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| Alyssa Merwin hiking Lion’s Head Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. Alyssa is now serving on the Eagle’s Nest Foundation Board of Trustees |
Influences of The Outdoor Academy
By Alyssa Merwin
Wood chips flew and the crisp November air bit the back of my tan, Florida neck. It didn’t stop there; my fingers numbed and my hair, once wet, hardened on top of my head as I chopped firewood to warm the Sun Lodge and we completed the morning chores. I loved it, though. I loved that Fall in North Carolina. I cherished baking bread in the community kitchen, learning to waltz on the floor of the Old Lodge, measuring water velocity in the streams of Pisgah Forest, and spending evenings with my Outdoor Academy classmates debating current events and collaborating on lingering assignments.
To those outside the Nest, it may sound strange to enjoy manual labor and the seemingly mundane tasks associated with living among twelve of your classmates and soon-to-be best friends. But years later, it seems strange to imagine not having attended that first semester of The Outdoor Academy, and seems even more impossible to have imagined that an experience thirteen years ago would have transformed and impacted my life so dramatically.
When at 15 years old I was selected as one of 12 students from across the country to attend The Outdoor Academy, I was excited about a community-based living and learning environment focused on rigorous academics and self-discovery. I entered that Fall semester excited about the experiences I would have and the things I would learn. I left three months later transformed. I blossomed from solid student and good kid into an ambitious young adult, eager to contribute to the world and with an enthusiasm and confidence I never knew I possessed. My time at The Outdoor Academy inspired a social objective while the coursework’s focus on diversity, responsibility and global impact allowed me to find my own creative way to contribute.
As with all of the alumni who have since graduated from semesters at the OA and gone on to change the world, each in his or her own way, I too felt a desire to contribute to the global community and to be an entrepreneur in creating my own path of success and achievement.
Today I tap the leadership, skills and values I learned at OA to excel in a career that challenges and inspires me every day. As Senior Director of Marketing in the London office of a best-practices research and consultancy firm, I manage an international team responsible for penetration of the European and African market. My work takes me across the globe, from San Francisco, New York, and Paris, to Stockholm, Johannesburg, Helsinki, and Sydney. My discussions have covered a range of topics from Corporate Social Responsibility to the risk HIV/AIDS pose to the South African labor force. These conversations have been stimulating and demanding and it is my time at The Outdoor Academy that has given me the drive to pursue an international career and to engage with executives on a level where our work can have tremendous positive impacts on the world around us.
My work enables me to pursue my goals, to give back and to enhance the world around me, and all because that Fall semester in the mountains of North Carolina sparked something in me that has since changed the course of my life.
