Congratulations to Ecuador’s New PTO, Dana Platin!

On the wintry evening of February 10th a merry group of RPCVs, former Peace Corps-Ecuador staff, and their friends and relatives met at the house of Ecuador’s former Program Training Officer (PTO), Michael Ketover, in Rockville, Maryland. 

Aside from just wanting to hang out in the New Year, the group met to celebrate Dana Platin’s recent promotion from the APCD of the Youth and Families (Y&F) program to the PTO position –second in command after Country Director Cisco Ruybald.  Dana certainly comes to the role with excellent experience.  After her initial service in Ecuador (’97–’00) as a Y&F volunteer Dana received her Masters in Public Health at the University of San Francisco in Quito.  She then served a couple terms as technical trainer for the Y&F program in Ecuador and helped Peace Corps-Peru design and implement their first Y&F program.  Dana earned herself the APCD spot soon afterward and was in charge of the Y&F program for two and a half years.

The get-together was organized through Evite.com, an online site for simplifying event planning.  Although the list of invitees started out small –based on RPCVs who the Ketovers knew were in the area– the number of invitations quickly increased as the original invitees added the email addresses of others who might want to make it.  RPCVs as far northeast as New York, as far west as Oregon and as far south as North Carolina were added to the growing list of names, as well as two RPCVs presently residing in Japan and the Dominican Republic.

Although not all of the invitees made it to the get-together, around five different omnibuses were represented spanning from 1997 to 2006.  The list of attendees included former Country Director Ruben Hernandez and his wife Arlene, Dana Platin, Barbara Fleck, Christine Bixiones, Claire Tebbets, Beth Blacklow, Caitlin Gerdts, Jocelyn Getgen, Daniel Dedeo, Daniel Lapidus, Liz Lehman, John Varrieur, Andrea Vaughn, Stefan Chacon, as well as various friends and family members of the RPCVs.