Before coming to CIE, Tom served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Armenia. He came to UMass looking to prepare himself for a teaching career in science and EFL, both internationally and domestically.

After graduating he taught in Novosibirsk, Russia for a year, and then taught at a charter school in Providence Rhode Island for another year.  After that he worked for five years at the CATS Academy in Boston teaching science and ESL science. He also served as chair of the Science Department.

Before coming to CIE I had been a teacher since 2001. I have been working under the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MOEVT) in different schools teaching Physics and Biology.

In 2022 Jacob became the Program Assistant Director with The Partnership for Worker Education (PWE), Office of Human Resources at UMass Amherst. In July 2023 he became the Director of PWE - a collaboration among UMass HR and the staff unions (AFSCME, USA, PSU) providing services for the roughly 4,500 UMass Amherst staff members.

I was born and raised in Newton MA and grew up in a musical household where there was a constant connection between life, politics and music. It was through my experience playing Jamaican music that I became interested in the intersection of music and youth movements in the Caribbean and Africa, a subject I studied as a Cultural Anthropology major at Hampshire College. 

Before coming to CIE, I spent several years in Brazil and after finishing my undergraduate degree, I worked as a curriculum writer for a community education program run by the nonprofit, Care for Life in Beira, Mozambique.  This program was notable in how hard it tried to solicit community involvement and stewardship in its programs, but there were many moments in which I wondered how the communities we worked in might come to further emulate what I had seen in Salvador.

Before coming to CIE I lived and worked in Japan for 2 years teaching English to everyone from 4-year-old children to 70-year-old pensioners. Despite the challenges of working in Japanese office culture I really enjoyed the work and the lifestyle. In 2006 I joined the Peace Corps and was sent to the Republic of Georgia, where I lived and worked as a secondary school TEFL volunteer for 2 years.

After leaving CIE Tatiana returned to Tajikistan where she did some freelancing and helped the international school, where she had worked before, to prepare for accreditation.

She then went to Israel for an education training course with Mashav before looking for new opportunities.  After looking at possibilities in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and China, she decided to take a position in China.  She spent several years teaching in an international school in Wuhan where she taught first and second grade students.  The children were from many different countries.

Only the people who take learning, growth and skills development into their own hands will be tomorrow’s leaders ~ Alli Worthington

Javad Ahmadi completed his degree requirements at the end of 2016 and returned to Afghanistan. His dissertation focused on capacity development and workplace learning at the Afghan Ministry of Education, Department of Planning.

After graduating from CIE Ryke returned to his position as Assistant Manager with the Ministry of Education and Culture, Directorate General of Early Childhood, Non-Formal and Informal Education.  In that role he was responsible for conducting evaluations of various programs and leading workshops.