I spent the last few days discussing college applications with a group of students about to head off on gap years in Ecuador, Brazil, Senegal, and India with Global Citizen Year. These were some of the coolest kids I’ve met, getting ready to move to the third or sometimes fourth continent they’ve called home, preparing to take on new academic and personal challenges without parents or teachers or friends. We talked about how their college application process had gone last year, what made them decide to take a gap year, and what they’re hoping to get out of this experience.
 
For many of the students I meet, there is a straight line from “What do you want to be when you grow up?” to “What are you going to major in?” to “What’s your five-year plan?” But the students I spent the last 48 hours with don’t know what their lives are going to look like in a year, and refreshingly, they don’t see that as a problem. These kids are ambitious, well-read, and well-traveled. They’re about to build international resumes before they can even drink legally. They’re asking big questions and looking for ways to contribute. But what stood out to me the most was their curiosity and their comfort with ambiguity, something many young adults are discouraged from expressing.
 
Of course, correlation is not causation. But I can’t help but wonder if being open to an alternative path to higher education also makes you more open to overlooked disciplines and unconventional careers. I wonder if just by taking this first step off the traditional path, they’re giving themselves permission to emphasize enthusiasm over practicality, exploration over decision, a choice that I believe will continue to serve them over the course of their lives.
 
These students are still teenagers, so of course they have moments of doubt about breaking ranks with their peers and heading off to host families instead of residence halls. But I felt confident reassuring them that they would be successful in the future because of their decision to have this experience, not in spite of it. The path to a satisfying career can be unpredictable, so why not start with an adventure?

After talking to Lauren Salas for 10 minutes, I knew I wanted to interview her for this series. Lauren is a horse trainer and competitive rider as well as an artist specializing in equestrian and canine portraits. Oh, and in her free time she’s studying for her real estate license. Lauren is a rare example of someone who turned her childhood passion into her career, but that doesn’t mean she’s done exploring. I have no doubt that every time we talk, she’ll have something new she’s excitedly diving into. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
 
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
You know, I honestly wasn't very sure. The equestrian part of my career has been a lifelong passion pursuit. My mom was a casual rider, but she said the second I was born I just had tunnel vision. Riding is all I wanted to do. I don't even remember starting riding. It's just always been my life. My area of expertise is in jumping. It's high intensity, adrenaline-packed, really fun, and I'm definitely that way; I want to go fast. I've done a lot of other things too like western-style riding and ranch work, cattle work, all that kind of stuff.
 
When I was in high school, I started working as an assistant to one of the top trainers in the area. That was really fun because I was doing what I loved every day after school and every weekend and getting paid. That supported me through high school, and then when I moved to college, I continued doing that same line of work. It was definitely something I could see myself doing for a career; I just wasn't quite sure yet.
 
How did you decide to attend University of California, Santa Barbara?
 
I did a couple of years at community college and then I transferred because it made the most sense for me financially. I really liked the Santa Barbara area. I wanted to be far enough away from San Diego, which is home to me, that it felt like I was going off and doing my own thing, but still close enough that I could go back for a weekend. And I just fell in love with the area, so I ended up staying there for seven years.
 
How did you choose your major?
 
I was kind of all over the place. I got a scholarship to go to Hawaii Pacific University and considered marine biology. My dad's a die-hard water man, so I grew up on a boat, on a surfboard, just consistently in the ocean. But it just made more sense to be in Santa Barbara.
 
I majored in communications studies at UCSB. It was just a really interesting mixture of the psychology component, the sociology component, looking at family units and the workplace. It was a really interesting way for me to delve into, "Why do people act like this and how can you have a healthy family unit?” Then I took a lot of courses on business organization and people skills. I don't really work within my major, but I do use the things that I learned every day because all of my work is working with people really. It's just human relationships, as is everything else.
 
How did you get from college to where you are now?
 
