Staff Spotlight: Sarah Waldie

Sarah has been working for Oyster Worldwide since 2015 and manages the school and university events. She also manages Oyster's teaching projects, tours and the 16-18 year old summer internship in India.

Definitely, spending my own year out in Ghana and South Africa. If I had to narrow it down to just one moment, it would be trying to steer a mokoro through the Okavanga Delta in Botswana, while watching hippos laze in the water.

Working for a company that promotes travel is very rewarding. Having gained so much from my own travel experiences - new friends, skills and amazing memories - it is fantastic to now be able to pass this on. Working for a small company is great fun and no two days are the same. My favorite part of my job is meeting young people and hearing about their travel plans!

Sending groups and getting to know participants before they go abroad is always fun. When volunteers meet each other for the first time, they tend to be nervous, but by the end of the experience they are best friends with so many shared stories. I also run our ambassador scheme and this means I get to train participants to share their own stories with the next generation of travelers.

I have been lucky enough to visit many of our programs and spent the summer in India, Nepal and Thailand. I enjoy working with children so any teaching program interests me. Our Chile program is remote and really different so that would have to be my top choice.

What I love about working at Oyster is that we all know our own programs very well, in addition all our programs have been visited and we genuinely love to see people enjoy their time abroad. Everyone in our team has traveled and we know how scary and exciting someone's first trip can be. We love being part of the journey.