Live Stream of the White House Travel Bloggers Summit on Study Abroad and Global Citizenship, December 9, 2014 #WHTravelBloggers

This morning I learned via Twitter that the White House in collaboration with Hostelling International USA is hosting the first White House Travel Bloggers Summit on Study Abroad and Global Citizenship today.  You can learn more about the Summit via the HI-USA News webpage at http://bit.ly/1w9mQ9x and this blog post by HI-USA CEO Russ Hedge at http://bit.ly/1s92a1S.  As the title of the Summit suggests, invited participants are the top 100 travel bloggers and digital influencers.

Based on my limited available time to fully research this event it seems that the National Security Council may have played a significant role in planning the event.  The Summit will stream live via the White House Live Events page at http://1.usa.gov/1w9sOHo at 2:15pm EST.

Speakers include:

Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Commerce, Department of Commerce

Denis McDonough, Chief of Staff, The White House

Benjamin Rhodes, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting, National Security Council

Evan Ryan, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), Department of State

Carrie Hessler-Radelet, Director, Peace Corps

Daniela Kaisth, Vice President, External Affairs and IIE Initiatives, Institute of International Education

Alex Montoya, Alumnus, Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship Program

Angel Cabrera, President, George Mason University

Samantha Brown, Host, Travel Channel

Don Wildman, Host, Travel Channel

Robert Reid, Digital Nomad, National Geographic

Robin Goldberg, Chief Experience Officer, Minerva Project

James Howard, National iHeartRadio Brand Coordinator, iHeartMedia

If you wish to follow along via Twitter, Instagram or Facebook you can do so via #WHTravelBloggers.

#WHtravelbloggers Tweets

I'll be posting this in a few moments over on SECUSS-L for two reasons:  

First - to inform everyone about this event as it seems to have not have made it to the larger study abroad community.  Kudos to @CIEEstudyabroad for engaging via Twitter to see if any of their alumni, and possible travel bloggers, are attending the Summit!

Second - to possibly generate some discussion within the SECUSS-L community about the Summit.

While I haven't come across the complete list of 100 travel bloggers attending the Summit I posit that very few (if any) are Study Abroad professionals and aside from Evan Ryan of ECA and Daniela Kaisth of IIE it appears that the international educator voice is missing from such an important Summit on Study Abroad and Global Citizenship hosted by the White House!  Perhaps that is a good thing?  Your thoughts?