got-globosocksgreen

The Next Journey…

Today on June 30, 2011, at 10 am Mountain Standard Time I begin another journey along a road with many journeys yet to be possible with the launch of my company Globosocks, LLC (www.Globosocks.com). After 13 years of travel to many parts of the world I have continually asked myself how I, as a first-generation college graduate from Albuquerque, New Mexico could contribute to the world in a meaningful way? In the past twelve months, I have seen the plight of people across Eastern and South Africa. Over the past six years, I have witnessed the rebuilding of some of the Balkans. I can envision and empathize with challenges families and communities grapple with across the globe from Asia to Latin America. Having grown up in the southwest, I have witnessed firsthand the challenges we as Americans face in our cities and our Tribal communities across the United States, and I keep returning to the central question: How can I be part of the solution?

I have been blessed to have had a variety of opportunities to meet, live, and become friends with people from many walks of life from the Maasai in Kenya to my friends from France to South Americans from Chile and Indigenous Russians from Siberia and everyplace in between. The common denominator is that people are people at the end of the day. We all want a happy life – free from the threat of violence and we all want our friends, families, and neighbors to enjoy the same. We all deserve enough food to eat and access to the simple necessities of clean water, electricity, and places to live. We want our kids to be educated and we want to be able to work and earn a wage that allows us the opportunity to enjoy the happiness that comes from contributing to our communities in meaningful ways.

I have often contemplated what I could do to contribute to this world which has given me so much… As people may know my career path has provided me with some amazing experiences. As I evolved professionally I found myself drawn to roles that enabled me to help others. At various stops along the highway of work-life, I’ve fed kids through directing summer lunch programs, I’ve taught art to young kids to allow them to express themselves, I worked in education for multiple school districts impacting thousands if not hundreds of thousands of kids and up until the beginning of 2011 I supported my beloved state by working with non-profits and NGO’s in addressing their communities’ needs through service in AmeriCorps and engaging community volunteers. At each stop along my highway, I found myself drawn into the thrill I get from helping others and having a bigger and bigger impact. Several times throughout the journey I have considered how to do more and how to have a larger impact. This lead me to consider elected public office, something quite honestly I didn’t consider long because that hasn’t been part of my personal equation. I give all the credit in the world to people who choose to make the selfless and underappreciated sacrifice by serving others as elected officials. Much of my inspiration comes from many elected officials I have been fortunate to work for over the years.

However, I suppose my newest endeavor has unconsciously been brewing in my mind for many years and has been many years in the making. With these and many other thoughts stewing around in my mind the last seven months I have deliberately focused on making a bigger impact in our world. I consciously began to focus on making this dream a reality. With the launch of Globosocks, LLC, I get to imagine the possibilities of helping non-profit and non-governmental organizations accomplish something so vital to their lifeblood – raise financial resources for their missions and their visions while raising awareness and their public profiles by utilizing our Globosock™ as a mobile billboard. All this can and will be accomplished by supporting others reach their dreams and aspirations; however, without the resources necessary all the good ideas stand idle in the face of what is possible. I do not claim to understand what communities need or how to fix anything, however, I have a belief that community by community, country by country the solutions exist to the changes we face and that those solutions exist in the many groups of people around the world who live and work in our communities. My company will allow me to support some of these great ideas to solving our challenges. I intend on accomplishing this by intentionally setting aside profits we make from our company. We will launch the Globosocks Foundation in 2013. We intend to make mini-grants to the developing world to help with capacity building. For example, a reoccurring dream I continually have, which undoubtedly has shaped by my travel experiences throughout the years, has been to take small solar panels to rural areas across the world. This would drastically alter the access to electricity which can and will have a profound impact in the developing world’s access to clean water by powering small wells, it allows for the student to study by light during the evenings, and it allows for opening up the rural and remote areas to the unlimited possibilities which I have been lucky enough to have been born into by the sheer luck of being born in the United States. Will I drastically alter the global world I live in? I don’t know, however, I do know that if I don’t try then what is the point of living in such a wonderful world full of possibilities?

So as I embark on yet another journey I ask you to join me in imagining the possibilities of this world I briefly wrote about by visiting my company website www.Globosocks.com and learning more about what we can do for non-profit or non-governmental organizations. In many ways, my company is your company. Together we can go on an amazing journey together. Imagine…