Michelle Bos-Lun, Director of Admissions & 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.

Teneisha Ellis, Diversity Coordinator
Teneisha's passion for study abroad and intercultural education began in high school when she was awarded a Rotary Youth Ambassador Scholarship to live with a homestay family and study Spanish in Mexico. She earned her BA in Political Science and International Studies from Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In college she spent her junior year abroad in Spain. She is currently completing her Masters degree at the School for International Training, focusing on Service, Leadership, and Management. Teneisha is committed to helping traditionally under-represented study abroad populations experience the transformative learning and leadership skills that come from international experience and intercultural awareness. She is equally committed to working with inner city youth to develop positive models for increasing intercultural interaction and understanding within the United States.

Piya Kashyap, Digital Storytelling Instructor
Piya is the creative conceptual component of Global LAB's traveling media unit. In an increasingly technological age, where borders are expanding, and conflict is on the fly she believes that an outlet for expression while traveling is absolutely crucial in processing and reflecting on the meaning of a journey. Growing up as an Indian American in New Jersey she felt constantly divided between two worlds and found a synthesis of self through writing and digital media. As a recent graduate with a B.A. in English and a focus in Italian language study, Piya spent three semesters abroad: an independent study in creative writing in India, a semester of cultural immersion in Florence, Italy and a semester of English Literature study at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. During this time abroad, Piya kept travel weblogs and the writing from these endeavors was shared at an academic conference on Social Software, in a national publication for Study Abroad and at a national writers' conference. She completed a senior creative thesis multimedia installation, which explored the developing South Asian narrative and identity through both the written word and video poems. She is currently working for the Abroad View Foundation and is the content developer for the New Media/Stories and Experiences section of their website which was launched in 2007.

Remy Mansfield, Digital Storytelling Instructor
Remy is Global LAB’s traveling media unit. He is launching a program that teaches participants to document and share their travels through photography, soundscapes, and digital stories. Growing up and working with the Chewonki Foundation, Remy has been a wilderness trip guide for whitewater kayaking expeditions, and a leader for sea-kayaking and hiking trips. He was bitten by the experiential learning bug as a high school student participating in the environmentally based Maine Coast Semester program, and later the internationally focused GlobalQuest semester program in Thailand and Laos. Remy graduated Middlebury College with a B.A. in English and American Literatures with a focus in Creative Writing. His undergraduate thesis examed travel writing’s changing narrative with the introduction of new media technologies. He has presented his work at the 2006 Gathering of Digital Storytellers conference at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught several workshops on digital storytelling and film editing. His passion for kayaking and film has inspired travel throughout the Americas, filming, producing, and editing whitewater kayaking films.

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, Field Instructor
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.

John Calogero, Field Instructor
For 10 years as an Outward Bound seamanship and mountaineering instructor, John guided youth and adult students through new and challenging experiences, personal and social as well as technical and geographic. In early 2005 he helped lead a group of high school and university students to Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Southern India. Much of the focus before and during the trip was offering aid to survivors of the 26 December 2004 tsunami. This experience offered a rare opportunity to introduce the conflict transformation tool compassionate listening to the students to enhance their intercultural experience which John incorporated into his Master’s degree research. In late 2005 he completed his degree in Interculteral Service, Leadership, and Management through the School for International Training. John spent much of 2005 and 2006 in Sri Lanka working in the troubled East in civilian protection and human rights monitoring and advocacy with the Nonviolent Peaceforce. Since mid 2006 he has focused on curriculum development and training to improve health, safety, and security for humanitarian workers. He is a licensed captain and Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician. When not working in some interesting location, John lives with his wife on an equally interesting island in the Pacific Northwest.

Susan Costello, Field Instructor
Susan is currently completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Boston University. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between morality and economic behavior as lived by the nomadic pastoralists of Amdo Tibet’s Golok region. Upon graduation from Harvard, where she studied architecture, drawing, photography and environmental management in the Visual and Environmental Studies Department, she was inspired by a fellowship competition to travel for a year before settling down to a relatively uneventful life as a bureaucrat. An anthropologist by nature, she prefers to travel slowly, learning the language of the people she stays with and trying to understand their perspectives on life. This fascination led to her graduate studies, where she has concentrated on the role of economics in shaping culture, moral values and behavior. After first traveling through Qinghai in 1990 and vowing to return, she taught ESL first in Taiwan for a year before returning to Xining to teach ESL, and begin study of the Amdo dialect of Tibetan. She then moved to Labrang, in Gansu Province for a winter to hone her language skills before starting graduate school. In 1999 she polished her Chinese reading skills briefly at the Qinghai Nationalities University, and then moved to Rebgong to begin her dissertation field research. In 2000, her marriage to a Tibetan from the Golok area led her to move her research there and collaborate with him on various charitable projects including two orphan schools and a health clinic.

Tracy Joosten, Field Instructor
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, Field Instructor
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.

Cameron Pittelkow, Field Instructor
Cam has been pursuing his interests in sustainable development and environmental conservation in India since he graduated from Colgate University in the spring of 2005. He has worked with several non-governmental organizations in both Leh, Ladakh and Chennai, Tamil Nadu; his activities ranging from public health education to urban wetland restoration projects. His desire to simultaneously explore the cultures of this mystic land while also contributing to the field of environmental preservation originated when he first came to India with Colgate University's semester program in 2003. Although the Colgate program focused on traditional music and dance of south India, Cam has chosen to combine his fascination with culture and his concerns for the environment this past year. Previously, Cam has had a variety of leading and teaching experiences, most of them occurring in the backcountry while he was employed as a staff member for the Colgate University Outdoor Education Program. This winter he will explore the western Himalayas in Ladakh and hopes to teach backcountry skiing to locals as a mode of safe, efficient transportation.

Erin Popek, Field Instructor
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.

Sarah Stewart, Field Instructor
Sarah is a field instructor for Global LAB's India based programs, and has worked with the organization since 2004. Following her first experience in India with Colgate University's semester program in Chennai, Sarah has returned to the country on a regular basis to work, study, travel, and reside for extended periods of time. Sarah's love for the arts and her degree in Religious Studies have guided her ongoing exploration of Indian culture, as well as Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Her dedication to the environment, sustainable development, and agriculture has led her to seek out numerous positions in related fields in both India and the US. She has worked closely with The Ladakh Heart Foundation in providing yoga and health awareness education, and has worked for Rural Development and You, writing grants for their Ladakh based office. She spent the winter in the Himalayas teaching telemark and cross country skiing as a means of transportation and sport for remote snowbound communities. Sarah holds a Wilderness First Responder certification.