As a young kid, I got lost. Often. Not because my parents were neglectful, but because I had a tendency to follow my curiosity wherever it led me. I get carried away. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up my answer was an adventurer. I have felt the allure of new and unfamiliar experiences throughout my life and I am so thankful for the wonderful surprises I have walked into over the course of my life because of it.
My parents instilled in my sister and I a respect and appreciation for nature from a young age. Tree huggers themselves, my parents toted us along on many camping trips and outdoor adventures all across the country. Some of my earliest memories are the simple sight of the mountains in Colorado, where we spent a couple of my early summers. Coming from the flatlands of Chicago, the massive and awesome mountains captivated me and filled me with awe. That feeling that makes you giddy and lost for words for how beautiful and amazing that everything around us is is something that I try not to let myself go more than a day without feeling.
My love for the outdoors and sense of adventure led me on many escapades throughout high school; be it a school camping trip to the Grand Canyon or driving around at all hours of the night searching for a place to see the stars through the orange suburban sky glow. While taking an AP Environmental Science class during my senior year of high school, I became aware of the trouble we are now facing with our environment. Prior to this class, learning about environmental issues filled me with fear. I felt helpless, this problem was so big, what could I possibly do about it other than fearfully await the day when the oceans boil away and curse my parents and grandparents for the damage that they had done. My AP Environmental Science class helped me to gain a deeper understanding of specific environmental problems, and I made the decision then that I could and would do something about it. I told my teacher I was going to save the world, and he laughed, and I declared an environmental science major at Santa Clara.
When I said that I would save the world, I naively envisioned creatively coming up with some off-the-wall solution to our problems, like a tube that extended up into space where we could send our garbage (yes… this is an actual idea that I had). Within my first couple of quarters at Santa Clara, I made great friends, learned from and looked up to phenomenal teachers and continued to explore my surroundings which helped me to learn about myself, the world around me, and my place in it. My idea of saving the world began to change.
During the summer prior to my sophomore year at Santa Clara, I participated in an immersion trip in El Salvador. I had never really seen poverty up close before, and the experience had a profound effect on me. We spent three days on a homestay with families living in the countryside. My host mother was incredibly kind and generous and during the goodbyes on the third day, she thanked us for coming and apologized for the living conditions, she said that she wished she could give us more, because we deserved so much better, but this was the best that they could offer us. This disturbed me. Why did I deserve living conditions better than this village had to offer? The people I had gotten to know here were some of the most generous, compassionate, accepting, and loving people I had met in my life. They were the ones who deserved more.
It was in El Salvador that the world wouldn’t be saved by some clever invention. I was humbled. “The world” doesn’t need saving anyway. We as humans, I realized, simply needed to treat each other and the life around us with love. I realized that if I made all my decisions out of love I couldn’t go wrong. I would be what was needed when and where it mattered. My calling became even more manageable and exciting to me when broken down into individual decisions and acts.
My ability to connect with others and the centrality that relationships with others holds in my life has allowed me to feel comfortable in unknown and foreign places. The more that I explore and push myself to get to know the unknown, people, places, activities, foods, ideologies; the more I feel at home in the world. This has allowed me to get very comfortable jumping into things that may be overwhelming or daunting to others.
This lead me to South Africa. I decided to spend a semester in a country I knew very little about with 24 strangers. The strangers became some of my best friends and during my time in South Africa I encountered some of the most beautiful places and people to enter my life thus far. We were engaging in ecological research within the National Parks of South Africa. It was beautiful and exciting, but we were isolated from interacting with the real people who lived in this country and that didn’t sit well with me. Finally, half-way through the program, we were able to spend time in a rural village. I connected with the family that I was staying with and began to feel conflicted about what I was doing in South Africa. How could I justify researching crocodile population dynamics when there were people living in poverty just outside the gates of the park who could benefit from someone working towards finding solutions to the problems that they face.
Upon arriving back in the states, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my experience in South Africa and where I wanted to go from there. I realized that in order to protect and restore our environment, we are going to have to find economically sustainable ways of doing so, because given the choice between saving a forest and cutting down that forest for firewood to cook food to feed your hungry family, people are always going to rightly choose to feed their families. I also began to think about how entrepreneurship could be a great way to achieve this type of change I was looking for. I believe that through entrepreneurship we can find solutions that help people while simultaneously improving and protecting our environment, and I am very excited to explore this potential through this fellowship.
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