MELANIE MANUEL
Villanova University, B.S., International Business; Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, M.S., Bilingual Intercultural Education

As a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at la Universidad del Valle in Sololá, Guatemala, she completed her master’s in Bilingual Intercultural Education, studying with Mayan educators to teach traditional and cultural literacy in Spanish and indigenous languages. She acquired a working knowledge of Mayan Quiche as the only non-Mayan in her program. As a recipient of a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching, Melanie will spend this spring semester in Chile researching street art and investigating how it can be used to teach language and culture. Melanie currently teaches high school Spanish in Philadelphia. She also teaches World Language Methods courses at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She has led Putney Student Travel Language Learning in Argentina, Community Service Ecuador and the Galapagos, and worked as an instructor on Pre-College Madrid, and Pre-College Barcelona. Melanie is fluent in Spanish.

CARINA SCHORSKE
Yale University, B.A., Literature, B.A., Ethnicity, Race, and Migration; University of Chicago, M.A., Comparative Literature

Carina has traveled extensively in Latin America, studying in Argentina for a semester and conducting a research and translation project in Mexico City. She worked for two years as the associate editor at Transition, a magazine of the African diaspora published by Henry Louis Gates at Harvard University. Carina spent an academic year at the University of Chicago writing her first manuscript of poems, entitled Viewfinder, which she continued to develop as an Isabella Gardner Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She was recently named a CantoMundo Fellow, an honor reserved for the nation’s most promising Latino poets. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she studies psychoanalysis, race, and Latin American literature. Her poems, translations, and reviews can be found online at The Awl and the Boston Review. Carina has led Putney Student Travel Writing in Ireland and worked as an instructor on Pre-College Barcelona, and was a student on a Putney program in Cuba when she was in high school. She is fluent in Spanish.

BRITT BASEL
University of Colorado, B.A., Anthropology; El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, M.S.; Colorado State University, M.S., Human Dimensions of Natural Resources

During her undergraduate studies, Britt conducted fieldwork with the indigenous Guarani of Paraguay and studied in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. She also studied Photography and Art History at the Aegean Center for Fine Arts in Greece and Italy. After graduation, she worked as a SCUBA instructor, a photographer, and an international educator in South America and East Africa. Her studies and work have brought her to 38 countries around the world. Since receiving her master’s, Britt has worked with the United Nations Development Program and the Nature Conservancy on  climate change adaptation, conservation, and agroecology projects. Currently, she works as a consultant in community-based climate change adaptation in the islands of the South Pacific and as a freelance writer and photographer. Her work has been featured in National Geographic Traveler India, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune, among others. Britt is a PADI-certified SCUBA instructor, an Emergency First Response Instructor, and a Wilderness First Responder. She has led National Geographic Student Expeditions programs in Spain, Belize, Australia, India, Ecuador and the Galapagos,  Switzerland and France, and Costa Rica. She has led a Putney Student Travel Global Action El Salvador program. Britt is fluent in Spanish.

JAMES BERNAL
University of Florida, B.A., Photography, History

James is a Chicago-based freelance photographer, filmmaker, and world traveler. He has interned at Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York while photographing for a number of different clients including the Travel Channel, The New York Observer, Airbnb, The American Guide, and SKY Deutschland. James has worked with 100cameras, a NY-based non-profit that aims at putting the power of photography in the hands of disadvantaged children around the world, and has worked as a photo assistant to Chicago photojournalist and TED Fellow, Jon Lowenstein. James’s travel adventures include backpacking through Europe, climbing volcanoes in Nicaragua, following the Andes mountain range from Colombia to southern Patagonia, and tracing the length of the Mekong River while exploring ancient Khmer ruins in Southeast Asia. He is currently working on a personal photographic essay on Colombian diaspora and issues of emigration and assimilation. James has led National Geographic Student Expeditions programs in Barcelona, Ecuador and the Galápagos, Australia, Italy & Greece, and Iceland. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.