Alicia started her career building institutions and infrastructure in post-conflict areas and she’s now Founder & CEO of Willamette Technical Fabricators. So, it’s safe to say she isn’t someone who takes the easy route. Want to know the biggest lessons she’s learnt along the way? Tune in to find out.
Alicia Chapman isn’t someone who takes the easy route. She started her career building institutions and infrastructure in post-conflict areas, like Afghanistan, Palestine, and Libya and she’s now Founder & CEO of Willamette Technical Fabricators — as well as being a mom to two under two.
Alicia’s deeply committed to equity, sustainable practices, and creating an inclusive workplace culture. She’s also passionate about public advocacy and using her platform to make the world a better place.
The biggest lessons she’s learnt along the way? Tune in to find out.
Alicia:
[00:00:00] You can't envy just one thing, right? Like, maybe I envy your career, but I don’t understand all the sacrifices you made to get there, and I don’t envy those. Or I envy your rockin’ body, but I don’t envy all the times I went to brunch and you went to the gym.
Amalia:
Welcome to The Whole Damn Pie. I'm Amalia Martino, and my guest today is Alicia Chapman. Alicia is the founder and CEO of Willamette Technical Fabricators, a company focused on transportation and clean energy infrastructure. She’s also an activist. The two of us are part of the Tory Burch Fellowship Foundation, a cohort of businesswomen from across the country who receive support, inspiration, and resources to grow our businesses—essential when you think about the whole damn pie.
This phrase, the whole damn pie, means to me that I’m not living in the binary and I don’t have to make trade-offs. It's possible to decide how I want to live. I know that’s different for everyone, so I’d love to know—when you hear “whole damn pie,” what does that mean to you?
Alicia:
I associate it with this myth of "having it all." I say it’s a myth because everything’s a trade-off. It’s important that we’re honest with ourselves about what we want and what we’re willing to give up to get it, without feeling bad for saying no or for not prioritizing something.
For me, my personal trade-offs are clear. I will not sacrifice my public engagement or my advocacy. I’m on several boards, appointed commissions, and I’m very active in my community, at the state and national level—testifying, lobbying in D.C. It’s important for me to use my platform as a business owner, a woman of color, an entrepreneur, to try to make the world better. I spend a lot of time on that.
I’ve had people say, “Wouldn’t it be better for you to focus just on your business, on the bottom line?” And I don’t think so. The regulatory environment, the state of the city—those are part of my business. They affect my ability to thrive, to attract and retain talent. It's all connected. That’s something I’m not willing to give up.
I also have two little kids under two.
Here’s the polished version of the transcript, with unnecessary words and "um"s removed for clarity and flow:
Amalia:
Oh my gosh.
Alicia:
My entrepreneurial journey has also been about gaining the flexibility to set my own schedule. For the first time in my career, I can say I’m ready to have a family, but there’s no paid time off for founders, period. In the early years, we’re wearing so many hats, and there’s so much I just can’t delegate. That’s definitely challenging. And my partner, my husband, also works for me. So he’s my backup at work and at home. We have to be really careful about setting clear boundaries and not always talking about work on date night—though that inevitably happens.
Amalia:
I bet! That definitely happens.
Alicia:
There are so many things I’ve given up willingly. Sometimes I’m a little nostalgic about that, but it’s the price I’m happy to pay to keep up with everything—work, and life outside of work.
Amalia:
Yeah, that’s a lot. I look at you, and I’m like, “How do you do it all?” How many hours are in your day?
Alicia:
I sleep less.
Amalia:
You sleep less? Yeah, I bet. I’d love to hear more about your advocacy work. You mentioned sitting on committees and boards—what does that look like for you?
Alicia:
Yeah, so I’m on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Portland Branch Board of Directors. It’s a mouthful! Basically, I’m one of a few local business owners, representing manufacturing in the Portland metro area. There are also representatives for construction, agriculture, and healthcare. We provide both qualitative and quantitative data, giving the Federal Reserve Banks a boots-on-the-ground perspective before they make decisions on things like the discount rate or interest rates. We help them understand how labor numbers or inflation data translate from a small business perspective, especially from the diverse perspectives of branches across the country. It’s exciting because I’m an economist by training, and I get to geek out on data and connect with other fascinating people.
