Christy Sommers

M.A. International Education and Development; University of Sussex
B.A. Political Science and International Studies; Northwestern University
Fulbright Fellow: Bangladesh, 2010-2011, Italy 2022-2023

Though she grew up in small town Iowa, Christy has seized every opportunity to work, study, teach, and share across five continents over most of the past two decades. Her sense of adventure is closely tied to a passion for and belief in the transformative power of education. Before coming to Dragons, Christy taught in France, worked as an international development consultant in Washington DC, and spent a year and a half in Bangladesh studying Bengali and undertaking research on rural primary education. Christy completed her Master’s in International Education and Development at the University of Sussex just days before embarking to lead her first Dragons course in 2008.

Since that time, Christy has worked with Dragons in many capacities as a field instructor and administrator. She has led summer courses in Senegal and Rwanda and the West Africa semester program twice. She developed Dragons’ summer program in Madagascar, for which she was the Course Director in 2015, and has worked as Course Director for the North India summer program twice. Christy also developed Princeton University’s Senegal Bridge Year Program and worked as that program’s On-site Director in 2012-13, and worked on the Princeton University Bridge Year Program in India from 2014 to 2017. For three years, she worked as the South Asia Program Director, overseeing all of Dragons programming in India, Nepal, and Bhutan.

Christy is a certified Wilderness First Responder. She speaks French, Italian, and Hindi, plus conversational Bengali, Spanish, Wolof, and Pulaar. Christy is an amateur livestock photographer and aspiring birdwatcher and loves living a life in which she can continue learning every day.