I am an American that is a product of an international world. A world I have travelled throughout and seen the travesties associated with underdevelopment and conflict. It is my desire to not be a bystander, but an actor and play a role in development and conflict resolution. Even if that means by writing

After high school my twin desires for adventure and purpose collided in the form of travelling and volunteering. I set up an internet café in Chile and learned Spanish, lived in India and worked for the Mother Teresa house in Calcutta, did disaster relief in Peru, lived in Switzerland to learn French and plan for trips abroad, built houses in Mexico, worked with street kids in South Africa, and traveled from Cape Town to Cairo.

Four years later, I knew that I had to study further in order to move from just putting band-aids over deep wounds to actually curtailing the inflictions. I choose to study in Africa instead of America because I wanted to run projects while I studied. South Africa has the best institutions in Africa juxtaposed against massive unemployment, the highest number of people with HIV/AIDS in one country, a huge housing crisis, and all the hopes and freedoms of finding the remedies to these tribulations. I came to Stellenbosch University, moved into a township and began to learn what development was about, and what it was not about. I am at the end of my degree program and have ran a plethora of projects that I can be proud of, as well as learned copious amounts about the world by travelling up in to Africa during my vacations. I have ran HIV testing programs, lead an aid team to Zimbabwe, set up a recycling system for the university, built houses, led a march, worked in orphanages in Mozambique, initiated a tutoring project and wrote various articles and papers on Africa.