Michelle Bos-Lun, Director of China Programs
Michelle went to high school in Taipei, Taiwan, studied abroad as an undergraduate in Shanghai, China, and conducted graduate research in Dharamsala, India. She received her Master’s degree in International Education at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. She has designed and led numerous high school programs to Asia, including programs to China, India, Tibet, and Thailand. She created global studies and travel programs for the Meeting School of Rindge, New Hampshire and the Compass School of Westminster, Vermont, where she founded their Global Connections program. She has been a co-director for the “Brahma to Buddha” India semester program since the fall of 2005. Michelle also has been a classroom teacher of Global Studies for many years. She is the mother of three teenagers (all of whom have studied abroad). Southeastern Vermont is where Michelle makes her home and where she works on program design and coordination, curricula development, and admissions for Global LAB.

John Eastman, Executive Director
John brings more than 20 years of non-profit experience to Global LAB, including extensive international experience, having spent five 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 design and development 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.

Coby Hadas, Community Relations Director
Coby criss-crosses the US in order to spread the word about gap year and other international education opportunities for young adults. He speaks with first hand experience, as he traveled extensively before, during, and after obtaining a B.A. in International Relations from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Upon graduation he decided that his classroom education was sorely lacking in experiential knowledge. Thus, he left the comforts of modernity in order to learn firsthand about indigenous communities in Colombia and Peru. For two years he continued his studies of Spanish while volunteering in a variety of grassroots projects in the upper reaches of the Amazon. He has traveled and worked extensively throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and India. During his world travels, Coby realized the importance of cross-cultural, immersion-based education, and now strives to share the magical world in which we live with others. Coby’s other passions include yoga, jogging, meditation, and cycling.

Alex Safos, Director of Middle East and North Africa Programs
Alex brings to Global LAB 15 years of domestic and international experience as a management consultant with BearingPoint and Chemonics international. He has lived and worked in several overseas locales, including Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine. Alex was a business development manager with Chemonics International, specializing in international development funded by USAID and The World Bank. In its Middle East and North Africa division, he managed major projects for sustainable tourism and cultural heritage preservation in Jordan, fisheries management in Oman, and civil society promotion in Egypt. He was also the US-based manager for Chemonics’ offices in Cairo, Egypt and Palestine. Alex’s seminal overseas experience occurred in Fes, Morocco where he lived for a year and taught beginning and advanced English classes at the American Language Center (ALC). In addition, he assisted with the roll-out of the Arabic Language Institute/Fes, now the leading Arabic instruction center in Morocco. Alex holds a M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies—where he achieved proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic—and a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin’s Plan II Liberal Arts Program.

International Staff

Kempie Blythe, Program Leader
Kempie leads Global LAB programs in Morocco and India. A native of Charlotte, NC, Kempie graduated from Colorado College where she majored in religion with a comparative concentration in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. In her high school years she began traveling in Asia, seeking perspectives drastically different from her own. Kempie’s initial intrigue with traveling developed into a passion for global learning and experiential education. She has lived, studied, taught, and volunteered in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific. One of her most memorable experiences was the semester she spent in Morocco with The School for International Training (SIT). There she pursued intensive Arabic study and conducted an independent project on Gnawa identity. While in Morocco, she fell in love with the unique play of cultures and influences. During college, she also studied abroad in India, New Zealand, and Mexico where she examined the struggles of several indigenous communities. This interest has sparked her current intrigue with indigenous desert cultures. Furthermore, Kempie has been involved in the field of education for the past five years. Most recently this passion led her to Indonesia where she completed a 10-month Fulbright Teaching Fellowship in East Java. She has also taught ESL in the States and served as a teacher’s aide at an environmental education school in Colorado. Kempie currently resides in San Francisco, CA where she works at a nonprofit that places at-risk youth in employment in local arts organizations. She is also an active volunteer at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) where she aids newly arrived refugees in their resettlement. An avid photographer, yogi, jewelry-maker, and outdoorswoman, Kempie loves creative endeavors and the fresh air. When she has the time, she is likely to be found cooking harira, a delectable Moroccan soup, for her friends.

