Half a Decade of EF: My story so far

I’m happy at my job.

What an interesting thing to realize, that I am truly happy, fulfilled by the work I’m doing, and growing into a version of myself that I carry with pride.

If you don’t know me beyond the contents of this blog, it may seem strange to be so euphoric about something so simple, but for me it’s a little complicated. You see, this isn’t what I thought I was meant to do. I was “supposed” to be an opera singer. My name in lights, roses thrown at my feet, moving people to tears with the powerful artistic expression my voice is capable of, trained to do. I have a Masters Degree in Opera from McGill University in Montreal, and an undergraduate Bachelors of Music from Ithaca College in New York. I’m still paying off the former degree.

For someone who so singularly pursued the performing arts to find himself so genuinely happy in what is at core a sales leadership role may seem like a bit of a pivot, no?

That’s what I want to talk about today, at least to start — you know me, I’ll definitely meander and wind up talking about 85 other things.

Let’s start with the why

So why did I do it? Why did I leave behind all that training, the pedigree of artistry I earned through studying with my incredibly gifted professors (including my dear, departed mentor and voice teacher, Sanford Sylvan, whom I miss every day)? In truth, I haven’t “left” anything. The benefit of hindsight tells me that I have carried much of what that life taught me into my current pursuits, I just found threads of that work that maybe were less immediately obvious to the outside observer.

I also found my fulfillment. I prioritized performing for about a decade. In that time, I was part of a Grammy-nominated original cast recording, sang all over the country and Canada, spent two Summers singing in Aspen (and learning much about the world from the insane intersection of humanity in that town), and got to participate in various projects that brought me a lot of artistic satisfaction.

I never made a ton of money, maybe to no one’s surprise.

In my bitter moments (yes I have them, yes they’re very infrequent), I’ll tell you that it is extremely difficult to “make it” in the performing arts if you can’t afford to not make money. Almost every single person I know from my time in the arts who has made it to the national/international level has been able to take a period where all they were responsible for was honing their craft; practicing, coaching, auditioning, performing, non-stop. Those periods of time build their network, and get their professional persona established in the minds of those who hire artists. Certainly people can do it and work side jobs or an ancillary career, but it takes longer, and, frankly, more commitment to the art than I ever had.

Sure I loved it, still do. Sometimes I still sing, and have entertained the idea of taking an audition or two here or there, but my version of a successful artistic career is always going to be adjacent to my current path, and that’s the thing, that is success. Finding the place that you can feel comfortable doing the kind of performing you want to do, not needing to say yes to every project, to me that is success. People achieve that in a variety of ways, for me the way I achieve that success is by building a fulfilling career at EF, and finding the spaces where artistic expression still lives in my heart, whether that’s singing in a classical style, or writing, or just doing karaoke, it’s all valid.

I digress, the point is I got to a point in my adult life where I knew that if I wanted the things I’ve always wanted - a partner who loves me, a family, a home - I was going to need to make some changes. Pursuing the arts, though fulfilling and exciting, can become a financial trap. You can spend a lot of money preparing for your work, auditioning, getting the work secured, then you do the job, make the money, pay off that credit card you used to finance all that prep, and start the cycle again. It takes extreme dedication, thoughtfulness, talent, and yes, luck, to achieve a financially secure lifestyle. I think for a while I had that dedication, but the older I got the more the pursuit of the arts started to be eclipsed by my desire for that life I described above, and so I chose to evolve. Sales was always sort of a “fallback” career I knew I could pursue, so I decided to start looking into how to make the pivot. Two lucky things happened in 2018 - first, a close friend who managed an internship program at an energy adjacent company in the Seaport area of Boston offered me a paid 6-month internship to build my office resume and help me transition out of the freelance lifestyle I was living at the time. The other was that a good friend and former roommate let me know that EF was hiring, and he could get some $$ for a referral, and would I be interested? I was indeed.

So I attended a referral night hosted in what would become a regular watering hole in my life, Lingo, the bar attached to EF’s main building at the Cambridge, MA campus. It was packed to the gills with people, some of whom would become my coworkers not long after that. I enjoyed the evening, and decided that applying for their tour consultant position (the entry level sales position within EF’s tours products) was my next course of action.