After graduation, I went full-time into training. I started my own business in Santa Barbara, coaching kids and adults, and then training horses and selling horses in that market. I was really, really happy. It paid for me to have a great little place in Santa Barbara, and my life was just busy and fun. I did that for three years until I moved to Europe, and just kept doing it in Europe.
 
I was married to a great guy who also worked in the equestrian industry. About two years into our marriage, he had a head injury and came out of it a completely different person. At the end of it, he got a job offer in a different state, which was really rough, but in the long term, definitely a blessing in disguise.
 
I went back down to San Diego, and I had started dating a Hungarian guy. He had to go back to Hungary, and I thought, "Well, if I can find a job out there, I'd be more than happy to just take on a new adventure." So I contacted a bunch of people and ended up getting a job out there competing and riding. It was a dream that I never really thought would happen, but it felt like my opportunity to do something wild.
 
I did some teaching there, but the language barrier was really difficult, so it was mostly training horses. There was a level of difficulty there with the language barrier, with the culture, everything. My ex-boyfriend's family was intensely old school as far as their views on what a woman should be. I felt like his parents expected me to be barefoot, pregnant, and cooking in the kitchen. And I was out there fighting for my career. That was really intense, being a single woman in a field dominated by men, especially being a foreigner. I really had to dig deep to get some street cred, but once I did, it was really good.
 
It's interesting because there are a lot of people in Hungary that are ready for a change, and then there are a lot of people holding on to these old school values. Hungary is a country that has been through so much turmoil and they've had so much loss, so there's these old values that they feel like they need to hold onto.
 
Working in Hungary was just a completely different world. It was very, very intense. There's a big competition circuit across California, so I had my clients and their horses that want to compete, and then my own horses that were for sale that need exposure, so I competed a lot.  But they have a different mentality in Hungary - you just get tough or die. And the workload is crazy. We're a lot lighter and fluffier here. But it was such a good experience.
 
I was there for two years, and through my work, I was able to travel to 10 different countries. But the winters there are like nine months out of the year, and they're brutal and cold and miserable. I felt like I reached a point where I had gotten what I could get out of it. I feel like I was stagnating; or I could go home and take this experience and move forward in a really cool way. I'd been there for a long time as a single person in this rural village an hour away from any major city. It was fun to be able to focus so much on my career and the horses, but I was ready to be back and have a social life. I feel like I have a family there any time I go back, but I was ready to be back on American soil and feel comfortable again.
 
I'm really proactive, so I set it up so that I would have work when I got back. I have horses for sale now, and it's been going really well. Also, about four years ago, I started really getting into artwork. Somebody contacted me and said, "Your pictures are so cool. Can I commission you to do my horses and my dog?" So that turned into a side thing for me. It’s really fun because while I’m not physically working with the horses, I can come in and just paint. And it's been a fun way to connect with different people.
 
I don't want to go sit in an office, I don't want to work with somebody else. So I just charge into these situations that are kind of crazy, but I do have always a plan. And it does require so much self-motivation. Yesterday I spent half my day going around to different places in the Design District in Solano Beach talking to people about collaborating on artwork and selling it. I think I have that mindset of very much being a go-getter and wanting to fight hard so that I can continue to do my own thing and not have to take a 9-5 somewhere.
 
It's been fun to see my career segue. I feel like I have my hands in a bunch of different pots right now. Like I'm currently studying for my real estate license, because my mom's in real estate and she needs an assistant. I'm really enjoying having a lot of different things. In my ideal picture - which is funny to say because five years ago I could've told you my ideal picture and then I ended up in Eastern Europe for two years - I would like to continue to do the artwork and continue to do the horses, but maybe not on such an intense physical level. As I'm getting closer to 30, it's so much physical work every day, and I want it to be something that I can continue to enjoy for the rest of my life. I see so many people lose that feeling of being so passionate about it. And I feel like as I'm transitioning into more of a professional phase of my life; I'm kind of ready to not finish the day covered in dirt head-to-toe, you know?
 
