Profiling your best friend is not as easy as one would expect. The interview takes longer because you spend half of the time laughing and the writing becomes a mess of balled up paper and red pen caps. Though it may not necessarily be easy, it is an absolute honor.Â
Carrie Stokes is one of those rare people that makes you burst with joy every time you’re around her. Call me biased, but with her infectious smile and gut-wrenching laugh, Carrie is undoubtedly what many refer to as a campus icon. She’s the student face of Campus Kitchen and the Sustainability Office, not to mention a senior anthropology/religion double major and environmental studies minor.Â
You’ll recognize Carrie gallivanting around campus with her Nalgene, Burt’s Bee lip balm, and oversized North Face backpack all in tow. Many know her for her “big brown eyes and curly hair,” as her favorite band, The Avett Brothers, describes in their song “Kind of in Love.”
Her southern charm comes from being a native of Winston-Salem, but her unique sense of self comes from her selfless dedication to a sustainable Earth and everything (and everyone) on it.Â
As the Campus Garden intern for the Office of Sustainability, Carrie works to spread the importance of a sustainable food culture throughout campus. Not only does she serve as the Theme Program Assistant for the Sustainability house at 1141 Polo Road, but she also serves as the secretary for the Student Environmental Action Coalition, a grassroots revolution which she explains as “how I go to sleep at night. It’s incredible to be part of a grassroots program where we aren’t reporting to the man!”
When she isn’t busy organizing new initiatives for the Office of Sustainability, such as her current project to create a partnership with Aramark to use produce from the Campus Garden in the Pit, (oh and by the way if you’ve had any basil there the past few days it’s from the garden!), she’s working as a student co-coordinator for Campus Kitchen. I mean, honestly, does she ever stop?
You may be wondering what exactly got Carrie interested in her tri-fecta of sustainability, anthropology and religion. To get the answer, we have to take a couple trips: one to the Appalachian Mountains and one, a bit longer, to India. Both of which she has taken twice.
Carrie first went to the Appalachian Mountains the summer after her freshman year with the anthropology department to live in the field while out researching. The program introduced her to what would become her passion: sustainable community development. “I became so enamored with how intentional [the community] was to what they put into their bodies.” She has been a vegetarian ever since.
Religion came into the picture that January when she was asked by the Divinity School to go on a graduate student trip (yes, as a sophomore she was asked) to the same area where she “studied the same place but through a completely different lens.” The program let Carrie observe and partake into the cultural and religious traditions of the region. The craziest part? Snake handlers!
Yes, snakes. Which were also in abundance that summer when Carrie headed to India with the communication department for course credit. In quintessential Carrie words, “It was the most life-changing experience. Ever.”
Little did she know that a year later she’d have the chance to go back when she was awarded the Richter Scholarship for the next summer. After writing quite the proposal, Carrie was awarded the opportunity to return to India to conduct her own case study.Â
“I went back to Ladakh [a region of north India] to conduct research and the study education within the region. It was a great place to do a case study because it is isolated between two mountain ranges. It’s a unique culture both from us and the rest of India … completely indescribable.”
Lucky for me, er, us, she has planted herself back on campus for her senior year, a reality she hasn’t yet come to grips with. We’re just glad to have her back at Wake for yet another year.
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*Photography by Karleigh Ash