Meet Christian Sinclair

For Christian Sinclair, director of global programs and initiatives at Moravian College, curiosity about the world and a desire for international experience took hold when he was a young boy. “My grandmother’s family was from Albania, and I remember them sitting around the table speaking in Albanian,” says Sinclair. “For family reunions, they’d hoist the Albanian flag on the flagpole.”

In high school, Sinclair would study German and French, when studying two foreign languages simultaneously was discouraged. He began his undergraduate education at Boston University, but his unquenchable desire to study abroad compelled him to transfer to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

“I didn’t return to the United States for 14 years,” says Sinclair. Most of those years he spent in the Middle East and North Africa. He taught in Tunisia, spent some time in Egypt, and lived seven years in Syria. He also worked in Peru and studied in Spain. Sinclair is fluent in Spanish and Arabic and also speaks German, French, Italian, and Kurdish. “My Albanian is rusty,” he confesses.

When he returned to the United States, Sinclair developed study-abroad programs at the School for International Training in Vermont and the University of Arizona before joining Moravian College in February of 2016 to oversee and expand study- abroad opportunities for students.