-: I volunteered in high school at a Boys and Girls Club
in my hometown of Austin, Texas.
And they had a small garden there.
And it was like, I like the outdoors,
you know, I'll give it a try,
see how it goes.
So I started a little veggie garden at my own home.
And then, when I was looking for colleges,
an environmental program, and a school that had
a campus farm, was actually high on my list.
And so, Pomona came up as a good place.
I was lucky to get in here.
Spent all of my free time, basically,
as a student, at the farm,
and was in a leadership role there.
And I just think for me, environmentalism is what
I kind of approach a lot of things in my life
from that environmental angle.
And this was a great kind-of hands-on way
to apply that, and also to use it to teach
the younger generation, and to teach adults.
And there's something as simple as growing
your own food that you can then take and eat
that's just really satisfying, so.
I mean, one of the biggest challenges is at
any small non-profit,
the kind of mentality is that
you are trying to do as much as you can
with as little as possible.
And so, obviously, we have financial constraints.
But, obviously, everyone working there is passionate
and wants to do as much as they can.
You know, it's not to say that we're encouraged
to like burn ourselves out
and after two years just be kinda
fed up with it all.
But, you know, we'll do more work
than we're getting paid for because we love it.
And it's, it's, you know, what want to do.
So that's definitely a challenge.
I think, in some ways it's a challenge
to have to do a lot of different things
as part of this job.
But, in other ways, that's what I really enjoy.
Like, I can't see myself in a nine-to-five
desk job doing the same thing every day.
That's just not, it's not me.
So I enjoy getting to do
a lotta different things all the time.