Pell City graduate Abigail Minor will be in Malta this summer for an apprenticeship program.

The Auburn University youngster will spend 8 weeks working with The Finesse Group, an international public relations and marketing company, this summer. Minor said she will be one of a couple of trainees the company takes on each year

“I’m going to be working specifically on public relations,” she said.

Minor said specifically that it will be assisting the Fesse Group in developing international messages as the company moves to a more global business. She said the company has traditionally been Europe-centric and is based primarily in the UK, Malta and Japan.

Minor said that the internship is primarily eight weeks of distance work and for the first three weeks of the program she will remain in the United States, but will then move to Malta for the remaining five weeks. She said that this will allow her to meet in person with her boss and other staff once a week.

A minor graduated from Pell City High School in 2019 and served as the valedictorian of her class. She attends school in Auburn where she studies public relations with a concentration in journalism and a minor in Italian studies.

Minor said that it has always been her dream to go abroad even before this opportunity presented itself.

“I knew I wanted to be offshore,” she said. “I’ve been trying to live abroad for, like, three years now.”

Minor said she is primarily trying to do this through au pairing, where she stays with a host family in exchange for some childcare or housekeeping duties as part of a cultural exchange. She said COVID-19 had stopped those plans and was glad the internship was offering her another chance to go abroad.

Minor said the internship would not have been possible without the Auburn International Mentoring Program. The program was joined by Auburn Alumna Kirsten McConnell Grenside, who lives and works in Malta.

“Without Kirsten, I wouldn’t have had any of these opportunities,” Minor said.

She said Grenside connected her to Finesse Founder and CEO Jo Caruana. Minor said that she initially got on Zoom’s call and was still chatting with Caruana and by the end of the call, she was being offered an internship.

The internship will not even be the end of her adventure, after finishing the internship she will also spend a month with a host family in the North of Italy, the same family that originally tried to pair up with her.

Minor said that if there’s one thing this experience has taught her, it’s that time is everything.

“Everything works in God’s time,” she said. “I’m on the moon,”

Taylor Mitchell is a reporter for the Daily House covering the City of Pell.