It’s a long story!
It’s been a long journey to explain how I decided to start Eco Nana.
Believe it or not, it all started when I went to UCLA as a German major. I loved learning languages and dreamed of working as an interpreter at the United Nations. By my junior year, though, I realized I wasn’t quite like the other German majors. There were only 12 of us left, and I was the only one who didn’t grow up in a German-speaking household. I had been fascinated by German because my best childhood friend spoke it at home, and I never knew what they were saying! That inspired me to take both Spanish and German in high school.
But college-level German wasn’t easy. If you’ve ever tried to learn the language, you know how they combine words into long, tricky ones with totally new meanings. It got so hard that my professor caught me reading a 15th-century German text in English instead! Since I like to give 100% to whatever I do, I decided it was time for a change—even though it meant staying in college an extra year.
Changing majors wasn’t an easy decision, especially because my dad had lost his job during my freshman year, and I was paying for school on my own. To make ends meet, I worked three jobs—after school, overnight, and on weekends.
When I didn’t know what to study next, I looked at the list of majors and chose one that wasn’t overcrowded: kinesiology, the study of human movement. I’ve always loved science, and classes in anatomy and physiology were fascinating to me. So, I gave it a shot—and ended up loving it! But even though it was interesting, I realized it wasn’t going to lead to the kind of career I wanted. Kinesiology majors often go into physical therapy or personal training, which didn’t interest me.
After five years, I graduated with top honors in my department and got my first job in a neurology lab. Unfortunately, that job didn’t last long. I discovered that the head of the lab was faking his research results! Eventually, someone reported him, and the lab lost its funding. I found a new job in another lab at the UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute and worked there for a couple of years.
I promise that I’ll eventually get to how I decided to start Eco Nana, but it’s a long way from age 22 to 70!
In my free time, I decided to try something completely different: recording engineering. I love music and thought working with sound would be exciting. But I quickly learned that the music industry wasn’t very welcoming to women back then—unless they were willing to do “favors,” which I wasn’t. This was the 1970s, after all. So, I gave up on that career path.
Once again, I had to figure out what to do next. Luckily, I was still young! I enrolled in UCLA’s extension program to study interior design, which I also loved. But before I could finish, my husband (a surgeon at UCLA) got a fellowship in cancer surgery in New York. So, we packed up and moved across the country.
My adventure didn’t stop there—stay tuned!