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Shayne Fitz-Coy also known as The Teaching CEO, runs a portfolio of companies and guest lectures at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Seoul National University.  But ask him what he really does, and he’ll say: “I run schools disguised as businesses.” Fitz-Coy is a third-generation educator, who serves as CEO of Rustic Pathways -...

Most educational travel companies still operate like glorified tour agencies - shuttling teens between monuments while checking off cultural boxes. Shayne Fitz-Coy saw this broken model and built something radically different. As CEO of Rustic Pathways, he pioneered a psychology-based approach that’s fundamentally reshaping how the industry thinks about student transformation. “I don’t run companies....

It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that the more dashboards we build, the more metrics we track, and the more algorithms we deploy, the better our businesses will perform.  Yes, data is undeniably critical but at Sabot Family Companies, we operate from a conviction that: People First, Data Second. It’s the bedrock...

Article written by Shayne Fitz-Coy on Rustic Pathways This article outlines Rustic Pathways’ leadership philosophy for educational travel programs. We believe the most effective leaders in experiential education are engaged at the point of service delivery: at ‘the actual place.’ This approach prioritizes hands-on leadership over remote management. Why This Note Exists At Rustic Pathways, we...

Article written by Shayne Fitz-Coy on Rustic Pathways Why do some teen travel programs yield change and others don’t? After 12,000+ students, one pattern keeps surfacing: transformation happens in the stretch zone. Too comfortable and teens stay the same. Too stressed and they shut down. The programs that work find the middle. The ones that...

For me, true education has always extended beyond the classroom walls. Some of life’s most important lessons are learned when we step out of our comfort zones and into the wider world. That is the core belief behind Rustic Pathways. At its heart, Rustic Pathways is about creating life-changing travel experiences for students. We design...