Founders
Seth Stanton Co-Founder
Pronouns: He/Him
Seth, an optometrist from New Orleans, LA, is immensely proud to be a co-founder of Miles4Migrants. His road to the charity’s inception is paved by an obsession with points and miles and a healthy amount of Redditing. On both sides of his family, Seth is descended from immigrants who fled in the name of religious freedom: his father’s mother came from Lebanese Christians who fled the Ottoman Empire, and his mother’s family were Russian Jews who fled the pogroms. Early on, Seth’s commitment to fulfilling flight requests became a personal obsession, and his waking up to photos of another family reunited drove him to work deep into most nights. As a result, he feels a personal sense of relief that Miles4Migrants now has staff so he can get some sleep and eat actual meals with his wife and children. Seth’s talents revolve around sarcasm, an ability to fire off a small flood of messages in free moments between seeing patients, and a semi-encyclopedic knowledge of the best miles to use for any route around the world. He is a proud husband to Erin and father to Marie and Sylvie.
Andy Freedman Co-Founder
Pronouns: He/Him
Andy proudly serves as one of the co-founders at Miles4Migrants, supporting the work of the dedicated team and celebrating the heroism of the families Miles4Migrants has the opportunity to support in their journey to their new community. His personal inspiration for helping to launch the organization came as he was searching for a way to make a meaningful impact on the global refugee crisis after spending time living in the Middle East. After attending an event on the topic of ways to support refugees at the headquarters of TripAdvisor (now a Miles4Migrants funder), where he learned about the financial burden faced by resettled refugees due to travel loan repayment, he thankfully stumbled upon the like minded and fellow miles-obsessed co-founders, Seth and Nick. Andy serves as a volunteer director, and outside his work with Miles4Migrants, he maintains an executive role at Assured Allies, a technology company helping to address the financial strain of a global aging population. Andy lives outside of Boston, MA with his wife and two young children, Nora and Grant.
Nick Ruiz Co-Founder
Pronouns: He/Him
Nick serves as a co-founder at Miles4Migrants, supporting the technology development that powers our mission. Nick also piloted the original idea of using points and miles to reunite families by flying the family of a Pakistani Christian personal friend in Europe. He later shared this idea on with other online reward point enthusiasts on Reddit, where Seth and Nick later sparked the movement. Nick is passionate about developing technologies that bridge cultural boundaries and overcome language barriers to improve lives. Outside his work at Miles4Migrants, Nick is a natural language processing research scientist at Interactions, working on virtual assistants for customer care. Nick lives near New Providence, New Jersey with his wife Jennifer and his daughters, Julia and Chiara.
Staff
Glaydon de Freitas Executive Director
Pronouns: He/Him
Glaydon was born and raised in Brazil where he studied law, and gained expertise in Brazilian administrative and immigration law, as well as international law. He continued his law studies in the United States at the University of Houston and was later a United Nations fellow at the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights. De Freitas was the CEO of Corazón Healdsburg and most recently served as the head of strategic planning for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) in Houston, Texas, as it gained national attention through a viral social media response to the U.S. border family separation policy.
Mary Novak-Caskey Flight Team Manager
Pronouns: She/Her
Mary has worked in the travel industry for 30+ years, first in airline reservations and later in a luxury travel agency. She has always had a love of travel, especially experiencing new places and cultures with family and friends. After being laid off from her agency during the pandemic, she came across a Miles4Migrants job posting and immediately felt fate had intervened. As the granddaughter of immigrants who spent years bringing their family to the U.S. one or two people at a time, re-uniting families sounded like an incredible way to make a difference. Mary is thrilled to be part of such an important mission and amazing team.
Patrick Stouffer Flight Team Manager and Corporate Liasion
Pronouns: He/Him
Patrick is a musician, writer, and points and miles fanatic currently based in Los Angeles. A freelance trumpet player by trade, he first discovered airline loyalty while traveling the world as a performer for cruise ships and various Broadway musical tours. For nearly ten years, he traveled non-stop to all 50 states and over 70 countries between work and leisure – using points and miles to fund and elevate his experiences. Patrick is overjoyed to be a full-time member of the Miles4Migrants Booking Team, where he gets to use his passion for frequent flyer miles to help reunite families and aid refugees on their journey to their new forever home. Between the remarkable tenacity of the travelers and the overwhelming generosity of the donors, he finds himself inspired and thankful every day to be a part of such a worthy cause. When he’s not booking flights, playing trumpet, or writing for AwardWallet, Patrick enjoys traveling with his wife, sampling new whiskeys, and spending time at the lake with his family.
Samantha Fauver Flight Booker
Pronouns: She/Her
Samantha has been in the travel industry for almost 20 years. She loves the opportunity Miles4Migrants provides her to use her passion for travel planning to help families and individuals start new lives and reunite with loved ones. Samantha has a Bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Utah. Currently, she lives in Sandy, Utah with her husband and three wonderful children. She loves to travel and in her spare time is an avid mountain biker and Mario Kart racer.
Julianna (Jules) Morales Flight Booker and Donor Engagement
Pronouns: She/Her
As a first-generation Salvadoran-American, Jules has held a lifelong interest in migration and human rights. After spending a gap semester volunteering at a refugee camp in Greece in 2017, she pursued a BA in International Relations with a concentration in Conflict Resolution at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. Through her studies and passion for travel, Jules has been able to call multiple cities around the world home, including Athens, Amman, and San Juan. Outside of her work with Miles4Migrants, Jules enjoys early morning workouts and deciding which passport stamp she wants next.