Stephen Spanos joins the GHD program from China, where he taught at an international school in Shanghai for two years and, as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer, at a university in Chongqing for six months. He holds an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and served two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher trainer in Indonesia. During his seven years as an international educator, Stephen has designed and facilitated teacher training workshops in China, Haiti, Indonesia, and the US. He has taught levels ranging from first grade to university professors and developed mobile application language tests in addition to the TOEFL exam. He is especially excited by technology’s potential to improve global access to quality education and create dynamic learning platforms.

Stephen has been interested in development work since his undergraduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis, during which time he interned with the UNHCR implementation partner Fundación Ambiente y Sociedad in Ecuador to provide microcredit to refugee entrepreneurs. As a GHD student, Stephen looks forward to gaining more experience in quantitative analysis as well as monitoring and evaluation. He speaks Indonesian, Mandarin Chinese, English, and Spanish.