Hi, my name is Jennifer Ocin and I am 21 years old. I am from Koreatown, Los Angeles, close to the Little Bangladesh enclave. I am a 4th year Public Health Sciences major, with a minor in Medical Anthropology. In my time at UC Irvine, my sustainability interests grew from my first public health classes and from Theta Psi, the first co-ed professional sustainability fraternity. With Theta Psi, I learned a lot about the different aspects of sustainability, and had the privilege of being pledge chair of the fraternity last year, in which I helped new members carry out their own service and fundraising projects. I also got to experience and work together with the rest of the group to do sustainable community service projects in the OC area, like the OC Food Harvest, beach clean-ups, and social and environmental justice events at UCI. With public health, I got to see how the natural and man-made environments play a pivotal role in the health and wellness of individuals and larger, global populations. In addition to Theta Psi, I am also the co-president for BioSci Student Council (BSC) and Bengali Rural Education Advancement (BREA). BSC is devoted to providing not only bio majors, but students in STEM, with academic resources, volunteering opportunities, and solutions to student issues, while BREA is dedicated to raising money for funding education in rural Bangladesh and spreading awareness of the Bengali/Bangladeshi culture to the UCI community. I have been a volunteer with the American Heart Association, Doctors 4 Diversity, and the UCI Medical Center. I previously worked at UCI Human Resources as an Employment Student Assistant and am currently doing Bio 199 research in Dr. Yassa’s Translational Neuroscience lab at the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. Besides all that, I enjoy discovering new music, (particularly the genre of indie/alternative), going to concerts, watching movies, going to the beach, exploring new places, hanging out with friends, trying new foods, and being a tourist in my own city. One of my favorite hobbies is to learn about cultures different from my own, and so I hope to witness this while in Costa Rica. I am excited to contribute teamwork and curiosity to the CRP team and learn about Costa Rican natives’ personal stories. Furthermore, I hope to experience the climate, biodiversity, and natural surroundings of Costa Rica firsthand, and try a myriad of foods while in-country.