 My name is Duration and this is Tengtai Kauai, Finding our Future and so I come on here every two weeks, Wednesday at one o'clock and just talk about something that I'm interested in with somebody in the community that I like. So, Justine Espiritu is here and you interviewed me a few years ago, I think, so it just comes around and I out the door flipped, like we're literally wearing the same colors that flipped. It's so funny. But yeah, so if you could just introduce yourself to whoever's watching and we can go from there. Yeah, again, I'm Justine Espiritu. I recently was with Bike Share Hawaii who launched the Bike Share system, Beaky for a couple years. I've also dabbled in some local food and farm stuff. I was with Oahu Fresh and the heart of my work is my book club. I co-founded the greener reader with Margaret Hardin through the RISE internship I had through Coupu a couple years ago. And so today I feel like everything kind of comes full circle and it's kind of interconnected and so we were going to talk about, you know, taking initiative in your career and job opportunities as well as how you choose to engage in the community, being creative and trying to build connections and trying to kind of forge your own future and those ideas of opportunity and pathways and stuff. Totally. So I think framing it as like problem solutions. So the problem, I think we could identify as people, most people hate their jobs. First of all, or they do it like just for money. Yeah, and then particularly in Hawaii with a high cost of living. People feel like they need that sense of security is sometimes first priority for sure. And then in kind of the world we're living in, you know, some people want to find meaningful work that contributes to solving like the larger problems that we're facing in society, the world in general. So trying to find that balance and be frustrating. And then you're like, point of anything, making money, but I hate my job, cost so much to live here. How do you balance priorities? Yeah. And be happy and like be happy in the work that you do and like feel like you're a positive part of society. And I think I'm glad you asked us to talk about that because I think we both have some kind of experience in forging that path. And I think everyone young has been on both sides, probably all work jobs that weren't fulfilling restaurant jobs, whatever kind of like first entering the workforce. But then, you know, there's a way that you can like find that. So what was an example of that for you, where you were able to find a job that or create a job that you loved? So yeah, part of my biggest example was working with Bike Share Hawaii and the BIKI system because that was really a startup. You know, I was part of the community that kind of brainstormed this idea as a solution to clean transportation and our energy issues. And so it was part of, there was a really small team to start. It was Ben and Lori and the board. And as they were kind of doing the planning, doing the kind of the community outreach, I was able to finagle my way in there as a grant writer, which was cool, able to kind of get some of their initial, some small grants to help with outreach, to help with some equipment purchasing. And what I found, and again, that was an opportunity I got through the Rise Internship Program, some of the clean energy and clean transportation projects I had kind of put me in that network, for sure, but it was what I've kind of realized looking back at, it really took some initiative to not only just accept what they had kind of hard to do, like just simple grant writing, but then I took a lot of initiative and through what I see as like mentorship under the leadership to kind of take on more roles and really do what else I was interested within the organization and within the work and through that kind of creativity and proving myself when they had the funding, they were able to create a position for me to come on full-time and over time, I was able to establish that into ultimately the an associate director of programs and community partnerships, which again is what I found was really important and really meaningful stuff and getting to work not only in the transportation or the bike community, but crossing those other boundaries into public health, into housing issues, into et cetera, cost of living and I'm just really excited that I had the naive confidence that I could do that and I think what I've kind of learned is part of what gets people that are able to achieve that is definitely mentorship and then a support system and the network that helps people gain that confidence, which has, so I've kind of recognized, I think there's mentorship in a ton of different forms in Hawaii in particular, which is interesting to kind of break down and see and recognize and so I've been really excited about that and then it's interesting to see that in other forms. Yeah, I think yeah one of the keys is like fearlessness and like offering yourself up like hey I want to help and like I just you know like let me help you and then they'll be like okay sure and then once you start like really inserting yourself somewhere like you choose an organization or company that you really want to be with and you offer yourself even if it's for a smaller role or smaller pay or no pay and then yeah through them investing in you and you investing in them and like proving yourself and they'll want you on their team. I think that's like an easy way to hack the system like I did that at a preschool I was like I really want to work at this preschool and I don't want to like be a teacher I just like really want to work here I really like it and they