From Global Nomad to Public Ally

I have always thought of my brain as 1/3 art, 1/3 travel, and 1/3 everything else. I grew up as a “Global Nomad” as I followed my parents wherever they were stationed for their United Nations jobs. I was born in Nepal to a Filipina mother and an English father, and went on to spend most of my youth in Zambia and Thailand.

The constant change of environment and exposure to so many different faces, landscapes, airports, foods, customs, skies, architecture, oceans, streets, gave me an incredibly strong will to express myself through visual art. I painted. I sculpted. I doodled. I designed. I did whatever I could to help myself understand what I saw.

The other effect of my international exposure was the yearning to solve what I saw as the same types of social and environmental problems I experienced in different countries. I wondered how I could use art as a way to foster solutions to the infinite injustices we face daily. It brought me to decide to study interdisciplinary visual arts and international studies at the University of Washington in Seattle (a place where I experienced huge culture shock and was also an inspiration to bring me where I am today).

Always on a journey somewhere!

After university in Seattle, then London for grad school, I went back to Asia for a year where I spent my time volunteering. After globetrotting for so long I decided I wanted to settle down in a place that would have everything I love about the places close to my heart, but where I could pursue my love for art as well: New York. I decided to go solely into art and after working for a while in the for-profit world, I became more and more jaded and thought that New Yorkers could only treat creativity as a commodity. I was settled in a comfortable job that let me expand my design skills but wasn’t fulfilling my need to be a contributing member of society. I was actively pursuing ways to switch my professional trajectory but really didn’t know how, and it was at that point where I found Public Allies.

It was an opportunity for me to get a support network to find the bearings I needed when I thought I was lost: Combining creativity and common good. I spent my first year at the Parent-Child Home Program, doing communications and outreach work, and now find myself pursuing a second year at the Queens Museum of Art in the education department. I feel lucky to have found an ideal situation where I provide support to an incredible museum that is very close to their community, and wouldn’t have found it without Public Allies.