“I want to be the wild card”
Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Fallon for sitting down with one of our interns and Teresa Kittridge for helping with the interview.
We are excited to feature her through our Spotlight Profiles.
Meet Fallon Ryan from Brainerd, MN. Currently, she serves as the Engagement Coordinator for Sprout MN which is a non-profit food hub out of Little Falls, MN essentially serving to revitalize Rural MN around the food system.
Question: Tell us about your connection to 100 Rural Women
Answer: I initially heard about 100 rural women through one of my good friends, Erica Bjelland. She brought me into the organization for one of the first leadership exchange cohorts. This is an amazing group of women who just take your breath away. I also love the term leadership exchange. It’s such a beautiful thought that we’re all learning from each other all the time.
Question: Can you tell us about your connection to Rural America?
Answer: I was born and raised in Brainerd, Minnesota, which is in the middle of Minnesota, and it’s a little bit of a little larger city for where we exist in and kind of pull from a lot of rural areas. I still have always truly treasured space, and I am very uncomfortable in urban areas. I think it’s probably the best way to get me to stop talking if there’s not enough space for me to like, feel like I can move and use my hands and run.
I’ve always had a very large love for rural America and the amazing things that are happening all over America. The narrative that sometimes gets spread is that we’re kind of dying, but I am constantly inspired by just the innovation and life that exists here and it’s kind of being perpetuated into a larger scale, too.
I have always had this thought that I was an introvert when I was younger. Though, I realized that I don’t necessarily dislike being in groups of people. Instead, I just like being in groups of people where I know everybody and kind of understand the dynamics and the framework that I can exist within. This could be a product of growing up around this dynamic in rural Minnesota as well. I’m constantly amazed with the amount of space that exists and the lack of concrete that exists within rural America.
It’s so fun to get back to more of the natural elements in the natural world and be connected to that wherever you go. I think that is something that’s so beautiful and something that is truly treasured. I just think I have such a love for just the small town dynamics and which can, you know, sometimes be annoying since everybody does typically know you and kind of moving from that standpoint, but is truly a beautiful thing to know your neighbor. You understand how you can make a change and your voice matters, and that you matter because you are acknowledged and can kind of move forward from that space, I guess.
Question: Tells us about a moment you felt discouraged and how you overcame it.
Answer: Initially, I choose my college, University of North Dakota, because I could swim there. I really wanted to swim in college and I wanted to swim D1. Swimming consumed my life. I swam my first-year college. Then, the team was cut my second year. My world just collapsed from under me and all of these things that had just been so certain just completely left me. It was definitely a very heartbreaking time. Maybe it seems silly, since it was just a sport, but it was my life. It made all of my life decisions for me. How I spent my time. How I made my friends. What I chose to do. How I chose my college. Yet, it was probably one of the largest silver lining moments of my life.
After that was gone, I really started digging into what I wanted, as a person. I found a complete love for the world around me. So, that started with a love for international affairs and for a while, national security. I ended up studying abroad in Costa Rica and China and just saying yes to every opportunity that came my way. Really, I just started traveling and becoming just really invested in learning as much as I could about the world around me through opportunities. I had an internship at the US Department of State, then an opportunity to intern for REAL Solar, and eventually found an internship with a farm up in Moorhead Minnesota.
So, it turned out to be one of the biggest blessings that I could have hoped for, because it made me fully pursue knowledge from a hands on experience perspective. So I was able to spend my time doing all of these other things instead of in the pool, essentially, and turned out to be a life changing moment for the best. It helped me grow as a person and into a much better human being in general.
Question: How do you lead and create change in your community and how can your community better support rural women?
Answer: I view the world totally through a lens of food and water. I’m a firm believer that if we all had access to healthy food, it would just be such a beautiful world. I think I do a lot of community work through Sprout; I guess that’s my full job. I’m pretty blessed to be able to really work within the scope of my community for my job and interact within an organization, and then also as a person. It’s kind of beautiful when that matches up.
Within Sprout, we run different creative production programs to cultivate creativity with cooking for veterans, for individuals within recovery, for caregivers, for the food insecure. Beyond that, we work with providing a space for farmers to sell their goods and connecting people back to the where food comes from. And really encouraging sustainability through that lens. So, in talking about sustainability with all three E’s: economic, environmental and equitable. I’m working through Sprout but then also working in my own personal life. I sit on a couple different boards. Also, I work for the Sustainable Farming Association. I really enjoy learning about people’s stories and perspectives. And trying to figure out how we can all work together to really create our most beautiful world that we can all coexist in and eat.
Question: If you could give one piece of advice to your former self, what would that be and why?
Answer: Wow, there’s so much advice I would love to give my former self. Firstly, I was so scared of myself. I just so scared of the world around me. My biggest piece of advice is just don’t be scared. Move forward with just this kind of passion and this love for life. I was always so scared of pursuing everything. I have like a little bit of a larger personality and so that sometimes can be intimidating to other people. So, I tried to hide that for a very long time to just fit in.
You know, I learned a lot from that, too. There’s been so many points in my life when I’ve been called a wild card. Which, now, I love. I think that’s my like newest model for myself; I want to be the wild card. I mean, who doesn’t like a wild card in their hand? If you’re playing cards, it’s the best card to have! Overall, I think this eagerness to learn and grow is a good place to start.
Question: Who or what has been your biggest inspiration?
Answer: Oh, I’m just constantly inspired by people I meet and new initiatives. I love 100 rural women. I love the fact that this introduced me to so many different individuals that are so inspiring. That’s really what motivates you to keep going and understand that you’re not alone and thinking this way that you want things to be maybe different. Certainly it’s a team effort. There’s a large community that exists to move some of this work forward and really create a more just and equitable system around us.
I am constantly inspired. People inspire me every single day. It’s so fun to see how resilient the human spirit is and what we can accomplish together. I think there’s a wonderful quote along the lines of “never doubt that a small group of dedicated citizens can change the world for, in fact, it’s the only thing that ever has”. I’m surrounded by a wonderful community and wonderful group of individuals that are truly pursuing that full force. So, they inspire me every day.