were like we have a role you can't work at the preschool unless you're in education like you have an education major and I was like I just want to work here I'll like volunteer if I have to I went like three or four times to the office and like bother them over email and finally persistence the last time for sure she was like it's because of your persistence like slightly annoyed but mostly impressed she's like you can work for us and we'll give you an exception and it was like you know I got paid ten bucks an hour was like nothing but I loved it I just like knew I would love working with kids and it was right across the street from when I was a student so I think persistence is part of it because that was when I didn't have a community but I chose the place that I wanted to be and I like you know kind of forced them to like work with me and like showed that I was like really committed to being there even if they kind of said no at first yeah yeah that's always excited you kind of think back like how did I get that persistence or like what gave me that confidence to just kind of insert myself into yeah something which is always that is yeah so I wonder what do you think that was for you or like where do you think you got that because it's kind of like a personality or yeah I think that's where the the mentorship piece and your network kind of come in I think it took someone telling me that like asking me the questions of what do you want to be doing like what do you find joy in where do you think you're you're not even necessarily the like what do you think your skills are but help asking me the questions to help me articulate what I wanted to do and then when I was confident in that then I could I think that idea of like selling yourself to an organization to have that that confidence and I think sometimes it does take an outer figure sometimes yeah like it's nice to know I I've gained a lot more confidence in myself when I knew other people had confidence yeah that's I feel like for myself yeah so confidence is key come back to that and I think probably like the way you're raised through I'm guessing what's a part of it like would you say that was yeah I would say I mean thinking back of my greatest resource of course I like my parents had the financial means to help me go through college but they also were a little bit it was a little bit of a dictatorship of like I didn't have a choice to go to college so I mean them having that experience of where college gets somewhere like home ownership gets somewhere specifically college was you're going to college you can go wherever you want but you're going to college you're signing this loan I sometimes I was like when I was in undergrad and thinking about my loans I'm like they didn't really ask me if I wanted to have this debt but they knew like education was the the pathway to jobs and resources and again the specific internship that I did have through the CUPU program which was the RISE a little bit different than their conservation internship programs but the RISE program was specific to college students or people recently out of college so recognizing that privilege to that pathway I think is important yeah totally I had the same experience in college going through the RISE program and I would say like college is like the best opportunity for you to like launch into something because there's so many experts and professionals and academics in every field and so that's your opportunity to like find your mentors like I you don't even need to go to class use your status as a college student to like me derade did not as she says go to class anyway like you should go to class but but like a lot of my energy in college was spent like as a volunteer like running the student club and like meeting with my professor again well that's where I I think meeting with your professors recognizing what resources exist in university because I think that's one thing to get into college and then again to be in college and recognize and take advantage of your resources and again for me what helped me take advantage of my resources was a professor seeing these opportunities and telling people hey do you guys want to travel you want to go to Geneva you want to go to this UN conference apply you can get funding from shamanod and then you can get paid for what so again it was that someone that's you know more knowledgeable more experience yeah making sure younger generation knows what their resources are yeah totally like they're like the bridge from expertise money like access to all of these other pathways and then they'll give that to you if you become like the point of contact again it's like if you take the initiative I think to seek those people out or to take advantage of those opportunities when they get presented you know some people I think in college they're like I don't want to go to my professor's office hours you know I don't want to have a relationship with my professor and those are people that then miss out on those yeah yeah because you can graduate college and be like have all this experience under your belt in your resume already even if you want to pay for any of them and you'll get that job because most college students graduate and they weren't involved they didn't get any experience so you graduate at the same level as like 90 of other college students and then you're like it's a loss yeah so again that it's it's that mix it's not just um your upbringing and the resources but again having that initiative and having that drive to you know contribute or right be a part of your yeah exactly and I think just like showing up to things that you're interested in yeah