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Jeff started his career in international education interning with Food for the Hungry in La Paz, Bolivia in 1989 where he collaborated in health education/prevention programs among the Aymara of the Bolivian Altiplano. In 1990 he moved to Santiago, Chile where he lived for five years. In Chile, he first worked with Youth with a Mission and then taught English at the Instituto Chileno-Norteamericano de Cultura. After finishing an M.A. in TESOL from Central Washington University in 1996, he taught English for three years in Tokyo, Japan at Asia University. In 1999, he returned to his native state of Washington where he completed an M.A. in Romance Language Linguistics and a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Washington. Before accepting his current position of Director of the Middlebury School in Latin America (Chile and Mexico), Jeff was a member of the faculty of Seattle Pacific University where he coordinated a study abroad/service learning trip to Santiago, Chile and taught Spanish and graduate-level courses in Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics. Of his love for Latin American cultures he states, “I went to Chile in 1990 with a 10-month plane ticket and stayed for five years.” He is passionate about helping students gain the second language and cross-cultural competence that will allow them to make significant contributions as global citizens.