Looking back, what seems clear to you now?
 
It'd be amazing if I could jump back to being 20 years old with the knowledge and experience that I have now, but that's an impossible thing. There are definitely times that felt rough to go through, but I don't think I would change a thing.
 
I was really fortunate to know young in life what my absolute passion was, what made me feel energized, and that was with the horses. Then, it's navigating this boundary between what you're passionate about and what makes you money. If you can find a way to put those two things together, incredible. I read something funny the other day; one of my friends who's in the same industry as me posted a picture that read, "Do what you love, and you'll kind of work all the time." But I think you just find a balance.
 
I would say, never let go of an opportunity to really chase something that you love, and don't get stagnant. That's something that I fight like crazy. While some days it's tedious and exhausting, I honestly don't feel like I go to work. If I wasn't working, this is still what I'd be doing. I've never let an opportunity pass me up, even if it seemed like it might be difficult to get into. And that's landed me in a lot of different, fun, odd jobs.

Thea Smith Nilsson is a singer, a traveler, a Stitch Fix stylist, and an explorer. Like a lot of people in our generation, Thea is card-carrying member of the gig economy, taking some time to decide on her next move after working in corporate social responsibility for the last 7 years. I see a lot of my own experience in Thea’s story, specifically her effort to find a career of substance, not just a job that sounds fancy. Which is why I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
 
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
Well, it was probably 50/50, singer and interior designer. Ideally I wanted to be a singer who wasn’t famous, but was popular. I honestly don't even know what would’ve looked like, but that's what my dream was. I wanted to be able to support myself singing, but I really didn't want to be recognizable to anybody, I didn't want to be stopped on the street. I just wanted to be myself in the world, but also record some CDs and make millions. And that seemed achievable at the time.
           
And then I was also really into interior design. I don't know if it was watching HGTV or what, but I was just really interested in the emotional relationship with space and place. I wanted to study how just moving things around, floor plan, and color can change the way you feel. I started taking classes in interior design through the UC Santa Cruz extension when I was 17. I was meeting a lot of cool people and thinking we should start a business, and then I remembered I was 17 and should also go to college. So between those two career paths.
 
How did you decide to attend University of California, Davis?
 
I was rejected from almost every college I applied to. My college of choice at the time was UC Santa Barbara, and I was really crushed that I didn't get in. I met a woman in my interior design classes who had gone to Davis, and I just liked her and I wanted to be like her, so when she told me I should apply to Davis, I did. So I basically went because a woman named Lauren told me to, and I'm so glad I did.
 
I think like all college experiences, it was a mixed bag. I actually went to community college first and did all my general ed courses, and when I transferred, I had a little bit of a feeling of arriving late because everybody had already made friends and joined sororities and were in clubs. And there was no transfer student housing, so I was on Craigslist trying to find an apartment, trying to figure out the layout of Davis and who to live with, it was stressful. So I think the first year was probably like a lot of people's freshman year, totally overwhelming.
 
And then it got amazing. The next year I lived with two girls who I adored and became really close friends with. I ended up staying a third year because I changed majors, and having the third year was incredible. So I feel like I had a really rich and wonderful college experience, even though at the time it felt sort of counterculture.
 
How did you choose your major?
 
I started out as an interior architecture major, but Monday, Wednesday, Friday furniture design at 8:00 am is rough. And also loud, because we were legit making furniture. So I loved the major, but I was also taking some communications classes and found myself really being more drawn to that. The assignments I was given in interior architecture were things I had to, and the assignments I was given in communications were a gift.
 
So I graduated with a degree in communications and a minor in contemporary leadership. That program was a compilation of a lot of different concepts from a lot of different departments like sociology, business, econ, which I liked. It was just about what it means to be a leader in today's world, and I really appreciated what I was able to learn there. I think there should be more programs and required courses that fall into that bucket. I remember my favorite part of that minor was learning about followership. They talked a lot about how leadership is obviously really important, but it's equally important to have followers, folks that are going to execute the vision and contribute to it too.
 
