How to win young person of the year
A rambling thank you to everyone who has helped so far
So last week something really cool happened-- I was named Young Person of the Year by Stay Work Play New Hampshire, as part of their Rising Star Awards.
I'm incredibly grateful of course. But it matters that people understand how this happened!
Because there are really two ways you could tell this story.
VERSION ONE
Andy is a heroic entrepreneur who has worked really hard and deserves this big fancy award because he is smart.
VERSION TWO
11 years ago, Angus Hervey started telling a different story about people. His reason was simple:
"When we only tell the stories of doom, we fail to see the stories of possibility."
Over time, others found their own way toward this chorus:
The Progress Network, Zachary Karabell, Emma Varvaloucas, Fix The News, Human Progress, Rational Optimist Society, The Roots of Progress, The Elysian, Elle Griffin, Dan Steinhart, James Pethokoukis, Faster, Please! (and too many others to name)
What these people all share is a conviction to tell better stories about human beings and our ability to make progress on hard problems.
The first person to tell me a better story was Fiona Wilson1, who exposed me to the world of sustainability, the "wicked problems" we faced, and what people were doing about them.
While at the University of New Hampshire, I went on to study and learn from Alley Leach and Cameron Wake at the UNH Sustainability Institute, further increasing my knowledge through programs built by Dovev Levine, Alexis Dwyer, and Faina Bukher. Inspired by Alex Freid, my last semester I entered the NH Social Venture Innovation Challenge, and then won after being mentored by Ian Grant (this day I also met fellow competitor and beloved friend for life Jules Good).
Then I graduated and became an official beekeeper while learning even more about the complex work of decarbonization after joining Second Nature.
Through them, I attended AASHE's 2019 conference and witnessed Aaron Tanaka's extraordinary opening speech on the Boston Ujima Project and impact investing, then spent the next two days of the conference trying and failing to find Aaron so I could talk to him (I later learned he had spent this time cooking gourmet food with nearby friends). Dejected, I boarded my flight home and prepared to feel terrible since I'd just spent 48 hours failing at my only networking goal.
I then heard a voice say to me "hey man, I think I have the seat next to you." In the most insane stroke of luck I have ever heard of, Aaron Tanaka not only was on my flight-- he was literally assigned the seat next to mine, and our ensuing plane conversation convinced me to go harass David Loehwing about career opportunities at Impax Asset Management (I'd recently met David while hawking my bees at a pizzeria after being invited to a UNH event there).
Impax eventually hired me thanks to Krystal Hicks, Anna Yates and Melissa Platner (I knew Krystal from her days at UNH career services!) allowing me to deploy Salesforce skills I'd picked up at Second Nature and as an intern at the NH Gay Men's Chorus (thank you Paul Cioto!)
At Impax I came to appreciate the vast disconnect between what people learn about environmental issues, and the businesses and innovations working to solve them, learning boatloads about this landscape from Chris Rooney, Sara Bee Pichette, Remmi Ellis, Robb Ruhr, Julie Gorte, Ed Farrington, Jeff Vilker, and way too many others. Impax also introduced me to New Hampshire Businesses for Social Responsibility (NHBSR).
During this time, Zack Angelini and Theresa McKenney also encouraged me to take up leadership of their networking group, Sustainabilibrews, which I did alongside Ian Gaudreau. One night Ian brought his friend Cody Whelan to Sustainabilibrews, and it turned out that I had actually booked a driving lesson with Cody through his business teaching manual transmission (which I needed to know to drive my Japanese mini truck, purchased for use on our soon to be home / farm up in the Mt. Washington Valley)
While teaching me to drive the kei truck, Cody shared his plans with me to start a business focused on being a local community space for outdoor adventurers and environmentalists. 8 months later, when Treeline Outfitters opened, it naturally became the new home for Sustainabilibrews, and we brought as much business as we could there the next year.
So many positive and interesting people kept showing up to Sustainabilibrews (21 meetups and counting) that I felt increasingly confused why no one was telling their stories.
Somewhere between this dynamo group and all the intellectual firepower at Impax, I learned about the progress journalism movement, and drawing on the model of NewsFix and The Progress Network decided someone should bring this lens of rational optimism to NH and New England.
Having gotten to know Cody, I asked if I could use Treeline as a recording space for my new podcast, Granite Goodness, and without hesitation he was all for the idea.
I then asked my wife (Jess Waters) to draw me the Old Man of the Mountain, but giving a thumbs up, grinning with sunglasses, and she manifested it exactly as imagined, first try.
Granite Goodness began with me just talking to my friends and colleagues. These first ten people all LEAPT at the opportunity to help me. It did not matter I had no idea what I was doing, no audience, no real plan. Just a mic, a ridiculous / cute logo, some alliteration, and a desire to show off how cool I thought my friends were.
