Annie Peuquet joined Polygence as the Director of Partnerships in 2023. She is a deep believer in the power of Polygence’s programs to help students discover their identities as learners, take the reins of their own education, and explore their passions in ways that will serve them throughout their lives.
Her personal journey:
I grew up amidst educators; my mom and grandmother taught at my school in St. Louis and the family commitment to the power of good education was omnipotent. I was lucky to have several impactful and meaningful teachers and mentors who helped me love school and develop a hunger for ideas and fascination with the complexity of the world. I developed early passions for politics, history, and the environment, and was also lucky to spend my summers at summer camp in Colorado doing backpacking trips that helped me expand my comfort zone and learn my limits were in fact mine to determine.
Growing up in the middle of the country left me looking in both directions for college, and I landed at UVA in Charlottesville, eager and excited to get to know another part of the country. My obsession with new places and challenges led me to study abroad early in college, spending a semester in Chile studying political economy and human rights, where I dove deeply into new truths I was learning about the history of US involvement in Latin America. How history is told, and whose stories are told, became a driving throughline of my undergraduate studies, and I stayed another semester (this time in Argentina) to study human rights and the US political and economic legacy on the continent.
I completed two degrees during my time at UVA in Foreign Affairs and Latin American Studies, and this focus brought me to Washington, DC after college where I worked in think tanks supporting Asian diplomacy efforts at the Aspen Institute and sub-Saharan African economic development at The Brookings Institution. After a few years supporting infrastructure projects in East Africa with MASS Design Group in Boston, I was ready to admit that my roots–my family’s roots–in education, were actually where I belonged.
To professionally transition to the world of education, I completed my Masters in Education at Harvard University, focusing on Entrepreneurship and Leadership. While at Harvard, I met the founders of Envoys, a company partnering with schools to bring global education from the periphery of learning to the core–to help students build the skills necessary for global citizenship. I joined fulltime after graduation and spent seven years growing school partnerships that helped students study topics like colonialism in Morocco, or K-Pop in Korea, or migration in France, all fostering their sense of self and their understanding of the world. These critical skills are also what we foster for students at Polygence!
I am a mom to a very funny two year old girl and live with my husband and our dogs in Denver, Colorado, where I love to trail run, ski, and explore the mountains.