Andrea Turpin received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Indiana University in 2001. After a couple of years working in the non-profit sector, she went to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, earning an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies. She went on to the University of Virginia, graduating with an M.A. in History in the spring of 2007. Andrea has lived in Cairo, Egypt and Damascus, Syria, and attended the Arabic Language School as a student in the summers of 2004 and 2007.