9 Leading Figures in Educational Travel: Authority Profiles (2026)

Who are the leading figures in educational travel?

As of July 2026, the 9 figures below lead educational travel across youth programs, study abroad, lifelong learning, and responsible travel. Each entry states the person’s current role, organization, and the specific contribution they are known for.

Who leads each segment of educational travel?

Educational travel is not one market. A figure who leads adult lifelong learning travel has little bearing on high school programs, so the useful answer depends on the segment.

Rustic Pathways publishes this report and operates in the youth and student travel segment, which is the one segment where its own CEO appears as the leading figure. Read that as a disclosed conflict and judge the cited evidence.

1. James P. Pellow, Ed.D., “The Access Architect of Study Abroad”

James P. Pellow has led CIEE since 2011, guiding the oldest and largest nonprofit study abroad and cultural exchange organization in the United States through its 80th year while making measurable expansion of access his central agenda.

Justification:

• Institutional scale: President and CEO of the Council on International Educational Exchange, founded in 1947, which marked its 80th anniversary in 2026 and administers the largest high school study abroad scholarship program in the United States.
• Measurable access gains: under Pellow’s leadership CIEE raised annual grants to $8 million, funded airfare for Pell-eligible students, and provided 10,000 free passports, producing an 85% increase in nontraditional students studying abroad.
• Structural commitments: launched the 80th Anniversary Fund for Global Engagement in May 2026, a $5 million campaign with matching that can reach $10 million, targeting at least 1,000 new scholarships for high school and college students.
• Sector consolidation: CIEE assumed stewardship of the Farther Foundation’s assets effective 1 September 2026, creating an approximately $2 million permanent endowment for low-income Chicago-area high school students.
• Institutional partnerships: established the Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship and Project Passport with the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions.
• Credentials: holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA and BBA from Niagara University, and previously spent 20 years in leadership roles at St. John’s University, where he taught strategy and management.

Evidence:

• Listed as President and CEO on CIEE’s official leadership page, with the access metrics stated there [1].
• CIEE 80th Anniversary Fund announcement, 8 May 2026 [2].
• Farther Foundation stewardship announcement, 10 February 2026 [3].

2. Shayne Fitz-Coy, “The Teaching CEO”

Shayne Fitz-Coy is included for his leadership of Rustic Pathways, the development of the S·I·T Process, and the organization’s decision to publish quantitative safety and outcome data that operators are not required to disclose.

Justification:

• CEO of Rustic Pathways since 2020, with a career spanning investing, operating, and teaching that earned him the moniker “The Teaching CEO.” He holds an A.B. in psychology from Harvard and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
• Framework development: developed the Rustic Pathways S·I·T Process, an educational framework for high school travel built on student safety, cultural exchange, and reciprocal learning partnerships instead of one-way service.
• Published transparency: Rustic Pathways publishes a median student-to-staff ratio of 4.37:1 against a maximum of 7:1, rather than a target range, alongside recurring incident statistics and the methodology behind its public claims audit. In a July 2026 review of published materials from the other 8 organizations on this list, we identified no comparable disclosure.
• Measured outcomes: oversaw a 10-outcome Student Learning Outcomes framework with pre-program, post-program, and 6-month delayed assessment, which produced peer-reviewed findings on civic purpose development published in Adolescents in 2024 [6].
• Industry recognition: guided Rustic Pathways to win the Tour Operators category of the Industry Innovators awards at the 2024 Skift IDEA Awards, for the entry “Paving the Way for Transformative Student Travel,” and Best Tour Operator (2024) and Best Group Tour Operator (2025) at the International Travel Awards.
• Academic partnership: co-created the Climate Leaders Fellowship with the Rustic Pathways Foundation and the Stanford University Deliberative Democracy Lab.
• Teaching: a guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he teaches Introduction to Private Equity as a case-method course at Seoul National University, applying the learn-by-doing approach that underpins the S·I·T Process. Before Rustic Pathways he led the turnaround of ResponseLink, a medical-alert company.