How did you get from college to where you are now?
 
Before I graduated, I didn't know what to do next, and it was that point in senior year when everybody has gone to the job fairs and they've had their interviews and they're narrowing down what they're going to do for an internship or a job, and I had not done that. I was doing some informational interviewing that last semester of the school, and I talked to eight different people who were in fields where a communications major might fit and might be able to add value.
 
I got the idea from Lauren, the one who told me to go to Davis, because she had really become a mentor. She said, “Think about everybody that you know, and write down the names of those people - don't omit anyone - your dentist, your uncle, your friends, parents, me, all the people that you know, and that could teach you something or provide value to you. That’s your network. And those people will help you.”
 
Most people want to be helpful, to share personal advice, stories, and connect you to other people. So it’s okay to reach out and say, “I don't know what I'm doing, I'm about to graduate and I just want to learn more about your work.” So I did that with eight different people and one of those people ended up hiring me. He was in corporate social responsibility, CSR, which was a field I knew nothing about, but immediately after talking to him, I knew that I wanted to be in that field.
 
I asked him about some of his favorite things about his job, and I remember really distinctly that he told me that the best days were the days when he gets to take groups of employees to volunteer with nonprofit organizations. And I thought, “You get to do that for work? That's awesome.” I realized that CSR was a lot of what I'd been doing. I started the microlending club at UC Davis, and I was really interested in recruiting people to join charity walks and runs; a lot of the stuff I did in my free time were things that he was doing for work, and I was so excited to think that I could do that in my everyday work. So I joined him as an intern the summer following graduation at this company called Synopsys.
 
For smaller companies, you kind of do it all. So you're involved in making grants to nonprofit organizations; vetting the organizations and deciding where to invest resources. And those resources can take the form of employee time and skills and pro bono work, or in more traditional volunteering, or it might be dollars. It might also be product. So you're sort of the liaison between the company and the nonprofit. And then the company will generally have a social mission as well as their corporate mission, so understanding what that is and being able to make connections between the company’s employees and the organizations that could benefit from their skill sets. And then recruiting employees, motivating them, congratulating them, recognizing them, all of that. And then externally, the PR side of things, making sure that, because it is a company at the end of the day, the social mission of that company is being promoted.
 
I was with Synopsys for a summer internship, and then I started with Microsoft in July. And that was again, just pure networking. My manager at Synopsis knew people at other tech companies, and he did a really good job of being an advocate for me and a promoter of my work.
 
I was with Microsoft for seven years; I left in January of 2017. There's a lot that I'm proud of from my time there, but for me, the most important part of the work was helping people find places to invest in. What I spend the most time thinking about and feeling proud of are the people at Microsoft that I was able to help make those connections, whether it was somebody who moved here from a different country and had a passion that they wanted to invest in, but didn't know anything about the organizations in this area; or somebody who had lived here their whole life and were just now learning about philanthropy and making enough money that they felt like they could build that into their own personal investment portfolio, maybe join a board. All of those were things that I was really privileged to be able to advise on.
 
I would still describe this phase of my career path as exploratory. I think when I was at Microsoft I was totally on a path, and at some point I just realized that I wanted to learn some new things, and I felt like I was at a point where I had learned as much as I could in that role. So now I'm exploring what the next chapter will look like, and I don't know how long this phase is (or how long I can afford for this phase to be) but I'm really grateful to have this time.
 
Looking back, what seems clear to you now?
 
