Meet the Expedition Leaders

2009 Rome & Greece Expedition Leaders, left to right: Matt Kostakis, Breena Kerr, Rachel Langosch

Archaeology & Ancient Culture

Matt Kostakis. McGill University, B.A. A proud Greek-American, Matt majored in International Development at McGill and pursued coursework in Greek mythology, art history, fine arts, and photography. He taught Spanish and coordinated the foreign languages program at the Tuxedo ParkSchool in New York, and taught traditional Greek dance to middle school students. Matt spent four months volunteering with marginalized communities in Thailand and Brazil, and won a scholarship from Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece, for the study of the Greek language. He led Putney Student Travel’s Language Learning program in Costa Rica in 2008. Matt has traveled extensively in Greece and Italy and spent much of the spring of 2009 exploring Italy, the Greek island of Ikaria, and the traditional Zagori villages of Epirus in northern Greece. Matt is an avid artist, photographer, and outdoorsman. He is fluent in Greek and Spanish and competent in Italian.

Journalism

Breena Kerr. Santa Clara University, B.A. Breena is a professional journalist and blogger based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She concentrated in Journalism and Video Production at Santa Clara, where she was an editorial columnist at The Santa Clara newspaper. She spent eighteen months living, working, and studying in Rome and Florence, Italy, where she wrote on-line restaurant and night-life reviews and served as an administrative intern at The Florentine, an English-language newspaper. Breena has worked as a documentary filmmaker, an assistant producer, and a voice-over artist. She was a journalist and web intern at The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and currently works as a writing/English tutor in San Francisco. Breena is fluent in Italian and proficient in Spanish.

Photography

Rachel Langosch. Bard College, B.A. Pratt Institute, M.F.A. Rachel is a New York-based photographer and personal trainer. She majored in Anthropology and Photography at Bard, where she was a starting center for the varsity women’s basketball team. Rachel volunteered for Habitat for Humanity in Nicoya, Costa Rica, served as a publication photographer at the Sigihara House Museum in Kaunus, Lithuania, and spent four months as an eco-tourism and reforestation volunteer for ProPeru Service Corps in Urubamba, Peru. She was and Americorps Youth Corps leader in San Jose, California and a head-shot and special events photographer for The Executive Source and The Simplicity Group in New York. Rachel currently lives in New York, where she works as a photography assistant for a freelance commercial photographer. She recently completed her Master of Fine Arts in photography at Pratt Institute. Rachel is part of the South 4th Cycling Team, a Brooklyn-based bike club, and a volunteer photographer for The B-Girl Project, an ethnographic study of female break dancers. She co-led the National Geographic Student Expedition to Ecuador and the Galàpagos in 2008.