About Us

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.