Ironically, I applied for the division I currently work for first, known as Explore America, it is EF’s domestic student travel product. They rejected me after an initial screening interview. I probably talked about my interest in international travel and my deep nerdiness for foreign cultures, so I can’t blame them. They did kick my resume over to the Educational Tours division (ET for short), who prescreened me, and brought me in for an interview (this is back when you had to wear pants for an interview because it wasn’t on Zoom). I dressed the way I would have for an audition - an ostentatious three-piece suit and tie. I interviewed with two sales directors, one of whom called me a few days later and offered me the job. I accepted the next morning.

Starting out - a whole new world

I was 31, in a “start-class” (grouping of new hires) of 16, most of whom were recent graduates from their undergrad programs. I was in an environment where the only choice was to embrace a student-mentality, and grow. I had some benefits, though. I was aware of myself in a way that only comes with experience, I knew how I learned best, I’d practiced it. I’d tried new things and failed, tried new things and succeeded, and everything in between, so I was ready for the new challenge.

I caught up to the new paradigm I’d entered quickly. I was able to understand the nature of EF’s sale rather easily, and start to think creatively about how I could be successful in my new role. I was given a territory in Northern Indiana, working under the Sales Director who had offered me the job, JB. JB was a great manager for me, collaborative but also a little distant, JB would leave room for me to figure things out on my own. One colleague told me that JB works best with staff who can bring a solution proposal along with their question, which was something I could do.

The team I was on had a great year. Through various work opportunities I was able to visit Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, and Panama City all within my first year at the company. I sold lots of travel, had over a thousand students signed up and ready to explore the world, and was proud of my impact not just on the company, but on the students that were planning to experience something new, to grow and learn, to find more of themselves in a special Summer trip… in the Summer of 2020.

We all know how that went.

Working for a travel company during a global pandemic

Before I go on, a quick anecdote - I traveled to my territory in Feb of 2020. Things were starting to look dire, COVID was beginning to make its way to Europe, and the feeling of ominous dread that many of us felt at that time was beginning to pervade. Ever the optimist, I was one of those who thought it’d be the kind of thing that maybe lasted two months, and then we’d get back to normal (ha…). I hosted an event on Notre Dame’s campus for all the teachers I was working with in the region, gave my spiel on how to grow a travel program, and opened the floor to questions. Every hand shot up, and every question was a variation of “how will COVID affect my tour.” The only answer I could give at that point was that we were planning to produce the travel programs their students had signed-up for, but that we were committed to safety and monitoring the situation.

A few weeks later, it became clear that none of those tours were going to travel.

So, COVID was upon us. I believe it was Mid-March of 2020 when then President Trump ordered borders to be closed, and all Americans abroad to return to the country as quickly as possible. Our organization spent tons of money, booked thousands of tickets, and had all our travelers back home within 48 hours.

There was a moment when we were given laptops in boxes (previous to this, we were a desktop only organization, remote work was frowned upon), and instructed not to open them, they were “just in case.” Then we were sent home “just for a week.” Well, we opened those laptop boxes, and we didn’t return to the offices for 18 months.

That time was hard, for all the obvious reasons, but what was painful about work at that point was that my job, from the isolation of my make-shift office space at home, was to call every teacher I work with and tell them that their tour was cancelled, and walk them through their options.

It wasn’t a great time, for so many reasons, but I was comforted by the fact that, to me, the decisions the company was making to get us through the pandemic made sense. They did the best they could by all of us, we did minimal layoffs when other companies were shrinking and furloughing down to 20% of their staff or less, and we leaned into our shared values and culture, a culture that clings to the belief that when people connect with each other, the world gets better. So for those 18 months, that’s what we did. We connected with each other, our clients, hosted digital events, created digital resources for teachers to share with their classrooms free of charge, and did our best to stay positive.

During that time, my wife, K, lost her job. She ultimately found another job, a better path, more specific to her interests, and it set her on the path she is on today where she is quite fulfilled at work. At the time, however, we were scared. I started to wonder if my job was safe, if the right decision would be to try to jump ship to an industry that wasn’t travel based in an environment where travel was fully halted, or if I should dig in and try to grow within EF. I chose the latter.

I had a conversation with JB (who had circled back to managing my team again after we were briefly managed by another great colleague), who helped me orient my professional “north-star” the way that would drive me forward, with the target ultimately on leadership.