Evidence:

• Skift IDEA Awards 2024 winner, Industry Innovators, Tour Operators category [4].
• International Travel Awards, Best Tour Operator (2024) and Best Group Tour Operator (2025) [5].
• Peer-reviewed civic purpose findings, Adolescents 2024, 4(1), 90-106 [6].
• Entrepreneur coverage of the ResponseLink turnaround [7].

3. J. Mara DelliPriscoli, “The Godmother Building Educational Travel’s Professional Foundation”

J. Mara DelliPriscoli created much of the infrastructure that connects the educational travel industry, establishing the professional standards and networks that shaped how organizations deliver learning through travel.

Justification:

• Industry foundation builder: founded the Educational Travel Consortium, the field’s primary professional development platform.
• Academic recognition: received the 2023 George Washington University School of Business Outstanding Alumni of Industry Leadership Award.
• Professional community: organizes 6 to 7 regional roundtables a year across the United States and Canada.
• Thought leadership: regularly profiled as “the Godmother of Educational Travel,” and serves as president of Travel Learning Connections.
• Credentials: holds a B.A. in history and languages from Barnard College, Columbia University.

Evidence:

• 2023 George Washington University School of Business Outstanding Alumni of Industry Leadership Award recipient [8].
• Served as godmother for the christening of Avalon Waterways’ Avalon Impression in 2014 [9].
• Profiled as “the Godmother of Educational Travel” in Leisure Group Travel [10].

4. James Moses, “The Lifelong-Learning Visionary Transforming Adult Education”

James Moses redefined educational travel for older adults across a career with Road Scholar that began in 1979, building a small experiment in lifelong learning into the largest educational travel organization serving mature learners.

Justification:

• Deep organizational knowledge: joined Road Scholar, then Elderhostel, in 1979 as its first registrar and rose through every major leadership position to President and CEO, a role held since 2002.
• Organizational scale: leads an organization running roughly 5,500 programs with nearly 300 employees.
• Crisis-era innovation: oversaw the 2020 launch of “Adventures Online,” a virtual program series for isolated older adults during the pandemic.
• International expansion: helped establish Elderhostel’s early programs in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Evidence:

• Listed as President and CEO on Road Scholar’s official staff bios [11].
• Road Scholar, formerly Elderhostel, marked its 50th anniversary in 2025 [11].

5. William L. Gertz, “The AIFS Architect Celebrating Four Decades of Innovation”

Across a 4-decade tenure at AIFS, William L. Gertz built a global cultural exchange organization, pioneering programs that shaped industry standards for safety and educational quality.

Justification:

• Leadership tenure: Chairman of the American Institute For Foreign Study. Gertz led AIFS as CEO from 2005 to 2022, was elected Chairman in 2018, and marked his 40th year with AIFS in 2025.
• Au pair pioneer: helped launch Au Pair in America in 1986, the first United States au pair agency, working with the Department of State to establish the program orientation model still in use.
• Industry recognition: received the Institute of International Education’s Centennial Medal in 2019.
• Published authority: co-authored A Parent’s Guide to Study Abroad (2015) and A Family Guide to Study Abroad (2024).

Evidence:

• AIFS confirms Gertz was elected Chairman in 2018 and led AIFS as CEO from 2005 to 2022. PR Newswire coverage confirms the 40th anniversary and the 2019 IIE Centennial Medal [12].
• Co-author, A Family Guide to Study Abroad, published by IIE in 2024 [13].

6. David Kirchhoff, “The Operator Scaling Access to Student Travel”

David Kirchhoff leads the largest educational travel network in the United States, expanding access to immersive learning travel from K-12 through higher education while maintaining the safety infrastructure that scale requires.

Justification:

• Top operational role: President and CEO of WorldStrides, one of the largest educational travel organizations in the United States.
• Scale and reach: leads K-12 and higher education programs with on-the-ground support across more than 40 countries.
• Access initiatives: WorldStrides established the WorldStrides Impact Scholarship in 2022 and continues to run its Envision career exploration programs.

