I grew up in the warm sunshine in the midst of cacti and rugged mountains, in a small town in Arizona. My creative and artistic habits began at a young age as I began to dance at the age of 3. After that, I couldn’t be stopped. I danced for hours on hours every week. One day, when I was about six years old, my older sister, Amy, saw an ad in the newspaper for “Annie” the musical, and begged my mom to let her audition, despite the theatre being 40 minutes away. So, of course, my brother, Jeff, and I were chauffeured by my mom to auditions for the show and so we began “The Bennett Show,” as we would continue to do musicals together for years, and my mom even started a community theatre in our small Arizona town. The memories and lessons I took from my time in the theatre with my siblings are truly special and I will always being grateful for the improvisational and creative thinking skills I gained from being a performer.
My brothers and I in ellsworth maine.
Vacations were always special to me because it was a time that was set aside for my whole family to be together, because our age differences were quite big I didn’t always see my two oldest siblings. We spent our summers in the trails and mountains in Acadia and Rocky Mountain National Park singing John Denver’s greatest hits at the top of our lungs. I cherish those moments spent in the great outdoors with my family and I think those times had a large impact on my choice to study Environmental Studies.
My sister went on to pursue musical theatre as her career, while my eldest brother Christopher was strictly being an intellectual as usual, (in fact he was in the first class of Ashoka student fellows- so he laid out a groundwork for me in the ideas of social entrepreneurship- way to go Chris!), and my brother Jeff and I went to brother-sister high schools in downtown Phoenix and continued to do theatre together. High school was the best of times. I adored everything about my highschool and my time there. It wasn’t until the first football game of my senior year that I received a phone call that would change my life. I found out my sister had been in a bike accident in Jackson Hole, WY, where she was performing in a summer stock musical. She died a few days later while my family and I stood under the light of the full moon and wept as we embraced, unsure how to continue on. Life would continue just as it always does, but for us, time had stopped. The months after that are much of a blur to me, but I was embraced by so much love that I was carried out of the fog by grace. I feel sure that we can only experience great grief when we have experienced great love, and surely much of my character and how I now approach life has been shaped by the way in which my sister led her life, full of joy and love. I carry forward her spirit with me everyday as I try to bring light into the lives of others.
Sisters are forever.
My beautiful, supportive parents.
As I moved off to college at Santa Clara, I left my parents as empty nesters, but was excited to begin a new era of discovery. I got involved in almost everything a student can be involved in, but my most influential experiences have been those of travel and immersion in different cultures. As I sat squeezed between two Bolivians on a little green park bench, in the middle of a park in Cochabamba, Bolivia, I began to acquaint myself with braving the uncomfortable. I spent my summer surveying and communicating with local Bolivians to understand their relationship to nature and parks and their sustainable behaviors. I spent almost every day out in the field, navigating the nooks and crannies of the Spanish language, sometimes feeling out of place, sometimes feeling warmly welcomed, and I discovered that interacting with others brings me such a sense of energy and joy. I also discovered my growing interest in how to nudge human behaviors to incorporate climate change into their schemas, and to embrace sustainable intentions and behaviors in all aspects of life. Through my different travels as a university student like my time in Bolivia, I have traversed the seas of ambiguity and have found the most authentic and vibrant version of myself. I circumnavigated the bright blue seas of the Baja peninsula by kayak and studied natural history and diverse marine species along the way. I took nature-art classes with youth in Puebla, Mexico. I danced my way through Denmark, and Europe as I studied transportation infrastructure and gained an inspiration for creating livable, human-scaled cities. I was so inspired by the livability and freeness of mobility in Denmark that I hope to transition cities to be more walkable, bikeable, greener, and happier. I will always think back to that little green park bench with gratitude for providing me the springboard to pursue ambiguous situations and novel dreams.
I am passionate about creating change in terms of sustainability and hope to find a path that allows me to communicate and help others understand our relationship with the environment. Our relationships with other beings and with the Earth begin and end with love, so my aim is to find a way to bypass the fear-based approaches that take away individuals’ autonomy and illustrate that the only answer to our problems is through love. In this way, my vocation also calls me to be a positive leader in sense that calls for social change that is inspired through creativity and collaboration.
I had the opportunity to be a part of the Global Social Benefit Fellowship my last year of university, in which integrated together my varied interests and skills to create a value exchange with my host enterprise. I originally accepted an offer with Pollinate Energy, a clean energy enterprise based in India and was thrilled to be working in the energy sector of development that connects environmentally and socially sustainable solutions together. However, mid-way through the fellowship, my project switched to East Africa, where I was to work in the sector of artisanal goods and women's economic empowerment. Unbeknownst to me, I had much to learn from the rural artisan communities in the layered hills of Rwanda and the lush villages of Uganda. Conducting research on women’s economic advancement was a transformative experience. I listened to women’s stories about their lives improving due to their involvement in the economic development of their country. I saw women’s agency animated dynamically by artisans, and I became inspired by the theory that empowering rural women in developing countries economically gives women more social agency and creates more social equality. While taking to heart the inspiration I gained from the powerful women of East Africa and my sister, I am now incorporating a gendered lens into my theory as I seek to understand women’s decision-making in the clean energy sector in India, a country that exemplifies the unrealized potential of women. My life experiences have taught me to be a resilient woman who makes unlikely connections. My vocation now has allowed me to integrate my budding interests to catalyze women’s agency in clean energy solutions through a Fulbright-Nehru student research grant.
I am now living in India studying women’s participation in economic development activities, specifically in the field of clean-energy technology and entrepreneurship. I am working with Pollinate Group, a social enterprise that micro-finances solar lanterns and other clean-energy products to impoverished residents in urban slum areas in India. I am delving into ways in which Pollinate Group can further involve women in its business model and advance the agency and power of women in the energy sector as entrepreneurial agents. I am currently fascinated as to how women entrepreneurs function in an urban & migratory context and am studying similar models that engage women with solar and entrepreneurship to understand which models provide the most agency for women. I am hoping to understand how social enterprises can deconstruct the male narrative of entrepreneurship to create an inclusive space for low-income Indian women to become involved. This is the journey of a lifetime and I am filled with gratitude for this chance to expand in so many ways.