Let me introduce you to my passion.

 

 

I grew up in a small town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but my real roots lie in my mother’s history. She is a Pacific Islander from the Solomon Islands, and her tropical homeland is starkly different from my hometown in the snowbelt of the United States.

 

When I was 5 years old, I visited the Solomon Islands — the country I heard about in stories so many times. The ancestral place that was separated from me by an ocean and several lengthy flights.

 

And privileges. And opportunities. And access to nearly everything.

 

My experience in the Solomon Islands on that first trip stuck with me long after I left. As I lived a comfortable life, my thoughts constantly returned to the discomforts my family faced in the Solomons. I wanted an explanation for the disparity.

 

I began to realize that I'm not entitled to anything more than anyone else — that no one is. And I believe that a person's birthplace shouldn't determine their access to resources and quality of life.

 

That idea is why I write, travel and communicate between developed and developing societies and try to bring them closer together in the process.