BLAKE PIEDRAHITA

Rhodes College, B.A., Commerce and Business, B.A., Spanish; University of Memphis, M.B.A., International Business (candidate)

While at Rhodes College, Blake focused his studies on International Business and Spanish language and literature. At Rhodes he also competed on the school’s collegiate Track & Field team, earning All-Conference distinctions in all of his four years to go along with multiple conference championship titles both as a team and individually. He spent a summer in a language-intensive study abroad program in Ecuador and another at an internship with the U.S. Department of Commerce in Santiago, Chile, where he helped provide export counseling and support for American businesses seeking to expand into Chile. Blake has traveled to Costa Rica twice for service projects. He is currently pursuing an M.B.A. in International Business at the University of Memphis. He is fluent in Spanish and is beginning to study Portuguese. Blake has led Putney’s Community Service Costa Rica program.

JAIMIE SPETSERIS

The University of Georgia, B.A., Journalism, Public Relations (minor in Spanish)

While at the University of Georgia, Jaimie studied abroad in Cádiz, Spain, and traveled around Europe for a summer. After college, she worked for an advertising agency in Atlanta, Georgia, until her desire to travel, speak Spanish, and teach English took her to Bogotá, Colombia, where she lived for a year, and traveled extensively throughout South America. Jaimie then went to Costa Rica, where she volunteered at Rancho Margot, a sustainable eco-lodge, giving tours of the carbon-negative ranch and local nature, working in the gardens and wood workshop, and assisting with recycled art and gardening projects for visiting high school students. After several months in Costa Rica, she went on to volunteer at an off-the-grid beach lodge on Isla Los Brasiles in Nicaragua, where she helped to manage the turtle hatchery and ran the lodge. Last summer, she led a Student Conservation Association crew in the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. Jaimie is a certified Wilderness First Responder and currently lives in the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California where she is a medic coordinator at High Trails Outdoor Science School. She is proficient in Spanish and has led Putney’s Community Service Costa Rica program.