Jacob Aehl (MA, Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, UW-Madison) is the Russian Flagship Program Coordinator. He completed his BA at UW-Madison in Russian and History and is a Russian Flagship Program alumnus, completing the Russian Overseas Flagship Program in Almaty in 2017. After finishing his BA, Jacob returned to Almaty and lived there for two years, working as an English teacher and as a translator. In 2019, he returned to UW-Madison as an MA student with the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia, graduating in 2021. Jacob previously tutored for the Russian Flagship Program during his MA studies and worked as a resident director with the Pushkin Summer Institute in 2016.