Heidi Nydam is an Educational Advisor at GESP, where she guides international high school students and their families through the boarding-school search, from first interview to enrollment. Fluent in Spanish, she works directly with families across Latin America and Europe, collaborates with GESP’s partner schools to find the right academic and athletic fit, and travels to GESP showcases in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico and Iceland. Since joining in September 2025 she has focused on growing GESP’s female student-athlete clientele and strengthening its global partnerships across 15-plus countries.

A former varsity soccer player, Heidi knows the student-athlete path firsthand. She graduated cum laude from Bates College in 2025 with a B.A. in Environmental Studies (ecology and earth systems) and a minor in Hispanic Studies, earning Dean’s List honors every semester. Her senior thesis, a community-engaged study of soil and ecosystem health across different land-use histories at a working farm in Auburn, Maine, was presented at the college’s Mt. David Summit. She also tutored first-year students in an Environmentalism and Social Justice seminar and worked as a research assistant in environmental economics.

Heidi’s commitment to education extends well beyond the classroom. She interned at the University of Maine’s Pelagic Fisheries Lab at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, contributing to Atlantic bluefin tuna research that informs international management decisions, and has spent two summers guiding backcountry trips, in the Adirondack High Peaks and most recently in Alaska, where she led students through backpacking and kayaking expeditions while managing logistics, budgets and risk. The through-line is the same one she brings to GESP: helping young people discover they are more capable than they believed.