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Jae Baker, ’17, French Major, Italian Studies Minor
After graduation, Jae dedicated himself to learning everything he could within the hospitality industry, focusing primarily on events. He recently accepted a position as the Event Technical Supervisor for the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. His degree has provided him with an invaluable skill set and a deeper level of cultural competency. He’s had the pleasure of working with celebrities, political figures, musicians, etc., and using his language skills along the way to engage with people from various countries.

Caitlin Clarke, ’12 - Double Major in French and English; Minor in Political Science
Caitlin studied in Chambery for a semester as an undergraduate and then returned there as an English instructor for a year after graduation. Back in the U.S., she looked for jobs that would allow her to use her French. She now works for Microsoft, helping to draw up proposals that sales teams market to their clients. Her language skills were essential to her hiring; Microsoft wanted a French speaker who could work with their French account teams and also do research on French companies for account teams that do not know the language.

Ryan Peterson, ’12 - Major in French, Double Minor in German and Political Science
Ryan spent his post-graduation year in Germany on a Fulbright Grant. He then returned to the U.S., where he worked in New York City with an events management company and assisted with communications for various art galleries. In 2015, Ryan moved to France to complete a master’s degree in political science and sociology at Sciences Po Strasbourg. He continued with a master’s in European politics and Franco-German cooperation, graduating in 2017. He currently lives in Paris and works as a Public Affairs Consultant at a consulting firm.

Matthew Casserly, ‘10, French Major and German Minor
After graduating, Matthew found a great job at Nokian Tyres in Colchester, helping francophone customers from Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritime Provinces. He especially enjoyed talking about his job with those who told him to stop studying things like French (and Finnish!), grow up, and study business. After God's infinitely ironic sense of humor led Matthew to get his MBA from Cardiff University despite solemn vows to never study anything so practical as business, Matthew moved to Kyiv and then Moscow to study Russian. He now wears many hats at Yandex, Russia's largest search engine and technology company, working mainly as a Russian-English translator and copywriter. In his free time, he teaches English, continues to study French, and volunteers in an organization that restores wooden churches in the north of Russia. Most importantly, he can still recite poetry he learned from his wonderful professors at ����̽̽.

Meg Salocks, ’10 - French Major; European Studies Minor
After spending a junior year abroad in France studying art history and critical theory, Meg came back to the States determined to work in the museum industry. She joined peer Matt Casserly for a bilingual year at Nokian Tyres before departing to intern at organizations in Vermont and California. This work led to a Master’s degree in Arts Administration from Columbia University and she focused her thesis research project on community engagement in New England museums as New England institutions face unique challenges that industry best practices cannot resolve. Meg has worked at the intersection of marketing and audience engagement for Jazz at Lincoln Center, Columbia University, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and Kidstock! Theater, and SIGMA Marketing Insights. She is currently the Director of Marketing and Engagement at Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vermont, and finds herself exploring new media solutions for bilingual and multilingual on-site visitor experience.

Melissa Guzikowski, ’15 - Double Major in Italian Studies and Anthropology
After graduating from ����̽̽, Melissa moved to Madrid where she worked as an au-pair for a year. From there, her love of travel landed her in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago located off the western coast of Morocco. When she is not at school teaching English, Melissa is advocating for animal rights through various internships and volunteer programs. She also runs a blog about veganism, slow travel, and mindfulness. In June 2018, she will leave the volcanic island of Tenerife to embark on a journey through Latin America. Melissaʼs appreciation of romance languages, culture, and travel blossomed during her college years. Her experience at ����̽̽ has allowed her to travel with an open mind while applying many of the concrete skills she learned in the classroom.

Patrick Grant-Musso, ’10 - Italian Studies Major
Patrick unexpectedly, but happily, found his way into the natural food industry shortly after graduating from ����̽̽. He started working as a finance manager for Madecasse, a fair-trade chocolate and vanilla company that sources its cocoa directly from local farmers in Madagascar and strives to make all of its chocolate at the source in Madagascar. At the end of 2016, Patrick was hired as an operations manager by Jawea Frozen Desserts, which makes coconut cream-based ice cream that showcases international flavors inspired by adventure and travel, such as Horchata, Spiced Coffee, and Dulce NO Leche.

