My parents began their impact on my life when they wrote a name on a birth certificate: Sierra, after my mother’s first American home, nestled in the forested foothills of a western mountain range. I am not one for nominative determinism, but it is certain that the same love of those hills she passed on birthed my love of history, ecology, and community, a passion for the outdoors beyond me and a love for the people beside me. My mother is a force of nature, a warm, adaptable woman who grew up on two continents and always wanted a better life for her children. She never graduated college, but ensured I was a ferocious reader, and daily encouraged me until I finished my degrees at the top of my class. She took me on my first hike and my first research trip, and she brought me soup when I was slogging through my thesis. I am every inch the outdoorswoman, environmentalist, scientist, human, and friend she built me up to be. We have built many gardens together, my mother and I - the first in a Texas backyard where I picked out seeds for pretty things and she picked out the practical. I did not, as a child, like carrots, but they grew quickest, and in my impatience to harvest something I consumed a great deal. My mother, who had planted them with that in mind, smiled. She taught me determination and grit in planting each season, the importance of being excellent in all things, the way weeds unchecked will choke out a good thing. She taught me patience as I waited. And the growing taught me botany, my great love, the field of research that produces the entirety of our food and protects the entirety of our forests. As I look to building my future, I want to grant that same garden and its life lessons to my children - good earth, clean air, populous pollinators. It is what has propelled a girl in love with the woods she was named after to the cutting edge of climate science. The funds from this scholarship would fund not only my own future, but that one, for a someday-girl with matching brown hair who looks up at me from a row of carrots. In granting me the ability to attend Yale University, these funds would equip me with a world-class toolbox for entering my own career as a scientist, as well as giving me the strength and credentials to protect all green and growing things for those around me and behind me. My mother made me a leader, an adapter, and a gardener; I should like to be able to say that she also inspired me through a graduate degree at an Ivy League School. This future of excellence is for me, and those behind me, and my parents and grandparents before me. I am grateful, and I grow.

I have always been a ferocious dreamer. My love for the natural world was born early - I would climb backyard trees and read stories of great naturalists before descending to put that wonder into action with all the force of a child’s enthusiasm. My mother and I’s garden was redolent with blooms for pollinators, the birds outside my window were carefully identified, the weather overhead wondered at, journaled, researched. At the college campus where I took piano lessons, I would sit against the door across the hall while waiting for my siblings and eavesdrop on an English course. One day bold enough to tell the professor I wanted to be an author too, someday, I found him kind enough to let a twelve-year-old sit in and to tell her that a famous last name does not a great work make. It is the work itself. And I set to the work with aplomb. High school brought unbridled opportunity. I volunteered at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, worked at a science museum where I was promoted through the ranks from an unpaid intern to the youngest ever student curator, and graduated top of my class. College opened further doors - labs, fieldwork, publications. I worked part-time throughout as an outdoor education instructor, sharing the marvels of our planet with another generation of girls with dreams in after-school programs. I traveled from the top of the US to the bottom of Puerto Rico collecting samples, and I finished two degrees, two minors, and two theses. As president of my campus’ Adventist Christian Fellowship chapter I represented my peers at the national level, as a member of two Natural Sciences Council committees I represented over two hundred College of Natural Sciences students in student government, and as a student athlete I represented my college on the rivers of Texas. For my work for my college and my world, I was awarded Dean’s Honored Graduate, the highest honor of my school, as well as a Research Distinction, Second-Year Excellence Award, and recognition as a Distinguished College Scholar. My greatest dream is to be an excellent teacher, researcher, and author; a historical ecologist building new, practical models for sustainable forestry and climate resilience through reintegrating human needs and histories into our understandings of forest ecology. I want to become a professor, to inspire a new generation of students in the wonder and necessity of plants - the foundation of all our food sources, the roofs over our heads, the fuel that runs our economies. I dream of supporting the individual, of building up the dreams of those after me as my mentors have my own. Along my journey I have acquired a strong background in archaeology, which I dream of using to return a human aspect to the work of my peers in natural sciences, integrating of the practicalities of farmers, the needs of foresters, the histories of indigenous Americans. I have fought for this great dream since discovering its seed as a child, kept at it through hardships, hospitalizations, and funding cuts. What makes a work great is the work itself. I am worth the dreams I aspire to achieve because I stand behind that plow and persevere, because I have been given much grace and intend to extend it, because I care deeply about people, plants, and the power of education. The cost of a graduate education at Yale University is higher than I can conquer by myself, but it is the excellence I dream of building my life of. I am worth achieving that dream. Thank you for your consideration.