I definitely feel like networking is not a natural inclination for me, and I've thought of it a lot as kind of... disingenuous? I always felt awkward asking for help, asking for what felt like favors when it really was just advice. But when I was at Microsoft, I had an hour on my calendar every Friday for informational interviews, because that had been so valuable for me along the way that I just wanted to make sure that my lunch hour every week was open if somebody wanted to sit down and talk to me about CSR. And actually that was oftentimes one of the highlights of my week. So I wish that I could have learned that earlier on, known that that in itself was a gift that you were giving somebody when you asked for help. Everybody you know is in your network, and they probably do want to help you.
 
Also, you can learn things the hard way and that's absolutely okay; it’s okay to try something and not like it. Which is one reason that internships are incredibly valuable, so if there's any way you can secure a summer internship while you're in college, I think that's absolutely worth doing. I didn't have an internship until after I graduated college, but it would have been so valuable to learn something totally different every summer.
 
I would really encourage everybody to see as much of the world as they can, on whatever budget you have. Go backpacking, stay in hostels, be safe, but see the world. Because, really, that's taught me every bit as much, if not more, and in different ways than my career path has. And don't worry about gaps in your resume. We all have them, in one form or another, and sometimes that can just show that you are a contemplative person who takes time to make decisions that you're going to feel confident about.

A lot has changed in the 18 years since I first met Amanda Gelender, but what has stayed the same is that she continues to be one of the most thoughtful people I know, engaging with her passions in a way that inspires everyone around her. Amanda currently lives in Amsterdam and thanks to the progressive policies of her new home, she’s started offering legal, guided psychedelic experiences through her company, Psychedelic Exploration. She is also a Partner at Vaya Consulting working with tech companies to foster diversity, inclusion, and social change. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When you were 17, what did you want to be?

I always knew I wanted to do social impact work, I’ve felt that as a driving purpose since I was very young. At 17 I was organizing on civil and human rights, including death penalty abolition and an end to the war on drugs. I was leading my high school’s Amnesty International club and working for a non-profit organization that connected young people in the US to grassroots social change projects happening all over the world at a really local level. My role was teaching young people how to be organizers and leverage their financial resources, educate their peers, and advocate on international human rights issues. I was active with many different mission-driven political organizations at the time and each resonated with me deeply. 

But I didn't know how my social impact work was going to manifest into a career. I had a lot of different ideas - maybe a lawyer, an executive director at a nonprofit, a movement organizer, a writer, or a teacher. I was very fortunate because I had models all around me. My parents were long-time activists, my mom was a teacher, my older sister to this day works at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California where I was a youth organizer as a teenager. And I had the almost unheard of opportunity to be a paid intern at a nonprofit when I was in high school, which is how I connected with my mentor Nicole Sanchez, someone who is still my close friend and collaborator to this day. So I had a lot of people in my community who had built their lives around social change, but I didn't have a concrete idea of what my career would look like.

How did you decide to attend Stanford University? 

I never thought I could get into Stanford. It really wasn't even in the realm of possibility for me. I had decided I was going to a college nearby which has this really unique program on performance and social justice, two critically important disciplines to me.

I remember I received my acceptance letter to Stanford on April Fool's Day. My mom called me when the envelope arrived, and I didn't think she would prank me, but I thought, “There's no way this is real.” I decided to go to Stanford because frankly I thought it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. I just thought the people I would meet and the caliber of education I would receive would be extraordinarily, and it was. But I know it also would have been great at many other institutions - I think there are a lot of different paths I could have taken and each would have been transformational in different ways. 

While I was at Stanford, I delved deeper into a wide range of political organizing. One key issue that I worked on was Palestinian rights. This is an interesting issue for me because like many Jewish people in the US, I was raised with a unwavering commitment to Israel. I never questioned what I was taught about Israel until a Jewish classmate in college who I was doing labor rights organizing with sat me down and basically said, "You're wrong on this issue." At first I was defensive but as I looked more into what she said, I came to understand that the Palestinian struggle for freedom is a human rights struggle, period. I’m regretful that it took me so long to come around but I'm really grateful that she had that conversation with me. We ended up organizing fellow Jews around Palestinian human rights, working with a phenomenal coalition of student organizations pushing for Stanford to divest from companies profiting from human rights abuses in Israel and Palestine. 

