Why I'm Here
Our perspectives shape the world.
The meaning we assign to any given event influences not only how we experience that moment, but how we move through the ones that follow. The responsibility I've taken on as a DRep is rooted in this understanding. With it, I hope to help shape a better world.
In 2024, I found myself in an unexpected place: volunteering as a construction professional in the Masai Mara Conservancy, Kenya. While there, I witnessed horrific violence, acts committed not by rebels, but by the very government sworn to protect its people. Peaceful, unarmed protestors were shot in the streets. Global news took notice.
In the days that followed, investigations revealed a deeper horror: some of the women who were killed had been secretly buried to cover up the crimes. Their bodies were only discovered after heavy rains brought them to the surface.
I don't have to imagine the instability. I was there, working shoulder-to-shoulder with kind, hopeful people who, like many around the world, simply wanted a better future. But in the shadow of entrenched corruption and armed authority, it was clear that real change would require more than hope. It would need strategy. Courage. Community.
Not long after, the very project I was helping build came under legal threat. A rival group filed to shut us down. I followed the case closely. In time, the courts ruled in our favor, we had every right to continue.
But nature teaches us: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
My resolve to finish the work, no matter what, was matched by the other side's determination to stop it. In the end, they raided our site, burned everything we had built, and violently attacked several of our team members with arrows and clubs.
Later that year, I traveled to Argentina to help draft the Cardano Constitution. And with me, I carried the weight of Kenya, not just as a memory, but as a question:
What story do I want to tell about what happened?
Will it remain a tragedy, or become something transformative?
At the convention, a wise delegate from New Zealand said something I'll never forget:
"If you want to bring a community together, you need to have a thousand cups of tea."
That's what Cardano can be.
Not just a blockchain. Not just a tool. But a shared table. A place where we meet, speak, listen, and build together. A place where power and responsibility are shared, not hoarded.
If, in your heart, you too believe we can do better than outdated systems, where a single vote binds you to a distant representative for years, then lend me your voting power.
I'll use it to push decision-making to the edges, where real people live.
So we can stop wondering what we could have done,
and start doing what we must.