I also have a couple of appointed positions. The governor of Oregon appointed me as a transportation commissioner. There are five commissioners across the state, and I represent the Portland metro area. We help decide policy related to transportation—how we can improve the network to make it safer, less carbon-dependent, more equitable, and more efficient. We’re trying to triage our very limited resources to address major challenges, both operationally (like keeping roads safe and in good repair) and by replacing failing infrastructure, which is actually what my business focuses on. So I bring that perspective to the table.
I’m also on a board with another Tory Burch fellow. Out of the 50 women selected this year, two of us happen to be in Portland. We’re both on the Better Portland board, which is like a B Corp trade association or a Chamber of Commerce.
Amalia:
Oh, that’s great.
Alicia:
Portland has something called the Clean Energy Fund, where big corporations—multinational companies making over a billion dollars in revenue—contribute 1% of their revenue. This fund is then available for grants to community-based organizations, nonprofits, and some business collaborations. The goal is to help reduce carbon emissions and ensure that traditionally marginalized populations have access to resources to go green.
Amalia:
That’s great. There’s so much synergy in our work. My communication and community engagement work is really grounded in community, making sure they have a seat at the table and a voice. We also work a lot in infrastructure, transit, transportation, clean water—so many of the same areas. I love that, even though you’re in manufacturing, which some might not think of as a community-centric industry, you clearly design your time, your day, and probably your company around community values.
Alicia:
A hundred percent.
Amalia:
Awesome. I love it. So, I’m really curious—how did you end up in Portland?
I’m from Seattle, so I don’t have any excuses. I’m a rare Northwest native, but most people I know here come from other places. So I’d love to know how you got here.
Alicia:
Well, both my parents were in the military, the Navy. My mom grew up in the Midwest and enlisted when she was 17 to see the ocean and get out of Indiana. My dad was born in the Dominican Republic, and his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was a teenager. He joined the Navy to gain citizenship—that’s how they met.
I lived all over the country and ended up graduating high school in Newport News, Virginia, which is a big shipbuilding and military hub. Then I went to college in D.C. and worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is a branch of the government that’s not part of the State Department or the Department of Defense. It’s kind of in between.
The projects I worked on were in post-conflict areas like Afghanistan, Palestine, and Libya, helping build institutions and infrastructure to help those places prosper. The goal was to empower young people to have a positive impact on their democracies, so they wouldn’t be recruited by terrorist organizations and turn to extremism.
Amalia:
Wow, that’s not a small job. Did you do that right out of college?
Alicia:
Yes, I started as an intern at USAID, then got hired by them. After that, I worked for a contractor that handles USAID projects around the world.
Amalia:
That sounds like a movie plot, but also incredibly brave. That’s such a brave thing to do.
Alicia:
Yeah, so I was living in Washington, DC, but spending about 50-60% of my time overseas in the field. And mostly in really difficult places, because honestly, that’s where the opportunities were for me to do meaningful work and advance. People with families didn’t want to go to places with danger pay. So, I was willing to take on the hard jobs to learn as much as I could and try to move up. It was really challenging, but rewarding. However, I got burned out. Some of the people who worked for me actually died, and I realized I couldn’t keep that up for long.
Amalia:
Wow.
Alicia:
I reached a point where I was struggling in Afghanistan. I didn’t realize at the time, but I had PTSD. I thought, “I want to go back to DC and get my PhD so I can design better projects and learn the actual math skills to evaluate them.” I knew I wanted to be in the Pacific Northwest, just as far from DC as I could be and still stay in the U.S.
Amalia:
You definitely nailed that one.
Alicia:
Yeah. Culturally, DC is so type-A. You go to a party, and it’s all about, “Who do you work for? How can you connect me?” It’s all networking. Portland, on the other hand, was more like, “What do you like to do in your free time?” It was very laid-back, very “Portlandia”—the joke being that it’s where young people go to retire. It felt collegial, not cutthroat, like a good place to just be a grad student and relax.
Amalia:
Yeah, I get that. I know you said you were burned out and had PTSD and were ready for a change, but that’s a huge change. You’re not just moving across the country, but also switching industries—plus, you had two kids under two! What do you think it is about you, or what did you learn, that made you even attempt such a big shift? I ask because I see a lot of younger people today being very planful. You know, they watch YouTube or TikTok and say, "This is how my life will go," and plan it all out. But life doesn’t always go as planned. So I’m curious—how did you handle that big change?
