Lindy Avila

Co-Founder | ESL Specialist & Spanish Teacher

Lindy is a TEFL certified language teacher and co-founder of Linguaviva Collective. As both an educator and a language learner herself, she understands how frustrating traditional language classes can be — and how powerful it is when learning finally feels relevant. She leads much of the day-to-day teaching, marketing, and operations, bringing empathy, energy, and structure to everything she touches.

Linguaviva began with two friends who studied abroad together and later found ourselves doing similar kinds of language work in different parts of the world.

While in grad school, Hannah was asked by a construction company to help their safety supervisors communicate with their Spanish-speaking team on a St. Jude project.

She taught the Spanish they needed to keep people safe. It worked, and then the requests kept coming... English for landscaping, Spanish for healthcare etc.

Lindy was living in Colombia, working as an ESL specialist in an international school and running her own practice teaching English to professionals – from clergy to realtors to business leaders.

We were both seeing the way highly specialized language instruction was in high demand + how it changed the way people could do their jobs, serve their communities, and change their lives.

Hannah Pitner, PhD

Co-Founder | Applied Linguist and Spanish Professor

Dr. Hannah Pitner is a professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics who specializes in second language acquisition. She launched Linguaviva after being approached by organizations looking for fast, relevant Spanish training for their staff. What began as a few custom classes quickly grew into an ongoing series, all fueled by community interest and results.

Shortly after Lindy moved back to the US, we did a six-week intensive at the Hospitality Hub (a local nonprofit): Hannah built the curriculum; Lindy taught the class. It was not only successful linguistically, but really brought the team together around a shared goal and experience.

We continued to collaborate over the next couple of years on classes and a community conversation partner program. When we officially branded and became Linguaviva Collective, we choose to turn this little project into a small business focused on connection and high-quality language learning. We set out to reimagine what online language learning could be.

Today we offer online language courses, a conversation partner program, a language immersion retreat in Colombia, and custom classes for teams.

As language learners and teachers ourselves, we believe in this work and we’re doing our best to build something that brings people together and brings good into the world.

Thanks for following along.