Maddie Melton
B.A. Anthropology, Chinese, Drama, Psychology, Rhodes University
B.A.H. Anthropology, University of Cape Town
Wilderness EMT
Originally from Washington DC, Maddie first traveled to China as a junior in high school for a year of personal growth and intensive language study in Beijing through School Year Abroad. They loved the confidence, independence, and joy they cultivated while building a life on the other side of the world. When they left Beijing, they moved to Hong Kong, where they finished high school with students from more than eighty countries at Li Po Chun United World College.
Maddie found another home in South Africa where they attended college, but China remained an important anchor point and they continued to return annually. During this time, they found their most meaningful work experiences as a Facilitator on the Americans Promoting Study Abroad summer study abroad program in Beijing. They loved sharing their own study abroad background with students and drawing on wide-ranging skills from language to leadership and facilitation to an intimate knowledge of city and country and taking advantage of the learning opportunities woven into the details of everyday life. It was also in college that Maddie (quite literally) stumbled into their love of the outdoors when a bad ankle injury took them out to the trails for rehabilitation.
They hiked mountains across South Africa and loved living within walking distance of the Cape Town Table Mountain trails in graduate school. After finishing their studies, they returned to the United States to thru-hike the 2,652-mile Pacific Crest Trail. Their time on the PCT renewed their love for the outdoors in the western United States and they are currently living in Salt Lake City, working in experiential education and hiking hundreds of miles each year across the deserts and high peaks of the American southwest. They are an avid scuba diver, insatiable reader, theatre aficionado, and aspiring writer. They have traveled to 40 countries and 19 Chinese provinces and are most often found with a backpack, a tent, and a box of takeaway dumplings on a train going somewhere.