We settled into a new “normal,” as we waited with significant anxiety for the world to arrive at a place where we again could start doing what we do best: producing travel and fostering connection. In the meantime, we served as friends, confidants, counselors, whatever was needed to our client base, made up of teachers who were having one of the most existentially difficult years of their career (the ripple effects of which are still ongoing, by the way). I became as close as anyone could be during that time to many of my clients, our relationship suddenly more consistent and just as “in-person” as any other friendship I’d been fostering in my geographic community.

Emerging into the world

In November of 2021, we started producing very limited travel again, and I was tapped to staff one of our training tours (quickly - it’s a long weekend where we take the teachers abroad, train them on how to run a successful tour, and give them a “mini-tour” of the area they’re in). I was euphoric. I dutifully strapped my KN95 to my face, with an arsenal of extras I was ready to swap out every 2 hours, and I was off to Paris.

Traveling is one of my greatest joys, and Paris is one of my favorite cities, so this was a welcome return to the world as we were starting to emerge from Covid (K and I had travelled to Iceland a few weeks prior for a vacation, which was also incredible and worth its own post, one of these days). The teachers were similarly euphoric, their first time since Covid began emerging into a world and celebrating their craft amongst colleagues and friends. It was a very special trip.

On that trip, however, there were many situations that needed solving, such was the nature of travel in the immediate aftermath of Covid. I discovered something about myself on this trip. Thankfully I speak enough French to be dangerous, and I was able to help our on the ground facilitator (referred to as a Tour Director, or TD for short) problem solve in a variety of circumstances. I learned that solving problems, being decisive, helping people who are stressed find their calm under pressure, all are things that leave me feeling useful, necessary, and fulfilled.

The bus manager of that trip was impressed with me, and elevated me to bus manager status, which meant that I could essentially oversee a tour (alongside the Tour Director) next time we had one that went out.

The next opportunity was Barcelona in January of 22, just a few months later. My love of problem solving, my ability to connect, and my fortitude were all about to be tested. It started out with a tricky staffing situation. Typically on those events, you have 35-40 teachers as guests, supported by the Tour Director, the Bus Manager, an experienced educator who works with us regularly, and three staff from the Tour Consultant teams. The first thing that happened was that for one reason or another, (mostly close-contact with Covid), I lost all three of my staff. The Tour Director tested positive, and had to be replaced last minute. I remember thinking to myself: “Oh well, the show must go on,” as I boarded my connecting flight from Boston to JFK. On the way to JFK where I’d board my flight to Barcelona, the ops team back home was working in overdrive to make sure that I was supported on this training tour. They came up with a solution. We had another group in Barcelona at the same time as my group, and both groups had shrunk in size to the point where we could safely run the trip with reduced staffing numbers, so my group borrowed one of the experienced tour consultants from the other group, we’ll call her M.

M was fantastic, a few years senior to me in tenure at EF, but a bright personality, a hit with the teachers, and a godsend to me in my role as bus manager. Together with our veteran tour director and a long tenured educator (who now works full time for EF), we pulled off a phenomenal weekend for these teachers.

One memory that stands out for me, on the second day we all had to be tested, so that we could obtain the requisite certification to return to the States and not invoke a quarantine policy. I was particularly frightened of this possibility, as it would involve an unplanned stay in Spain for an additional ten days, at least. If we continued to have group members testing positive, at that point, the quarantine period would begin again. It was an intense possibility, but one that our organization was prepared to support in order to produce these trips.

So the testers came in with their swabs, and friends let me tell you, if you think those American nose swabs went far up your nose… try a European one. I’m pretty sure they got some brain matter on there.

Thankfully, miraculously, every member of our crew tested negative and were cleared for return on the third day. Do you ever realize the weight of something you’re carrying once you put it down? That’s what it was like for me. I collapsed into a chair with relief, and we enjoyed the rest of our tour together, finishing with a joyful flamenco performance in the gothic quarter of Barcelona. We were back, and I was feeling the fullest expression of myself I had in a long time. My team and I produced an incredible weekend under adverse circumstances, and I was truly full of joy. The leadership bug was growing in me.

