Deanna Wertheimer

Deanna Wertheimer is World Learning’s manager of Communities Connecting Heritage, an ECA-sponsored cultural heritage preservation program in its second year of implementation. She oversees the implementation of six collaborative cultural heritage preservation projects focused on youth, women, and underserved communities that connect U.S. and international communities through both virtual and reciprocal in-person exchanges. Wertheimer has more than a decade of experience in educational exchange at World Learning, having successfully led the startup of two ECA-sponsored long-term youth exchanges, including the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) Program and the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange & Study (YES) Program. As lead on these programs, she worked closely with host schools, host families, and local coordinators to support students on their academic year exchanges. Her overseas work includes institutional strengthening activities with leaders in civil society organizations in Nicaragua, teaching English to university students in Valparaíso, Chile, and working in Barcelona, Spain, as the assistant program director for a Spanish immersion program. Wertheimer obtained her bachelor’s degree in social ecology and Spanish from the University of California, Irvine, and her master’s degree in international education from SIT Graduate Institute. She is fluent in Spanish.  

Expertise: academic exchanges; cultural heritage preservation; exchange program design and implementation; experiential learning; virtual exchange; short-term exchanges; youth exchanges; host family recruitment and management