Our Team

Meet the people supporting our growing movement.

Leadership

Duarte B. Morais

CEO, Lead In(ve)stigator

Duarte is co-founder and CEO of P1t. He is also a tourism Professor at NC State University where he does participatory action research about tourism microentrepreneurship.

Gene Brothers

COO

Gene is co-founder and COO. He is also an Associate Professor Emeritus at NC State University. He is engaged in destination stewardship, community tourism assets, and quality of life.

John Bass

CTO

John is co-founder and CTO. He is involved with several startups in the Raleigh area making analytics an affordable decision-support resource for growing businesses.

Directors

Irem Unal

Director of Operations and Partnerships

Irem makes sure that things run smoothly with our destination clients, industry partners, and internal operations.

Craig Prince

Director of Product Development

Craig works with entrepreneurs to co-create transformative experiences that delight visitors and reflect the brand of our client destinations.

Destination Collectives

People-first Tourism has a growing number of individuals who actively nurture the entrepreneur networks at each client destination.

Contact us at info@peoplefirsttourism.com if you’d like to learn more about becoming a P1t entrepreneur or ambassador.