"My name is Stephanie Pendrys and I am currently a third-year doctoral student in the Communication Management program at Turiba University in Riga, Latvia. I’ve lived in Liepāja since 2021, and I am honored and excited to take part in the Study in Latvia Digital Ambassador program this school year.

Originally from Houghton Lake, Michigan in the good ol’ United States of America, I graduated from Albion College with a bachelor’s degree in History and English with Creative Writing Emphasis. I also have a Master of Mass Communications degree with an emphasis in integrated marketing communications from the University of South Carolina and a Master of Business Administration degree with an emphasis in marketing management from the University of Sioux Falls.

What else about me? Well, I have a dog named Cayce who you will be seeing a lot of over the next few days. I have loved sports since I was about five years old and have an irrational fear of ladybugs.

A question that I am often asked is, simply, why Latvia?

Out of nowhere, a guy I hadn’t seen in over a decade messaged me. He had lived in Latvia for several years. I told him everything, and he offered to buy me a plane ticket from South Carolina to Riga.

And I took a leap of faith. I quit my graduate assistant gig, sold or gave away about ninety percent of my personal belongings, and quit school before the semester even ended—all of this in about three days, and, oh yeah, without telling my parents first. Now, that was an interesting phone call.

My flight was Columbia, South Carolina to Charlotte, North Carolina, then Chicago, followed by New York, Helsinki, Finland, and finally Riga. I remember that it took me almost three hours to get approved by Customs in Chicago:

“Do you speak Latvian? No.”

“Are you Latvian? No.”

“Is your family Latvian? No.”

“Have you ever been to Latvia? No.”

“So, you have quit school in the middle of the semester and have a one-way ticket to Riga? Yes.”

I remember sitting at my gate in New York in the middle of the night, phone blowing up with people telling me that I was insane, stop, reconsider, just book a flight home to Michigan and think things over.

Leap of faith. And that jump is the best decision I have ever made in my life."