Whitney Obrien

Background

About Whitney Obrien

Whitney served as a Program Assistant at Laspau: Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas, a Harvard University affiliate in Cambridge, MA for 10 years. In the latest iteration of her role, she served on the Operations & Systems Team. In this capacity, she fulfilled scholarship operation duties and worked hard to foster collaboration amongst teams with the goal of streamlining processes. Whitney has three additional years of work experience in student affairs, teaching, and cross-cultural dialogue facilitation. During her time at Laspau, Whitney also pursued at EdM in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she focused on adolescent development, education justice for immigrant students, and intercultural development and learning. Prior to her position at Laspau, she pursued a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies at the Rubenstein School of Natural Resources and Environment and Honors College at the University of Vermont. As an undergraduate, her fervor for environmental planning, intercultural relations, and conflict resolution brought her to Cádiz, Spain to study coastal planning and later on to Costa Rica and Nicaragua to conduct research for her undergraduate honors thesis: “Transforming the Riparian Border Disputes Between Nicaragua and Costa Rica Through Environmental Peace-building: A Vision for Transboundary Collaboration in Central America”. Whitney also was also a Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) fellow for International Peace Park expeditions, where she has examined the peace-building potential of a proposed Balkans Peace Park between Montenegro, Kosovo, and Albania.Whitney is bilingual in English and Spanish and has a deep passion for traveling and experiencing new cultures.