Behind Green Steps: Alexander Neely

● Do you have a Nickname?
People usually call me Alex or sometimes in the past I was called “The Machine” when playing various sports

● Explain to a stranger what you do for Green Steps?
Help identify data sources that help teachers and students guide their understanding of trees and animals around them. I also trial walking routes around St Pölten and Vienna looking for areas of improvement and potential new trees to add to the routes.
I also help map and measure trees and put them on the Greensteps platform called ARK and help solve issues on the ARK platform.

● What is your daily routine? What is something you like doing and your coworkers may not know about you?
My daily routine usually involves cycling when in Austria – I think that it is one of the best modes of transport and is a great way to stay healthy without breaking the bank. I also enjoy trading so you can find me looking at charts and graphs of various metrics and prices.
More generally speaking about my daily routine, as I have been travelling for the last 8 months no two days have been the same. The common phrase “the only thing that is constant is change” would be apt for my current routine.
Of course, it isn’t always stress free but travelling and exploring new cultures and ways of living is something that I like doing. I would recommend travelling and exploring to everyone who wants to try new things and learn new perspectives.
In terms of something that my coworkers don’t know about me – I’m always curious about human interactions and the psychology behind decision making. Topics like critical thinking, cognitive biases, information environment management, fallacious thinking and logic are areas I like to discuss. Recently I had read the classic “Thinking straight and crooked” by Robert H. Thouless which I would recommend as a primer or gentle introduction.

●  “where are you from” to the choice of joining Green Steps.
I am originally from pleasant Hertfordshire in England but quickly moved to live in Hong Kong during my early years. The first half of my childhood was spent in the hustle and bustle of the vibrant city. Navigating the hot and humid climate and enjoying the numerous choices of cuisines was a great way to kickstart my appreciation of food. I would travel every year back to my other home of Northern Ireland where I spent a lot of my time helping out on family farms. Looking back on the contrast of experiences between city and country living, I was very lucky as a child. This has helped me retain an appreciation for nature as well as seeing the impact of cities and culture on our environment. I would then move to Northern Ireland for the latter half of by childhood.
I later specialized in mechanical engineering before switching into data engineering and machine learning within the Insurance industry in London. After doing a stint in the corporate world, I thought it would be great to look at the big picture again and travel around the world through workaway. This time my focus would turn back again to farming, nature, sustainability as I travel to find a new way of living. In retrospect, my upbringing swung between the city and the farm, so perhaps the turn of events leading to Green Steps and returning to a more nature focused approach was predictable in this upcoming chapter.

● What made you choose Green Steps as a workaway experience?
I was curious about how nature education and the challenges associated with national education curriculums were being tackled. I also saw that there was the opportunity to help on a more technical side where I could also use my skills in data. Combining both my desire to learn more about nature and my existing skillset seemed to be a great opportunity.

● How was your experience different from what you expected?
I had a great time helping in many different aspects – be it from debugging errors on the walking routes and their online representation, travelling around Austria and helping look after biotopes, to identifying species occurrence data sources at an international scale, to helping look after school gardens and helping out at a smoothie workshop. The variety of tasks was quite broad, and it was great to have exposure to so many different and rewarding challenges. I was surprised how many different things I got to do in the short space of a month.