Ericka earned her bachelor’s degree in Theatre from Flagler College and her master’s degree in Global Sustainability at University of South Florida Patel College of Global Sustainability. Ericka’s journey has been interesting and inspiring; her change of career focus from theatre to sustainability was influenced by a series of events motivated by the passing of her best friend. Ericka decided to pursue her master’s degree where she focused on agricultural sustainability and food waste. During this time, she had what she calls, a “light-bulb moment” while reading an article that talked about the unsustainable practices and detrimental consequences that exist behind cotton production. In her own words, “I was able to connect these two topics in an academic way that I hadn’t before; the two things we do every day, eat and get dressed, come from the same system. If you go down the supply chain in both of those systems, in farming and clothing production, it’s a lot of the same human right violations and environmental degradation.”

During this time, Ericka started a bow tie business, influenced by the loss of her grandfather, called Sewn Apart, where she repurposed fabric donated by friends and family to make bow-ties. At one point, she was receiving too many clothing donations and was more than she could handle. She then remembered learning about composting and remembered that cotton is a crop, and thought ‘since it came from the earth, it can go back to the earth’.

Her composting project quickly outgrew her backyard and later other locations she partnered with in search for a bigger space. It was through this process of looking for a more space to compost when she found Rosebud. Ericka has now been carrying out her composting project at Rosebud since 2021. It is of great importance to mention that during the 2.5 years of this project, she has composted 600 lbs of clothes and 900 lbs food and created 400lbs of soil!!!! What a great accomplishment!