COA Alumni

14

Bratislava, Slovakia

Senior state advisor and policy officer at the Ministry of the Environment in Slovakia

My work focuses on environmental education and education for sustainable development. I engage with different policies and national strategies to underscore the importance of education for sustainable development and help develop policies and initiatives that address the need for such education.

I am trying to find ways in which policy can support the creation and enhancement of effective learning environments, where every student would have opportunities to gain the appropriate knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development, and to act in an environmentally and socially responsible way. At the ministry, I am also responsible for the management of the Green Education Fund, which pools together public and private funds to support NGOs in environmental education. At the international level, I am part of a strategic planning group of the UN Economic Commission for Europe that is trying to set the future direction of education for sustainable development. I’m also involved with examining EU environmental policies that emerge so we can, as needed and appropriate, adapt and adopt those policies in Slovakia. A lot to do!

Apart from my official work, I am engaging in something much more practical. With a partner, I am in the process of creating a high school that would embrace all aspects of sustainable development by design – something akin to a Central European approach to Human Ecology. We are laying the grounds for a high school that would be intimately linked to the surrounding community and region, using all its surroundings as one big, practical classroom which would raise young change makers, climate activists, and students with the agency to shape their wider communities for the better.

Here in Bratislava I was lucky enough to be awarded a Davis project for Peace – with that support, two of my closest friends, Ana Puhac and Zuri de Souza who are also COA graduates, and I co-founded the country’s first community rooftop garden. It was a huge success. Through that work, I got to meet many wonderful people. We had more than 70 gardeners and they became friends, colleagues, and family. I’d also say I’m very lucky to have an excellent cadre of colleagues at work.

I completed a master’s program in Rome in Food Security and Human Development; it was at the Roma Tre University. I am in the process of applying for a masters in Educational Leadership.

My senior project was about the transition of Slovak agriculture from 1989-2014. It was based on interviews with farmers here in Slovakia who had lived and worked through the transition from collectivized agriculture to open market agriculture. The product from that work was a large installation at COA which featured writing, photography, and interview transcripts.

I did my internship at the Slovak Ministry of the Environment. I did a second internship working on an ethnobotanical project in Guatemala as well.

Through the practice of Human Ecology, I have developed a set of tools that allow me to think across disciplines and across sectors. I’m passionate about bringing different people and different stakeholders together. From my perspective, there is huge momentum toward working in silos and we need reverse that trend. Human Ecology can do that and I have a real advantage from my experiences at COA.

So hard to pick just one. Sailing across Frenchman Bay with Jon Archer and Zuri de Souza from Compass Harbor to Zocalo (and all the visits to Zocalo in general) in South Gouldsboro. We sailed on Jon´s self-made catamaran, he played the flute and porpoises and seals were swimming by us.

 

And I’ll never forget the way we friends came together to celebrate each other during birthday parties. And salsa dancing. I developed amazing friendships at COA – friendships that spanned students, staff, and faculty.  Older people in positions of authority – staff and faculty, for example – treated me more as a colleague than as a “receptacle” to be filled with information. That gave me such confidence and completely changed the way I engage with authority figures.

Prospective students ask me that all the time. Honestly, there is no “stock” answer and it depends on what they and who asks it. When they ask for my personal perspective I say it was truly a lifechanging experience to live in such an aware, engaged and responsible community.