When I was fourteen, I sat cross-legged on a dusty floor in Narsapur, India, watching a woman weave lace so intricate it looked like frozen water. She earned 20 rupees a day for it. That moment sparked Incredible Art, the e-commerce platform I built to connect 1,400+ rural artisans with global buyers, eventually generating over USD 40,000 in sales and increasing that weaver’s daily income tenfold. It also taught me something I carry into every decision I make: sustainability is not just about carbon. It is about whether the systems we move through leave people and places more whole than we found them.
This is the lens I will bring to my year at the London School of Economics. Travel has a well-documented environmental cost. Aviation alone accounts for roughly 2.5% of global CO2 emissions, and long-haul flights like mine from Los Angeles to London sit at the sharp end of that figure. I take that seriously. But I also believe that studying abroad, when done intentionally, creates the kind of cross-border understanding that makes global cooperation on climate possible in the first place.
My concrete plan starts before I board the plane. I will offset my flight emissions through Gold Standard-certified projects (goldstandard.org), choosing programs that fund clean cookstove initiatives in communities similar to the artisan villages I have worked with. Once in London, I intend to embrace the city’s cycling and public transit infrastructure rather than relying on rideshares, using apps like Citymapper (citymapper.com) to navigate efficiently. For weekend travel across Europe, I plan to prioritize rail over air through Trainline (thetrainline.com), which also calculates the carbon savings of each journey. To minimize food waste in my daily routine, I will use Too Good To Go (toogoodtogo.com) and OLIO (olioapp.com), both of which have strong networks in London.
These individual measures matter, but my LSE placement also lets me engage with sustainability at a systemic level. My academic focus on economics connects directly to UN SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), the same goals that have guided Incredible Art from the beginning. At LSE, I want to study how policy frameworks in the UK approach sustainable supply chains and ethical sourcing, then bring those insights back to both USC and my work with Indian artisan communities. Having led the Areca Leaf Sustainability Project at my high school, where we built a profitable business model around biodegradable dinnerware, I know that sustainability works best when it is also economically viable.
What excites me most is the exchange itself. I want to learn how British and European students think about consumption, waste, and responsibility differently than we do in the U.S. or India, and I want to share what I have learned from sitting on that dusty floor in Narsapur. Butex’s support would not just fund a semester abroad. It would deepen a commitment to sustainable economic inclusion that I have been building since I was fourteen.
