Welcome to another one of our new Ambassadors, Maria Barsa! Maria grew up in Red Hook and lived here her entire life - except for one year in Germany. She had Nick as her teacher in high school every year and was valedictorian! After graduating from RHHS, Maria went to Yale and studied architecture. During college, she was involved with the soup kitchen and loved hearing from the people she worked with and getting to know them.
After college, Maria moved to New York City and went to architecture school at Columbia. She then worked in the city for a few years, first in design and then in marketing, where she met her husband (who coincidentally had also gone to Yale and then Columbia). After her husband finished his fellowship they moved back upstate. Together they have three daughters.
When asked about which AFF core value resonates with her the most, Maria writes: “Education is about access to information, people, cultures, differing opinions, and resources to broaden our understanding of the world. While I am endlessly grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to study at Yale and Columbia, I’m acutely aware that Ivy League schools, and higher education in general, is not always the best education for everyone. I think you can go through the world’s “best” schools and still come out ignorant, and you can conversely go through life with no formal education of any kind and have boundless wisdom and compassion for humanity. With that in mind, I think empowering lower-income communities with education means implementing programs and providing resources within those communities just as much as it means giving them access to means beyond their communities.”
We’re excited to have Maria onboard!