Alicia:
It’s terrifying. Both my parents took huge risks to create better lives for themselves, so that was ingrained in me. Moving around a lot as a kid, I knew if there wasn’t a great opportunity where I was, I could start over elsewhere. When I decided to leave international development because I couldn’t keep doing it, I saw a real need and an opportunity to bring together brilliant minds and support them in the way they needed to do good work. That seemed worth risking, even if it didn’t work out. I figured I’d learn a lot and maybe make some valuable contacts for whatever came next.
Amalia:
Yeah.
Alicia:
I really thought I’d be in Portland for my PhD for five years and then return to DC. But I ended up falling in love with the place. I started working for the university’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions in downtown Portland. Through that, I got connected with people working on an R&D project for Boeing in the UK. They had built an R&D center in a place that used to be a thriving manufacturing hub, but everything had been outsourced to China. When the mill closed in that timber town, it led to mass poverty, despair, and disenfranchisement. Then Boeing came in, built a factory, and brought in all their suppliers. Suddenly, there was real hope and opportunity again—it was like an overnight success story.
I met people working on this in the UK and tried to replicate it in Portland. They needed someone with a background in economic development, youth engagement, government contracting, and academia. I knew nothing about manufacturing, but I had those other skill sets. The people I worked with at the center were brilliant engineers, but basically absent-minded professors. So, someone had to herd the cats.
Alicia:
That was really my crash course in manufacturing. But it was really all about getting young people off the streets, out of trouble, giving them good jobs, giving them hope, and thinking about this existential crisis we’re facing with climate change. How can we merge these two goals—literally saving the planet and helping young people get out of trouble and give them good jobs in manufacturing, building the infrastructure that’s going to get us off fossil fuels and foreign oil, which is also at the root of all the problems?
Amalia:
Yes, you are literally saving the world! Oh my gosh. You know, we’re talking about all of these things, and none of them are easy to solve, right? Like, to your point, you have all these people, and you’re bringing together all these different disciplines to make this one change, which seems like—just give young people a job.
Alicia:
I mean, the solution is really that simple. It’s like, give people a chance to affect positive change in their community, to feed their families, to feel like they have a heard voice. We’re all pretty simple. We all want basic needs met and a sense of purpose. I feel so much for young people right now because it seems like such a hard time to not know what’s ahead of you.
Amalia:
So hard.
Alicia:
Yeah, it’s a tough time not knowing what’s ahead.
Amalia:
Okay, when did you start Willamette Technical Fabricators?
Alicia:
I started the company at the end of 2020, kind of in the middle of the pandemic. Because of all the chaos trying to keep everybody safe, a lot of the things I had been working on were just shut down indefinitely, especially the university research. Boeing was going through a big crisis, the first of what we’ve now seen to be many. And two of the other big OEMs, the big manufacturing partners that were part of this consortium, were struggling. So, I was able to recruit a lot of the most brilliant engineers and tradespeople I had worked with before and spin off my company, which I jokingly called WTF because we figured—pandemic startup, maybe it’s going to fail, no one’s going to blame us. But we had pretty good intel that there was going to be major federal investments in infrastructure from the bipartisan infrastructure law, Build Back Better, and the Inflation Reduction Act—whatever you’re calling it now. I saw the local manufacturing environment, which was so different from the manufacturing environment I had seen as a high school student in Virginia, really as this potential positive force for change, both in the community and in the global infrastructure supply chain.
Amalia:
This is amazing. And it’s really important as it pertains to the whole damn pie—when you think about melding your values and creating change, but also making money. So, I understand that you’re going through the process of becoming a B Corp. What does that mean?
Alicia:
Sure. Yeah, so it’s a little bit confusing for folks because we are a registered benefit company. That means we’re registered with the Secretary of State, and we are legally obligated to consider our impact on our people, our community, and the planet. So, we’re legally committed to a triple bottom line—not just thinking about our profits, but also going through the certification process to be an official B Corp, which means we’re going through a very rigorous certification process so we can put that little B Corp label on our website. Every other B Corp who’s gone through this process knows exactly how hard it is. The hope is that we’re inspiring others to do the same and live by those values.