Jackie Dennis, Program Leader
As the Program Director for the India Semester, Jackie brings more than ten years of international travel experience to Global LAB. Jackie's incendiary preoccupation with Modern Tibetan Studies was fueled while a student on the University of Wisconsin College Year in Nepal Program '99-00. During this time, she traveled independently throughout India, Tibet and Thailand, acquiring a taste for adventure that has yet to be sated. She has since made seven extended return visits to this region, both as a graduate student and as three-time field instructor for study abroad organizations. As a field instructor, Jackie designed and taught several comprehensive Tibetan Studies curricula - focusing on Art History, Religion, Current Events and Political History. In 2007, Jackie received her MA from Naropa University in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies. Trained as an oral and textual Tibetan-English interpreter, Jackie now teaches Tibetan language, culture and religion to her students on rooftops and mountaintops throughout the pan-Himalayan region. She has spent the better part of the last decade traveling, working and studying in South Asia, North Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America. In her free time, Jackie studies Sanskrit and Hebrew; translates Tibetan poetry for publication; writes travel narratives; dreams of her next adventure and the mountain hermitages of Tibet. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Kai Johnson, Program Leader
Kai currently leads India semester programs for Global LAB. He holds a B.A. in Human Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has spent the last several years in transit from the US to South Asia and the Pacific for study, work, and travel. During his time at UW-Madison, Kai spent two semesters abroad—the first in Suva, Fiji, and the second in Hyderabad, India. While in Hyderabad Kai studied Hindi, Urdu and Nyaya and Vedanta Philosophy and afterwards spent three months in an internship with the Micro Insurance Academy in Delhi. These experiences imbued him with a passion for the challenges and rewards inherent in international and experiential education, as well as a love for the intensity and the diversity of life in India, which he hopes to communicate to students. In addition to leading with Global LAB, Kai has also criss-crossed the US as a leader with Trek America and was a founding member of an organization aimed at increasing the availability of literary resources in Fiji.

Tracy Joosten, Program Leader
Tracy leads India Semester Programs for Global LAB. She has recently completed her M.A. in Conflict Transformation from the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont. Her thesis explores how public schools in the United States teach conflict mediation and social competency skills to their students. A program facilitator for SIT's Youth Programs, Tracy works with youth from Vermont, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom teaching workshops on social networking, prison industrial complex, restorative justice, and nonviolent communication. She also facilitates dialogues on gender, social identity, and spirituality. Tracy lived in Ladakh in 2006 while teaching for the Vermont Intercultural Semester. She created and implemented courses in Ladakhi Language, cross-cultural communication, and co-wrote and taught curriculum for a high school honors level research methods course. Her passion for Himalayan cultures stems from her studies in Nepal with SIT's Culture and Development program in 2001. Resulting from her SIT education, Tracy's teaching style strives to meld independent study and academic inquiry with personal transformation. Fascinated with communication, Tracy enjoys focusing on language learning, ritual, and music as a means to create connection across cultural divides.

Galen Murton, Program Leader
Galen has designed and directed cross-cultural educational programs in South and Central Asia for Global LAB and other organizations since 2005. He first visited South Asia as a student on the University of Wisconsin-College Year in Nepal program in 1998-99, and following graduation from Middlebury College (with a degree in comparative religion) spent five subsequent years trekking, climbing, and studying in remote areas of India, Nepal, Tibet, and Pakistan, particularly in the Himalayan and Karakoram region. His tireless enthusiasm for exploration, and genuine appreciation for peoples of all cultures and walks of life, has been a subtle invitation for many to put aside more mundane concerns and lead a similarly exhilarating nomadic lifestyle. Galen has high altitude technical climbing experience in mountain ranges throughout North and South America, and is an instructor with the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School/Outward Bound USA on the Atlantic coast near his home in Portland, Maine. He is a certified Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician (WEMT), and in addition to working as an educator in South and Central Asia, Galen has worked for the UNHCR with Afghan refugees in Islamabad and aided research projects on the sacred geography of the Kathmandu Valley. A student and observer of diverse religious traditions, Galen continues to spend several months of every year in the Himalaya and strives to inspire in others the deep sensitivity to cultural and religious nuance that is gained through responsible, immersive travel across the Subcontinent.

Erin Popek, Program Leader
Erin is currently an MA candidate in International Education at the School for International Training. Her first visit to South Asia and the Himalaya began in the spring of 2000 through Gonzaga University, her undergraduate institution, where she focused on International Studies and Political Science. With P.I.E.R (Program for International Education and Relief), Erin spent the summer teaching—and being taught-in an orphanage in Delhi, afterwards gravitating toward the mountains. There, while continuing her own pilgrimage, she researched for her undergraduate thesis, The Future of Chinese Tibet, through the eyes of Tibetan refugees. While listening to HH the Dalai Lama speak during a Kalachakra Initiation ceremony on the Tibetan-Indian border, Erin encountered a group of US high school students and their leaders who were also fortunate enough to be present for this holy occasion. Fascinated with this form of education she determined to become involved. The past five years have been a winding path of leading experientially-based international education programs, exploring the world's mountainous and wild places, including her own backyard in Alaska, white-water river guiding, teaching Spanish and being a student herself. She is a NOLS Alaska Mountaineering graduate and recently finished a Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician course in the White Mountains of New England. Erin’s wanderlust spirit, nomadic life-style and true love for putting herself outside of her comfort-zone can be contagious.