Meet Our New Colleagues!
We’re thrilled to introduce the four new team members who have joined us this year! Adam Beardsley, Lauren Hewell and Lauren Parker are bringing fresh energy and enthusiasm to the Client Services Team as Guest Services Advisors. Bayley Coleman is ATA’s newest Marketing Coordinator, working closely with Creative Manager Wade Jennings to manage ATA’s design queue, which includes digital brochures, social media posts, websites, and other communication tools. Welcome, colleagues!
Stay tuned as we expect the next newsletter will feature more new team members! Also see the list of our open positions here for CET Academic Programs, our study abroad division.
Wisdom from ATA’s President
ATA’s President Kate Simpson was recently interviewed by Authority Magazine about the company’s work on behalf of HISTORY Travel, A+E Networks’ travel brand. In the interview, Kate imparts a few pearls of wisdom that she’s learned from a deeply satisfying career spent in educational travel. Read the full interview here.
An Update On Our Sustainability Work
Over a year ago, ATA signed onto the Glasgow Declaration, a 10-year commitment from the travel industry to reduce the effects of climate change. One of the commitments of each signatory is a climate action plan for the company. Under the leadership of Senior Director of Educational Programs Emma Impavido, ATA has completed its own Climate Action Plan. This is a part of the overall sustainability plan we committed to in signing the Declaration. We recently looked back at our first year accomplishments:
- We added an ESG (environmental, social and governance) fund to our 401k options.
- We reduced staff travel across the organization while offsetting trips that we deemed critical
- We reduced printing and mailing costs of marketing materials
- We educated students and travelers about United Airlines’s path to becoming 100% carbon neutral by 2050. We’ve endorsed United’s investment in bio jet-fuel and recommended the airline when it makes sense to do so.
- We extended the life of the computers that we “cycle through” by securely wiping the hard drive and offering them to staff for personal use.
Future plans include a focus on reducing food waste and single use plastics during our programs. We will be sharing regular updates in future newsletters.
Read our plan in its entirety here.
