I grew up in beautiful Aurora, Colorado, and in the background, I was slowly watching the snowcaps disappear from the Rocky Mountains. I attended University of Colorado in Boulder to earn my Bachelors in Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology/Ecology in 2017. I really miss the dining halls on campus. Wow did I take that fresh, healthy, delicious food for granted! This was the setting that I learned sustainable lifestyle habits. When I was in the middle of college and I needed to find alternatives to student loans to fund my college degree, I sought an AmeriCorps service year. I learned in that time, working for a watershed organization, that environmental work is political work. This was demotivating for my college degrees. I didn’t want a job in politics.

I focused my climate change efforts on personal lifestyle choices. I’ve taken my vegetarian efforts everywhere I’ve lived, and limited my consumption, my shopping, my wardrobe. I hand-sewed on buttons, closed holes, but most of my jobs required uniforms so I usually wore my clothes until they were worn through. My tap water hasn’t always been the cleanest but instead of buying plastic water bottles, I have used water filters. But this past year, as climate change has overtaken the planet, and our leaders have taking only the most minor, less-than-bare-minimum steps to curtail emissions, I have expanded my actions to politics.