To nurture that bug, I applied for and was accepted into a leadership training program run by an incredible human who would become another close mentor, V. V’s program spans six months, and introduces you to leadership styles, tools, and processes that are crucial to understanding how to lead with intention. I could, and will, write an entire post specifically on this program and my takeaways, but for the sake of brevity (ha, that ship has sailed, whatever), I’ll save the details for another time.

That Summer, we produced our Global Leadership Summit for the first time in two years, an event that I will be writing much more about, as I am departing for this year’s Summit in a few days, so I’ll save the storytelling for that, but suffice it to say, Summit is EF at its absolute best, a beautiful collaboration of our organization, thought leaders, and the students that attend. It is a special kind of magic.

What is relevant to my professional journey from that year’s Summit is that a manager position had posted, and I decided to interview for it. My thinking at that point was basically this: “I’m not sure I’m ready, but if the interview team thinks I am, then great. If not, they can tell me where I need to develop.” I articulated that thought to each interviewer (people I knew and respected), and let the chips fall where they may.

I didn’t get the job, not then. However one of the interviewers, who would become one of my closest mentors to this day (T, for short) started working with me in the areas I needed to develop. I was weak in my ability to coach to numbers, and to think strategically with the numbers needed for sales success. T gave me an hour once a month, and when she couldn’t, she put me in touch with other experts on that particular piece. She also tapped me to resuscitate the Co-Op program (Co-Op is “Boston-ese” for Intern, reflecting Northeastern’s program) along with a few of my colleagues who were also on the rise within the organization.

That year was one of tremendous growth, not only professionally, but personally, because that was the year, in November, where I discovered a lump in my leg, that lead to the diagnosis of High-Grade, B-Cell Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. You can read all about that journey in earlier posts on this blog if you’d like. I’m proud of that writing, and I kept it as light as it could be, so it shouldn’t be too much of a bummer (plus, come on, it has a happy ending).

Growth, Grit, and Strength

Now I entered the most profound experience of my life so far: managing chemotherapy while working in a job I loved. There were many blessings to count - great medical coverage, a team that loved and supported me, a manager who would have moved heaven and earth to support me if I’d needed it, and projects that I was excited and passionate about to keep my spirits up. I leaned into the work with the co-ops, producing two semester long “classes” who had a wonderful impact on our organization, and have gone on to great things. I kept my territory consistently humming along, hitting my sales goal for the 2024 travel season on the same day I had my last chemo infusion. I even was able to sneak in a visit to Austin, TX for our annual meeting, right before I started treatment. You can read about all the other details of those days, but as I reflect on it now, it was a time period full of love, support, joyful victory, and shared success.

I learned much about myself, which I’ve detailed and will continue to write about in other posts, but the one thing I was left with was a profound knowledge of just how strong I truly am, and what I can overcome.

I finished my last treatment in March, and as Summer approached, we began, as we always do each Summer, to discuss new opportunities.

Leaping into leadership

T, my mentor I mentioned before, was in my corner, and knew that I was ready for my next step. I was clear of the chemo, I’d had a year of profound learning both professionally and personally, and I had come out on the other side stronger, more knowledgeable, and most importantly, grateful for what I had. The trouble was, my beloved international travel division was about to undergo a major transition, staffing up an entirely new division. There was no clarity on what the leadership roles would look like, and T knew that I needed to make my move that Summer. So, she did what any good mentor would do. She pissed me right off.

T told me that I should consider moving to another product, specifically our domestic division. At that point, the way I heard that was “the international division is not going to promote you, so you should leave,” which was of course, reactionary and short-sighted of me. I kept those thoughts to myself, thanked T for the advice and went home to stew. The next day, I told T that I’d be interested in whatever opportunity the domestic division had, and asked her to connect me with the hiring manager. Enter SD, my current boss.

I met SD in Lingo, the company watering-hole I mentioned before where we often take a 4:45 meeting so that we can enjoy a libation over a meeting and still feel at least nominally responsible. SD and I hit it off rather immediately, he is uniquely gifted at getting an authentic conversation rolling quickly. I could see myself not only working for him, but learning and growing from that work and that relationship. A bright green flag, in my opinion.

Shortly after that conversation, I interviewed with a few other future colleagues, and then I was off to Paris again for another training tour. I put the opportunity I had interviewed for out of my mind, I did that thing people do where you just assume you’re not right for it, and it surely can’t be coming your way. Well, on my last day in Paris, I got a call from SD, who offered me the job.