I also co-founded a social change theatre organization at Stanford, and I got to work on so many different political issues with that company. We partnered with dozens of activist organizations and engaged in everything from street social protest theater in the vein of Augusto Boal to full-stage productions on everything from queer rights to racial justice to environmentalism. I got to dip into all these different incredible coalitions doing such interesting work, some of which I ended up joining as an organizer, like the No on Prop 8 campaign. It was pretty wide-ranging, invigorating work.

How did you choose your major? 

I knew from the get-go that I wanted to double-major in Political Science and Drama. I was an actress and activist and I just didn't know how to live without one or the other, I didn't want to. I think performance and social change are always in conversation with each other, and in this political moment that conversation is more relevant than ever. If you look at films being created now like Sorry to Bother You and Get Out, these incredible pieces made by Black creators, you're seeing the way in which performing arts moves and shapes culture in a profound way. I think that more and more artists are looking for how to best leverage their creative urges to craft a more just world.

With the way that many of us instantly access media and culture in 2018, other creative mediums can move and adapt more quickly than theater, but theater definitely still holds a very important space in the culture conversation. Creators like Lin-Manuel Miranda are breathing life into theater and making it relevant for younger generations by creating brilliant pieces like In the Heights and Hamilton that center Black and Brown people.

With regards to my majors, something that did change is that I started out studying political science with a concentration in US national politics, and I ended up switching to political philosophy. I connected with a mentor and advisor in that field, Rob Reich, and I became enraptured with the theoretical underpinnings of political systems and our role within them as individuals. 

How did you get from college to where you are now?

My last couple years in college were really, really challenging. I had a psychiatric hospitalization, and in the psych ward doctors gave me a bipolar disorder diagnosis. They put me on a very strong cocktail of medications, I was on antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, sleep drugs...and the meds and doses were constantly changing, wreaking havoc on my body.

I started to not be able to recognize myself. I was so dazed and lethargic I needed help getting out of bed and going to class every morning. I had severe physical side effects from the meds including vomiting, hives, and migraines that would leave me incapacitated for days. Before the meds, my brain was a sponge. I could easily pick up a whole script, perform in multiple shows at once, it felt so easy. On medications my brain slowed down to a halt. I stopped being able to memorize lines, which is why I stopped performing. I feel like medications ripped theater out of my hands. I did a fifth year at Stanford to finish my degrees. 

Somehow I managed to graduate and receive a Fulbright scholarship to research social protest theatre in Bangladesh. But I didn’t end up going. I don't even know how to describe my last year at Stanford; it’s such a blur. It was like a long race was finishing, and somehow I had to drag this body across the finish line. I was a hollow shell by the time I graduated, which was so scary for me because my brain and passion were everything. Being engaged, driven, taking a full course load, having three jobs, running clubs, doing theater…that’s what I knew, and suddenly it was gone. I graduated with a pile of awards and honors, and then I really fell apart. 

For three and half years, I was basically down for the count. I was surviving. I rarely left the house, I stopped driving, I stopped connecting with friends, I was just managing symptoms. During that time I went through the grueling process of coming off of all my psychiatric meds. As I shed each medication I started to feel a bit more like myself. Coming off of meds is not right for everyone, but it was right for me. I started replacing them with other tools like peer-support group therapy, acupuncture, and cannabis, which was perhaps the biggest game changer for me. I can say in no uncertain terms that cannabis helped save my life.

By the time I started to emerge from this murky haze of meds and symptoms, I thought all my peers had passed me by, that there was no chance I could access the passion and drive that I used to have, let alone have a successful career. That was hard - coming to terms with this new self. But I was very lucky that I had supportive people in my life and a safety net. As I started to gain my energy back, my mentor Nicole said "I think you're ready." I built up my stamina, and I took her up on a job offer working on diversity and inclusion in the tech sector. And when she started her own firm, Vaya Consulting, I was her first hire. These positions were my first foray into working on organizational culture and social impact in the tech industry.

