LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH MEG RAMEY

Like many professional women in higher ed, Meg Ramey had reached the pinnacle of success in the academic world. She earned a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and Literature from the University of St. Andrews, attained tenure status at Messiah University, and received a generous benefits package that included sabbatical time. However, she felt like she was not on the right path.

“When I was a professor, I had no time for anything else. I was working 70-80 hours a week and didn’t have much time for family, friends, or a life outside of my academic career.”

She recalls reading an article early in her career stating that among career professionals, female academics were one of the highest demographics to remain single, even more so than female lawyers or medical doctors. Out of the fourteen members of her department, the three women were single while all the men were married. “That was more or less my experience throughout graduate school and higher education,” she recalled. Wanting to find a better work-life balance, along with many other factors, helped Meg decide to leave her tenured position. 

It was a natural transition for her to shift from academics to education abroad since during her eight years as a professor she had led students on many cross-cultural and service-learning programs spanning four continents and eighteen countries. When one of the program providers with whom she had worked—Tutku Educational Travel–offered her the position as Director of Education Abroad, she was happy to accept.

Even though she was traveling a great deal in this new role, she also had more free time than before. She joined the Board of Directors of YesLiberia, a non-profit that seeks to “empower young people in Liberia through meaningful service-learning opportunities in education, healthcare, and technology” and began volunteering with her local Harrisburg Keystone Rotary Club, which is where she met her husband. 

“I promised to show him the world, and he promised to show me Pennsylvania,” she laughingly recalled, “because even though I had lived here for 10 years, I had never had much time to explore the area. In 2019, during our first year of marriage, he saw five new different countries. When COVID hit earlier this year, however, our roles reversed, and he began taking me around Pennsylvania. We’ve been trying to get outdoors as much as possible—taking walks along the Susquehanna river, going camping, and hiking along the Appalachian Trail.”

She is happy that she left academia when she did. Reactions among her colleagues were mixed when she made the decision:

“Some people felt like I blew up my career, and others would say, ‘Take me with you!’ My life is a lot more balanced now, and I am much happier. I love my husband. I love my life. And I’ll be happy if this new business venture takes off.”

Meg’s latest adventure is becoming the Founder and Executive Director of WorldKind Journeys, a teaching ministry that facilitates studying the Bible “on the ground” while journeying to historic places and into sacred spaces across the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Europe.

The business was birthed out of necessity and ingenuity in the aftermath of parting ways with her company, which suffered a reduction in staffing due to COVID-19. Part of her business development research included enrolling in the Brazen Business Institute and in Penn State-Harrisburg’s Launchbox program, which helps individuals develop their own business and organizes a pitch competition at the end. Meg won the pitch competition and received a small amount of seed money to invest in her new business.

“After that it’s been figuring out how to do graphic design, web building, marketing, and all these different pieces that were not part of my academic training.”  

Along the way, Meg has had the support of other women impacted by the pandemic. She had just begun a Mentoring Circle offered by the Global Leadership League in March of this year.

“We were supposed to focus on salary negotiations, but we all just looked at each other and thought, ‘What’s there to negotiate?’ Half of us are laid off, and those who are still employed are not going to negotiate a salary because they are just thankful to still have a job. It morphed into us meeting once a month to discuss what was happening in the pandemic.”

She had also just been accepted into NAFSA’s Trainer Corps program and was placed into one trainer group with two other women:

“One still had a job, the other was furloughed during the summer, and I had just left my company, so we all had different stories. We still keep in touch periodically and hope that one day we will actually get to lead an in-person training session together.”

Starting an educational travel business amid a pandemic has had its share of highs and lows, but like most companies and individuals, Meg is focusing her efforts on what she can do as opposed to her limitations:

“The way that I’m making it work right now is that I’m doing a variety of jobs in addition to trying to build a new company. Next April and September, I am supposed to lead programs in Turkey, if there’s a vaccine by then, but I’ve also been teaching online and preaching at churches along with tutoring and editing online. Those are all the little pieces that have helped bring in money.”

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds.

The mission of the Global Leadership League is to ignite change across the global education field by empowering, connecting, and training leaders. We invite you to reach out to us here or learn more about becoming a member.