In relationship to everything

Nancy Huizar, ’15, had long established their community service values. As a high school student, they (Nancy uses they/them pronouns) worked with the Pacific Science Center teaching visitors about climate change and ocean acidification. They implemented school-wide recycling programs with the Earth Core club and mentored middle school students in preparation for the challenges of high school. In just four years, Huizar amassed over 1,000 hours of community service.

Huizar attributes this early love for the environment, science and education as a gift from their parents who had met in Alaska. Their father worked in the crabbing industry, on boats alongside Captain Phil long before the days of the “Deadliest Catch.” Their mother worked in the fish canneries and here, they rooted Huizar with the importance of one’s relationship to the land and the water. They lived what it means to be a steward of natural resources.

Awakening can happen

When asked what the genesis was for Huizar to head to the University of Washington’s aquatic and fishery science program, Huizar recalled their father taking them in 1996 to see Keiko, the whale from “Free Willy” at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon. While reckoning as an adult with the irony of seeing Keiko as a captive whale, Huizar still cites this moment as life-changing, “I remember being in awe of this giant Orca whale.” That awe opened a pathway of diving deep into whales, dolphins and captivity impact issues, leading all the way to the UW.

As an incoming freshman, Huizar learned about the Ellis Civic Fellowship and its support for students committed to serving their communities. The program offered an opportunity to learn more about oneself, the greater community and what lies at the intersections of study and service work.

“As a young person, I was really excited to build on the skills I had been developing, while also asking, ‘What are the things I don’t know,’” Huizar said of their decision to apply.

Awarded the Fellowship their freshman year, they further identified the opportunity as one to connect with other service-oriented students, as well as to expand their experience and skills in leadership, fellowship and empathy.

The Ellis Civic Fellowship begins as a series of building blocks, with the first year offering a broad overview of the Seattle community.

“Before college, I had thought of community service as helping where there was a need,” said Huizar. As the Fellowship progressed with classroom studies and complex conversations, Huizar found themself in an animated class conversation where they realized the naivete of a held idea of theirs. “Having that time to be challenged, and having it with structure and safety, made a space where I could work through, process and figure things out,” Huizar said.

It was this experience that awakened their systems perspectives and the drive to unlearn bias, “My lens had been very narrow in that I didn’t consider systems and how systems impact both the need and root causes of issues.”

Nancy Huizar, ’15, majored in aquatic and fishery sciences. They are now principal owner at NHuizar Consulting and program manager at UW Othello-Commons. Photo by Ian Teodoro.

Working arm in arm

Building from this moment, Huizar began to meet people where they were at and develop relationships from there. Asking, “How do we come in to be an advocate in the environmental sciences,” was key, and in the most simple and humane way, the answer came to them as, “How are we addressing root causes?”

The Ellis Civic Fellowship progressed to service partnership stages, where Huizar worked with the Washington Environmental Council and Seattle Aquarium, applying and practicing new methodologies and leadership styles within educational impact work. They remember a particular day leading students through learning activities at the aquarium. The highlight of the day, however, wasn’t within the glass walls of the aquarium. As they sat together outside along the water eating lunch, a harbor seal came in and out, playing in front of them. It flipped up a salmon and caught it, enjoying its lunch right along with the students, to their squealing delight and wonder of it all. Huizar knew they were on the right path.

As Huizar developed deeper connections between their academic work and service commitments through the Fellowship’s duration, they sought out how to fully integrate the sciences with the voices and full participation of communities. Huizar’s final Fellowship partnership was working as the environmental intern at Seattle City Light. In this role, Huizar conducted baseline vegetation studies to target sites ideal for restoration and habitat improvement; analyzed 20 years of survey data of steelhead and chinook runs; and developed their capstone project, an interactive curriculum for elementary school students about climate change effects on Pacific Northwest salmon.

Bringing others along

Huizar recalls bringing 5th grade students from South Seattle to Regis Park in Renton. The students gathered around the Cedar River, wearing the bright, polarized goggles they made in class, allowing them to see the salmon swimming without having the light reflect.

“I remember asking them,” said Huizar, “‘Have you seen salmon before?’ A lot of them said ‘no.’ A lot of them had never been to a river before.”

Huizar led them through activities, looking at the beds and salmon, teaching them to measure distances and how to use a compass. Spanish-speaking students were excited that that Huizar spoke and understood them when they spoke in Spanish. Huizar knows what it meant for those children to see someone who looked like them in that space, “It can change the way that you think of your dreams for yourself.” To imagine that you, too, have access to these spaces.

The Ellis Civic Fellowship culminated with a community-based capstone project, and here Huizar created visuals and an interactive balloon and beaker system where students could use the carbon dioxide from their breath to change the water’s pH levels. Through chemistry, Huizar was able to show these students how impact happens, how climate change happens. Infusing their lesson with service and justice ideas, Huizar taught them how they can take this information and make this world a better place.

Throughout the Fellowship experiences, Huizar approached their work through the lens of inclusion, participation and collaboration. This led Huizar to where they are today: consulting across stakeholder groups and working within communities who have previously experienced disinvestment. To Huizar, no person or place is disposable.

Today, Huizar is fully committed to community-based impact work for social and environmental justice. From working on the team to draft Seattle’s Green New Deal, to leading organizations and governmental offices on a wide array of environmental and social justice issues, Huizar continues to drive toward the question at the core of every challenge, “What is the root cause of the injustice here?” Huizar continues to exemplify collaboration and collective action within the Seattle community, proving the environmental sciences are interconnected and in relationship to everything — population health, the strength of local democracy and education equity.

Huizar cites the Ellis Civic Fellowship as having given them the opportunity to ask deeper questions, craft creative connections and innovate new solutions to the most pressing issues and concerns of the day.

“We need to remember ‘it takes a village’ can be applied to how we actually keep our communities safe and healthy,” said Huizar, “which we would all benefit from — how we care for each other, how we want to see the world and what we hope to create in this world.”