Our Ambassadors at Cirenas are those who one way or another have contributed valuable time and efforts to help Cirenas grow and be what it is today. It all began back in the day, exactly May 2006, when Professor Chris Inman and his teacher assistant, Oriol Gimenez, led a group of students to Hacienda Ario to create a “Business Plan” as a model for Hospitality, Residential Development and an Ecosystem Research Station.
The “Ario Ranch Business Plan” was a catalyst for Caroline Grew and her newlywed husband, Tucker Symkowicz to take on a new project on the ranch, leading student groups from the US to come for one to two weeks of hands-on experiential learning. At the time, the housing and “center of operations” was the Grew family home, Frangipani.
Caroline and Tucker’s teachers and students all had “life-changing” experiences that gave Cirenas the strong base of contacts it has today. As Caroline and Tucker dreamed of having a family, they decided to move on, not without leaving a very important contact that helped build Cirenas a new campus.
Larry Lunt’s generous gifting along with other Ambassadors’ hard work and additional donations, is the reason Cirenas has a beautiful campus with infrastructure that is perfect for groups and a permaculture layout that is amazing.
Larry’s interest in seeing Cirenas grow, employed two of Cirenas’ leading Ambassadors for the structuring of the administration and operations. Karla Cosgriff and Sam Kenworthy came with vast amount of knowledge from the Island School of the Bahamas. Annette Grew, joined the team to lead with sales and marketing for two years, but the campus was under construction, which limited the amount of groups to be received.
Eventually another Management team took the place of Karla and Annette and kept working with Sam. However, it was still difficult for Cirenas to pick up sales.
In 2017, Cirenas took on a new management team and then restructured its board to lead with greater impact. Sales & marketing strategies, as well as the implementation of new projects (turtle conservation, watershed management and increased production of produce coming from the permaculture) are being worked on. All permitting, insurance policies and improvements have been made on campus. Since September Cirenas has picked up momentum and seen increased interest of potential groups coming during the 2018 high season.
The list of Ambassadors continues to grow and Cirenas is appreciative to each and every one who has helped. Cirenas looks forward to the involvement of new Ambassadors to reach its every day highest potential, which is to be a model of sustainability to the world.