This year has been the longest I have ever been nomadic, having lived out of a suitcase for nearly five months. I discovered that this type of life is not for me, staying in each location for days, to several weeks, to a month at a time. Now that I have relocated back to New York, I can say that this is what being home feels like. Paradoxically, this familiarity sets you up for further personal and professional growth. Having this foundation in a home base to continuously come back to allows you to take more risks than you otherwise could manage. For me, being on the road for prolonged periods of time creates a tenuous feeling, like I am losing touch with where I belong. I don’t want to reinvent myself, rather I want to grow like a tree anchored in fertile soil, following the patterns of the seasons.
I am still in this fight to stem biodiversity loss with passionate allies. I am continuously surprised by what our team is able to accomplish, especially with such limited resources at our disposal. I am cautiously optimistic for this coming year. Despite the headwinds in the United States, countries in Asia will start taking up this mantle of incorporating nature-based risk in how they conduct their work. They ultimately will have no choice but to given the degree in which natural disasters are disrupting business as usual.
I am very grateful to have built such a strong global group of confidants who come from so many different walks of life. I traveled for the first time to the African continent in Egypt and got to connect with conservationists whose work is so crucial to protecting migratory birds. Dr. Khaled Noby is both brilliant and humble in his work, in our conversation constantly passing credit to his team. He is also incredibly generous; despite his packed schedule he still found time to drive me back to the airport!
I was also quite lucky to be part of the Kinship Conservation Fellows class of 2025 and to meet such a great cohort. It was one of the best summers of my life. I will elaborate further in a future posting. There’s still time to apply for the class of 2026 and I highly recommend those conservationists out there to submit their application.
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