Catching up with Brittany Swingle, SVHS ’04

Where are they now?

Brittany Swingle

Not many recent grads up and leave a great job with Google after being offered an even better opportunity.  But Sonoma native Brittany Swingle recently learned she had been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to teach English in Croatia, so she gave notice at Google and will be arriving in Zagreb, Croatia, as this paper hits the press.

The Fulbright Program offers grants to United States citizens to study, teach and conduct research abroad and for non-U.S. citizens to come to the United States. It was established by Congress in 1946 and is funded by an annual appropriation made by the Congress to the State Department, with additional support provided by foreign governments, corporations and foundations.

The Fulbright Program awards approximately 1,600 grants to U.S. students each year, who travel to and work and study in more than 155 countries worldwide.

Swingle graduated from UC Berkeley in 2008 with a degree in communications and sociology, and has worked for Google in their legal department since graduation.  

Upon coming to the realization that she did not, in fact, want to be a lawyer, Swingle looked for opportunities to work overseas, as she hadn’t been able to study abroad in college.  

She applied for the Fulbright and, after several rounds of applications and interviews, learned that she would receive a $20,000 award to teach English to Croatian graduate students at the University of Zagreb.

Located in the northwest of the country, Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia, with 700,000 residents.

Swingle will be in Croatia for around 10 months, and then hopes to stay abroad and do some traveling.  “I am interested in learning more about the foreign service,” said Swingle.  “I expect that this experience is going to give me a much better idea of what I want to do next.”