showing up asking questions and just like offering yourself like if you offer your time people will respect you they'll be like wow she's so generous like she wants to help and then when when funding becomes available they're like we have a job for you and you're like yeah exactly like yeah you don't even expect it so again I think that's another thing that you tapped on to is that that commitment and consistency yeah I think is really important too when you're showing up when you are putting your own resources and time yeah totally and then you kind of can build that community which is how the little segue into the book club and what I'm also interested too of you with your the good food movement you know I think people are drawn to you and that organization because they know this is something you're doing out of passion I don't think maybe you're getting paid for now no you're like being sponsored we're not losing money anymore but I mean just that time commitment you know I think people really respect that yeah yeah I'm like good for movement for me was it was like I'm doing all these things I love like I work for environmental organizations and it's amazing and we get to like impact positively impact our society and our local community but I knew like I wanted to work in food you know and I love connecting people to food and like you know information and inspiration around how food choice can like save the planet and like right that's what's cool too when you're super committed into your cause of volunteering for all these um environmental organizations yeah and then you you find what your kind of niche is in that you know I know yeah food choice and diet is a huge factor in our environmental issue and so it's awesome then when you find that thing and then you can focus your energy on that and then again having the confidence to and the initiative to create your own opportunity at that which you which you did with the good food movement yeah and it's cool because like now we're at like 1100 followers on Instagram which is like in some ways it's like to us it's like wow it's a lot because we you know we do things only when we really have time um and we always like have this running joke because it's me and my three best friends we're like you know people who are like it's working we just made stuff up and it's working yeah I mean you're always you're always surprised at what you what you do yeah you think you and I think sometimes when you reflect back on you're like how did I have the nerve to do that you know it's like and then you never you never really set out to do what ends up happy like you know the having however many followers and having these many people pay attention that like probably wasn't necessarily on your mind when you started it was just like me and my best friends we care about this we're interested in getting together talking about it doing it you know exactly and then what's cool was when that resonates with other people in your community yeah and that's what's cool too when you realize you have such a bigger community than you imagine and and so many more uh such a wider network than you thought or people that you align with yeah exactly so this can you share we're going to go to brickson but can you share a greener reader like yeah overview first yeah yeah so it all it all comes full circle again um my start of the book club with margaret harden who is the director of my rise internship program and they had an original vision for it of the interns kind of going out that didn't happen now i like took it over so i just i just read it our our thing so let me let me read it to you so oh god go back so greening our mo sorry i did change it gathering edit it gathering our minds one book at a time gomo bat is our motto so the greener reader is a conscious raising book club focused on reading and discussing texts and sometimes films that intersect with the topics of sustainability place clarify and other potential futures democracy and civil engagement environmental ethic history from the perspective of food and other underrepresented perspectives and tested narratives and the unspoken complexities of the human heart we meet almost always on the last tuesday of every month to read together in silent solidarity share what we're reading and discuss the book of the month one to three times a month we gather in public green spaces to read as well so it's still greener reader there's that relevancy there it started out as specifically sustainability focused right kind of like you sit on grass yeah yeah yeah keep in the green keep in the green but that's my new my new little blurb for it i like that what is a clarify climate fiction that's what i kind of so it's like sci-fi with the climate crisis lens what's an example of a hi-fi book um what in me uh but of orcs orcs and craig a margaret atwood kind of has that theme through through that um we read lagoon which again is kind of like the climate crisis and impact in nigeria and how the town is kind of um responding to that and uh there's like a million others oh wow that's good to know okay cool we're gonna go to break and then we'll just talk about tons of other stuff thanks to our think tech underwriters and grand tours the atherton family foundation carol monlie and the friends of think tech the center for microbial oceanography research and education collateral analytics the cook foundation dwayne koresu the hawaii community foundation the hawaii council of associations of apartment owners hawaii energy the hawaii energy policy forum hawaii an electric company integrated security technologies gaelan ho a b a e systems kameha meha schools mw group