Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sabrina Williams. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Sabrina, thank you so much for joining us. You are such a positive person and it’s something we really admire and so we wanted to start by asking you where you think your optimism comes from?
For me, optimism is a form of invisible practice, like some people think about faith. There is a saying that faith is a belief in things yet seen, and this is how I think about optimism. It involves thinking about the future without fearing it, and trusting in outcomes or realities that are not yet visible, despite what’s happening right now.
It comes from looking at an event days, weeks or years later, and instead of focusing directly on the good or bad outcome, noticing that you actually made it days, weeks or years down the line! I’ve learned that good things are easy to leave unexamined but, just like bad things that happen, they should be studied.
When I was in high school, I had a job stuffing envelopes. Instead of being bored by it, I challenged myself to beat my “stuffing” record every day, in addition to engaging in some quality daydream time. It became a personal fun point in what, for my fellow highschoolers, was a job of drudgery. Years later, after I was a post graduate, I found myself taking temp jobs, one of which involved envelope stuffing. The supervisor apologized over and over about having someone of my background and education doing such “menial” work. But for me, it wasn’t menial, it presented an opportunity to challenge myself, just like I had a decade before.
This is the mindset of optimism for me. With it, I’ve been able to find purpose regardless of the chaos out there and I can spend time indulging my curiosity about the world. Whether that’s through “rabbit holing” or daydreaming about possibilities.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
When I was in elementary school, I told people I wanted to be an architect-lawyer. I would build these complicated, labyrinthine structures out of cardboard, and I would also negotiate terms for the doll residents to use the space. Through my middle and high school years, I was heavily involved in student government and conflict-resolution, but I leaned closer to the architecture side of things and became an undergraduate completing an architecture degree. In my thesis year, I was faced with residents being displaced at a site I naively thought was a result of resident-welcomed intervention. Residents they told me they could have received optimal outcomes if they had proper legal representation earlier. That cemented my decision to complete the hyphen and become a lawyer.
Along the way, I spent time with my grandmother, where growing hot peppers served as the setting for conversations about life and plants, about innovation and agriculture, and about community and fairness. I then studied urban planning to bring these concepts, grounded in justice, together with architecture and law—and started organizing public housing residents in 40 states, to change rules that prevented them from growing food at their sites. I founded a nonprofit to do this work and also learned about low-cost, DIY irrigation systems at my local makerspace. Those systems became part of a project called SEED at the nonprofit, and they took me to Cuba for testing and refinement with smallholder farmers. In Cuba, the first ideas about testing soil carbon were born as it had become dispiriting to see so many Black, Brown, Indigenous and immigrant growers losing resources and resilience to climate change and learn that almost 80% of these folks lacked access to the very tech that could lift them out of poverty. So, I learned to code and build electronics, to bring them affordable and sustainable tools.
Twenty years later, SEED moved from a project to its own Public Benefit Corporation and B-Corp certified company building a portable, affordable soil carbon sensor for anyone that grows on less than 5 acres. Social justice is part of SEED’s DNA and within that a belief that soil matters. I know that environmental progress, food justice and technology already pose standalone barriers to many growers (they live near industry, far from healthy food options, lack access to affordable tools). But I also know a simple tool is achieving much where they intersect. Emissions and heat are reduced, oil and heavy metals are being remediated bringing contaminated soils to health, and sites are becoming more productive. Rough calculation of current rates of soil degradation suggests we have about 60 years of topsoil left. The communities harmed most by loss of this resource are poor and of color, with a clear link between remediation and pollution-free communities.
The same social justice that defines SEED, has helped the company receive business development assistance, but it also impacts company funding as we develop our soil carbon sensor. I’ve found that there’s a bit of truth to the notion that black founders (especially women) are over mentored and underfunded! In spite of this, SEED has moved a tool through the prototype stage to produce meaningful results for hundreds of small plot growers, with final version scheduled for the end of this year.
Soil is often not a priority in development of urban ag, yet underpins every yield achievement at urban sites. So, SEED is also using the soil carbon sensor to develop a soil remediation formula and amendment for sale and community distribution.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I’ve worked on identifying and getting a good grasp of the intersection of what I like and what I’m good at. And I’ve learned that each of these things is informed by the other. For instance, I know I like to solve things, and I know that problems come in many shapes. Some are obvious, like a broken coffeemaker or the monarch butterfly chrysalis that fell from a leaf. But they can also be broken systems or communities.
My desire to problem solve is informed by my curiosity. I’m curious about why things happen, how they happened and what can be learned to either replicate or prevent them from happening again. Why did the coffee machine/chrysalis/community break? How did it? (Open that coffee machine!) What can I learn about this for future action?
My curiosity fuels my action. Don’t let water corrode the coffee machine heating element (get a French press), reattach the chrysalis vertically with floss, build spaces for relationships and trust.
The advice I’d give anyone, including myself, for improving on these qualities is have tools handy. Those can be anything from screwdrivers to your ears. If you’re a curious problemsolver, be ready to open things, follow a link, engage with individuals, listen.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
There are a few books that have informed the way I move through the world. Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of American Cities” with its prescription for communities and their health, Marshall Berman’s “All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity” and its possibilities of reconciling social idealism with the more burdensome facets of bureaucracy and everything Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written because of his theme of memory and what we do with it.
But the book I keep bedside to reset and reorient is “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He has been able to capture what makes satisfying experiences actually satisfying and the fact that achieving this quality experience does not just happen by chance. He’s really put into words the positive experiences I have with mindful challenge and focus, and this book always helps me get back to that place to keep chaos at bay.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.seedbox.systems
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedbox.systems/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-l-williams/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Seedbox.Systems
Image Credits
Sabrina Williams, Kiino Villand
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
