STAFF

The World Leadership School, based in Denver, Colorado, has extensive experience with international travel, leadership training and managing student groups overseas.

Ross Wehner, Executive Director of the World Leadership School, has worked as an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School and as a journalist, teacher and a mountain guide.

After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1989, he moved to Chile where he covered the end of the Pinochet regime for the San Francisco Chronicle. He spent four years reporting from Peru, as well as Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Mexico. He has written about climate change, outdoor adventure, the organic movement and other topics for Mother Jones, Utne Reader, Outside and Ski magazines. He most recently worked as a reporter for The Denver Post.

Ross is also a dedicated teacher. He has been a Spanish teacher at The Miller School of Albemarle in Crozet, Virginia, The Bush School in Seattle and the University of Virginia, where he earned his M.A. in Spanish American literature in 1999.

He taught leadership as a wilderness instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School both in the U.S. and in Mexico. He continued his work with leadership and risk management as a mountain guide for Alpine Ascents in Seattle. He has guided clients on high-altitude rock and ice climbs in the U.S., Canada, Peru and Ecuador.

Ross first experienced the educational impact of service learning while leading high school volunteers in Costa Rica for Global Routes, a volunteer organization based in Berkeley, California. He then spent nearly two years managing Volunteer Adventures, a Denver-based volunteer organization.

The World Leadership School combines Ross’ experience with global issues, leadership training and service learning. He lives in Denver with his wife Renée del Gaudio, with whom he co-authored Moon Peru. Ross and Renée have two young children, Sebastian and Francesca.

David Maher, Academic Director of the World Leadership School, is a life-long teacher. Over the last 25 years, he has held a variety of teaching and leadership positions at both independent and public schools in the U.S. and abroad.

David began his teaching career in Virginia, where he was an English teacher the Albemarle County Public School system and then Assistant Dean at Miller School of Albemarle. He then worked five years at Oldfields School in Glencoe, Maryland, where he taught English and served as a mentor for new faculty. He is currently Academic Dean and English Department Chair at Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

David has a deep interest in experiential education. He is founder of PEAKs, a leadership and outdoor education program that takes kids each summer to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and Utah’s Canyonlands. He has also led student groups to Europe, Costa Rica and Belize and is director of Fountain Valley School’s Outdoor Education Program.

David lives on the campus of Fountain Valley School with his wife of 14 years, Laura, his two children, Lulu and Owen, and a dorm of upperclassmen.

As Academic Director of World Leadership School, David is responsible for developing curriculum and helping train teachers and instructors.

Joshua Berman, Operations Manager of the World Leadership School, is a published author who has worked as an instructor for Outward Bound and spent two years with the Peace Corps in Nicaragua.

He has spent much of the last decade living, working and leading groups in Central America. He has led volunteer trips for American Jewish World Service in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. These trips have involved a variety of service assignments, including construction, education, public health and hurricane reconstruction.

Joshua is also a Latin America travel expert and award-winning guidebook author whose three book titles (Living Abroad In Nicaragua, Moon Nicaragua, and Moon Belize) have sold a combined 50,000 copies. He has written for the Boston Globe, National Geographic Traveler, and Yoga Journal.

Joshua is a certified Wilderness First Responder and has worked as both an EMT and wildland firefighter. He and his wife Sutay recently completed a 15-month volunteer honeymoon around the world, in which they worked with local organizations in India, Sri Lanka and Ghana. Joshua and Sutay now live in Boulder, Colorado, with their daughter Shanti.

As Operations Manager for World Leadership School, Joshua is responsible for coordinating logistics for groups and ensuring their safety overseas.

COUNTRY DIRECTORS

Country Directors work and live year-round in our host communities. Each director has a long track record of handling volunteers in their country. They conduct thorough background screenings of host families and are responsible for all in-country logistics and support.

Joaquín Randall, Peru Program Director, has six years experience working with the Lakeside School in Seattle as coordinator of its Global Service Learning Program in Peru. He has the unique experience of having grown up both in the United States and in Ollantaytambo, a Quechua-speaking village in the Peruvian Andes.

He was born in Ollantaytambo in 1979 to American ethno historian Robert Randall and artist Wendy Weeks. Joaquín lived in Ollantaytambo until the age of 16 when he concluded his studies at the public high school in nearby Urubamba. He then moved to Seattle where he studied for two years at The Bush School.

Joaquín deferred admission to Tulane University in New Orleans in order to travel and study independently in the US, Europe and Africa. At Tulane, he studied rural development and multicultural education for his B.A. in Latin American Studies and Spanish Literature.

Joaquín has moved back to his hometown of Ollantaytambo where he is director of CATCCO, the non-profit organization behind Ollantaytambo’s cultural center and museum. Joaquín also serves as the Peru coordinator for the Global Service Learning Program run with Lakeside School in Seattle. He lives in Ollantaytambo with his partner Aima and their one-year-old daughter, Mayu. Together Joaquín and Aima oversee El Albergue, a bed & breakfast in Ollantaytambo.

Alvaro Molina, Nicaragua and Costa Rica Program Director for the World Leadership School, has coordinated student groups in Central America for over a decade.

Alvaro was born in 1960 in Estelí, a lush agricultural province in Northern Nicaragua, where his family owned cattle and tobacco plantations. As a child, he also spent periods with relatives in Memphis, Tennessee, where he learned English and attended U.S. public schools. After graduating from high school in Nicaragua, Alvaro moved to Miami to study at the University of Florida and work in the aviation industry. The next year, Alvaro’s entire family moved to Miami and stayed there throughout the Sandinista Revolution of the 1980s.

In the late 1980s, Alvaro’s family purchased 850 acres of land near in northern Costa Rica. Much of the area had been logged, but Alvaro was impressed with the biodiversity of the remaining forest and its proximity to the world-famous Tortuguero National Park. He began to restore the land to its original state of lowland forest as La Suerte Biological Station. In 1993 the Costa Rican government recognized La Suerte as a conservation reserve. The next year the University of Illinois held its first primate behavior and ecology class there. Students from all over the world now come to study and learn at La Suerte, which is one of the few surviving examples of lowland rain forest in Central America.

Alvaro returned to Nicaragua for the first time in nearly two decades in 1996 and fell in love with Ometepe Island, a double-coned volcanic isle in the middle of giant Lake Nicaragua. He remodeled Hacienda Merida a former coffee plantation on Ometepe Island owned by former dictator Anastasio Somoza, and converted it into a backpacker’s lodge. He also founded Fundación Ometepe, a non-profit organization that focuses on social and environmental issues on the island. Alvaro now lives and works between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Instructors are professional teachers with extensive international experience. They speak the local language, have graduated from the World Leadership School instructor training program and have requisite first aid training.

ADVISORY BOARD
World Leadership School’s advisory board serves as a source of experience and counsel on a wide range of issues. Members of the advisory board are:

Gerald Prolman
CEO
Organic Bouquet
San Rafael, California

Lara Mendel
Executive Director
Mosaic Project
Berkeley, California

John Zurn
Headmaster
St. John's Episcopal School
Olney, Maryland

Greg Courtwright
Chief Operating Officer
Lincoln Property Company
Dallas, Texas

Sam Schlehuber
President
Schlehuber Insurance Agency
Dallas, Texas

R. Haynes Chidsey
Partner
The Decatur Group
Denver, Colorado

Dr. Charles Ehrhart
Coordinator
Climate Change, CARE International
Nairobi, Kenya