worldschooling journeys

About Us

Worldschooling is our passion

Worldschooling Journeys was created for homeschool families who believe childhood learning can be bigger than a classroom.

We believe real life is the best teacher, so we create group travel experiences where homeschool and alternatively-schooled kids can learn through culture, history, nature, adventure, and friendship.

Our trips bring together diverse families from around the world who value curiosity, connection, and learning by living. Each journey is planned with balance in mind: education, fun, rest for busy parents, cost efficiency, and the real needs of the families joining us. As the founders’ daughter likes to say, we cracked the code for “The Perfect Millennial Childhood Experience”.

Join us in making the world your classroom and creating memories that last a lifetime.

SEE OUR TRIPS

Who are we?

Did you know none of our team members were ever asked to show a resume? We hire people based on something much harder to put on paper: their outlook on life, their work ethic, their curiosity, and the way they show up for others. And we’ve found that this is the secret behind a thriving team.

Behind Worldschooling Journeys is a team of 9 people from around the world, each with their own story, skills, and beautifully unconventional path. Some of us are parents, some of us are still very much raising our own inner child, all of us are lovers of travel, learning, connection, and living life fully. We come from different cultures and experiences, but we share one belief: Life is meant to be experienced with others.

Meet the team behind the trips:

Elena

Founder of Every Avenue Travel + Worldschooling Journeys

Elena is a multi-passionate entrepreneur, storyteller, community builder, and the vision behind Worldschooling Journeys.

Elena spent over a decade as a magazine editor, crafting travel stories and exploring the world on assignment. But it wasn’t until she became a mother that travel took on a completely new meaning. Longing for a lifestyle rooted in freedom, connection, and global education, Elena began carving a new path, one that allowed her daughter, Alexis, to grow up surrounded by the real world. What started as a personal journey quickly became a movement that now connects hundreds of families.

At Worldschooling Journeys, Elena is the founder, the spark, and the person keeping all the moving pieces connected. She is constantly listening — to families, to the team, to what is needed next — and turning those patterns into new trips, better systems, stronger communities, and experiences that actually make sense for real families.

Joe

Co-Founder of Every Avenue Travel + Worldschooling Journeys

Joe is our land trip mastermind, which makes sense, considering he has been traveling since he was 3 months old, flying across the world with his flight attendant mom.

He grew up in Minnesota, where the outdoors naturally became a big part of his childhood. Sports, fishing, lakes, fresh air, and family adventures shaped the way he sees the world. These days, Joe can usually be found somewhere around the world working on trip logistics, managing the company’s finances, working out, exploring, or even better, eating. Over the years, he has built a deep knowledge of destinations and unique travel.

At Worldschooling Journeys, Joe is the brain behind the trips that take years to plan and hundreds of tiny details to make work. He is also the spreadsheet person, the expense calculator, the invoice rememberer, and the one keeping track of all the pieces that could easily fall through the cracks. In short, Joe manages the behind-the-scenes chaos so families can simply pack their bags, show up, and enjoy the journey.

Atena

Cruise Director

Atena is our cruise director, Elena and Joe’s right hand, avid traveler, history nerd, and proof that you do not have to follow a traditional path to build a meaningful life.

Raised as the proper daughter of a rigorous Romanian family, Atena was expected to become an engineer - so naturally, she became a digital nomad working in tourism. While she was never worldschooled herself, there’s no one who better understands how much travel can teach and change perspectives.

At Worldschooling Journeys, Atena is the social butterfly you can rely on for all your travel questions. She oversees the team to make sure that all the moving pieces work together, and she organizes our hundreds of private port excursions around the world, many she has visited herself, and many she has been reading about and adding to her ever-growing bucket list.

Chelsea

Cruise Logistics & Booking

Chelsea is our cruise brain. History lover, certified teacher, avid book reader, and mom of six, Chelsea has been managing complex group cruise logistics since before most of us had answered our first email of the day.

She understands worldschooling not just as a travel concept, but as a teacher and mother who knows that learning becomes more meaningful when kids can see it, touch it, question it, and experience it for themselves.

At Worldschooling Journeys, Chelsea is the person you want in your corner when it is time to book your cruise, track your payments, confirm the details, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. If you’re ever overthinking any cruise detail, Chelsea is the one on the other side of your screen making sure it gets handled. She has perfected the art of keeping a lot of moving pieces from turning into chaos, and now she helps our families feel calm, prepared, and taken care of before they ever step onboard.

