Introduction

Hi there! Welcome to my Leadership & Social Change capstone ePortfolio. My name is Gabriel Brown, and I am in my fifth year here at Virginia Tech. I spent four years studying Biochemistry, I spent last semester doing some graduate work to figure out what I want to do my master's in, and I'll be working this and next semester to finish up an undergraduate degree in political science that I added over winter break.  My minors include Chemistry and Leadership and Social Change, though I'm still not sure if I'll be able to finish up my minor in chemistry and I may end up dropping it. Hopefully, I'll end up with about 8 months with nothing to do (read: still deciding what to do) before I start graduate school.  This ePortfolio is geared towards my completion of the Leadership and Social Change minor.  I started working on this minor when I lived in the Residential Leadership Community my freshman year.

My three biggest interests that are just for fun are books, television, and traveling.  I enjoy books because, whether fiction or nonfiction, they can completely transport you to completely different situation; books help you realize what you love in life and what you want to change in your life.  I enjoy character driven television, especially those with complex and "realistic" characters.  And finally traveling, I love everything about traveling!  I get butterflies when I'm in an airport waiting on a plane or filling up the gas tank before a roadtrip.  I love adventure, and though I'd say every day of my life is story-worthy, there is no doubt that going somewhere you've never been before, or the same place but with different motivations or different people is a catalyst for the adventures that will change your life.

The top picture is from the beach outside of my hotel on an island in the Caribbean, you can't really tell, but the water is crystal clear.  The second picture is a view of the exact same beach from the vantage point of halfway up the hike to the tallest peak on the island.

Leadership: The art of catalyzing a group of people to accomplish together what could not be accomplished without a singular purpose or by a singular person.  The better the leader, the further the goal, and subsequent accomplishment of that goal, can be from what that group of people would have done without any provocation.