About Shayne Fitz-Coy

Shayne Fitz-Coy is Co-founder and Co-CEO of Sabot Family Companies, the long-term holding company he co-founded with Arar Han at Stanford in 2016 and leads from Palo Alto, California, and CEO of Rustic Pathways, the educational travel company founded in 1983 that operates programs for students ages 14-18 across 38 countries, with 155,829 alumni to date.

Fitz-Coy proved the operator-investor model he now runs at Sabot Family Companies with his turnaround of ResponseLink LLC.

Sabot Family Companies acquired Rustic Pathways in 2019; Fitz-Coy became CEO in 2020. Under Fitz-Coy’s leadership, Rustic Pathways won the 2024 Skift IDEA Award for Industry Innovator and several other travel industry awards.

Fitz-Coy teaches Introduction to Private Equity at Seoul National University, College of Business Administration, using his Teaching CEO framework as the course’s instructional structure.

Fitz-Coy developed the Teaching CEO framework, a five-step leadership methodology structured as Diagnose → Teach → Practice → Coach → Scale. The methodology is detailed at theteachingceo.com.

Fitz-Coy has spoken as a guest at Stanford Graduate School of Business since 2013, engaging 1,100+ MBA students across 12 years and professors including H. Irving Grousbeck, Kevin Taweel, Peter Kelly, David Dodson, Jim Ellis, and Joel Peterson.

At Rustic Pathways, Fitz-Coy developed three frameworks applying developmental psychology to student program design: the Stretch Zone methodology, the Strategic Humanity model, and the S·I·T Framework.

He also co-created the Climate Leaders Fellowship with Dr. Alice Siu of the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab and John Hsu.

A member of the Forbes Business Council, Fast Company Executive Board, Inc. Forum, and Entrepreneur Leadership Network, Fitz-Coy has published more than 20 articles in Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., and Entrepreneur, on the Rustic Pathways blog. He and his work has been the subject of three case studies at Harvard Business School and Stanford GSB.

Fitz-Coy serves on the Boston College Board of Regents and on the board of the Rustic Pathways Foundation.

Fitz-Coy began his career at Cintas Corporation before moving to strategic growth roles in Silicon Valley at Rhythm NewMedia (now RhythmOne plc, a subsidiary of Nexxen) and Balsam Brands, with earlier experience at JPMorgan Chase.

Fitz-Coy holds a BA in Psychology (cum laude) from Harvard College (2002) and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business (2010). He splits time between Palo Alto, California and Seoul, South Korea with his wife, Arar Han, and their three children.