A lot has happened over the past year – more teachers and students are traveling on one of our programs than ever. In fact, nearly 15,000 teachers and close to 500,000 students are enjoying a WorldStrides trip – just this year alone! To support this incredible growth and to provide additional leadership to the vast team of passionate and dedicated employees that are committed to providing safe, once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences, we’ve got some new faces at WorldStrides. And, we’d like to introduce them to you….
Anish Rajparia
Chief Operating Officer
Anish brings over 20 years of experience to his role of Chief Operating Officer at WorldStrides, including responsibility of large and entrepreneurial organizations, and leadership experience in general management, strategy, product, marketing, business and technology. He recently held pivotal roles at Automated Data Processing, including president of Major Account Services, Canada; Small-business services; and International. Prior to ADP, he was co-CEO of Parlo, an online language learning company. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University. He has lived and worked abroad in France, Spain and Brazil, and is fluent in five languages. Married with two children, Anish lists tennis, travel and squash as favorites among his hobbies.
Matt Wertz
Executive Vice President and General Manager
Matt Wertz brings extensive industry knowledge and leadership to WorldStrides. Having held several pivotal roles at Explorica, including CEO, he has had 15 years of experience and hands-on involvement with every facet of educational travel. He has led numerous technical and service-based innovations that have transformed the entire industry. Matt shares WorldStrides’ passion for changing students’ lives through high-quality, affordable travel programs across the globe. Prior to joining the company, he worked as an e-commerce consultant and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Electrical engineering from Boston University.
Jeff Coppola
Vice President of Customer Support
Customer Service welcomes Jeff Coppola, our new Vice President of Customer Support. As a two time graduate from Penn State’s acclaimed Supply Chain program, Jeff brings result-based experiences in delivering measurable improvements to organizations’ people, performance and systems. With focuses across client services, operations, and information technology, Jeff has led transformations for a variety of consumer product goods and education-based services companies. As a lifelong learner, his passion for education, travel, and experiencing other cultures from their perspectives makes Jeff a great fit as our new leader of our customer support, financial services and fulfillment teams. Jeff, his wife Mary, and son Addison, are very excited about returning to the Charlottesville area after a fourteen year hiatus in Baltimore.
Adam Hall
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Adam joined WorldStrides in 2015 as CFO with responsibility for all financial and legal activities of the company. Adam came to WorldStrides from SNL Financial (now a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill Financial), where he was CFO, and prior to that as head of the product management organization. Before joining SNL, Adam served in senior financial and strategic roles at RiskMetrics (now MSCI), Institutional Shareholder Services, and the NASDAQ Stock Market. Adam has a B.A. in economics from the State University of New York at Binghamton and an MBA from the University of Maryland. He lives in Charlottesville, VA with his wife—a kindergarten teacher – and two children.
Jim Cigliano
Executive Vice President of Marketing and Strategy
Jim Cigliano has joined WorldStrides to lead Marketing and Strategy. Jim comes to us with over twenty years of experience in marketing, strategy, and line management. He graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in ’91 with a B.S. in Economics and received his MBA from MIT Sloan in ’96 on the Financial Engineering Track. During the early years of his career, Jim worked at IBM, McKinsey & Company, and AOL. He then spent 13 years of his career with Staples in a variety of roles and worked closely with small business clients and deployed the tech services offerings in some of his most recent leadership responsibilities. Prior to joining WorldStrides, Jim worked at Time Warner Cable. Jim lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with his wife and children and will be working from the Charlottesville office for this role.