Meet the Team: Aaron Lesser, Book Club Manager

Aaron Lesser is the Book Club Manager and part of the Communications Team at StartSomeGood. He’s doing an awesome job leading the SocEnt Book Club—finding inspirational and mentally stimulating books for all of us to enjoy, setting up chats with the authors so that we can ask questions and learn more about them, and providing us with engaging book reviews on the blog. Aaron is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in International Studies and minoring in Writing and Chinese language. Before joining StartSomeGood, he was studying in Kenya last year with the St. Lawrence program.

How did you find out about StartSomeGood?

After Kenya I found that I wasn’t interested in the same things as I was before I went. On the last day I spent there I was talking with one of the program coordinators, a brilliant Sudanese man named Sinnary. When I half-jokingly asked how he felt about having to deal with American students all the time, I was expecting an answer about how scared we all are of bugs or how we’re spoiled from a lifetime of ease, but instead he said he really likes Americans. He said we have an attitude, often maligned, that we can fix any problem. He said we’re wrong a lot of times, and sometimes we make things worse, but he prefers that attitude to the defeatist one he hears from people from other parts of the world. That conversation stuck with me and I started looking for organizations that are trying to help people make positive changes in the world. I don’t think you’ll find a better example than StartSomeGood. That’s also my favorite part about StartSomeGood.

What social issues really get you fired up?

I’m really interested in food insecurity issues and how they’re related to poverty. I don’t think many people understand the long term implications of eating the types of foods that people living in poverty in urban areas are forced to eat; it’s really scary because no one is really certain what the health consequences of eating nothing but industrialized food are. Humans have never gotten their food exclusively from companies that manufacture food in the way that most items in a grocery store today are made.

What are your favorite social entrepreneurship resources?

Besides StartSomeGood, your own network of friends and family—if you have their support you’ll have the confidence to find all the resources you need to accomplish your goals. Also, most of your fundraising is going to be done within your network, so they’re doubly important!

 In your opinion, what is the greatest album of all time?

I’m going to have to go with the first CD I ever bought, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below by Outkast. It’s been all downhill from there in terms of music for me.

When you aren’t busy being our awesome Book Club Manager, what do you like to do in your spare time?

I’m an amateur artist specializing the mediums of oil pastels and blue painter’s tape on the walls of my dorm room/apartment. A couple of years ago I made a to-scale map of the world on the ceiling of the common room in my suite using blue tape. After spending several hours standing on chairs making what I thought looked like a really detailed world my roommates told me I had made the whole thing inside out—it’s hard to explain, it was like what the continents would look like if you were standing right in the earth’s core. It made for a very disorienting year in the suite.

You could travel anywhere tomorrow.  Where would you go?

Back to Kenya. I never got a chance to visit a small island called Lamu on the coast where you have to get around by riding on a donkey (there are no automobiles allowed on the island). It sounds amazingly relaxing.

Do you have any favorite books or authors? Or any books that you’ve read recently and recommend?  

Usually the last book I’ve read is my favorite book. Not to toot our own horn, but the last three SocEnt book club books have been spectacular: We First by Simon Mainwaring, The New Relationship Marketing by Mari Smith, and Shift and Reset by Brian Reich. If you’re strapped for time I always enjoy reading anthologies of short stories written by great authors, Hemingway, Pushkin, and Lahiri are the three that come to mind.

__________________________________________________________

Did you enjoy reading about Aaron and are eager to learn about more of our team members? Check back next week to meet one of the newest Communications Team members: Vanessa Rhinesmith!