Intern Bio

Vanya Akraboff

Making a new friend in Ireland

Vanya is a newly-minted college grad currently trying to answer that troublesome question favored by well-meaning family members of “what’s next?” She graduated with an English Literature degree from the University of Washington, a degree mainly reflective of her love of good books and not much else, as Vanya has no desire to teach as a career or further pursue her study of literature in grad school. Tellingly, her first 2-3 years in college were spent frantically trying to decide between several different majors that included art and French.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Vanya’s travel personality is a study in contrasts. She loves the city, but only providing she can take yearly sojourns in the rural country – her most recent job was working at an organic guest farm in the middle of nowhere Northern California. Likewise, the Arctic and the deep desert are at the top of the list of places she’d like to visit, and she is just as comfortable camping in the wilderness as she is racing around New York City.

If you are going to skydive, might as well do it in the Swiss Alps

Her most recent international sojourn came by way of a semester-long study abroad program in France that included side trips to almost every Western European country, including a glorious three weeks in Spain. She has also been to Bulgaria to connect with family roots. She is busy planning her requisite post-collegiate long backpacking trip to either South America or Southeast Asia, and is toying with the idea of giving up on trying to find meaningful work and instead joining the Peace Corps or teaching English in France.

She harbors dreams of becoming a mountaineer (in the Arctic!), learning Spanish, living in Paris, learning to surf, and getting a dog. She can usually be found reading a magazine, as she has an insatiable appetite for pop culture (as well as delicious food), or running, as she is attempting to talk herself into training for her second marathon.