A native speaker of Russian Svetlana Abramova received her Ph.D. in Russian Language and Methodology from the Moscow State Pedagogical University. She is an experienced teacher, whohas taught Russian to both native and non-native Russian students in Russia and the USA. For more than ten years she has worked as a teacher with high school students specializing in physics and mathematics, which sets high requirements on students’ competence in wide range of social registers of Russian, including the academic style. Her teaching practice, as well as her research interests, are specifically oriented to learner- centered pedagogical techniques, such as research projects in Russian language. In 2011, Svetlana had a unique opportunity of becoming a student in the STARTALK Teacher Program, “Preparing Russian Teachers for the 21st Century” at the University of Washington. This program gave her a chance to apply her teaching experience, as she successfully taught most of the STARTALK Student Program lessons related to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). In 2012-2016, she was the Lead Instructor of the STARTALK Student Program, which she almost single- handedly redesigned to focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and Russian culture. In 2017, Svetlana was a Lead Instructor at STARTALK program at Harvard University.