Patricia B. Brennan, Esq.
Patty has been practicing law since 1987; her fields of expertise include general business law, taxation, partnerships, and acquisitions. She has extensive experience working with non-profit organizations, including representing Philadelphia's North County Conservancy. Patty currently serves on the Board of Directors for Grand Street Settlement Senior Housing, connected with Grand Street Settlement, a non-profit community center which annually assists more than 10,000 residents of New York City's Lower East Side.

Brad Choyt
Although he wanted to travel to India while a student at Phillips Exeter, Brad didn't have the chance to start exploring Asia until his junior year abroad from Brown University, when he first visited India and Nepal. Once he graduated with degrees in Studio Art, Religious Studies, and Art History, he returned to Kathmandu where he served as an apprentice to a master Tibetan thang-ka painter who is still, 20 years later, a close friend. After two years of trying to learn the intricacies of grinding stone pigments and using brushes made with single hairs, he returned to the United States ready for graduate school and the making of an entirely different kind of art. Over the next three years, he earned his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania, with a focus on painting and sculpture. Knowing that he wanted to inspire young artists, he became a faculty member at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, CT, and served there for five years. During that time, he continued to create and exhibit his work, but he also expanded his sense of what was possible in a classroom and even what constituted the limits of a classroom. In 1995, he began taking students to Asia, primarily in the Indian and Nepali Himalaya, experiences that led him directly to the work he does today at Global Learning Across Borders. This work has brought him and what is now a wide range of collaborators and fellow educators back to the region dozens of times and given him deep experience in everything from the philosophy to the logistics of planning international curricula that emphasize profound personal transformation and safety. While designing these programs during the summer and the academic year, Brad served, from 2001 to 2005, as a faculty member and Chaplain of Eastern Religions at St. Paul's School in Concord, NH. From 2005-2007 he served as the first Director of Education at the Rubin Museum of Art, the country's only museum devoted exclusively to Himalayan art and culture. Currently, Brad is the Director of Green School in Bali, Indonesia, a school slated to open its doors in the fall of 2008. He and his wife, a writer, and their two young children, live outside of Ubud, Bali's cultural center.

Deborah Friedman
Deborah received her Master's degree in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management with a concentration in International Education from School for International Training (SIT). Her thesis, The American Gap Year, examined the Gap Year trend in America from college admissions advisors' perspectives and has presented her research at the Federation EIL Poland General Assembly and, as a guest lecturer, at SIT. Currently, Deborah manages UNICEF's P²D (personal x professional development) program, a non-traditional career development program for UNICEF staff members and their families. Prior to UNICEF, Deborah designed, developed, and lead intercultural programs, both domestically and abroad, with organizations such as The Experiment in International Living, Semester at Sea, and Kids Can Free the Children / Leaders Today, The Institute for Civic Leadership at the Dwight School, and CIEE. From 2004-2005, Deborah served on the Board of World Learning as a Student Trustee and is now a Leader of their New York Alumni Chapter. Deborah has her BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Communication Arts with a minor in Business and attended Boston University's Study Abroad Internship Program in Sydney, Australia.

John Eastman
John brings more than 20 years of non-profit experience to Global LAB. Prior to co-founding Global Learning Across Borders, he was a founder of Pacific Village Institute and helped grow it into a leading non-profit provider of study abroad programs focusing specifically on Asia. John has extensive international experience, having spent years in Asia working for NGO's before dedicating himself to non-profit global education initiatives based in the United States. His intercultural education background includes creation of global studies and service programs in Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Morocco, and Vietnam; ESL instruction in Hanoi for the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society; and teaching at Houston's Taiwanese-American Community Association and Park Place School, serving Vietnamese and Mexican children of recent immigrants. In the early 1990's John was an editor at Oxford University Press in New York City and later helped design and manage PEN America Center's national literacy program for at-risk populations. He is a graduate of Amherst College.

Kathleen Frye
Kathleen has been making and teaching art for 25 years. For the last three years she has taught at The Dwight School in Manhattan, and was recently appointed head of the school-wide curriculum review committee. She will also direct the school’s museum program, which integrates museum learning experiences with classroom curriculum. Kathleen’s teaching practice focuses on the arts as a means of appreciating the rich diversity of both local and world communities. Before moving to the east coast in 1998, Kathleen lived in Colorado for eighteen years where she worked as a visiting artist in inner city schools, as adjunct faculty at the college level, and founded a successful after-school visual arts program for children. Kathleen spent a year in Brazil as an exchange student and returned later for extensive travel through South America. She is a graduate of the University of California with an MFA in Printmaking from Colorado State University and an MA in Art Education from City College of New York.

Scott Hoyt
Scott earned his MBA from New York University and has over twenty-five years experience in marketing and business development. While working over the years in sales, advertising, marketing, overseas new products, and business development (most notably in the areas of OTC family planning products and herbal remedies), he served as a member of the Board of Directors at Carter-Wallace Inc., a Fortune 500 healthcare products company. Scott has served on the board of the Lower East Side Service Center (L.E.S.C) in New York City and for nearly two decades, he has been a supporter of The Tibetan Classics Translators Guild, where he currently serves as President. In recent years, Scott established Hoyt Tea, a new venture in beverage tea, as well as Tea Dragon Films. In 2007 he directed and produced the feature length documentary film, The Meaning of Tea. Scott continues to travel widely, and maintains a keen interest in studying and photographing cultures and traditions around the world where tea is understood, and appreciated.

Lauren M. Maher
Lauren has over12 years experience in international development project management with a primary focus on Africa and health. She currently serves as Senior Program Officer for the Firelight Foundation, where she is responsible for supporting projects involving sub-Saharan African families affected by HIV/AIDS. Prior to joining Firelight, she worked at the Rockefeller Foundation from 1998-2006, supporting grantees in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, coordinating The Philanthropy Workshop, and serving as a member of the Women and Development Strategic Working Group as well as the Foundation's corporate citizenship grantmaking committee. From 2003-2004, she was a Coro Leadership New York Fellow. Lauren is currently pursuing a Masters of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she is focusing on international health.