George Butterfield ’57: Embracing a Global Community 

Tiger — Spring/Summer 2026

George Butterfield ’57 was 19 and in his final year at Ridley when he took what he calls a grand tour of Europe. It changed everything. That journey became the seed of Butterfield & Robinson, eventually one of the world’s most respected travel companies, and the source of a conviction he has carried ever since: that travel makes people more fully human. 

“We tend to live within our own communities. Travel exposes you to different cultures, religions and ways of life, and people who have travelled are generally more open and understanding.” 

Now 87 years old, George’s support for Ridley’s global and service learning initiatives is rooted in that same belief. When he and his wife were approached about funding travel programmes at the School, the answer was an immediate yes. He knew firsthand that transformative experiences are not equally accessible, and that helping to close that gap matters. 

What he finds most compelling about today’s Ridley is the shift toward service learning, students who do not simply observe the world but contribute to it. That integration of travel and purpose, he says, is something his own generation at Ridley never had. 

“Whether students are doing service at home or abroad, the important thing is getting involved and understanding the needs of others,” he says. 

For George, that evolution reflects something essential about what education at its best should do. It should pull back the blinds, as he puts it. It should create encounters that complicate easy assumptions and replace them with genuine understanding. 

He points to a simple truth that his years of travel have reinforced: most people, wherever they live, want the same things — a good life, a family, the chance to contribute to their community. The more students encounter that truth in real places, with real people, the better equipped they are to lead in a world that increasingly demands the ability to see across difference. 

He still loves to travel himself. At 87 years old, the airport has become more complicated. But the desire to see the world, George says, has never diminished. And his belief in the transformative power of a Ridley student's first real journey beyond their own community, that, too, remains unchanged.