Day 1
The first two days of MTP have gone by in a flash, and I already have enough questions and thoughts to last me for the next 6 months. I don’t have much time to write but I’ll do my best to detail what happened on Wednesday and write a separate post about what happened yesterday!
Wednesday
After checking in to the Line Hotel in Korea Town, I headed out to the Arts District to meet with the community manager at the Impact Hub in LA. The Impact Hub Network spreads across the world and the way that they describe themselves is…
“part innovation lab, part business incubator, and part community center, we offer our members a unique ecosystem of resources, inspiration, and collaboration opportunities to grow impact. Joining our diverse community of members and collaborators will inspire, connect, and enable you to develop your best work every step of the way.”
While waiting to meet for the community manager, someone came up to me and asked “excuse me, is your name Harris?”. It turns out that this friendly person was Rachel Sumekh and she recognized my face after a mutual friend of ours sent over my project description on the MTP website — what a small world! Rachel is the Co-Founder of a social enterprise called Swipe Out Hunger, which takes leftover dining dollars from college students and turns it into meals for the homeless and those who are less fortunate. Rachel and talked for well over an hour about the social innovation community in LA, innovation in the Jewish community, and what it’s been like to be a millennial social entrepreneur. It was one of those moments where you’re totally on the same page as someone and realize you’ve not only made a new connection, but made a friend as well.
From there, I headed over to a place called the Zinc Cafe which was about a ten minute walk from the Hub. I highly recommend going there and ordering the guacamole — to die for. At Zinc I was meeting with the Regional Director of Southern California for the Opportunity Fund in LA, Iosef Alofaituli. The Opportunity Fund provides microloans for entrepreneurs to build their businesses and microsavings programs for low income families to save for college. Iosef and I spoke about his journey from working in finance in corporate New York City, to starting community programs in a neighborhood in LA, to becoming the Regional Director of the Opportunity Fund. Iosef is an incredibly warm person and shared so many different insights with me that had me leaving the meeting feeling remarkably hopeful about my own career and journey. These first two meetings, in the span of about 3.5 hours, had my MTP journey starting off on the right foot.
I then headed back to the Line Hotel feeling a little bit anxious about meeting the other participants while still processing all that had already happened earlier in the day. I walked up to a group of millennials standing around and asked “are you with Millennial Trains Project?” and everyone’s face lit up with the prospect of meeting another member of this new community. We all talked for a little bit before heading over to our orientation where we would get intro’d to the MTP staff and learn more about some of the frameworks we would be using throughout the journey. One of the biggest takeaways for me from orientation was listening to the founder of MTP, Patrick Dowd, tell us that one of the core principles of the MTP journey is about “uncovering greatness, not filling emptiness”. Right off the bat, everyone was really open and sharing their thoughts and perspectives. We talked about everything from “the micro being the macro”, to asset based inquiry, to what life might be like on the train.
From orientation we left as a group to go to dinner which just happened to be on the rooftop of an old hotel. We spent the night sharing each of our personal leadership statements and the focus of our projects. Dinner was delicious, the view of downtown LA was incredible, and the bonding between participants was in full force. From the rooftop, we headed back to the Line hotel for an evening reception of drinks and cheesecake (it was delicious) and getting to know one another. All I can say without gushing too much and writing pages upon pages is that everyone on board the train is incredible. They’re all well spoken, their projects are remarkable, and they’re passionate and fun individuals. I’m excited to get to know them more over the course of the ten days and hear their perspectives on all of the challenges that come with trying to create change. These people all kick some serious ass.
From there we all realized that we would have to wake up at 6am and went straight to bed. Needless to say it was a fun filled day that got us all pumped up! I’ll be posting later today about what my first day on the train was like and what actually happens on board each day!