A lot of company leaders and HR teams look at their workforce and recognize that they have real people problems, “We're overwhelmingly white and male, we’re bleeding talent from underrepresented backgrounds, we’re getting external backlash for our practices.” And they don't know how to fix it. So companies bring us in to help them with everything from redesigning hiring processes to crisis remediation to training managers and executives on building inclusive teams. One of our first clients was a startup in the Bay Area, and we enjoyed working with them. They kept asking for more and more of our time and ultimately, the CEO asked us to come in-house and run the diversity, inclusion, and social impact work for the company. 

I got to do a lot of really interesting and exciting work there. I was tasked with overseeing the company’s commitment to ConnectHome, a President Obama initiative to close the digital divide in public housing. I worked with a dynamic team to provide free and low-cost high-speed broadband wireless Internet connections, devices, and tech training to young people in low-income housing communities across the US. Our goal was to support students in becoming not just consumers of technology but tech creators and innovators. The pilot program impacted 250,000 families in 28 public housing communities.

I also oversaw international flagship social impact programs, working with a broad coalition of partners across the continent of Africa. Part of my role was to identify and support innovators who were building open source technology for social change around the world. I also worked on the internal culture at the company, and started one of tech's first affinity groups for employees with mental health challenges. 

When I work with tech companies on culture change through Vaya Consulting, I always remind them that diversity and inclusion are not abstract concepts disconnected from the products they are building. Teams that are not diverse build products and initiatives in a vacuum, and they struggle with problem identification and understanding the ways their work can and will be used by different populations. This inevitably comes back to bite the company. The alternative is building diverse and inclusive teams in which members bring their unique life experiences to the table and build more innovative, accessible, and viable products. 

This is a crucial moment for the tech sector. So many people from underrepresented backgrounds in the tech sector are looking at the state of our industry and saying, "Tech leaders, what are you doing?" The same systems of money, power, and exclusion that run our government run the tech sector. The Trump administration has shifted the US into an even deeper state of crisis. Tech has an incredible opportunity in all this - human and civil rights violations need tech products to work. If you're going to have mass deportations, detention camps, police surveillance, tracking dissidents...that runs on technology. We don't have enough workers and leaders in the tech sector saying, “We're not going to be a part of this anymore.”

In 2017 I relocated to Amsterdam, and in 2018 I started my own company Psychedelic Exploration (www.psychedelicexploration.com): legal, guided psychedelic experiences in Amsterdam. Psychedelics have been a vital wellness...". I consult with tech companies on diversity, inclusion, and social change with a specialization in building mental health into team culture. I also work as a strategy consultant for individuals and organizations around the world looking to level up their operations and vision.

I also just launched a new service, Psychedelic Exploration: legal, guided psychedelic experiences in Amsterdam. Psychedelics have been a vital wellness tool for me over the past three years, and I have a unique opportunity to offer this service living in the Netherlands, a country where people can legally purchase psilocybin in the form of mushroom truffles. I work with clients who are brand new to psychedelics as well as experienced psychedelic users to provide the set and setting for transformational experiences.

On an individual level, I’ve seen how psychedelics can help people explore and heal their own psyches, come to peace with their bodies, hone intuition, build mental wellness and fortitude, delve into creativity, and connect with consciousness and spirituality. On a collective level, I'm very interested in supporting social change agents in using psychedelics to level up their work, access untapped power and energy, and identify new creative pathways to implement social change. I've done years of therapy in a single psychedelic session. Psychedelics have also provided me with incredible insight and clarity in enhancing my social impact work at a time when all people of conscience need to dig deeper to maximize our collective impact.