Ashley

Cruise Booking Consultant

Ashley is our cruise booking consultant, mom of three, currently caring for two foster babies, former surrogate, plant collector, house-project lover, and always finding time for her art.

Ashley understands Worldschooling Journeys from the inside, because she first joined us as a traveling mom on her family’s first international trip. She loved it so much that she eventually became part of the team. That makes her especially good at supporting new families who are still wondering if they can really do this.

At Worldschooling Journeys, Ashley helps families find the right cruises and move through the booking process with the kind of lived experience that cannot be taught in a training manual. And yes, she may be painting something or working on a DIY house project while she’s helping you.

Melike

IT Master

Melike is our IT master, better known as Website Magician.

She originally studied psychology, but her degree was not demanding enough, so she used her spare time to casually teach herself IT. Now, she is the person making sure the digital side of Worldschooling Journeys actually functions. She keeps the website running, builds the things we dream up, fixes the things we break, and somehow magically creates whatever we ask for, even when the rest of us do not fully understand what we are asking.

Melike fits perfectly into Worldschooling Journeys because she is endlessly curious, self-taught, and deeply passionate about learning. She is currently writing a historical fiction novel about Ottoman rule, which tells you everything you need to know about how her brain works. She has the soul of a therapist, the creativity of a novelist, and the brain of a corporate IT bro.

Anahat

Land Trips Manager

Anahat is our land trips manager, itinerary researcher, client communicator, and behind-the-scenes checklist queen helping turn big land trip ideas into real, organized adventures.

She works alongside Joe to help bring our land trips to life. She researches the first drafts of new itineraries, communicates with local operators, hotels, transportation providers, and on-the-ground partners, and helps make sure every piece of the trip is moving in the right direction.

Outside of the spreadsheets and checkboxes, Anahat loves going off-trail and saying yes to the kind of experiences that make travel feel alive. She loves adventure, wildlife watching, and hikes. Then she comes home, opens her laptop, and pours that same excitement into our land trip itineraries. So, if there’s ever too much hiking on our land trips, you can take that up with Anahat.

Rox

Social Media

Rox is our social media girl, solo travel expert, cat person, and the definition of a Slavic stare with a very friendly soul underneath. She has solo traveled to over 40 countries, which sounds incredibly brave until you find out she still hates calling to make a doctor’s appointment.

At Worldschooling Journeys, Rox helps tell our story online. She turns the fleeting moments of pure joy into content that helps people understand what this community actually feels like.

Basically, Rox brings the perfect mix of independence, travel knowledge, and creativity to the team — which is exactly what we need from our social media gal!

Cheryl

Forward Development Engineer

Cheryl is our Forward Development Engineer, which is the official way of saying she builds the AI tools, dashboards, apps, and bots that help Worldschooling Journeys run smarter. Give her a messy system, a hard deadline, or a problem that needs a custom tech solution, and she is fine. Ask her for one fun fact about herself, and suddenly her brain has left the building.

At Worldschooling Journeys, Cheryl helps build and improve the systems that keep everything moving forward. She can take a messy operational problem and turn it into something functional, organized, and actually useful, which is exactly the kind of brain we need behind the scenes.

She also has a freakishly good memory, is weirdly good at packing and there’s no arguing with her system, and has one clear travel rule: suites and first-class flights, no exceptions. She can build complex applications, but ask her to record a 30-second video about it and it will simply never happen. And no, she did not use AI to come up with these facts.

Dina

Video Editor & UX Designer

Dina is our video editor, UX designer, Nuddle Girl, and the person turning our travel chaos into something people actually want to watch.

We call her Nuddle Girl because she speaks three languages and somehow still invented a new one by saying “nuddle” instead of “noodle.” At Worldschooling Journeys, Dina helps share Elena’s vision through video editing, while also adding her touch to our website pages - because nobody wants to scroll through 200 trips without a proper user interface.

Dina has had roughly 1,000 jobs, with her shortest lasting one impressive 8-hour shift, but with our team, she has been incredibly steady. If you see her dissociating with a Slavic stare, she is not being mean. She is simply zoned out, overstimulated, and probably already editing the moment in her head.