The trajectory of TLU senior Austin Olsen’s life changed, in a roundabout way, due to the fact that she lives a long way from campus. “I commute over an hour to come to school, so when I picked my very first classes, I tried to choose more than one a day to make the drive worth it,” she explains. At the start of her first semester, however, one of her classes shifted to being online rather than in-person. That left an opening in Olsen’s schedule—an opening she wanted to fill with something worthwhile. “While on my way to the advising office, I overheard Dr. Kaminski teaching her Intro to SISE class and knew that was the class I wanted to fill my schedule with,” she recalls. “That led me to not just fill my schedule and justify my commute, but I ended up being so invested in the curriculum that I added SISE as a minor, and eventually double majored. It shaped my entire TLU experience and showed me what I wanted to do with my life.”

Over the past year, Olsen’s been interning at the New Braunfels Food Bank, and this May, she will earn her Bachelor of Business Administration in both management and Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship. And after that? “I have already secured a position as a part-time grant writer, so I plan to transition to writing grants full time,” she says. “I hope to one day open my own nonprofit supporting individuals with substance use disorder and their families.”

Her overarching dream is a noble one: “I hope that I can inspire people to not see ‘no’ as a definitive answer, but rather an opportunity to ask how. Anything can be possible; you just have to find a way. This inspires innovation and brings hope to our community.”