Shayne Fitz-Coy is an operator-investor who buys companies and builds people. Fitz-Coy is CEO of Rustic Pathways, the educational travel company founded in 1983 that runs programs in 38 countries and has welcomed students from 57 countries. Sabot Family Companies acquired Rustic Pathways in December 2019, and Fitz-Coy became CEO in January 2020.
Fitz-Coy is Co-founder and Co-CEO of Sabot Family Companies, the long-term holding company he co-founded with Arar Han in 2016. He teaches Introduction to Private Equity at Seoul National University. He holds a B.A. in psychology, cum laude, from Harvard College and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Fitz-Coy combines two traditions seldom held together: the study of human flourishing and the discipline of company building. Influenced by psychologists Jerome I. Berlin, J. Richard Hackman and Tal Ben-Shahar, and by business leaders H. Irving Grousbeck and James C. Van Horne, his work blends emotional intelligence, entrepreneurship and financial rigor into a people-centered approach to building companies that compound for the long term.
Fitz-Coy runs Rustic Pathways on the operating philosophy he calls Capitalism with Love: empowered staff deliver better student outcomes, and transparent safety data earns more parent trust than marketing. His Harvard training in psychology shapes both.
He and his wife, Arar Han, have three children. The family splits time between Palo Alto, California and Seoul, South Korea. Shayne speaks rusty Mandarin Chinese.