Our Directors

At Conversa we like to believe that we're more than just a Spanish school. Whether you begin contact with us before you arrive in Costa Rica or once you're here, we like to think of ourselves as your host - and we'll do our best to see that your experience in Costa Rica is as good as it can be. Here are a few of the folks that help make this happen:

Dave Kaufman - Director (dkaufman@conversa.com)
Dave obtained his B.A. in Spanish from Ithaca College and began his Spanish language teaching career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic. He served as Spanish Language Coordinator for Peace Corps training programs in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica before obtaining his M.S. in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University. In 1975 Dave co-founded Conversa and has been the head of the school ever since.

Andrew Kaufman - Administrative Director (akaufman@conversa.com)
Andy obtained his B.S. in Manufacturing Engineering at Boston University in 1997 and began working for Intel Corporation as an engineer in the Pentium ® chip manufacturing operations. From there he moved on to work in consulting with KPMG (now BearingPoint), working on selection and administration of government IT initiatives. In 2003 he obtained his MBA at The George Washington University in Washington, DC and he's been head of operations at Conversa since then.

Steve Hanson - Academic Coordinator (shanson@conversa.com)
Steve came over to Costa Rica from England in 1982 and has been working with Conversa since then. He was both a French major at the University of Costa Rica and an Education major at Ulacit. He came to Costa Rica shortly after finishing a managerial course at J. Sainsbury in England. He has coordinated both English and Spanish programs over the last 25 years, including the intensive CAPS/USAID program in the late 80's for graduate and undergraduate students going to the USA to finish their college degrees. Since then Steve has worked continuously on improving Conversa's teaching staff as well as on developing new teaching tools and techniques.

Nuria Zumbado - Language Coordinator - Santa Ana (nzumbado@conversa.com)
Nuria joined Conversa way back in 1980 after being part of the Peace Corp's Spanish training crew here in Costa Rica. In 1997, Nuria took on the role of Language Coordinator out on the Santa Ana campus. She has been working on further developing our teaching staff and our materials. In addition, she has been a member of the ConversaConmigo.com development team from the very beginning.