I am a junior at UC Berkeley studying Geography and Urban Studies, with plans on pursuing graduate education. I'm passionate about the role of education in shaping the world we live in, and want to work to create safe, inclusive, and accessible spaces for both living and learning environments. To that end, I believe it is necessary to promote active, engaged, and participatory systems that encourage diverse perspectives in leadership.Through my work as a peer educator and teaching assistant at UC Berkeley, I have endeavored to challenge traditional pedagogical models and encourage more engaged, horizontally structured classrooms. I believe that nuanced perspectives from within and outside academia are essential to learning, and thus have worked to promote fieldwork opportunities for students, to decolonize education and environmentalism, and to make my work available to individuals outside of the university. This is also reflected in my time as a researcher, working with organizations and community members to improve equitable access to housing in Oakland and to eschew violent extractive economies and psychedelic tourism in Mexico.