After spending the fall semester of 2009 studying abroad in St. Petersburg, Melissa graduated in May with a double major in Foreign Affairs and Russian and East European Studies. She is currently interning in the Communications department of Management Systems International, an international development company and USAID contractor. Although she is working in (purely-English language) Communications now, she hopes to further her study of Russian within the development community, specifically through democracy, human rights, and governance projects in Russia and the CIS region.