For this Day 2 🎉 piece of this digital writing journey, I am diving into three of the topics I am learning about. 

We all are learning something new at any point in our lives. One of the biggest challenges, at least for me, is trying to nail down a concise explanation to describe the area or subject I am learning about; especially if the content does not fall into a clear, delimited field such as “digital writing” or “how to grow a bonsai tree.”

This is my attempt to explain these topics and give a short reason why I find them intriguing.

Let’s dive in!

Social policy and business

Businesses that are working to tackle big social problems with innovative product delivery models have long intrigued me.

My graduate degree is in social policy and more broadly the study of markets. I find it enlightening and exciting to learn about businesses that plant their flags squarely in the mission to solve a big, often intractable challenge and then toil to find a sustainable, market-driven solution. 

I hope that over the next 5 years, as I continue to deepen my knowledge in this area, I'll speak more technically about a business's ability to tackle social challenges with business solutions with the right mission and operations.

Stopping environmental plastics

One area I have followed for years is the global and dynamic movement to clean up environmental plastics.

Both of my parents are veterinarians. Animals have always played a huge role in my life. One of the core beliefs I grew up with is that, as humans, with our status in the animal kingdom, we have an inherent responsibility to care for animals. The ecosystem is a critical part of animal health. As a result, the growing issue of environmental plastics—and environmental waste more generally—has long bothered me.

Businesses, foundations, and nonprofits are joining forces to clean up environmental plastics, a large portion of which ends up in the oceans. This is one of those fascinating areas I find myself exploring simply because I enjoy learning about all the innovative, market-driven answers.

Much of the plastics that end up in the oceans originate from low and middle-income countries. In Asia, Africa, and South America, The Plastics Bank has collection points where residents can bring, deposit, and be paid for the plastics they collect. In Bali, Sungai Watch captures river plastics with their meshed waterway barriers, aiming to clean up waterways by turning river plastics into furniture through their Sungai Design initiative. And for plastics that do unfortunately end up in the oceans, The Ocean Cleanup deploys large-scale clean technologies with a mission to address ocean plastic pollution.

The One Army Precious Plastics Project produces machinery and offers an online marketplace where people can sell artistic and functional products made from recycled plastics. With the boom of additive manufacturing (3D printing), there is a growing market for filament made largely from recycled plastics.

Additionally, to stem the flow of petroleum-based plastics into the environment—which can take centuries to decompose—a market for research and commercialization of bioplastics is growing.

International living

While I have been interested in transnational living and international projects since my undergraduate years, I didn’t truly live aboard until I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique. 

Since then I have either worked or lived for extended periods in the U.S., the U.K., Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Senegal, and Ghana. Through all the traveling from place to place, I have learned a lot about how to be productive as a digital nomad; the real power of living, immersed, in another country and culture for at least 3 months; and the growing, global community of high-level professionals working remotely.

If you are interested in any of these topics or would like to find out more, I would love to connect with you!

Thank you for reading!