Game Changers: EXPLO Faculty and Staff Set the Gold Standard in Summer and Beyond
At EXPLO, we often talk about our unparalleled faculty — that our staff sets the Gold Standard for summer programs. That we hire emerging leaders with incredible potential, many of them college and graduate students, who are the perfect role models to inspire and energize EXPLO students.
We have a long history of hiring exceptional people who help us create rich and exciting programs each summer. These great minds and enthusiastic personalities are the foundations on which we build environments where exploring the world of people and ideas is exhilarating. It should come as little surprise, then, that these talented individuals go on to achieve at the top of their fields — and in many cases, they change the game entirely.
Innovators + Entrepreneurs
Jonah Peretti, co-founder of the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, spent multiple summers teaching at EXPLO before becoming an internet entrepreneur who is changing the way we consume the news. (Random fact: Jonah was an EXPLO faculty member while Kevin Systrom was a student. Systrom went on to found Instagram!)
Barry Nalebuff (a Rhodes Scholar) and Seth Goldman worked at EXPLO before they went on to launch Honest Tea.
You’ve probably heard of Watson, the world’s first cognitive system that bested two human champions on Jeopardy! Jim Spohrer, who is bringing Watson’s AI technology to businesses and universities as Director of Understanding Cognitive Systems, taught at EXPLO before launching an award-winning career at IBM.
Nathaniel Keohane, who taught students in grades 8+9 during his EXPLO tenure, is leading the charge against climate change as the VP for Global Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund where he helps shape advocacy for climate policy.
Creators
Leah Hager Cohen, author of five “Notable Books of the Year” by the New York Times, taught creative writing at EXPLO before publishing her first book.
Amor Towles taught at EXPLO before beginning a successful investment career. But like lots of EXPLO folks, Amor is a person of many interests. Writing is one of them and it led him to pen, The Rules of Civility, which landed him on the New York Times Bestseller List.
The notion of civility is something former EXPLO faculty member Marc Bodnick extolls at Quora, the question-answer website he helped build. (That’s a project he took on after founding Elevation Partners with Bono and Roger McNamee.)
Scholars + Educators
Prior to earning his doctorate at Harvard, Andrew Frishman taught at EXPLO. He is now the co-executive director of Big Picture Learning. Frishman and a team of top flight educators recently won a $10 million grant from the XQ: Super School Project to start a game-changing public school in the Greater New Orleans area.
While working as a public defender in Washington, D.C., former EXPLO faculty member James Foreman recognized that his young clients needed more than what their schools could provide. In response, he co-founded the See Forever Foundation and the critically acclaimed Maya Angelou Charter School.
Five former EXPLO staffers spent summers working at our programs before attending law school. All went on to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court and then joined the law faculties at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and the University of Texas. Among them, Paul Mahoney was the Dean of the University of Virginia Law School. They are often called on by leading news organizations to comment on recent Supreme Court rulings and policy issues.
These days, former EXPLO staffers are popping up on HBO’s Westworld, teaching at many of the world’s leading colleges and universities, writing and producing avant-garde plays in New York, and conducting pioneering research on children’s brain development and the use of computers and other digital devices. In 2015, five EXPLO staff members applied for — and were accepted to — Fulbright Fellowships, joining scores of other faculty alumni who have won Watson, Rotary, Gates Cambridge, Mellon, and Rhodes Fellowships.
The list could go on and on, but you get the idea. We hire smart, creative, and pretty cool people. The kind of people that can really inspire our students to reach beyond the typical and dream big. Because at EXPLO, we know that dreaming big is simply the first step to doing big.
