Meet The Team
Auron Tare
Founder
Board Member of Unesco Underwater Scientific Committee
Auron is extremely active in cultural heritage issues and preservation initiatives in the country. He achieved his first great success by directly managing what is today the best sustainable model in the country and created the Butrint Foundation alongside Lord Rothschild and Lord Sansbury.
In 2006 he established the Albanian Center for Marine Research (ACMR) which serves as the leading NGO specializing in underwater research and archaeological expeditions. Together with RPM Nautical Foundation and early on support from INA from Texas A&M great findings and exploration continue each year along the coast.
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Contact Auron directly: auron@ourownexpeditions.com
Ols Lafe
Professor of Archeology
Ols is an archaeologist and national tour guide and has studied history and archaeology at the University of Tirana, Albania. He received an MA at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio (USA), and holds a Ph.D. in cultural heritage management from the University of Tirana, Albania.
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Co-authored several books and has won the 2014 Society for American Archaeology Book Award in the Scholarly category. Apart from his academic background in archaeology and tourism, he served for over 6 years as the Director of the Cultural Heritage Directorate of Albania's Ministry of Culture as well as with the President of Albania as his Cultural Heritage Adviser and Director of Cabinet. He is currently leading the Center for the Development of Ancient and Medieval Albanian Heritage (CDAMAH), a scientific research center based at the state university "Aleksandër Moisiu" in Durrës, Albania.
Vilson Haldeda
After serving two terms in Iraq as Albania's "Special Forces" we are honored to have Vilson on our team. His promptness, precision, and instinctual capabilities make him the perfect driver and assistant to our team.
Driver
Nancy is a native Michigander. For the past twelve years, she has managed operations and sustainability programs for Our Own Expeditions.
“With every tour we execute, we are constantly finding ways of keeping it real. Ensuring every local person touched will benefit from it one way or another. We strongly believe that Albania has a wonderful opportunity to learn from many mistakes other well-known destinations have previously made and we work hard at doing it right.
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Our passion and purpose are to create and promote tourism as a vital sector that locals can benefit from. We hope that our small role can somehow prevent over-tourism and foreign occupation of our treasured sites and preserve our landscape."