Renée Lariviere
Foreign Service Officer at U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C - 

“I studied political science and Russian area studies at ����̽̽. After graduation, I completed a master’s program in international relations, with a regional focus on Europe and Eurasia at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. My ����̽̽ education has helped me in the pursuit of my future goals, namely to join the Foreign Service. I have had the opportunity to intern at the U.S. Embassies in Astana, Kazakhstan, and Moscow, Russia.”

Brittany Seraphin
Administrative & Production Assistant, Adventist Development Relief Agency, Silver Spring, Maryland - 

“While attending ����̽̽, I was given approval by the German and Russian departments to study abroad at Chelyabinsk State University for two academic semesters and was provided a scholarship. I have gone on to participate in the 2008-2009 ACTR (American Council of Teachers of Russian) Domestic Flagship program at the University of Maryland, as well as the ACTR academic year program in Moscow, Russia."

Claudia Garber, ’18, Linguistics major, French minor

Claudia will be working as a data associate for Amazon's Alexa Skills team. The job involves language data processing to make Alexa run more smoothly. She will be working primarily in English, but her skills in French were also very attractive to the company, as French Alexa just launched so transcribers are needed. In the future, she would also like to go back to school for a PhD or Masters in Linguistics or a related field.

Shannon Foley '19
Predoctoral Research Fellow at Dartmouth College

"I came to ����̽̽ undecided, but took some linguistics courses right away, though I had no idea what that really meant. After two semesters, I declared it as my major! . . . Linguistics helps you become aware of the intricacies/patterns in language that you hear and use on a regular basis."

Meghan McClure '19

"I really loved phonetics. I appreciated how it was more on the 'science' side of things. I liked being able to pick out differences in speech – now my party trick is to test people for the 'cot/caught merger' and then talk about dialectal differences."

Yovita Poerwanto '19

"I’ve always loved languages, and linguistics is a perfect blend between the 'hard' and 'technical,' and the more abstract nature of languages and art."

Sean Cray, ’18, Double Major in Spanish and Political Science

Sean is working for the Urban Teachers program in Baltimore, which is affiliated with Johns Hopkins School of Education. He has been assigned to teach at the elementary school level, and will also receive training on how to be a special education teacher. En route, he will receive his master's degree in elementary education/special education and a teaching license. He will likely be assigned to a school that has Spanish speakers because he can speak Spanish. 

Amanda Fox, ’10 - Major in Global Studies and Political Science, Spanish Minor

Amanda has taken on a variety of jobs since graduation: as an Americorps creator of environmentally friendly activities for children and adolescents, as a para-educator for a girl with Down syndrome, as an instructor at the Green Mountain Audubon Center, and as a farmyard educator at Shelburne Farms. These have helped her apply what she learned in global studies about making connections, and now she is an Eco-Cycle educator in Boulder, Colo., teaching children about recycling, waste reduction, litter prevention, energy awareness, and helping their schools to become producers of zero waste.

Raymond Ki, ’10 - Double Major in Spanish and Psychology

After graduating from ����̽̽, Raymond served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines, where he taught English as a Second Language (ESL) for two years, mostly to 7th and 8th grade students. While there, he founded his Filipino [public] high school's English Club and learned to speak Tagalog at an intermediate level. After returning to the U.S.A., he enrolled at the Boston Academy of English where he received a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) certificate.
Then, for a year and a half, Raymond studied at Boston University and graduated with a Master of Arts in Teaching Modern Foreign Language Education; his student teaching was done at Boston Green Academy, a Boston Public School. Afterward, he taught Spanish and ESL at CATS Academy Boston, a private boarding high school for international students. For the last few years, Raymond has been teaching introductory Spanish to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students at Framingham Public Schools in Massachusetts.