Hurricane María and its Effects on small- and medium-sized Businesses in Puerto Rico

Independent Project Lead, PKG Explore Program

Just a week after Hurricane María made landfall in Puerto Rico, I took one of the most impulsive decisions of my life: I decided that I wanted to spend all of January 2018 traveling through Puerto Rico, documenting how the hurricane had affected small- and medium-sized businesses' ability to operate. What had at the time been a poorly thought out idea turned out to be one of the most transformative experiences of my life. It guided a lot of the career decisions I have made since, including my recent work in the energy field and my current goals of using technology to give marginalized communities a voice.

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I kept a blog (which you can see here) during this time that is far too short to do this experience justice. I am currently working on a much longer piece that incorporates a lot of the more than five dozen interviews I carried out. I intend to publish it on this website in the next couple of months.

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My work was also featured on Slice of MIT as part of a longer piece on how MIT students were getting involved in Puerto Rico: MIT Students Focused on Puerto Rico Recovery.

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Funded by:

PKG Explore Program, MIT PKG Center