Hellooo Global Glimpsers! I’m Sophie and I’m one of your *awesome* Global Glimpse Leaders. We’re just under a month away from embarking on what is going to be the best trip ever – to León, Nicaragua! I’ve traveled around Central and South America a bit, but have never been to Nicaragua, so I’m getting really excited, and particularly looking forward to meeting all of you!
This is going to be my first GG trip, and I’ve loved reading through all of the workshop material you all have done – I’m so inspired! You all sound like amazing leaders and I’m excited to get to know each of you better. So you know a little bit about me going into this – I’m pretty new to the Bay Area, having moved to Oakland last summer from NYC. I’m originally from Seattle though, so have come back to my West Coast Best Coast roots after experiencing a few different parts of the country and world – mostly by playing professional soccer. Unfortunately, injuries got the best of me after playing through college at Columbia University in NYC, with the under-23 women’s national team, and then playing with the Chicago Red Stars, Seattle Sounders Women, and Bay Area Breeze. I’m a huge Seattle sports fan, but have also been a Manchester United supporter since I was a kid – any fútbol fans coming on the trip?! As long as we don’t have any Chelsea supporters we’ll be good… justtt kidding! 🙂
Since I don’t get to play very much anymore, I’ve channeled my energy into something else I care very much about – tackling some of society’s biggest humanitarian challenges! I work for a nonprofit called DataKind (www.datakind.org) and we use data to help other nonprofits be more effective in solving challenges like drought, fire prevention, disaster relief, traffic safety, etc. If anyone is interested in how the tech, social, and corporate sectors can merge to create some amazing, life-saving work – I’ll be happy to tell you more about what we do!
In my free time (when I’m not watching or playing sports, or finding new projects for my organization to tackle) I love cooking, going to concerts, traveling, surfing, reading, and most importantly – meeting new people. Some of the countries I’ve been to are South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and of course our North American neighbors – Canada and Mexico. One of the things I’m most looking forward to about our trip (and the main reason that I wanted to be a GGL) is that the program isn’t ‘just’ a way to travel and see another country – it’s all about building leadership skills that help create amazing global citizens – which is something I’m continually striving for. The program’s values of Courage, Compassion, and Commitment are three things that I value deeply, and strive for with each new trip I take and adventure that I embark on.
I can’t wait to see how each of these values comes out on our trip, and see how each of our unique individual experiences meld together to create a new awesome shared experience 🙂 I’ll be reaching out to each of you individually to connect before we get to SFO, so look out for an email from me and I’ll talk to you all soon!
With GG love,
Sophie
PS – Attached is one *super intense* pic of me in my natural habitat (green jersey – probably just scored a goal :P), and another just so you can recognize me at the airport / so you know I’m a totally normal, happy person haha 🙂
