To find your why, it’s important to go back to the start
At the heart of my Why is the desire to create social and environmental change through business and technology, why is that? Well, there are many good reasons for a cause such as this, but a bit of my back story might help set the scene...
I was born in Mexico City, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, to two highly intellectual parents both born and bred in Mexico. My father, now a Doctor in Geophysics, was originally from a small town in Baja California, the eldest of four children all driven to pursue excellence in what some people might think was a small minded regional community. I still recall my grandparents ranch that cultivated a vineyard with what appeared to my tiny child stature - enormous majestic peacocks roaming free in the hot sun. My mother grew up in Mexico City itself, the youngest of four, she too strove for excellence and graduated a mathematician. This side of my family has a combination of scientific and creative pursuits, even with the struggles to tap into creative talent with the economic pressures that exist in a city that now has 22 of the country’s 129 million people.
How did I end up living in Australia you might ask?
During the time my parents met at university in Mexico City, my father was offered a scholarship to complete his doctorate in either the United States, Canada or Australia. My parents tell me that this decision was simple, "Australia sounded like a real adventure - why not!" And here is where the story of my childhood began in 1982, flying over the Pacific Ocean via Honolulu at six months of age...
Growing up, I knew home to be in two countries as my parents commenced their impressive cycle of moving from Australia to Mexico and back again nine times over before I turned 16. Educated across two very different school systems, languages, cultures, community identities and value sets I was very aware of the stark differences between these two peoples. Shaping my young mind with vivid, colourful and sometimes traumatic scenes of inequality and complete environmental disregard I couldn't help but compare.
At the age of eight, I'd just left the safe quiet suburbia of Brisbane in 1990 and was quickly surrounded by millions of my own kin in crowded streets, markets and metros. Startled by young indigenous women roughly 20 years of age walking past me with young toddlers asleep in their ‘rebozos’ (a traditional garment used as baby carriers), outstretched hand for money, barefoot looking tired and desperate. Beggars of all ages attempting to get your attention for a peso or less.
One man I remember singing with a beautiful tenor voice projected by a small speaker set strapped to his back, a makeshift cane used to prop him up due to a malformed limb as he made his way down the metro carriages. Mariachi music travelling through as he passed by. Another beggar boy drug induced at 14 years of age, spreading out his tattered T-shirt on the floor with broken glass a top, before throwing himself on to it in roly-polies to demonstrate some sort of magic trick, as people got on and off at every stop.
Gut wrenching memories of careless environmental disregard still fully formed, of young mothers discarding empty single use drink containers out of ‘micro’ bus windows without a shadow of embarrassment. No momentum lost in their chitter chatter with friends or children. Adding to the garbage in the gutters, destroying beautiful landscapes, all this coupled with high levels of water and air pollution. Air pollution so high that I remember on more then one occasion sitting happily with my Grandmother in her small apartment kitchen, not being able to see the building across the road out the window. The smog being so thick that I was unable to even see the buildings' outline no more than 200 meter away.
Being a child of two countries with such enormous differences has not only made me very aware of how lucky we are in Australia, but has driven a desire to never take it for granted. I have so much of Mexico in my heart, but have chosen over my adult life to live in Australia - to make a difference, grabbing those opportunities that this country promises.
I feel obligated to ensure I am able to dedicate my time and energy to making an impact worthy of the privileges I have gained. The environmental and social struggles my ancestors and current family still face need addressing, and that is what I will be doing.
For those of you who feel a similar obligation to be on the positive side of the environmental and social repair, I welcome you to my community and over the coming months will be outlining my actions to keep the world healthy for our children.
Every little bit counts.
Iyari Cevallos