Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Sarah Hunter-Lascoskie with me.
Sarah Hunter-Lascoskie: Hello.
Toni: Hello, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project. Sarah, take a minute and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Sarah: Sure. I am a Berks County native. I went to Wilson High School, if that matters to folks in the Berks County area where you went to high school, but I was in Philadelphia for college, undergraduate, and the first few years of my career. When it came time to have a family, I moved back to Berks County. I’m formerly a historian working in museums, and now I’m in communications and marketing for nonprofits here. That’s a passion of mine, and a career that I love. I also enjoy if we’re doing some personal things, books, parks, playing the piano, music, and my family.
Toni: Wow. What a diverse background. You were a historian?
Sarah: I was.
Toni: What got you into that, excited about that?
Sarah: I loved as a kid going to historic houses, museums. My parents took me to a lot of those places when I was young because they were free, so you could take your kids there and just enjoy what they had to offer. We’re really lucky here. We’re surrounded with, among so many other things, such a historic landscape, and I loved it. I just wanted to know everything about where I lived, what the history was, what did the landscape look like 100 years ago? It was a passion of mine to work in a museum, not be a history teacher or history professor. I really wanted to tell people about history, which it was wonderful. It wasn’t dates. It was something living. It was something engaging. It was something right under your feet.
I did that for a while, and worked in the Museum for the History of Science in Philadelphia for a while tracking stories in oral histories of scientists, and working in digital exhibits. It was a really fun experience to be immersed in that for a few years.
Toni: Fantastic. Again, welcome to the Project, and let’s go into the Project.
Sarah: Sure.
Toni: What does inspiration mean to you?
Sarah: This was a fun question to ponder, because I was considering the difference between inspiration and motivation. They are slightly different. To me, inspiration is a bit of a heady topic, because I really think it’s a connection to who you are as a person, your authentic self. You really get inspired when you see a piece of yourself in something or someone.
For that to work as well, it’s a two-way process. You have to be open to being inspired, because inspiring things can happen to you and do happen to you. You see them every day. Sometimes you’re just not ready for it. Sometimes you’re not there, but I think that two-way process of saying, “Actually, I see something in myself that can really get me motivated to do something that this is who I am, this is what I love,” and that’s that amazing two-way process of inspiration.
Toni: You have to recognize what inspires you first, and then be motivated to take action on that inspiration. Am I hearing that correctly?
Sarah: Absolutely.
Toni: Can you recall the last time you were inspired?
Sarah: There are a lot of moments, and I think for me, it was part of why I came back to this area career wise and to start a family. I think we are really lucky here to have an amazing nonprofit community, and that’s the inspiration I see when I came back here, and also every day. We have so many nonprofit leaders, so many nonprofits that do amazing work here. I think that’s something that people might forget about, because you take for granted the work people do for building houses or the library or some kind of arts organization.
There are things that I see people working for a passion, for a cause. It’s something that they glommed onto immediately, and they just take in an amazing direction. When I see those leaders in the community, that’s awe-inspiring, because they’re really taking something that’s important to them and making a difference in the best way they can in our county and beyond.
Toni: I mean, that’s huge, but you’re absolutely right. I couldn’t agree with you more, but are there smaller nuances of inspiration that you can recall?
Sarah: I think that one thing that really drove my career in terms of inspiration, and also personally, I remember being young at two organizations. One is the Reading Public Museum, and just being completely inspired by the mummy that’s there, right?
Toni: Oh my. Yes.
Sarah: It was amazing to me. First of all, when you’re a kid, everything seems large and everything seems amazing, but being a kid in that museum was just awe-inspiring. Then, I see this mummy, and it’s amazing. You think of mummies are somewhere in New York in some kind of museum that isn’t here in Berks County. I remember seeing that and just thinking it was amazing, just for the fact that there was a mummy, period; the fact that it was here in Berks County; the fact we had that museum. That museum is a jewel, and it was something that I’ve taken my daughter back to now just to see if that gets that same level of inspiration for her.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with Old Dry Road Farm. They do a festival I believe in Bernville; maybe I’m not correct in that town, but old historic farm. They do candle dipping. They do spinning. They do all these things of how life was in Pennsylvania however many years ago. Just to be able to do a thing, I think sometimes in that level of immersion, that’s inspiring. I try to go back to that every year, because who doesn’t want to dip a candle every year, right? To me, the people who facilitate those things, but also getting to do that, it’s so fun. To me, it just reminds me of why I love things like history, why I love the place that I live. When you get to do those things, that to me is really inspiring.
