program Manager	Emma Impavido was born in the UK. She spent 3 years as a child in Paris and was bitten by the travel bug at an early age. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe and spent extended periods in Venice, Milan, and the south of France. Emma holds a degree in Italian and French from Reading University, UK and a Masters degree in Art History from Warwick University, UK. Emma worked for six years for Britain’s leading cultural tour operator, Martin Randall Travel organizing educational tours and music festivals in historic buildings along the Danube, Rhine, and most memorably in Venice. In 2000 she moved to Washington DC. She worked at Smithsonian Journeys for just under a year before joining Academic Travel Abroad in April 2001. Emma loves the thrill of pulling together a program and talking about her favorite cities and regions.
	Janet Varn Senior Program Manager	Janet’s career in program design began at the Smithsonian Institution where she created tours across North America, and traveled with Smithsonian study tours throughout Asia, Russia, and many countries in Europe. It is the western U.S., though, that keeps calling her back. After her first cross-country skiing adventure in Yellowstone 20+ years ago, she finds ways to hike in the Rockies and explore archeological sites in the Southwest desert whenever she can. Janet became a telecommuting staffer too after moving somewhat west — to Oak Park, a turn of the century Chicago suburb filled with old elm trees and Frank Lloyd Wright houses.
	Chris Roper Senior Program Manager	Chris's fascination with Asia began as a child when, at the age of 5, he accompanied his family on a 6-month tour of the region during which he skateboarded through the botanical gardens of Jakarta and learned to eat Chinese food with a pair of pint-sized chopsticks. During college, Chris studied for a semester in Qingdao, China, where he practiced with the women's volleyball team, and though a foot taller than anyone else on the team, he was the worst player on the field. Fluent in Mandarin, Chris also learned Vietnamese in graduate school, where he studied Sino-Vietnamese border trade. Since joining Academic Travel Abroad, where he designs our programs to Asia, Chris has enjoyed traveling to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bhutan, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan and India.
	Whitney Kulesz Director of Travel Services	Whitney joined ATA in May 2006 as a Tour Communications Specialist. Her first experience overseas was to Paris, France, when her high school band performed at the Paris Air Show – she played the bass trombone. In her free time, she enjoys practicing her Spanish and Portuguese, and loves cooking and finding new D.C. restaurants. Future goals include learning how to dance flamenco and play the piano.
	Edward Yan Reservations Agent	Ed hails from Cleveland, Ohio as an offspring of two natives of Guangdong, China; he remembers a childhood that involved being packed into a car for road trips to the Chinatowns of Toronto, New York City and Chicago. His first realization of the concept of countries came to him when he wondered out loud to his parents “Why do they use the same money in New York as they do in Cleveland, but when we go to Toronto, we have to get a different kind of money?” After spending 6 months in Guangdong and Hong Kong and being immersed entirely into a non-American culture, Ed has been fascinated with the World and wishes to visit as many places and sample as many cuisines as possible. Since then, his travels have taken him all over the States and Canada, England, Mexico, various islands of the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Japan, South Korea and back to China on numerous occasions. Ed speaks English and Cantonese fluently, has dabbled in French and is currently learning Spanish. He enjoys surfing, snowboarding, the culinary arts and holds an Advanced certification in SCUBA. Ed graduated from the University of Akron with a BS in Business Administration/Marketing and supports the professional sports teams known as the Cleveland Indians, the Cleveland Browns, DC United and Aston Villa FC.
	Adrian Trauma Tour Specialist	Adrian is a Tour Communication Specialist at ATA. She graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a B.S. in Marketing in 2006. She has always enjoyed traveling but it was not until studying abroad during college that she was really able to appreciate it. Her travels have brought her to Iceland, Norway, Russia, Poland, Belgium, France, Ireland, Spain and Greece. She looks forward to continuing her travels within the United States and abroad.
	Alex Whaley Reservations Agent	Alex is steadily working her way through her first year here at ATA and she is off to her first destination, Egypt, with the company, which she couldn’t be more excited about. Within ATA, Alex handles Smithsonian Journeys tours, so she is constantly surrounded by conversations of travel and adventure. Born in Germany to a mother and father with the “travel bug”, as her mom would say, she has been off to Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, and Guam. Her studies abroad began with Rotary International, who sponsored her as an exchange student for her high school senior year in Finland, where she was given ample time to traipse all over Europe. Then, while studying at the University of Hawaii, her Alma Mater, Alex ventured off once again to study abroad in Spain for a semester. Through travel, Alex has learned to love food and drink from all over the globe, and she has had the great opportunity to try her hand at sailing in both Greece and the warm waters of the Pacific, an activity she enjoys immensely and hopes to do much more of.
	Dave DeLuca Reservations Agent	Dave joined ATA in April 2008. In March 2008, while on a study abroad trip in India, he became convinced that educational travel was the field for him. In April he joined ATA as a National Geographic Reservations Agent. A native of the DC area, Dave earned a BA in Anthropology and a MA in International Commerce and Policy from George Mason University. Away from ATA you will find him bartending in Arlington, traveling with his wife, planning to travel with his wife, or cheering in vain for the Nationals and Redskins.