Psychedelics have a long history in indigenous communities throughout the world, dating back thousands of years. Inextricably linked to the current practice of psychedelic use is colonization, the violent economic pillaging of Central and South America, spiritual tourism, the racist war on drugs, and widespread ongoing state violence against indigenous people. I’m particularly excited to collaborate with psychedelic explorers and practitioners of color working at the intersection of decolonization, mental wellness, and social change.

My strength and curse is that I have a million things I'm excited to do at all times. I don't know where my work is going to lead, but I know it's right for right now and that I’m building relationships with brilliant collaborators around the world. That's really enough for me. I want to stay agile, I want to stay responsive to the political moment, and I want to jump on opportunities where I can leverage and expand my impact. That's served me well over the years. I'm excited about the work I do now, and I think it'll only grow. 

Looking back, what seems clear to you now? 

A lot of people told me when I was younger, "Slow down. You're going too fast. You're doing too much, and this isn't going to serve you." I think it would have benefited me to hear that, but I didn’t, I was too stubborn. I think the best advice, had I taken it, would really just be to try and stay embodied through the experience. 

I think for much of my life I've been disembodied, always churning out ideas and working a mile a minute. I think if I hadn't disconnected from my body that would've served me. Coming back into my body after so many years has been a really painful but important process. I remind myself often to try and relax and stay grounded for the ride, because this is the body I’m going to have for my whole life. 

A piece of advice I would give younger people is to identify the things that you could do for hours and hours and be in complete creative flow. Keep those close to you. Whether those practices end up being part of your career or not, that feeling of creative flow is your power tool, so don’t discard it because it seems impractical or a waste of time. What you actually end up doing as a career will probably change many times, and that’s great, that’s part of the journey. But having a creative outlet will serve you for a lifetime.

​Before I made my visit to Whittier College last week, I spent some time at Loyola Marymount University. At the beginning of the tour, all the students shared one of their academic or extracurricular interests so our (delightfully quirky) guide could be sure to touch on it during the tour. As the students went around, I heard all the usual subjects: biomedicine, mechanical engineering, business, and apropos for a school in the middle of LA, theater. But at the very end, I heard someone say, “History.”
 
As we made our way to the first stop, I couldn’t help myself and told this random teenage boy how cool I thought it was that he was considering history. We humanities geeks have to stick together. He responded with enthusiasm, telling me how he’d gotten really into it over the last two years, and how excited he was for the vast array of history classes he’d be able to take in college.  And then he said the same thing people always say about humanities degrees: “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that though.” To which I replied, “Anything you want!”
 
Yes, that is a bit of an exaggeration. You’d be hard-pressed to find a lot of rocket scientists or CPAs that have history degrees. But it would not be shocking to find a brain surgeon who majored in history, let alone the scores of writers, lawyers, politicians, and teachers who hold history degrees. See the CVs of comedian Larry David, writer Salman Rushdie, and business mogul Martha Stewart, not to mention three pretty diverse US presidents (FDR, Nixon, and Bush the younger).
 
So it’s clear that you can do practically anything with a degree in history. But what makes it challenging is that, aside from teaching, there’s no obvious thing you should do with a degree in history. STEM degrees tend to have pretty straight paths from major to career, giving these students a clarity and confidence that humanities majors might envy. But if your field shifts significantly, or heaven forbid - your career interests, the linearity of a STEM degree can leave you with fewer ways to pivot if you need to make a change.
 
Anyone who tells you that a humanities degree is impractical is wrong. That is a hill I will die on. But the ambiguous nature of building a career from a degree in history or English or classics is not for everyone. Like anything, it’s a choice, between the clarity of knowing exactly what you’re going to do next, and the flexibility of getting to take great opportunities as they come along. So if you’re a budding engineer, great! Your job prospects and earning potential are better than ever. But if you’re considering a degree in something that makes people furrow their brows in confusion, don’t be discouraged. You can pretty much do whatever you want – you just have to figure out what that is.