If you are interested in joining the team as either a member of our program staff or office staff, please contact us.

Fred Swaniker, Founder

Fred is the founder of the African Leadership Academy and Global Leadership Adventures. Originally from Ghana, West Africa, Fred has lived and worked in South Africa for several years, and spent his formative years in four other African countries before attending university and graduate school in the United States. These international experiences taught Fred that having a worldview is especially important in today's increasingly inter-dependent world, and provided him with the inspiration to create Global Leadership Adventures and now Terra Intern Abroad.

Fred is a graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, USA, and helped to manage one of the top-performing schools in Botswana before attending the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In earning his MBA, Fred was an Arjay Miller Scholar, a distinction awarded to those graduating in the top ten percent of each MBA class at Stanford.

Andrew H. Motiwalla, Co-Founder & Executive Director

Andrew leads GLA and Terra Intern Abroad with significant experience in managing international education and volunteer programs. Although most recently Andrew helped launch a couple of internet start-up companies, his true passion lies with international education. Along with his passion, Andrew brings expertise in experiential learning from having served as Senior Vice President for Cross-Cultural Solutions, a non-profit organization that offers international volunteer programs. At CCS, he helped build programs from scratch, personally recruiting country directors and managing operations in Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Kosovo, Peru, Russia, Tanzania, and Thailand. He designed and launched CCS international internship programs and implemented systems to catapult the organization's growth.

International education and service opportunities have always been integral to Andrew's life. In fact, prior to his experience with CCS, Andrew spent two years in Honduras with the Peace Corps teaching small business skills to rural community groups.

Andrew is a graduate of Lawrence University and speaks Spanish and Portuguese.  In addition to international education, he also enjoys studying languages, anthropology, technology and loves spending time with his wife and two daughters at their home in San Diego.

Jessica Rose Miller, Program Manager

Jessica has worked with Terra Education in the launching of both Global Leadership Adventures and Terra Intern Abroad. She has an inherent passion for international education, social entrepreneurship and for initiating positive change in our world. Jessica was raised in a rural community in Southern Oregon that fostered her dreams of a bigger and better world. Early on during her studies Jessica learned about the benefits of international education and travel. During her undergraduate degree she studied abroad in northern Spain and then after graduating, taught ESL as an Assistant Professor at the University of Cantabria where she cemented her Spanish language skills and traveled extensively throughout Europe.

Jessica strongly believes that international education is an imperative instrument for change in our world. By creating global citizens today, she sees a future led by conscientious leaders with a global perspective. Jessica graduated Magna Cum Laude from Oregon State University with degrees in History, Anthropology and Spanish. She has managed programs in Brazil, Ghana, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and South Africa.

Jonathan Harada, Program Manager

Jonathan was brought on to launch Terra Intern Abroad and has experience in entrepreneurship, education, non-profit and for-profit ventures as well as volunteerism. He brings with him a strong international background having lived and worked over 7 years abroad and traveled independently to over 32 countries. He most recently spent 3.5 years in Buenos Aires, Argentina having founded an educational start-up and consulted for small businesses.  Prior to this he was a Director of Programs and Education at Hostelling International and spent several years as a Country Manager for Forrester Research in Tokyo, Japan and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Jonathan is a graduate of Wheaton College in Massachusetts, earned an MBA from Babson College and speaks Spanish, Portugese, Japanese and a bit of Mandarin.