Amalia:
That is so great. So how does that show up in your company, having that triple bottom line?
Alicia:
Well, in a few ways. We take really good care of our people. We’re very lucky to have almost no voluntary attrition.
Amalia:
Wow.
Alicia:
In manufacturing, especially post-pandemic, that’s unheard of. The people that we hire who make it through our training program and decide this is the right career path for them, they stick around. We pay them very well. We have transparent wages, which means we post on our website exactly how much we’re paying everyone. We have great benefits. Everybody has healthcare for themselves and their families, and it’s the same plan I have. We offer unlimited PTO for our office workers so they can have the flexibility to work from home whenever they need or work nontraditional hours because our production hours are nontraditional. They might need to be here super early or stay late, but then, if they want to take off or take a long lunch break or, you know, work four days instead of five, whatever it is, we trust them. They’re adults; they can get their job done, and it hasn’t impacted our productivity at all. Everything’s been very iterative, and we’re trying to find the best balance for our employees and their welfare, which, you know, isn’t a short-term cost savings, but it is a long-term cost savings by not having to recruit and onboard replacements for those positions that we’re seeing at our competitors, who are just constantly turning over.
Amalia:
I totally appreciate your vision and that your values are showing up here, where you're wanting to create a workspace that values flexibility, provides flexibility, and has trust in your team. I'm sure they really appreciate that too. This is also something that’s really core to my company at The Vida Agency, where we want to provide what we call the Pura Vida, which is work-life balance and flexibility, and really trust people to do their best work. But I like how you say it’s really iterative because, you know, we as founders and company owners don’t always know what we don’t know. So, we’re always having to iterate and improve, listen to those on our team, and make decisions that work for everyone.
Alicia:
Thank you. Yeah, it’s something that seemed really obvious to me coming from, I wouldn’t say the nonprofit world, but from the public service world. And it turns out it’s actually a really good business strategy. The same is true for the way we deal with our materials. Almost everything we buy, as far as steel, is recycled and manufactured in the United States. We could probably save a ton of money buying steel from China, but we don’t do that because we want to support local businesses. We want to be compliant if we're working on government projects, of course, but we also just, even when we don’t have to buy American, we choose to anyway because it’s better for the environment, and the things we’re building are to support the sustainability of the environment. So, it just makes sense. We’re also very conscientious about our energy usage, trying to minimize that, which is also great for cost savings. A lot of things make a lot of sense if you look at them over time, and we’re really thinking about the next 10 years, not just the next quarter.
Amalia:
Yeah. That’s really admirable, but I imagine there are sometimes things that show up where you have to decide on a tradeoff, like deciding one thing over another. I’m wondering how you actualize this in your work.
Alicia:
Yeah, one way is that we have a very traditionally male workforce, and we said from the very beginning that we were going to have paid family leave for all genders. Now it’s actually a state requirement that there’s paid family leave, which is great. But even before that, we wanted to make sure we didn’t have our dads going straight back to work after their babies were born, making it that much harder for moms to get back into the workforce because of that—even if they weren’t our moms. But then, I didn’t actually personally take any leave because I just, you know, I can’t.
Amalia:
Oh my gosh.
Alicia:
Yeah. And that’s not the best example. I’m trying to do better, but you know, I also didn’t pay myself until we were profitable. And I know that none of my workers expect to take that sacrifice. So, I’m trying to be more intentional about saying, “I’m not working these hours and I’m not available, and you’ll be fine.” I’ve delegated, and you have all the tools you need to be successful. I don’t want to be the bottleneck, and I don’t want to set a bad example of what’s expected, even if our policy is explicit.
That’s actually something that’s made us rethink our unlimited PTO policy. What I’ve realized is kind of the opposite of what I’d hoped—that people would take more than the standard vacation. They’re not taking any or they’re working on vacation, and they don’t ever get a real break. So, we’ve decided that we’re actually just going to completely shut down our office the last two weeks of the year, and make sure that no one feels guilty about not working because nobody’s working. Our schedule will have to adapt to that as far as delivery and how we make sure that we’re still meeting all of our customers' needs. But I think, as I said, we’re iterating. We’re constantly experimenting and trying to figure out what works best for people. If that still doesn’t achieve the desired outcome, then we’ll figure out something else.
