Michael Howell is from Granite Falls, NC. Michael taught English and worked on an organic farm during his gap year in Brazil, Argentina, and Costa Rica. He discovered a passion for language that he further explored with a Foreign Language and Area Studies award to study Mandarin in China and through his involvement in LingoKids: Carolina Language Outreach, a student-led volunteer initiative to teach children a second language. In the future, he hopes to work as a translator and open an institute for language learning.