UNH Today

Quincy Abramson ’19 thinks she would like to run an international nonprofit one day. Or work for the state department as a consul (she’s been studying for the foreign service exam). Maybe even become an ambassador. She has a pretty good background to get her there: Her father, an immigration lawyer, was born in Chile. The family lived there for two years when Abramson was in third and fourth grade. When she was a junior in high school, she spent the year in Italy with a host family.?

"I can’t imagine being here and just going to classes without being involved in everything else."

A dual major in international affairs and Italian, Abramson says her time overseas fueled her love of art, leading her to minor in art history. She also happens to be “effectively” fluent in Spanish and Italian and knows Latin.?“I’m just fascinated by so many things. Being a professor is probably the one way I can see to combine all my passions,” Abramson says.

Those passions, a blend of her education and experience, are shaping her future goals. Her immediate plan is to pursue a master’s degree in public administration; to that end, she has applied for a yearlong Fulbright fellowship at the University of Milan in Italy, a school that offers? the program.

“It’s a shot in the dark,” Abramson says of getting the coveted scholarship, “but Jeanne Sokolowski from the (UNH)?Fellowships Office reached out because she thought the program would be a good fit for me, so I applied.”

Abramson knows she is a semifinalist and will learn in late April or May if she has made the final cut. In the meantime, she is ramping up for plan B, which would have her going knee-deep into the 2020 presidential campaign. If she gets the Fulbright, she’ll volunteer as much as she can this summer. ?

“I worked on the 2016 and the 2018 elections. Being politically active has been a very big part of my college career,” the Concord, New Hampshire, resident says. “I’m so fortunate that I was able to be involved with the presidential campaign during my freshmen year.”

Her previous campaign involvement had her working as a fellow with NextGen America in tandem with the New Hampshire Youth Movement. For the upcoming presidential race, she has already started candidate-tracking.

“I’ve been birddogging Sen. Elizabeth Warren,” she says. “And there will be others.”

Abramson’s engagement doesn’t stop there. She is the director of the UNH?Diversity Support Coalition and a member of the Presidential Task Force on Campus Climate. In 2018, she did an internship through the UNH Center for Social Innovation and Enterprise, spending nine weeks at the?NH Community Loan Fund/ROC NH?on their resident-owned communities project.

“I’ve definitely overloaded myself some semesters,” Abramson says.

And yet she wouldn’t have it any other way. Coming out of a private high school to a large public university “broke me out of my boarding school bubble,” she says. “I sought out pockets that interested me. You have to find your own niche. I can’t imagine being here and just going to classes without being involved in everything else. There is always so much more you can do.”

Interested in a dual major in international affairs? See where it can take you.

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