the schilder family foundation the sydney stern memorial trust volo foundation yuriko j suki mura thanks so much to you all hi so you're watching think tech hawaii and the show is finding our future so i'm here with justine spirit two and we are talking about her book club consciousness raising book club and how to create your own job and kind of be like an empowered citizen and not so much like passive trying to make money and make a paycheck but more like they're like we're gonna make money we're gonna make money but try and the best we can to do it in a way that keeps us happy and using our creative muscles to do that exactly so where are you at in your career so i'm at a better description of cli-fi so also sci-fi which i which is i'm happy that my book club opened my heart to you because i was always a little bit overwhelmed with the idea of sci-fi but what i think is cool about uh sci-fi and fiction in general specifically sci-fi genres for us you know when we talk about solutions to climate issue and and environmental issues in general we're very much i think confined by what we imagine is possible and so kind of like the cli-fi realm is a way for us to step out of the present constructs and kind of think creatively and when they're these books are like climate focus and it helps us kind of open our minds to other ideas and and then just how we might like react and if we don't want to react this way then it's like let's think about the structures that we have in place but a good one that i really liked was the the water knife that was one of wen's picks a couple years ago and so talking about imagining a world when water is such a finite resource and people start getting nasty start killing each other and like the kind of gangs and stuff that form around that yeah like climate dystopian yes exactly yeah interesting yeah so that's a that's a that's a category yeah that's cool so how many people are involved right now in the book club i mean every month we have anywhere between like five and fifteen people show up i have about like 220 on my monthly newsletter not all of them live in hawaii they're just interested in my newsletter but um it's cool i tried to kind of like crowdsource the the ideas we get together every december to make the list for the year and what i've and how it's kind of evolved to is you know trying to be democratic about the book selection and so i have i have friends that have different particular interests but then kind of fall into those 525 categories i listed that we read so you know i have my friends that are really interested in hawaiian history and hawaiian culture i have um my friends that are really interested in like indigenous perspectives um other friends that are interested in um other things lots of things you guys do look a lot of cool but yeah i'm always like that sounds like a really good book so another way of that what i've been trying to do because i also what i kind of noticed though it's like a lot of the most committed people are my close group of friends yeah which has been fun in the sense of getting to know them on another level of how what they like to read about and what and then people say they like coming to book club because it's conversations that aren't just about relationships or complain about your job you know it's this like centered topic and so it's been really cool to hear that people say they can come to this and have a more lively yeah so but one so that idea though of like reading just with your close network of friends of like how is that like expanding our minds at all yeah so my new kind of vision i've been enacting is trying to hook up with other kind of themed book clubs yeah and basically going to their book club me so planning to have to attend one of their book club meetings so it's like jumping into another club and another network and other people that i don't necessarily know so it's cool we did that this year with the slow food oahu book club so they like yeah they had a partnership with the shop yeah so they picked four different books for 2019 and that's how we ended up we read hippie food last last month yeah so we kind of crashed their book club and got to just meet new people have these maybe even some similar conversations that we've had amongst each other but it was a cool way to meet new people this for 2020 i'm gonna do that with the civil beat book club oh so that's a lot of cool book clubs exactly that was the thing there's like these book clubs join forces yes i really i and i did um have a book club coalition that is what i was doing it was like i think in mar no maybe it was last november we did like a book club social at the shop so emily helped me coordinate this where we invited different books yeah super bunch of cool nerds cool nerds but that was cool you know so we were only able to connect with slow food that one then i just heard through the grapevine civil beat was doing theirs i emailed uh the woman that has the book i'm gonna do she hasn't emailed me back yet no big deal i'm just gonna show up with my book persist yeah that persists again if i want this partnership to happen uh and it's cool if you build a partnership in a way where they don't necessarily have to consent like i'm just gonna show up let's open the public yeah anyways but yeah so that's exciting to then it's been my little passion project of like how i can try to keep learning and keep kind of meeting new people and meeting new perspectives i've always also on the hawaii angle i've been able to connect with namae a couple of times through different projects on like parking day they've come and brought books and i've had a vision of kind of