I hemmed and hawed for a week, I couldn’t decide if it was the right move or not. Ultimately the reason I accepted was this: due to the nature of the position, and the size of the product (much smaller than the international division), I could, as SD pointed out, have an incredible impact, quickly. That spoke to me. Everything I’d done up until that point had been leading to this choice, and I realized that I was truly happiest when I could measure my impact, so the opportunity was too good to pass up.

I signed on the dotted line, and on May 8th, 2023, I became the manager of the RTC team for Explore America, EF’s Domestic division for student travel.

“These are your first steps.”

Everything was new. I knew the basic sale as it was similar to the international division, but the product was vastly different, and the strategy is different as well. For professional privacy reasons I won’t get into that beyond saying this, I had to learn new things, and fast.

I inherited a team of 11 that SD had been managing, on top of his responsibilities in his main job. They challenged me right away, I needed to ask them to increase their output commensurate with their tenure, in a time where sales traditionally slow down (Summer is slow for us). They pushed me on it, but I leveraged the difficult conversations training I had received in V’s leadership training cohort, and sat down with them. SD was in the room, and watched me navigate this conversation. I believe that is the moment he became not only confident he’d made the right hiring decision, but started to see the full spectrum of what I was growing to be capable of.

I had a new start class coming in mid-July, and I was excited, but something about the process felt off to me. You see, the team I was managing was the newest hires. The purpose of the RTC team as it was at that point was to learn by doing, and while learning, qualify leads and pass them off to the tour consultants. I wasn’t keen on this structure, as I believed at the time, and still do, that what we were doing was shooting us in both feet. On the left, we were interrupting the sale at the height of impulse, and passing a client to a new person who had to start that relationship over, and often those leads would wither and die on the vine. On the other, we were producing sellers who needed to be re-trained once they found their way onto a team, as they had never closed before, creating strain on the regional directors, and significant pain around turnover, which is already difficult.

We also had a strategy that asked us to do business “differently” to achieve growth, so in that spirit I pitched my idea to SD, that we allow the RTC’s to own the entirety of the sales process. SD initially told me we can’t make that change, but a few weeks later, he and his leadership team had a conversation, the result of which was an implementation of my idea.

Bless our sales training team, they pivoted on a dime to add an entire new module to their onboarding process, and off we went.

Shit gets real

28 new hires stepped into this new structure, and I was on my own managing them, across three different office spaces; Boston, Austin, and fully remote. The plan was to have a counterpart for me hired into the Austin office, but that hadn’t materialized yet, so it was on me.

I leaned into delegation, leveraged technology, and learned what resources I had as quickly as possible. I needed my focus to be on these people for whom I was their first manager within our walls, and in many cases their first manager, period. My responsibility was sacred, I needed to start these people out and give them a foundation that would set them, and our organization, up for success.

We created an incentive structure to motivate our team around a certain number of wins, built around a specific KPI (key performance index). We started to crush that target, hard.

Before long, one of my now closest coworkers and dearest friends entered the picture. Lex was hired to be my counterpart in the Austin office, and finally I had some help.

Most teams at this point would split the responsibilities, delegating that Lex take 1-1 meetings for the Austin team and half of the remote crew, and I take Boston and the other half. This wasn’t going to be our way. The team had grown to trust me, and were wary of losing my time, so instead of divesting them of it, we added Lex in, and Lex and I alternated 1-1’s every other week. We would share the team fully, and engage in a shared-leadership model. This model has a lot of risks - do we confuse the team? Whom do they go to for what? How do we ensure we aren’t being redundant? So many questions, all of them answered by establishing tight communication between Lex and I. I spoke to Lex so much it’s highly likely I spent more time in conversation with her than I did with my wife at that point. Every one-on-one meeting needed to be fully recapped to each other, every individual on our team needed to be accounted for and reviewed each week, every strategic decision needed to be generated in a shared ideation space. In many ways, our style of managing together reflected the way bands write songs together, or teams develop strategy on the fly during a match. It was one of “yes, and…” and it worked beautifully. There were times when as individuals, we would have doubts, and we benefitted mightily from the shared ideation space not only to validate that, yes, what we were observing was happening and needed addressing, but also that we both were good at this job, and deserved our place in the organization.

