Client Spotlight
Q: What is a formative experience or person that shaped who you are today?
A: In 2010 I was living and working in a remote village in Northern Tanzania and ended up supporting a woman as she delivered her baby in a small clinic with no running water, no doctor and just one nurse helping another laboring mother in the same room. Witnessing Ester summon the strength of all the women before her as she birthed Mzee, and lean into her own power and courage forever changed something in me, and how I have operated in the world since then.
Q: How has COVID shifted your perspective in a positive way?
A: COVID offers us a glimpse into our interconnection and the complexity and responsibility to our inequalities in America and worldwide. While devastating, COVID also gave us an opportunity to pause and acknowledge the suffering of our neighbors, our reliance on one another for resiliency, and the work we have ahead of us to build a true culture of care.
Q: Why is investing responsibly important to you?
A: My work has always been about investing in communities and causes I believe in. Working with Blue Marble was the first time I realized that even with limited resources and setting aside a small amount, I can be investing in the future in another way- in myself and my family while supporting people and the planet- essentially doubling the impact of my dollars.
Q: What’s a guilty pleasure you enjoy to recharge?
A: My favorite recharge is a solo hike or trail run. Amidst the chaos, I find clarity, insight and perspective out on a trail surrounded by nature with just the sound of my own breath.
Q: How do you keep your cynicism at bay?
A: Good friends who aren’t afraid to speak the truth, and by taking action. It’s easy to grow fearful, anxious, cynical about the world around us when so much is hard everyday. But stepping into involvement to actively participate in shaping solutions keeps me motivated and focused on what is possible and helps buoy my sense of humanity.
Q: What book/podcast do you find yourself continually revisiting?
A: Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to A Young Poet” is the one book I have carried to every place I have ever lived and read countless times. The pages are torn and stained and underlined and his reflections on relationship and solitude and the human experience offer up something new every time I reopen the book.
Q: Astronauts call it the overview effect: a shift in awareness when humans view the totality of their home planet. What do you see when you view our Earth from afar?
A: I always think of the duality of earth. Both the complexity and simplicity, fragility and resilience, individual experience and collective responsibility. And the human impact as both a speck in the immensity of it all and the infinite possibility for good.
Support Quinn’s causes by visiting https://sloundocusupport.org or follow her on instagram @quinnlbrady