My name is DJ Avila Mathers, my pronouns are he / him / his, and since losing my mom in November of 2020 to her long war with alcoholism, I have committed my time, energy, and effort on prioritizing growth through my own grief recovery. It has become my determination that artificial intelligence provides an unrealized opportunity to innovate and improve on the traditional approaches to grief therapy. In fact, I have simultaneously spent the past year and a half not only working through that complex grief, but also building an application based off OpenAI’s GPT-3, artificial intelligence language processing tool, to emulate personality. This tool will, at its minimum, give me and so many others the chance to finally say the goodbye we were never afforded. After my mom died, I was left with a scarred, incomplete relationship with the person I loved and cherished the most in the world. Her struggles with alcoholism created additional complexity as she the disease through her inability to work through the grief of her own mother, my grandmother. I knew the process of completing my relationship with her was my only hope of growing through the immense grief. Unfortunately, I knew that from already working through my dad’s death in high school and my grandmother’s death years later. Each loss left me in pieces, wondering why, and begging God to please let this just be a terrible nightmare. While I had participated in grief groups, traditional therapy, and alternative therapy practices, my journey had not been easy, nor resolved. Through this journey, it had been my experience that most people don’t know how to pick those pieces of themselves up, nor put them together in a way that creates an improved version of their previous selves. Then one day, I came across the Grief Recovery Institute and their Grief Recovery Program that changed my life in multiple ways. Not only did it provide an effective framework to finally process and grow through my grief, but it gave me the biggest epiphany of my life. The kind of epiphany that uncovers a life-defining passion where you completely believe you will make a difference helping others in your own unique way. I realized my technology background and interest in artificial intelligence had given me the vision to create an intersection with mental health that will change and save lives. My ultimate goal is to leverage my life story of intimate loss and recovery as the fuel for my passion to help others through the hardest and darkest times in their life. Through the previously unattainable benefits of artificial intelligence, I will craft an improved experience through grief and loss that will proactively prepare individuals for loss and guide others through the isolating experiences once they’re gone. This combination of mental health care and artificial intelligence has the opportunity to transform traditional therapy, suicide prevention, grief therapy, and many more use-cases. I am hoping Colorado State University's MBA program focused on social entrepenuership will support these endeavors to create a better world for all of us. We are finally in a period of time where mental health is more understood and respected, but we are just at the tip of the iceberg...

The single greatest threat to our present and future reality is the continued downward spiral of this inherited climate crisis. We have made a game out of ignoring the very real and catastrophic effects these human-induced changes to the climate have *already* created. We continue to hope some future technology (think: terra-forming Mars) will make it easier and less of an inconvenience to the way we currently live. However, I believe it is in our nation’s past that we find the blueprint needed to swiftly and dramatically alter our course towards longevity and prosperity once more. Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only lifted the country out of the Great Depression and jointly guided the Allies to victory in WWII, but he also created a proven framework for fundamentally transforming the United States into the world’s only true superpower. It was his framework that mobilized every-day citizens to feel empowered in personally contributing to what this country could be. It is his framework that we must tap to address our nation’s most pressing challenges. This renewed commitment to a New, New Deal will uplift people out of poverty, provide equitable access to social serves, implement ambitious sustainability projects for the nation's mass-transit infrastructure, grid resiliency, water conservation, and so much more. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders echoed embracing FDR’s bold and visionary leadership, “Now, we must take the next step forward and guarantee basic economic rights — the right to quality health care, as much education as one needs to succeed in our society, a decent job, affordable housing, a secure retirement, and a clean environment.” I admire FDR’s contributions to our past, present, and our future. Thanks to FDR, I believe we will once again rally behind our nationalist identity to create a better, but this time–greener, future.

My name is DJ Avila Mathers, my pronouns are he/him/his, and since first discovering the concepts of smart cities during my 2013 BBA exchange program in Vienna, Austria, I've focused my academic and professional careers on acquiring connections, experiences, and skills to comprehensively embrace and pursue that newfound passion. The Impact MBA (Social Entrepreneurship Track) at Colorado State is the only program that offers the full range of experiences and opportunities to realize my forwardly idealistic, yet attainable goal of saving the world from this inherited climate crisis. From technology development to strategy consulting and power and utilities to state and local government industries, my professional career is all but missing the core components of CSU’s Impact MBA to bring my future startup to life. This scholarship would not only enable me to pursue my academic dreams, but it will provide the runway to fully commit to the risk-heavy venture of starting my own smart city business to save the planet. Prior to my study abroad experience, I was completely unfamiliar with the macro-term “smart cities”. However, through the international course, “Sustainability in Business: Building for Tomorrow”, I discovered what I'd been missing in my BBA education – pure passion to make an important and needed difference in the world. My alma mater’s motto, “what starts here, changes the world” has been something I've chased since growing up in Austin, TX. I always knew that motto rang true in my heart and that I just needed to uncover what would enable me to accomplish that change. I’m thankful for my time at the University of Texas at Austin, but I always knew I would need to find a more tailored graduate program to accomplish the goals I have set for myself. There’s no denying I come from very humble beginnings. My mom raised me on her own through multiple server jobs and we struggled to live the life she hoped for us. She always impressed my education as an opportunity to change that for us and our family, that if I “worked hard, got good grades, I could go to college, and get a good job”. Through that hard work, I was granted admission into the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin to become the first in my family to make it past high school. I largely entered my undergraduate pursuit unsure of what I wanted to do and unequivocally unsure of what the options even were. That first semester I pledged a co-ed, professional business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, and met the people that would guide me and challenge me to become the world’s future professional I dreamed of. I decided to pursue my BBA in Management Information Systems and began acquiring my experience in organizational technology, technology derived efficiency, and innovative and user-focused design. My junior year, I co-founded an organization, Consult Your Community, that prioritized students’ ability to give back to their communities with the skills they were learning in the classroom. We coordinated pro-bono consulting projects for minority, small businesses across the region and directly improved their families’ livelihood. My singular hope is that I am able to move the needle towards saving our planet by innovating and improving the ways we interact with the environment around us. I have accumulated many varied experiences around technology, organizational change, and the product lifecycle. My immediate next step is to support these experiences through the deep-dive into Colorado State’s Impact MBA. I’m aware the goal of saving the world is idealistic, but I am tired of waiting for someone else to do it.