My grandpa, Maurice Clayton Forseth, wrote these words in a letter he gave me before he passed away.

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Growing up in snowy Minnesota, I'd watched my family live out this idea. I saw it in the monthly work we did in soup kitchens, which goes back as far as I can remember. I saw it in the service trips we took to places like Vancouver, Tanzania and I can't even tell you how many states in the U.S. I also saw it in everyday things, like my dad pulling his truck over to the side of the road to offer his help. He always made the time to stop and ask. Maybe it was a Minnesota thing, but it was the way I was raised. Giving back was the norm, and all these experiences formed a deep need in me to give back to the community I live in.

CLAY grew out of that, and it's named to remind me of my Bapa and my Nana, my grandparents who I want to honor with everything I do.

CLAY also felt like a natural extension of my early volunteer work, which led to my first leadership role in a nonprofit. During my summers in college, I got hired to plan the service trips that I'd grown up participating in. Youth would come from all over the country to stay in Minneapolis for a week, and I organized them to do service work twice a day at ten different nonprofits. The idea behind the program was to show these volunteers that the communities they live in have so many opportunities to give back. They didn't have to fly to Africa to do good. Instead, they could look at what they'd done in the Twin Cities and take that back to their own communities.

Once I graduated from college, I wanted a warmer climate that would better harbor my imagination and creativity, so I moved to Santa Barbara, California. No matter what possibilities came my way in this new environment, I knew I would continue to find ways to serve my community and continue to give my life away in service—a concept I learned from an important mentor of mine, which has stuck with me all this time.