them you know at least just picking a book yeah again to have that someone that has that kind of tied to hawaii and culture and hawaii history and having them kind of not necessarily i don't want to put that on to facilitate it but to have a book selected by them yeah totally so just trying to mix it up yeah and one of the things that we want to talk about well two things were like mentorship we kind of covered in community like the social capital that's required to be like successful and like well connected which in some ways is like you know that's the best pathway to any form of wealth is through people and those connections and i feel like we're both kind of the types that are like we can go to an event and we know like lots of different people out there and like we have that kind of like network in our local community i'm wondering what you would recommend to somebody who's like looking for that network or trying to expand in terms of like outside their friend group just be like more connected yeah i mean i think it's what you said earlier i think showing up and like taking the time to go to an event that you're interested whether or not your friends are willing to go with you whether or not you know you if you're going to know anyone there or not just kind of looking at what you're interested in and having that courage to just show up even by yourself yes is i think uh fun it's almost like maybe it's even better to show up by yourself because then you don't rely on just hanging out with your friends you're forced to like kind of go and talk to others and there's so many cool things you know i'm always like drawn to the book thing so looking at the events at the shop and um parking day and whatnot but volunteering doing the beach cleanup routes that you know with surf riders sustainable coastlines but again and then it's like if if what you're interested doesn't exist create it yourself yeah that's what i was saying i don't really like facilitating a book club but i was like there was no book club so i had to do it you just have to that's how it is yeah that's how it was a good movement i was like we went to all these vegetarian society events and they just weren't like i wasn't like feeling super excited after like they're cool events great speakers um so we were like let's create like a you know it's almost the same thing but like it'll be like targeted to like a millennial audience and we're gonna make it like really inspiring and fun and like have really great food and so we like filled this niche that we felt like was needed and was exciting for us yeah people can find like that alignment that's key yeah and so i think those two ends of the spectrum of one being willing to totally jump into you just like finding something that already exists and jump into it yeah and i think on the other end of what we were just talking about is is just doing what you want and then letting that network come to you and i think what's key to that what i know the difference for me of having the confidence to do something is if i have like one partner that is like okay yeah let's do this together partner in crime and i'm like a hundred percent committed and it's always like even if it's just two of us in book club let's do the book club you have to because if it's just you it's like doing yoga by yourself like if i do i'm like okay that was 10 minutes but if i go to a class like i'll always stay for the hour hour and a half so it's like really you need that accountability yeah yeah and then and then being and being okay with that too because i feel like so many people want to start things but they're so afraid of what if no one comes what if no one cares and it's like well if you have one person that's committed to caring with you then and then being like two people every time yeah that's what i that's what i tell myself you just gotta have like one partner and yeah that's true like finding a friend or somebody you know you can work with that you know like we'll keep hyping you up and least of fun stuff yeah which again kind of goes back to that mentorship link or just the the support network of yeah someone helping build your confidence and that you're willing to have like you know you'll have a good time so we have shows up we have one minute so can you share a mentor example that you have that you've been really thankful for yeah i mean i think again i always fall back on Ben Trevino uh he was the the first president of like share hawaii and i feel like really took me under his wing and really like asked me questions to think about what i i wanted to do and as all and has continued to be a support system long after we don't work together anymore and i just as a person i know i can share ideas with and that he'll always be there to support it feels good inside oh yeah it's like friends i'm like this is my friend friend who's my mentor i have like 10 or 15 mentors yeah yeah you don't even don't have to be limited to one older and more experience i mean now i have people that i mentor like high school students that are activists and um just keeping that cycle going is so important and making sure you're like passing it on and like always open open that you know recognizing who what what resources you had and then doing what you can to share those with others yeah awesome well that was our show it was super fun and i always love talking to you so thank you for coming on and maybe we can do it again sometime yeah let's do it every year okay what's a year thanks everyone so every other wednesday thank tecua ii finding our future talking about lots of solutions to our community and global problems so it's a lot of fun thank you