Institute Staff

Jason Pedicone

Jason Pedicone, the co-founder and President of the Paideia Institute, received his Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University in 2013. Jason has taught courses in Latin, Greek, and the history of Classical Scholarship at the university level in the U.S. and Western Europe, and is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College and Fordham University. Jason’s research and public speaking focus on public humanities and Latin and Greek pedagogy. Jason received a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Germany in 2004, and a Jacob Javits Fellowship in 2013 to support his graduate work.  In 2015, together with Paideia's co-founder, Eric Hewett, Jason was awarded the President’s Award by the Society for Classical Studies for outstanding achievements in promoting the study of Classics. He lives in Manhattan.

Gene Cunningham

Gene is a student of the M.A. program in Ancient Philology at the Polis Institute in Jerusalem and is Paideia's former Assistant Director for European Operations. He received his B.A. in Classics from the University of California, Berkeley. He participated in Living Latin in Rome in 2013 and Living Greek in Greece in 2012 and 2013, and Living Latin in Paris in 2013, and was Paideia's Rome Fellow for 2013-2014.

David Hewett

David Hewett is Paideia’s Outreach Manager for Classical Tours, as well as instructor in Telepaideia. He has an M.A. in Classics (2009) from the University of Virginia and began a dissertation there on Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, before starting his position at Paideia. He has been a Regular Member of the American School for Classical Studies at Athens (2011-12), a student at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (Spring 2005), and holds a B.A. in Classical Studies from Dickinson College (2006). In addition to this formal education, he studied with Reginald Foster in Rome (2006-07). He lives in Philadelphia.

Allegra Forbes

Allegra is the institute's Marketing Manager, as well as an alumna of Paideia's Living Greek in Greece and Summer Humanities Internship programs. In 2021 she earned her B.A. in Art History from Barnard College, where she wrote a thesis investigating the museum store as an apparatus of cultural capital and commodity fetishism. An occasional tutor of Ancient Greek history and literature, she is passionate about art and aesthetics from the Classical to the contemporary.

Fernando Barreto

Fernando completed a master's in Ancient Philology from the Polis Institute of Languages and Humanities and a master's in Classics from the Washington University in St. Louis. He also holds an M.A. degree in Literary Studies and a B.A. in Ancient Greek from the Federal University of Parana. Fernando has been teaching Greek since 2008, and his research interests are focused on the history of education, platonism, self-knowledge in antiquity, and second language acquisition.

John Byron Kuhner

John Byron Kuhner is the former president of the North American Institute of Living Latin Studies (SALVI) and editor of the Paideia Institute's online magazine, In Medias Res.

Griffin Smith-Nichols

Griffin is a graduate of Cornell University with a B.A. in Latin and the College Scholar Program, and wrote a thesis for the latter on the Old Saxon Heliand poem, a 6,000 line alliterative verse epic retelling of the New Testament. He additionally received minors in German, religious studies, and medieval studies, and some of his scholarly passions include Greek and Latin Patristics, Biblical Hebrew, and Anglo-Saxon England. During his time as a student, he helped run Cornell’s undergraduate society for medieval scholarship, played in performances of Ancient Greek tragedy, and participated in reading groups in Latin and Old Norse. He is an alumnus of the 2017 Living Greek in Greece program.

Finn Mehigan

Finn is a graduate of the University Virginia, having received his
B.A. in Classics and Linguistics there in 2017. For the last five years
he has been teaching fifth-grade and Latin at the Heights School in
Potomac, MD. He has attended a number of programs focusing on
the active use of ancient languages, including Living Greek in
Greece. His interests include ancient drama, epic poetry from
Homer to Chesterton, and iconography.

Jonathan Meyer

Jonathan Meyer holds degrees from Calvin College, Yale University, and the University of Kentucky, where he took part in the active Latin program at the Institute for Latin Studies. He is primarily interested in Latin of the Renaissance to the modern period. He was a regular member at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, and a fellow at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck, Austria. He also studied under Reginald Foster. Since 2014 he has been an instructor for Living Latin in Rome and has taught occasional courses for Telepaideia. He is currently the primary instructor for Paideia's Rome fellowship. 

Chikondi Medson

Chikondi Medson teaches classics at the University of Malawi. Originally from a rural village in Malawi, Chikondi is an alumnus of the Accademia Vivarium Novum. While in Rome, he attended undergraduate courses at the Università Pontificia Salesiana, where he graduated from in June, 2016, defending his dissertation entitled "Senecae Locus In Philosophia Stoica: De Hominis Libertate Fato Universa Regente." His interests include Seneca's Stoicism, Patristic literature and Lucian.

Marco Romani Mistretta

A native of Rome, Marco Romani Mistretta studied Classics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and received a PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard University before joining the Paideia Institute. He currently directs the Institute's European branch and oversees all financial reporting, including income statements, balance sheets, and annual budgets. Besides being the author of several research publications, he has taught a number of courses on ancient languages, Greek and Roman literatures, and science in antiquity. He peer-reviews articles for Sage Business Cases and regularly lectures at Rome's Sapienza University.

Nancy Vander Veer

Nancy Vander Veer is a Development Officer at the Paideia Institute. She previously taught Latin at the Marymount School of New York and is a graduate of Samford University.

Luca Campomori

Before Luca became the bookkeeper for the Italian branch of the Paideia Institute, he graduated with a degree in Business Studies and Foreign Languages (English, French and Spanish) in Rome. He held several jobs (sales assistant, warehouseman, secretary) before working in a tax service center and then at an accounting firm. In his free time he loves to go to the cinema, travel, take photos and, when the weather is nice, do some trekking.

