Meet Aisha White, this week’s Campus Celebrity. Aisha, a Business Marketing Major with an Italian Studies Minor, can usually be found in Nordy’s grilling up some delicious grilled cheese for FeelGood, which she has just become the president of this semester. If this Pitt junior is not behind the grill or attempting to end world hunger, you can find her in the studio doing her radio talk show with WPTS on Friday from 12-2 with Aidan Smith called “The Theme Shosho Fo Show.” She also enjoys rock climbing at Trees and hiking around the Appalachian trails.
HC: How did you get involved in FeelGood?
Aisha: My freshmen year, I saw them at the activities fair because they have that huge grilled cheese costume, so it’s kind of hard not to get sucked in by that. A friend of mine also wanted to go to the meetings so we went together, and I got pulled into the family environment and ending world hunger honestly. Plus I love grilled cheese–it’s my favorite snack.
HC: What is your favorite part about working with FeelGood?
Aisha: A lot of it is that I get to be around people that care about something, whether it’s fixing the environment or ending world hunger. You get to meet a lot of really great people within FeelGood. You also get to travel and meet the other chapters as well, which is a great experience. Big Cheese, which I got to attend this summer out in Colorado, was an amazing, surreal experience. I was able to meet the founders of FeelGood as well as founders of Choice Humanitarian and the Hunger Project too. With FeelGood, the first fact you learn is that 25,000 people die each day from chronic persistent world hunger, and around one in five people are suffering from chronic persistent world hunger. There’s this sense of “why are you not one of those one in five?” My parents have always raised me to give back since I am so fortunate to be who I am. Last semester alone we made over $8,000, and since its inception at Pitt in 2008, we’ve made around $52,000, which roughly translates into helping around 4,000 people through the Hunger Project.
HC: We heard that FeelGood catered for the Fair Hill Movie Project, with Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, and Mark Ruffalo. Did you get to meet the men?
Aisha: Oh yeah! The group got to take a picture with Channing Tatum the first night. I got to shake his hand the second night, but I didn’t really know who he was because he was really in character– really buffed up for the role he’s playing as the wrestler, wearing sweatpants and stuff. But that was really cool because we got to meet all the sound crew and a lot of runners and people on the set. They’re all really super nice and super chill. They even talked about hunger with us. We did not meet Mark Ruffalo or Steve Carrell. Well, I saw Mark Ruffalo. But with Steve Carrell, we apparently may have seen him, but he is so in character that you can’t recognize him – at least that’s what the lady who was prepping us told us.
HC: What sandwiches did the stars order?
Aisha: I think Grilled Cheese of Learning is what [Channing Tatum] ordered. That was his sandwich (laughs). It was also the one that was most commonly ordered, or people just got grilled cheese. The Pizza grilled cheese was the other one people got.
HC: Tell us about your radio show and your love for music.
Aisha: It’s a music show with Aidan Smith, and every week we pick a theme. So far we’ve done cats and outer space. We’ve only done two, but this week is our third show, which we might do body parts. So it should be interesting. We both have really different tastes in music. Aidan is really folky and likes classic rock, whereas I’m really into indie and electronic music, so it gets really eclectic sounding.
HC: What would be your dream job?
Aisha: I don’t know what I plan on doing after graduation, but my dream job is to work for, I guess, either a record label or a concert venue. I would love to do touring management or music festival management. Basically working in music! We’ll see if it actually happens.