At Princeton, Abyssinia focused on education and human rights in coursework and community service. Abby is thrilled and honored to be joining the team at the Mariposa Foundation in the Dominican Republic!Ībyssinia Lissanu of Somerset, Kentucky is a recent graduate of Princeton University (class of 2016), with a major in Politics and a certificate in Spanish Language and Culture. Abby also has studied and volunteered in the Sacred Valley of Peru and has worked at a wilderness adventure summer camp for several years, leading groups of young girls on extended backpacking and camping trips through remote parts of Northern Michigan, Ontario, Canada and Alaska. In 2015, Abby participated in a Princeton Global Seminar in Santiago, Chile, studying Chilean literature, art and history for a semester. Growing up in Washington D.C., Abby attended a Spanish-English bilingual program at a public elementary school, which gave her the ability to speak and write Spanish and an immense appreciation for Latin American culture.
Outside of the classroom, Abby participated in a number of theater productions and served as a Princeton Women’s Mentorship Pod Member and a Windows Project team member, which brought theater workshops to an LGBTQ safe house in Trenton, New Jersey. Her senior thesis on gender dynamics in utopian and dystopian fiction garnered both the Willard Thorp and Thomas H. in English and minors in theater and American Studies. Abby Melick graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University (2017) with a B.A.