What position do you hold at Pacific Discovery? What has been your career path so far?
I am a Co-Founder and Director of Pacific Discovery. I have a background in experiential education, which is a really hands-on approach to learning. Since I was young, I've been obsessed with adventures and in my early teens, I was lucky enough to have the experience of leading my peers on wilderness trips and working during holidays at a wildlife sanctuary. In my late teens, I left high school to pursue my passion for adventure through rock climbing, orienteering and mountain bike racing. I supported these interests through my work in construction. This taught me the value of learning practical skills, maturity and allowed me to build my self-confidence and self-belief. I started working for the environmental organization Greenpeace when I was in my twenties and taught outdoor education - rock climbing, rappelling and backpacking.
While in Oregon, my wife Rachel and I founded Pacific Discovery with the goal of enabling young people to have similar experiences and create an organization that focuses on pushing students to have a deep connection with the natural environment, pushing personal limits, mastering skills and seeing the world through different lenses/perspectives. We needed to build bridges of understanding between cultures and believe that perhaps, Pacific Discovery could be a small part of the solution by supporting our participants to become global citizens and by working alongside local organizations with similar goals.
Fast forward 16 years to today, and I'm really proud of what we've achieved with Pacific Discovery. We have taken roughly 2000 students on 150 programs and I'm constantly overwhelmed by the positive impact the program experience has on our students. I have spent more than 1500 days on the road with our groups, which has given me a ton of hands-on experience and insight into what makes for a good program - a balance of structure and freedom where students have the space and support to grow upon their own unique path.
What do you believe to be the biggest factor in being a successful company?
At Pacific Discovery, we measure success by how we measure up to the lofty goal of offering the best gap year programs in the world. What this means is that we never rest on our laurels, feeling like we've nailed it. Instead we have a company culture where the whole team continually evaluates and works on how we can improve what we do. We aim to facilitate the best possible experience for our students, while being a great employer, maintaining superb relationships with local in-country colleagues, and ensuring our programs minimize impacts and contribute to making the world a better place.
What unique qualities does your company possess?
Here are three reasons that Pacific Discovery is such a unique organization:
- Journey: Our programs are based around the concept of a journey of discovery. They are a journey in a physical sense, where the experiences are deliberately chosen to flow together really well but also so that the physical journey contributes to the inner journey of insight and personal growth that each student goes through during the program. We give these inner and outer journeys equal attention.
- Passion: We have personally researched, and work directly with, every accommodation, activity and transport provider; we've worked with every community and service project our groups undertake. These personal relationships result in surety of the program experience for our students and a better outcome, as local providers value the ongoing relationship they have with us and we reduce the barriers to communication and feedback.
- Family: We are all about connection and fostering relationships. We try to treat everyone we work with like family... our local colleagues of 20 years, our talented program instructors as well as our students and their families.
What does the future hold for Pacific Discovery - any exciting new programs to share?
Exciting things are always happening at Pacific Discovery! We are so passionate about what we do so we have tons of new ideas and a growing staff.
As we grow, we want to make sure that we don't lose the core of what we do by expanding too fast or trying to offer too many different things.
We are working on an Instructor Training Program that focuses on safety management, disease vectors, logistical issues, service program management and teaching instructors to facilitate cultural understanding in the developing world.
We have also recently launched a Cuba Summer Program and an India Photography Summer Program. Our Cuba Summer Program traverses Cuba - from turtle conservation at one end of the country to climbing the highest mountain at the other with lots of salsa, history, cultural immersion and adventures in-between. Our India Photography Summer Program visits an array of amazing sites in India, led by Kevin Connelly a professional photographer who teaches photography that enable connections and involvement in place, rather than just being a voyeur or spectator.