Gabriela D'Addario

Gabriela is a researcher, translator and humanist with 10 years of experience in international digital media. At companies like Google and BuzzFeed her roles have included business development, operations, and strategy & analytics. Other recent work includes translating a book from Italian into English; editing literature in translation; and fund-raising activities for arts and media non-profits. Gabriela graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in Classics, and is currently pursuing a Master's degree from NYU in the experimental humanities. She sits on the board of the Fiorello H. LaGuardia Foundation, a New York-based international development NGO. Thanks to time spent living in Italy and Brazil, Gabriela speaks Italian and Portuguese; she loves to play volleyball and unearth the inner workings of New York City. She believes strongly in the importance of the humanities to illuminate a path forward in these challenging times, and in the value of bringing academic thought and process into the world beyond the academy.

Jamel Daugherty

After almost a decade of teaching languages, Jamel left the classroom to focus on writing curriculum. Jamel developed materials for the Aequora program, served as a subject matter expert for the Institute's Summer Humanities Internship in 2017, and joined as a full time curriculum designer for 2018. She holds degrees in Classics and Letters from the University of Oklahoma and is pursuing a M.A. in Educational Technology Leadership from George Washington University. Outside classics and linguistics, Jamel is particularly interested in Irish archaeology and literature. She lives near Washington, DC with her husband, young son, and feisty calico.

Megan Buick

Megan Buick is the Online Programs Manager at the Paideia Institute. She studied Classics in Latin at the University of Iowa and under Reginald Foster in Milwaukee and has a Masters degree from Boston college in Philosophy & Theology.

Eleonora Vescovini

Sara Picciariello

Sara graduated in 2018 from the University of Aosta Valley in Languages and Communication for Business and Tourism. In 2016 she spent one year in France, attending the University of Savoy Mont Blanc in Chambery, which allowed her to get a double major in French. In 2017 she did a 5-month internship in Valencia (Spain), working as a receptionist in a hostel. She also has experience working as a hostess for international events. Sara's passions include languages, travels, and sports. She currently lives in Civitavecchia, near Rome, even though her origins are tied to the mountains around the Aosta Valley.

Emma Daniel

Emma Daniel and is a recent college graduate from New York City. She graduated from Hunter College, City University of New York in the spring of 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Greek and Latin and a minor in classical studies. While at Hunter, she was awarded the Athena Scholarship as well as the Solomon Bluhm Scholarship in classics. Emma tutored other college students in ancient Greek while at Hunter and was awarded the Josephine Earle Greek Prize upon graduating. Since graduating, she plans on expanding her Greek and Latin teaching experience in preparation to continue her education in classics at the graduate level in the future. Emma is particularly interested in the field of Greek and Latin translation and hopes to complete some of her own translations in the future, with a focus on early Latin church writings and the Greek New Testament. In addition to Greek and Latin, Emma is also interested in modern languages and has some basic knowledge of Spanish, German, and French. She is currently working part time in the design field as she hopes to pursue her artistic interests as well as her passion for ancient languages. Emma continues to reside in New York City.

Aminata Hughes

Aminata Hughes has a B.A. in History with minors in Classical Civilization and Secondary Education from Saint Peter’s University. Her love of the classics was nurtured at The Brooklyn Latin School, where she earned a perfect paper on The National Latin Exam during her freshman year. As an undergraduate, she played Jocasta in Oedipus Rex as part of her university’s Greek Theater Project. Outside of the classics, she enjoys camping, Japanese comics and winning at trivia.

Julia Donahue

Julia Donahue is a writer and recent graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Screenwriting and Classics & Archaeology. For her secondary major, she graduated with the honor of Program Scholar. Julia enjoys traveling and has spent significant time in Budapest, Hungary, where she studied film production and screenwriting; in Greece, where she studied modern Greek history; and in Cannes, France, where she worked at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019. Outside of classics, Julia enjoys literature and comedy writing.

Amanda Carver

Amanda earned a B.A. in Classics and History with a minor in Modern Greek Studies from San Francisco State University. She holds an M.A. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Arizona and wrote her master's thesis on Nabatean funerary practices, for which she earned an outstanding thesis award. While taking a hiatus from the world of Classics, she had the privilege of working as a Special Education teacher in Washington and Arizona public schools. Amanda's current interests include learning Modern Greek and reading New Testament Koine Greek. She lives in Phoenix with her husband, three rambunctious sons, and sleepy Bluetick Coonhound.

Shea O'Connor

Shea graduated in 2020 from the University of California, Santa
Cruz with a double major in Literature and Creative Writing and
Classical Studies. She is currently studying at the University of
Denver to obtain a masters degree in Library and Information
Science. She is an alumna of 2019 the Living Latin in Rome
program.

Shea hopes to unite her passions of archival studies,
Latin, writing, and teaching by promoting access to Latin
scholarship in underfunded high schools bringing visibility to the
language and Roman history through her writing.

Molly Jewett

Molly is excited to join the team as the office assistant. She enjoys having the opportunity to engage in the classics community and learn more about the many unique knowledge it can offer. When not helping out the Paideia team, she enjoys sourcing for vintage clothing and furniture, cooking, or exploring NYC.

Christopher Childers

Christopher Childers has a BA in Classics (2005) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry (2016) from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. In between, from 2005-2014, he taught Classics and Creative Writing at St. Andrew's School in Middletown, DE. He is currently in the tenth and, hopefully, final year of translating an anthology of Greek and Latin Lyric Poetry: from Archilochus to Martial, under contract with Penguin Classics. Some of his verse translations, from Greek, Latin, and French, can be found here: https://www.literarymatters.org/author/chrischilders/. He currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.