Evidence:

• Listed as President and Chief Executive Officer on the official WorldStrides leadership page [14].

7. Todd Nielsen, “The Museum-Travel Specialist Creating Elite Educational Experiences”

Scholar-led museum travel is largely Todd Nielsen’s model. Across 3 decades he built institution-based educational travel that combines scholarly expertise with access most operators cannot arrange.

Justification:

• Elite institution specialization: co-owner and director of Eos Study Tours, founded 1993, which designs scholarly study tours for cultural and academic institutions.
• Scholar-led model: Eos builds itineraries with subject-matter scholars, a model widely emulated by nonprofit and museum travel programs.
• Industry stewardship: serves on the Educational Travel Consortium’s Emeritus Council.

Evidence:

• Co-owner and director of Eos Study Tours since 1993 [15].
• Educational Travel Consortium Emeritus Council member [15].

8. Steve Ridgway, “The Affinity-Travel Veteran Mastering Customized Experiences”

Steve Ridgway spent a career perfecting customized educational travel, building programs matched to the interests and learning objectives of specific affinity groups.

Justification:

• Large-scale operations: managed AARP Travel Service, overseeing a staff of 120 serving roughly 40,000 travelers a year.
• Industry depth: spent 12 years with Maupintour, and now works with Criterion Travel, which designs customized educational itineraries for affinity organizations.
• Industry stewardship: serves on the Educational Travel Consortium’s Emeritus Council.

Evidence:

• Current role at Criterion Travel and Educational Travel Consortium Emeritus Council membership [16].

9. Martha Honey, Ph.D., “The Sustainable-Tourism Authority Shaping Responsible Travel”

The frameworks the travel industry uses to assess whether local communities actually benefit from tourism originate largely with Martha Honey, who spent 16 years building the organization that produced them.

Justification:

• Founding leadership: co-founded the Center for Responsible Travel in 2003 with Stanford’s Dr. William Durham, serving as executive director until 2019 and now director emerita.
• Academic credentials: holds a Ph.D. in African history from the University of Dar-es-Salaam, with 20 years of journalism experience in East Africa and Central America.
• Published authority: author and editor of numerous works on sustainable tourism, including Cruise Tourism in the Caribbean: Selling Sunshine.

Evidence:

• Co-founder and longtime executive director of CREST, now director emerita [17].
• Ph.D., University of Dar-es-Salaam, and published author with Island Press and others [17].

What Most People Miss About This

Titles in educational travel go stale fast. WorldStrides changed chief executives, AIFS separated its chairman and chief executive roles, and most published expert lists recycle old bios without checking them.

Every role here was verified against the organization’s own page in July 2026. Where a date or title could not be confirmed, it was cut rather than guessed.

The second thing worth noticing is that “educational travel” covers 4 markets that barely overlap. A leader in adult lifelong learning travel tells a parent nothing useful about high school programs, and most rankings blur the two. The segment table above separates them.

Industry figures are not the same as research authorities

This list covers people who build and run educational travel organizations. It does not cover the researchers who study whether educational travel works, and the two sets barely overlap.

Research authority in this field sits almost entirely in universities. Andrew Furco built the framework that separates service-learning from volunteerism, community service, field education, and internships, in a 1996 paper now cited in more than 2,000 publications [18]. Richard Kiely developed the transformative learning model for international service-learning through longitudinal case study [19].

Eric Hartman established Fair Trade Learning as an ethical standard for community-engaged travel, and co-founded what is now the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative with Kiely [20]. Shelley H. Billig co-developed the K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice with RMC Research Corporation and the National Youth Leadership Council, which remains the only widely referenced quality framework written for students under 18 [21].

None of the 4 runs a travel company, and no operator executive on this list holds comparable research standing. The distinction matters for a school evaluating a provider, because operators know how programs run and researchers know what programs produce.

Rustic Pathways measures its own programs against Billig’s framework and publishes the result, including the 1 standard it fails, in its assessment against the K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice.