Amalia:
I love your flexibility. We started that a couple of years in my company, where we closed between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. Our clients understood; we adjusted delivery plans and work plans, and the feedback was like, “Oh my gosh, it was so good to come back to work knowing everybody was off, and I wasn’t the only one off and didn’t have a gazillion emails waiting for me.” Right? I think it’s nice. As a business owner, those are like the power things you can do that really benefit someone’s life, and as the business owner, give yourself a little break.
Alicia:
Yeah, I definitely think it’s a cultural thing. You can look at European countries that take all of August off, and they’re still leading the world in cutting-edge aerospace, and it’s not a mutually exclusive concept to have a good work-life balance and still be able to innovate and make money.
Amalia:
So, at The Vida Agency, we’re a communications company, but we’re really trying to use business as a vehicle to reinvest in community or empower the community. I know the work you do is a lot about getting women, people of color, and non-binary folks into manufacturing and trades. I’d love to hear more about how you do that and especially any success stories you have.
Alicia:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first, I think it started out of necessity because there is a lack of skilled labor, especially in all trades right now. There was just this generation, I think, of young people—my generation—that didn't really consider the trades as the best possible option out of high school. We were really encouraged to go get a four-year degree, even if it wasn’t necessarily useful. There was a lot of focus on technology and computer science, and not enough focus on things that are more hands-on. Now, we’re seeing a resurgence of trades and CTE programs—or CTE programs, or really like pro-manufacturing marketing—which is so needed because a lot of these are really good jobs, you know, like well-paying jobs. Most of the people in my shop are making six figures with just a high school diploma, and they really love what they do. It’s very creative, very high-skill, and therefore, there’s a lot of pride in the work they do. They’re also driving past things they helped build on their way to work—bridges, blocks, and dams—and thinking, "You know, I helped make something that’s really going to last, that’s going to contribute and have a positive impact on everybody I know." It’s so rewarding, and I don’t know a lot of people working in other fields that they left to come to manufacturing who feel that same sense of pride and passion.
So unfortunately, because we have this gap of probably 40 to 55-year-olds—like millennials—we’ve got to expand our recruiting pool. And the most obvious way to do that is to get more women and more people of color, who have traditionally been left out of, I’m doing finger quotes on the podcast, but you know, clean tech, manufacturing. First of all, just expose them to these careers so they know that they’re out there, and expose their parents. I think this is where we really need to do a better job—expose parents to manufacturing, because these are not dull, dirty, dangerous jobs like the type of jobs I grew up with that I would never want to send my kids into. But so much has changed, and also the culture has changed. It’s not something that you’d have to be worried about. You know, my little cousin, who is non-gender conforming, probably wouldn’t have felt safe in the shipyard I saw when I was his age. But in my shop, it’s no problem. We have a very diverse workforce: women, people who are non-gender conforming, people of color, young people, and people past retirement age and everything in between. And the key to that is no assholes—which I hope I can say without being edited. But we are very strict about culture and being, not just open-minded, but being very supportive of beginners because everything we build, we’re building it for the first time.
We’ve been really deliberate about first of all, just putting our values out there: "This is who we are. If you’re not comfortable with that, it’s not going to be a good fit for you." And making sure that regardless of talent or experience, if you don’t respect the fact that that’s non-negotiable for us, we can’t hire you. That means there are no "brilliant jerks." No amount of margin that your skill could bring me justifies changing the culture for the worse and making people feel like they can’t safely ask questions or say, "I don’t know how to do this," or "I’m not sure I did this right. Can you double check it?" Because the things we’re building, I mean, it’s literally life or death if it doesn’t work.
Amalia:
Yeah, for sure. I love the term brilliant jerks. So, what do you think is next for you? I mean, you have two little ones, you're just out of the startup stage, but making such a big impact and so clear on the culture that you want. What happens next for you? What do you envision five years from now?
Alicia:
Yeah. So, there’s another Stanford professor I love, Huggy Rao. His recipe for a successful business is to ask yourself, "Do you want to help people, or do you want to sell shit?" Because if you’re trying to help people, if you start from that point, you’ll figure out where you’re going to add value and where you’re actually going to be able to make money. So honestly, I didn’t start out thinking that I was going to be working on offshore wind. We wanted to make battery electric locomotives. For various reasons, that didn’t work out, and now here we are, making components for offshore wind, which wasn’t even a market when I started thinking about my company five years ago.
