While she was still a senior at Merrimack College, Fiona Coleman earned an Honors Program scholarship to travel to Haiti with a nonprofit organization to implement and distribute information for her capstone project, designing a resource- and culture-appropriate rehabilitative exercise manual. The trip changed the trajectory of her career.

Coleman returned home to Windsor, Conn. in the summer of 2015 and joined the Peace Corps, which assigned her to Zambia, Africa the following February. After spending three months in Zambia learning the language Bemba, she spent another two years teaching farmers advanced agricultural techniques to improve crop yields, enhance the nutritional quality of crops, and mitigate the effects of climate change in the region.