State Staff Assistant, Office of U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell

PROFILE Grant Friedman ’15

Mvengue is about a three-hour drive from Kribi. Kribi faces the Atlantic Ocean. Driving this route through Cameroon, one might see rain falling from the skies into a network of rivers. There is still water, even through the challenges of drought and climate change.

It is a Sunday morning in the fall of 2019, and Grant Friedman ’15 is leaving his home in Mvengue to walk to the village spring to collect water and to wash his clothes by hand. He is the only American within a thirty-five-mile radius. He is a Peace Corps Volunteer working at the health clinic, educating community members about HIV and AIDS prevention, malaria prevention, and maternal and child health. In Cameroon, Grant often hears the phrase, On est ensemble. It is repeated during his training and becomes a mantra driving his daily work. He says it to himself as he settles into his work with the community. It means, “we are together.” In just a short time Mvenge feels like home, and those he is working with feel like more than neighbors. They are a community. On est ensemble. Grant has felt this sense of camaraderie and family for a long time, starting when he first joined the The Bush School as a Third Grade student. During his ten years at Bush, he developed a keen interest in learning both inside and outside the classroom. “Bush taught me that education, in a broader sense of knowledge acquisition and sharing, is something that we should strive for every day, in every aspect of our lives,” Grant says.

A lifelong Seattleite, Grant headed to Vermont to attend Middlebury College after his graduation from Bush. He then served in Cameroon as a Peace Corps Volunteer until March of last year. Abruptly, Grant was evacuated from Africa due to the looming COVID19 pandemic, and the Peace Corps suspended all volunteer operations, evacuating all posts.

One can plan for life, but one cannot predict it. COVID-19 abruptly ended his Peace Corps service. Despondent, Grant did not know what to do next, but he knew he wanted to do something to help others. “The Bush community, the country, and the world have really shown me firsthand the values of perseverance, optimism, and community.” His next opportunity appeared in the fall of 2020, when he stepped into the role of state staff assistant at the office of U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell.

Grant’s passion for learning about the world was cultivated on the second floor of Gracemont with history teacher Gardiner Vinnedge. “He

taught me to be a better thinker and writer. He inspired in me a passion for history; a learning about the world we live in.” During these classes, Grant learned to hold multiple perspectives and lean into the contradictions, knowing his generation was inheriting a world awash with both disparities and commonalities. It was his time at Bush that taught him how to suss it all out in order find his path. For Grant, his path leads to places and people where he can help others. “From a young age you’re taught the value of hard work, while at the same time taught to realize that there are other valuable things in life as well. In a year when all of our spaces have been merged into one (our home, our office, and our space to relax), the ways in which Bush taught me to value all of the different aspects of life have felt incredibly important.”

Exactly a year after being evacuated from Cameroon, Grant reflected on his Peace Corps experience in an opinion column for the Seattle Times (March 5, 2021), sharing, “Certainly, there will be much work to do to recover from the medical, social and economic turmoil that we are currently experiencing in America. As we work to rebuild and improve America, however, we must remember that ‘we’ means more than just America.”

Grant’s focus on community action has led him to know that we are all stronger when we stand together.