Amalia:
Wow.
Alicia:
So, we’re definitely adapting and trying to think about where the demand is going to be next, especially with technology evolving as fast as it is and the energy crisis that we’re in, evolving as fast as it is. I know that I’m going to keep those core values, but what we’re actually building—the product—is going to keep changing, maybe a dozen more times.
Amalia:
Brilliant.
Alicia:
Yeah, I’m very lucky to have a mentor who was really my first boss when I was working for USAID overseas in Palestine. Now she’s one of my best friends, and we’ve been able to stay in touch for 15 years. She really instilled in me the importance of not just bringing problems but bringing solutions and really thinking about where I can add the most value with my limited time and broad skill set, instead of trying to think about where I can create this path of professional development. If I’m more focused on "How do I make this better?" then that will come naturally. I really appreciate that strategy.
Amalia:
Yeah.
Alicia:
But I’ve also been working as a mentor for some of my actual employees and for some young women, especially, who I think really need to know that imposter syndrome is real.
Amalia:
Yeah.
Alicia:
And you're not doing it wrong just because it's hard. Oh Lord.
Amalia:
That's a good one.
Alicia:
Yeah. And then the trade-offs thing. We see people thriving on social media, we see their highlight reels, and we wonder, "Man, how can she do it all?" The reality is, she can't. Expecting that anyone can is setting us all up for failure.
Alicia:
Yeah, you can't envy just one thing, right? Like, maybe I envy your career, but I don’t understand all the sacrifices you made to get there, and I don’t envy those. Or I envy your, you know, rockin’ body, but I don’t envy all the times I went to brunch and you went to the gym.
Amalia:
That is true. Word.
Alicia:
One thing I would really like to share with especially young women listening is how important my network has been to achieving my understanding of the whole damn pie, and the friendships I’ve made, and the supporters I’ve had along the way. I’m part of a lot of women’s professional groups, and it’s great to get together, to talk about problems, to commiserate, and to be cheerleaders for each other.
Alicia:
But at the end of the day, I need access to capital. Yeah. I need cash. I don’t need cheerleaders, especially in manufacturing. And I think there’s a misperception that the reason women aren’t CEOs or the reason there aren’t more women-owned businesses is because we just don’t have the confidence. When, in fact, it’s these institutionally patriarchal systems that are holding us back. I would not have been able to grow my business if there weren’t other women who believed in me, supported me, lent to me, or vouched for me because they know how hard it is. They know the double standards I’m constantly being held to, the higher standards that I’m being held to.
Alicia:
So I really just want to give a shoutout to all the women who have supported me—and the allies, you know, the men—especially the Black men who have supported me, or the Latino men who have supported me, because they know how fucking hard it is.
Amalia:
It’s fucking hard. And it is really hard to find those allies. I mean, it’s just—it’s a different path. I say to some of my friends and colleagues all the time, like, we're so lucky because we work a lot in the public sector. I say, "We’re so lucky that we live in this region. I don’t know that we could have this business in, insert red state or insert southern state," right?
Alicia:
For sure.
Amalia:
The barriers are higher, the networks are more closed. This is just some of my perception, but the funding mechanisms are different. You know, the funding priorities are different, right? Equity is not at the forefront of funding or contracting. And that’s really taken generations of fight to get there. So it’s really up to us to keep those doors at least ajar.
Alicia:
Absolutely. I mean, you’re a native Washingtonian, so you’re very lucky. I was not coming from the South. Yeah. I chose to come here for that reason. I would never be able to do what I’m doing in Virginia, or in Georgia, or in Florida.
Amalia:
Yeah. And I think, you know, local governments sometimes get a bad rap, or people complain a lot, but it’s like, there are a lot of policy things we should be really thankful for being here. We have access, and it’s only because so many people fought for this access for us to have it. Not perfect yet, but we’ve got to keep fighting. We’ve got to keep going.
I am really inspired by Alicia. I mean, she is kind of a testament to where you start isn’t necessarily where you end up. She has so much confidence in navigating—she started working in international relations in Afghanistan and now runs this manufacturing company in Portland, Oregon, and is really thinking broadly about redefining or influencing an industry to make it more inclusive. She really inspires me to continue living through my values. And that, my friends, is the whole damn pie.