Lex also honored me by treating me as a mentor in many ways. I am a bit older than her, and I had the benefit of going through V’s leadership training program, so I had some things to share that added value to Lex’s professional life, and she quickly found her comfort tapping into that. I still work with Lex in that space, though we don’t co-manage together anymore, we are still valued thought-partners for each other, and whenever either of us is successful, the other is the first to celebrate. I am very proud of that friendship, and I hope it continues for many years. I hope to invite her perspective onto this blog in the future, as she has a story to tell too, that I don’t want to tell for her.

Halfway through the sales season, our team was crushing its goals so effectively that we had to restructure them entirely, and shift not just to measuring how many parent meetings we were able to book, but how many individual travelers each RTC was able to sign up. At this point, they became a fully functional team, and a key component of our success. I’m proud to say that we built something special, new hires come in through our stellar sales-training team who provides onboarding training, they then come onto the RTC team in full-force, and are deployed immediately to go after leads that tour consultants don’t have time to get to. We rely on them for helping out with overflow in busier moments of the season, and they provide a layer of support for the Tour Consultants that allows them to be even more effective in their roles. When they graduate onto the regional teams and assume the title of “Tour Consultant,” they are prepared, effective, and able to have an impact on their region immediately. I am immensely proud of the work Lex and I did to create that model.

I expected to stay in this role for a few years, it being my first real leadership role, however opportunity likes to knock on busy doors, and mine was practically revolving at this point. In May of 2024 almost exactly a year after starting as RTC manager, I was tapped to step into a recently vacated Director role, taking the reins of team Midwest. It’s a very different team, with three of our most senior sellers (designated as STC, or Senior Tour Consultant), and four solid tour consultants. I’m still finding my footing, but we have a sizable challenge ahead of us, one that I am excited to tackle, and have great optimism when measuring our potential success.

What’s next?

My community at work expands every day, and it’s starting to spill beyond our EF walls. Recently, having started writing and publishing on LinkedIn, I was reached out to by a grad school colleague of mine, someone else who has navigated the Musician/Ancillary career life, who is impressed with how I describe my time at EF and wants in. That was a lovely reconnect, and very validating to hear that what I’m putting out is making an impact. I will continue to grow that community (I’m a little allergic to the word “network”) with intention, and can’t wait to see how much I can scale my impact.

Recently, I’ve taken a keen interest in AI. I listened through Brene Brown’s series “Living Beyond the Human Scale,” and was introduced to writers and thinkers like Amy Webb, who’s book “The Big Nine” documents the rise of the 9 companies who are developing AI here and in China. I also “met” Dr. Joy Buolamwini, the poet of code who founded the Algorithmic Justice League, and who’s work on facial recognition is crucial to creating systems that we can rely on to be equitable and safe for people regardless of the skin they live in (the short version of her long story, when developing a face-tracking algorithm for an MIT Media Lab Project, it wouldn’t track her dark skin, but when she put on a white mask, it found her immediately, thus began her focus and work she continues to this day).

My interest in AI is framed like this: “how can I dream and ideate in our current environment, so that I stay relevant, and help keep my employees on the cutting edge.” I’ll never be a coder, I have no interest. I want to understand how to use the tools that are coming online, and how they will evolve, so that I can effectively lead my teams through the coming transition. As Amy Webb puts it in her recent conversation with Brene Brown, we are all part of “Generation T” for transition. Gone are the lines between Millenials, Gen X, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, we’re all about to experience the great transition, and I want to help my staff and my company navigate it as gracefully as we possibly can, so that we can lead, succeed, and continue impacting the world the way we have for over 50 years. I’ve started having that conversation with whomever will listen, which has lead to a new mentor relationship with one of our digital experts, and a connection with a data scientist who works for us from our London office. My sphere of influence, and those who influence me, is growing exponentially.

So that’s the shape of it, that’s my career so far at EF. I could undoubtedly expand on all of this, get more specific, but for my purposes this will do for now. If I take one thing away from this all, one red thread that is becoming a central theme in my life, it is this - my power is that I am a dreamer and a connector. I can see the shape of things, and I can envision them beyond their current limitations, and I can draw people together to actualize those dreams. I will feed that ability, I will exercise it where I can and grow it with intention. The road ahead is unknown but exciting, and I can’t wait to keep making my mark.