Toni: I love the fact that you become inspired in the memories and the reminders of everything that this area has to offer. So, with the awe that you feel, with the inspired feeling of the leaders that you see doing the work that they’re doing, how do you take those feelings and put them into practice here in Berks County?
Sarah: Sure. Part of that was being part of the history community and wanting to volunteer and be part of that, but moving into the trajectory I am in my career for marketing and communications is, how do I help those people tell stories? How do I help those people get the word out? I have certain skills that I can use to help you do so. I think that to me has been something that I know I can provide to help, especially with some of these nonprofit organizations that may not have resources or are looking for folks to help them.
That’s fun and exciting for me to be able to do that, because like I said, I know that it inspired somebody like me to have this organization or this resource nearby, so if I can help them do that, that’s wonderful to me. The first place I got to do that when I came back to Berks County was Berks Encore, who provides senior services and Meals on Wheels. That was amazing, to get to tell stories of volunteers of the people they serve or of the resources they offer. That was a tremendous honor, and like I said, it was really fun to be able to take some action upon that.
Toni: Absolutely. That’s a great way to keep the legacies going, right, of what these organizations do?
Sarah: Right.
Toni: So, who in Berks County inspires you?
Sarah: There are many. Referring back to just broadly nonprofit leaders and people who I interact with on a daily or a weekly at least basis, and especially in particular, I was part of a Leadership Berks class last year, class of 2017. That was amazing to be part of a group of people who are truly like-minded, who really wanted to do something to help the community that we live in.
I think Toni Eckert, who leads that, she’s an inspiration to me, because she kind of embodies this sense of, “I care about community. I care about the place I live and the people, and making sure those people can use their gifts to also help our community.” I think that’s tremendous. She does wonderful work. I have those very broad professional people.
Then, as I mentioned, I have a daughter, and she’s four. It’s like that traditional parent answer to say your child is an inspiration, but it’s true, but maybe sometimes I think why she’s inspiring me is a bit of a twist. She is this wonderfully loud, brash; she is who she is. She asks lots of questions. She’s a delight, and can also be a terror sometimes, but it’s inspiring to me because there’s a certain level of joy and a certain level of curiosity that I think sometimes gets lost as you get older.
I know that she won't always be necessarily as brash and loud and asking questions of everyone, but for now, I think it reminds me that it’s okay to be loud. It’s maybe okay to be a little uncomfortable for some folks, and it’s okay to ask all those questions, because that’s part of life. It’s part of being joyful. Seeing that in her every day reminds me that that’s who I am, too. It’s okay to do those things. Those are the two parts of that.
Toni: Do you find a common thread between those that inspire you?
Sarah: I do, and I think it goes back to the authenticity, and the idea that there are things that…there are issues in the County, issues in the world that might seem huge, might seem like you can't really have an impact on, but you yourself have an ability. You have a gift. There’s something you can always offer to solve a problem at hand. You don’t have to solve all of our problems. You don’t even have to make a huge splash, but you can do a small thing, and it makes a tremendous impact. I think people who are consistently doing those little things that make where we live great, I think that is the common thread that I see.
Toni: What would you like your legacy to be?
Sarah: That’s a hard one, but I think back to this idea of doing small things. I have a catch phrase at work, which is, “Just do the things.” I’m going to do the things, because I think people, especially myself, you can have a tendency to overthink. You can have a tendency to overanalyze or try to solve everything, but just do a thing. Do a small thing. Do the task at hand. Get something done. That can mean more than solving the world’s problems.
I hope that for me, people can see that I did try to just accomplish a few things, help people tell their stories, help improve and tell the story of where we live, because it’s important. As long as people see, I don’t need to be in the spotlight for that. If I can be a hand behind the curtain and somebody’s who facilitating things, that’s enough for me; just helping improve where we live.
Toni: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much for what you do, and thank you so much for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Sarah: Thank you so much. This was fun.
Toni: Thank you.
Sarah: Thanks.