Our story

In 2008, early in his 22-year career as President and CEO of East County Schools Federal Credit Union, our founder, Steve Devan imagined a travel program for the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce. At the time, Steve was also serving as a board member for the Chamber. His thought was to create a collaboration between the chamber, and his credit union that exclusively served school employees in his community.

By creating this travel program, he could not only increase the awareness of the chamber and the credit union, but also increase the worldwide knowledge and experience that school employees could bring back to their classrooms in an effort to ignite and inspire the students they serve.

What started out as little more than a thought bubble turned into an 18 year international travel experience (and counting) that take school employees and community members all around the world to such places as China (twice), Peru (twice), Istanbul, Costa Rica (twice), Italy (twice), Australia & Fiji, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, the French Riviera, Croatia (twice), Thailand, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Chile, Argentina and the Amazon River.

With the Educator Tour traveling exclusively in July due to the availability of virtually all school employees to travel, Steve wanted to expand his Guided Travel experience to places that summer travel wouldn’t always accommodate. In addition, travel during the summer tends to be more expensive so he decided to offer travel opportunities beyond the July Educator Tour program.

Some of them have travelled with Steve and Therese as many as fourteen times.

Upon retirement Steve and his wife Therese created “MyTribe Travels”, largely on the encouragement of many of the 600+ travelers, some of which have traveled with Steve and Therese as many as 14 times. So as you can see, the term “MyTribe” is not just a fancy marketing term, it is a true family of travelers who have enjoyed their travel experiences with each other for many, many years.