Christina Ilgner

Tina was born in New York City but grew up in Berlin and Bremen, Germany. German is her mother tongue, but she feels at home in Vermont as well as in Germany. She delights in traveling and learning about other cultures, and has combined her passion for travel and hiking by completing four long distance hikes in Austria and Italy. She taught German, Spanish and Music at a boarding school right after getting her B.A. from Middlebury, and is on a quest to become completely fluent in Spanish. Despite her love for anything Latino, she calls the community of the German School her second family, where she’s worked as the Coordinator and later the Assistant Director since 2001, after working many years as a paralegal in the Juvenile Public Defenders Office and a corporate law firm. 

Outside of work, she is the principal cellist of the Champlain Philharmonic, has a pilot’s license, loves the natural world and anything outdoors, is a former 4-time All-American in track, and won a competition to do a new English translation of the German classic “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo”, which was published in 2013 under the title “Zoo Station”. She lives in East Middlebury with her dog, Rusty.