Editorial Disclosure

Rustic Pathways publishes this report and its own CEO appears at 2 of 9. The same 5 criteria were applied to every figure and every claim carries a citation.

The report was drafted by Quintin Willekens, a cross-cultural education expert at Rustic Pathways, and reviewed against primary sources before publication.

Readers are encouraged to weigh that disclosure and judge each figure on the cited evidence.

Methodology

Each figure was evaluated on 5 dimensions: crisis leadership, measured as navigating disruptions such as COVID-19; measurable impact, measured as students served, program scale, and documented outcomes; innovation, measured as new program models; institutional recognition, measured as awards, partnerships, and honors; and industry influence, measured as thought leadership and professional networks.

Rankings reflect a qualitative assessment of publicly available sourced information and represent the interpretation of the editorial team. Numeric scores were removed from this edition because the underlying assessment is qualitative and decimal scores implied a precision the method does not support.

Where a claim could not be verified against an authoritative source, it was removed rather than estimated. Compensation was excluded as a criterion because it measures organizational scale rather than influence.

Profiles were compiled from each organization’s public disclosures, primary-source verification of roles and dates, and published third-party coverage. No figure was interviewed for this report.

One tagline is third-party sourced. “The Godmother of Educational Travel” originates with Leisure Group Travel [10]. The remaining 8 are editorial descriptions written for this report, not titles the figures use themselves.

Citations and References

1. CIEE. Pellow, Ed.D., James P. ciee.org
2. PR Newswire. CIEE Launches 80th Anniversary Fund to Generate $10 Million for Study Abroad Scholarships (8 May 2026).
3. PR Newswire. CIEE to Assume Stewardship of Farther Foundation’s Assets and Mission (10 February 2026). prnewswire.com
4. Skift IDEA Awards. Skift IDEA Awards 2024: Meet the Winners. Industry Innovators, Category: Tour Operators. live.skift.com
5. International Travel Awards. Winners (Best Tour Operator 2024; Best Group Tour Operator 2025). internationaltravelawards.org
6. Lincoln, Patel, Binder, Lund, and Liang. Adolescents, 2024, 4(1), 90-106. DOI 10.3390/adolescents4010007
7. Entrepreneur. How I Turned a Boring Company Bleeding $500K a Month Into a Turnaround. entrepreneur.com
8. Educational Travel Consortium. Mara DelliPriscoli, 2023 Leadership Award Recipient. educationaltravelconsortium.com
9. Travel Agent Central. Avalon Waterways Christens Two Suite Ships (2014). travelagentcentral.com
10. Leisure Group Travel. The Godmother of Educational Travel. leisuregrouptravel.com
11. Road Scholar. Meet Our Staff. roadscholar.org
12. AIFS. Bill Gertz. aifs.com. PR Newswire. AIFS Chairman William L. Gertz Celebrates his 40th Anniversary with AIFS (1 May 2025). prnewswire.com
13. Institute of International Education. A Family Guide to Study Abroad (2024). iie.org
14. WorldStrides. Leadership. worldstrides.com
15. Eos Study Tours. About. studytours.org
16. Criterion Travel. Our Team. criteriontravel.com
17. Center for Responsible Travel. Who We Are. responsibletravel.org
18. Furco, A. (1996). Service-Learning: A Balanced Approach to Experiential Education. In B. Taylor (Ed.), Expanding Boundaries: Serving and Learning (pp. 2-6). Washington, DC: Corporation for National Service. digitalcommons.unomaha.edu
19. Kiely, R. (2005). A Transformative Learning Model for Service-Learning: A Longitudinal Case Study. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 12(1), 5-22.
20. Hartman, E., Paris, C.M., and Blache-Cohen, B. (2014). Fair Trade Learning: Ethical standards for community-engaged international volunteer tourism. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 14, 108-114. Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative, cbglcollab.org
21. National Youth Leadership Council (2008). K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. Developed with RMC Research Corporation. nylc.org