4 minute read
Eat Clean
SELF MADE CHANGE THE RULES
A cofounder of Watsi, an innovative health care start-up, Grace Garey is tackling big problems in new ways.
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By the time she graduated from college, Grace Garey, now 25, had worked in a Liberian refugee camp and helped coordinate emergency response for war-torn countries at a humanitarian organization in Washington, D.C. While she loved solving problems in international development, she felt frustrated by the bureaucracy. “I came away from those experiences thinking, There must be a more creative way to make health care accessible to every person on the planet,” she says. So Garey cofounded Watsi, a global crowdfunded platform that connects donors directly with individual patients in the developing world. The nonprofit, which recently celebrated its third anniversary, has already raised $5 million for more than 5,000 patients in 20 countries. “You can scroll through stories on the site,” she explains, “and read about a single mother in Kenya who overcame cancer because 30 strangers funded her treatment.” Watsi is also radically transparent, publicly updating all its finances in real time. Says Garey, “I think this is the future of health care.” —Jen Schwartz
Garey on how to be bold and stay inspired—at work and in life
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Percentage of Watsi donations that directly fund health care “I’D NEVER KNOW THERE WAS A BETTER WAY TO DO CHARITY IF I HADN’T TRIED. THAT MOTIVATES ME.”
SPEAK UP “When I was still an intern, a manager I admired told me that I was great at assigned tasks but never formally proposed the ideas I chatted about casually. I hadn’t realized I could do that! At my next gig, I pitched a new program that is now raising millions of dollars a year.” “THE BEST ADVICE I’VE HEARD: PROGRESS IS THE AUDACITY TO THINK BIG AND THE DISCIPLINE TO START SMALL.”
PERSEVERE “When I’m learning something new, like finance or data crunching, I identify an end goal and tell myself it’s more important than the temporary pain of a steep learning curve.”
LEARNING CURVE
AROUND THE WORLD IN ONE SUITCASE
On a nine-month journey with her fiancé, writer Cecily Wong discovered how much can happen when you live with less.
Three years ago, my fiancé, Read, and I made a plan to shake up our lives, which were growing cramped and unruly as we worked in Manhattan, pouring long hours into Read’s start-up while I managed a restaurant and endeavored to finish a stubborn novel. We yearned to feel the open sky, to use our bodies for more than riding elevators and consuming brunch. Before we turned 30, we promised each other, we would quit our jobs and see as much of the world as our funds would allow. Last year, we seized our chance. We spent our weekends in intensive preparation, devouring travel books and documentaries, placing pins on the world map fastened to our living room wall, creating our route: New York to India to Indonesia, a loop through Asia and westward to Europe, with many stops in between. When we delivered the news to friends and family, they weren’t that concerned about the ambitious length or the potential dangers of traveling through developing countries. Instead, they were skeptical about the fact that for nine months we’d each be living out of a single carry-on suitcase. The purpose of the trip was to feel agile and liberated, we explained, not weighed down by possessions. We wanted to live lean! My mother, remembering the 60 pounds of luggage I’d hauled to Rome a few years earlier—multiple pairs of boots for a two-week trip—simply laughed at me.
Yes, I knew my reputation for stockpiling clothes, for changing outfits a few times a day to fit the occasion. I knew Read’s proclivity toward Amazon Prime, a box of kitchen gadgets or a trio of dress socks arriving at our front door in a steady, two-day cycle. Still, we were ready for adventure, to explore distant lands and to be far away from our consumerism. Into a storage bin went six years of New York accumulation—the spoils of sample sales, the infinite dresses, the Amazon deluge—and Read and I turned our attention toward the practical: assembling our suitcases for pure function.
We each handpicked the pieces of clothing our trip required: one pair of perfect pants (lightweight, quick-dry), one set of sturdy shoes (breathable, treaded), one all-purpose jacket (black, waterproof). We acquired a miniature pharmacy of mosquito repellents and stomach settlers, melatonin and antibiotics. Our suitcases were small but well curated, a showcase of our careful planning. As we boarded our flight from New York to Mumbai, we felt fortified by foresight, the lightness of our baggage still romantic.
But within hours of landing, India assaulted us. The colors, the smells, the filth and the crowds—after a day at the outdoor market with hot vats of greasefried samosas and pakora, we would return to our tiny room and peel our damp clothes from our bodies, wanting to throw them in the washing machine and change. But in India, clothes are often washed by hand. So for seven weeks, we washed everything we had in our mini hotel sink and cramped bathtub. We laughed at how we looked, sitting there together in our underwear, waiting for our clothes to dry in the one sunny spot in our room.
Yet as we met other travelers, their belongings fresh from modern washing