I recorded and produced the first 10 episodes without telling anyone (with all the podcasts out there, I didn't want the first time people heard about it to be before it was something substantive, with a legit catalogue of episodes!) and then on my 29th birthday, we were off!
The story I'm trying to tell here is basically this-- that Granite Goodness was started out of a steady avalanche of goodwill, favors, and inspiration, and these very same forces have defined its growth since its existence became public. Nearly every episode from 10 (Cody Whelan!) all the way up to #61 (the Governor of NH!) has been the result of a prior connection or favor, that often then turned into another connection, spiraling outward and upward in audience reach and guest prestige.
There are countless examples. I first learned about TEDxPortsmouth by accident, looking for interesting local things to take my mom to in retirement. We had such a good time the first year we went that when Granite Goodness came around I knew I had to ask the producers on the podcast. We ran into Anna Goldsmith and Kaarin Milne by chance at an afterparty, and I got to introduce myself in person to invite them on. (We also ran into Deaglan McEachern during the TEDx lunch break, and in extremely embarrassing mom fashion, she immediately told him about her son's "AMAZING NEW PODCAST". To my delight, he asked me to contact his office and said he'd love to come on, which he did soon afterward).
Fast forward to a couple months later when I applied to speak at Tedx. I was actually rejected-- because instead they wanted me to co-host the entire event alongside the one and only Latonya Wallace. It was the funnest day of my life (stay tuned for some episodes soon featuring all the speakers from this day!) which brought massive credibility and reach to Granite Goodness.
Jonathan Kiper came on the podcast after declaring his bid for governor, but I enjoyed him for years prior when I lived across the street from his restaurant, having eaten dozens of chicken taco burrito bowls from the legendary Jonny Boston's in Newmarket. Same for Emmett Soldati and Teatotaler, where my friends and I used to go nearly every sunday after swimming at the works in Somersworth.
Willamina Coroka connected to me after Zoe Dawson reached out with a good news story about wildlife in NH.
Caitlin Mcgrath Levesque (Red's Good Vibes), Dr. Nancy Pearson, Laura Cleminson, Alexandra Martin, and Jennifer Moore I met through either TEDxPortsmouth or TEDxAmoskeagMillyard.
I was introduced to Susan Kaplan, MBA and Jesse Lore, M.B.A. through New Hampshire Businesses for Social Responsibility (NHBSR)
Zeina Eyceoz also introduced me to the wonderful Karen Ager and Chris Dugan at NH Possible, my first strategic partnership. This gave me the framework to meet and partner with Jonathan Noury-Elliard, MBA and NH Rocks, who encouraged me to reach out to TAYLOR CASWELL, which was not a crazy leap after James Key-Wallace came on the show early on. That was also when I learned that my bank's CEO Charley Cummings had his office not so far from James, with Shawn Menard being an incorporator at Walden Mutual Bank (his episode dropping this week!). NH Possible also introduced me to Gene Martin, Anthony S. Poore, Jo Porter, and Jennifer Frizzell.
Caroline Tremblay let me use a story of hers for my newsletter, and then connected me to Julianna Dodson at Hannah Grimes, where I met Maria Kulianin Finnegan, and they both introduced me to Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander, whose team connected me to Senator Maggie Hassan.
Fiona Wilson's appearance helped vouch for me in asking to interview new UNH President Elizabeth Chilton, who reminded me of the The Freedom Café's new location where longtime friend Rachel Vaz connected me to Bryan Bessette.
Former Stay Work Play New Hampshire Executive Director Will Stewart connected me to their new Executive Director Corinne Benfield, who invited me to meet the governor at a Stay Work Play event, where I was able to make an impression and then follow up with her office via Corinne's connection to her assistant.
There are so, so many other examples I am leaving out, but the point is this: if you're wondering how someone gets to be named "Young Person of the Year", the answer definitely isn't "because they did a bunch of cool stuff themselves." That would be version one of this story.
The answer instead is that it happens because of Japanese mini trucks, Paul Bunyan lore, gay men singing, downing ciders with tree huggers and punks, bees, TED talks, embarassing moms, carbon accounting, airline seating accidents, pizzerias, granite, a healthy dose of optimism, and a ridiculous amount of people being ridiculously generous.
If you didn't know otherwise, you might think that version two sounds like something made up, stranger than fiction. You can guess which version I prefer.
And yes, I also prefer to focus on stories of optimism and possibility, where the story of people is one of cooperation and progress.
The thing is though, that story is the one that's true.
🗿👍🏼
Come celebrate all the awesome people making NH better with us on October 16! Use my code Winner2025 for a ticket discount : )
Wow, this is awesome. Congratulations!!! And thank you for sharing the movement at large—there are so many holding this torch!
I am and always will be a SUPER PROUD and EMBARRASSING MOM!!! Love you so much!!! Mom:)