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.

Claire Cunningham

Ilias Kolokouris

Cecile Kurman-Browning

Cecile graduated from the University of Chicago in 2019 with an AB in Classical Studies. Her interests include Roman archaeology and art history, and she hopes to work as a museum educator in the future. She is an alumna of 2017 Living Latin in Rome program.

Madison Forbes

Madison is a Latin teacher at the School of the Blessed Sacrament in Manhattan, teaching 4th-8th grade. Using the spoke-Latin approach, she teaches Paideia’s Elementa curriculum and is now piloting the second edition of Elementa. She is also an English PhD student at Fordham University, in which she focuses on Greek and Latin pedagogy in 16th-century England. She is an alumna of LLiR 2017, the Rome Internship 2018, and has been a Telepaideia instructor.

Margot Kleinman

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.

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. 

Emily Landau

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. He also manages the Paideia Press. 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 the Programs Manager 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.

Gabrielle Bruestle

Gabrielle has a BA in Philosophy and French from Pepperdine University and a MA in Liberal Arts from St. Johns College. She has taught in classical elementary schools across the country for over a decade. After studying Latin at the University College of Cork during the summer of 2012, she fell in love with the Latin language. She returned to work developing a Latin program in a start-up classical school. She was later hired as an elementary teacher and curriculum coordinator for a classical school in New York City. While there, she attended the Living Latin conference in New York City in 2018 and enjoyed the extra pedagogical training. Later while working at the Naval Academy Primary School, she began an Aequora site offering Latin instruction to elementary students after school. During the pandemic, she offered online Latin tutoring to students in various educational contexts. She now specializes in Latin instruction at the Key School in Annapolis, MD. Gabrielle looks forward to making Latin instruction more teacher friendly and engaging for elementary schools. She is passionate about encouraging Latin instruction in diverse school settings, and sharing her love for language and learning with others.

AnnMarie Patterson

AnnMarie Patterson is a Ph.D student in Classics the University of Southern California focusing on epic poetry and Roman art. She has taught for the institute’s Telepaideia and Living Latin Online HS programs, as well as other Latin classes. An alum of Paideia’s Living Latin in Rome and Living Greek in Greece programs, she loves spoken Latin, the architecture of Rome, and a good cappuccino.

Eleonora Vescovini

Rebecca Tauscher

Becca Tauscher is a graduate of Hunter College and received her B.A. in Classical Studies and Classical Archaeology in spring 2021. While at Hunter, she was awarded the Solomon Bluhm Scholarship in classics as well as the Raab Presidential Research Fellowship. She also was accepted as the 2020-2021 Archaeological Institute of America New York Chapter Scholar. Her undergraduate thesis focused on Seven Against Thebes iconography in Etruscan material culture during the 5th-2nd century BCE. Becca worked with the Paideia institute as a Latin teacher and tutor at ThinkPrep Academy in Manhattan, as well as helped to revive the Latin program at the Williamsburg Charter High School in Brooklyn. Currently, she is a Paideia Fellow working in Rome on various Paideia projects and running academic tours for high school and college students.

Tyler Patterson

Claire Mieher

Claire Mieher graduated from Tufts University with a BA in Greek and Latin in 2019, and received her MA from the University of Southern California in 2021. She is interested in the reception of Greek and Latin literature from the 15th-17th centuries, especially within the writings of classically-educated women. Claire has taught and tutored high school and college students in Latin and Ancient Greek using active methods. In addition, she enjoys creating videos, glossed readings, and other resources in ancient languages. She is excited to join the Rome office this year as Senior Rome Fellow.

Cha Quan Wilder

CQ Wilder is a graduate from George Mason University with a B.S. in Administration of Justice and a M.ED. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus in ESL. She first worked with Paideia in 2016 as a literacy consultant for the Aequora curriculum, and she now manages the Legion Project. Currently, she teaches academic writing to English Language Learners at a community college in Maryland. Moreover, she has over a decade of experience in early childhood education and is also a ghostwriter and published author. In her free time, she loves to travel, spend time with her dog Karla, and help others.

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.

Oliver Berman

Oliver Berman is a high school student at Grace Church School. Before working as Development Assistant at the Institute, he was a Paideia summer intern doing research for the Legion Project and writing for the Dolphin Editions. Outside of classics, he spends his time reading, studying Japanese and French, and tracking down cute cat pictures. He lives in New York with his family.

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. 

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.

Kristen Hook

Kristen is Paideia’s Programs Manager, as well as an instructor for Telepaideia.

Alongside her work at the Institute, she is writing a Ph.D. dissertation on poet Guido Cavalcanti’s afterlife in 15th century Florentine philosophy (UC Berkeley, Italian Studies). Before going to grad school, she lived and studied for several years in Rome, where she also worked for Paideia’s European branch.

She is a devotee of literature, philosophy, and art — especially of the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance — and is fascinated by Aby Warburg’s approach to Antiquity’s “survivals.” She currently lives in Maryland.

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 Frederick, Maryland.

His teaching in the Institute's Telepaideia program currently focuses on Latin Historiography.