From weekly reminders to limit food waste to clothing drives promoting sustainability, Green Team promotes environmental preservation through everyday actions. President Gary Ding (12) leads this club, drawing inspiration from his appreciation for the environment.

Gary finds motivation in spending time with what he loves; in his free time, Gary enjoys hiking as a way to experience and admire nature, unobstructed and free. Around a year ago, Gary went for a hike at Mount Tamalpais, a mountain that, due to its bareness at its peak, provides those at the top with a complete view of their surroundings. 

“It feels like you’re standing on top of the world,” Gary said. “Sometimes when there are clouds that hang low, it envelops a portion of the hill, so it seems like you’re standing above the clouds. You can see everything if it’s a clear day. You can see San Francisco, you can see the ocean, you can see the mountain ranges behind you.”

Sublime experiences like this inspire Gary’s appreciation and limitless admiration for the beauty of nature that spur his desire to help protect the environment. What catalyzed his drive to take action, though, was a robotics project for which he designed and built a trash sorter. As a person with many passions, Gary realized that he had discovered a way to merge his interests in robotics and environmentalism while exploring each in depth.

“I’ve discovered that I like finding the intersection between environmentalism and robotics,” Gary said. “When I went into Harker, I wasn’t sure where I would end up with my interest because I knew I liked the environment, and I had been doing robotics since the beginning of middle school. Now, I’ve reached a point where it makes more sense to me. That journey to get to find out where that intersection lies has been really enlightening.”

Gary makes his persistence in pursuing whatever captures his attention clear to his friends, who describe his enthusiasm as both admirable and contagious. 

“Gary has this ‘I can do it’ type of attitude,” close friend Emma Biswas (12) said. “Even if he doesn’t want to do something, he’ll still put his all into it. If there’s a problem, he never likes to shy away from it. He’s always like, ‘I can fix it. I want to do this.’ He’s able to spread his passion to others in a very interesting way.”

Gary’s determination inspires his curiosity that drives him to dive deep into environmentalism. This inquisitiveness leads Gary to think deeply about where issues with the environment stem from. Over his years of leading the Green Team, he began to understand that, while the actions of each individual are incredibly important, to solve such widespread problems, he needed to focus on the impact of the community’s collective actions on nature.

“One of the big takeaways with environmentalism is to not focus on the individual behavior,” Gary said. “Buy Better Boba started off as something like, ‘You fix your own individual patterns,’ but this year it’s shifted that conversation to, ‘What can you do as a person? How do we all contribute as a collective? How can we make a bigger difference?’”

Gary’s deep reflections shape his ability to clearly understand and analyze situations and then to change the situation for the better.

“He has that vision, he has the articulateness, and he could really be helping move this planet,” upper school Spanish teacher and Green Team adviser Diana Moss said. “I hope that he keeps that passion for making a positive difference in what is literally the crisis of your time. You need people like Gary who have hope.”

Finding such unfaltering determination is never easy, yet with immense inner strength and persistence, Gary continues to push forward, always finding ways to achieve what has to be done. His courage and solidity have guided him over the years, bringing him past all obstacles.

“One of the things that I admire about him the most is that he has become so resilient,” close friend Rachel Ning (12) said. “No matter what gets in his way, he will always find a way to finish that task. No matter how much work he has or how much personal stuff he’s going through, he always finds a way to get through it. Even if he struggles, he’ll talk himself through it, or he’ll push himself to do it, or he finds motivation within himself.”

One fulfilling way to push and motivate one’s self is through pure, unfiltered curiosity. To Gary, curiosity is a fuel, a battery that empowers him to continue moving forward and to explore new fields. Gary often finds his mind filled with questions, and with those questions come more questions, of how to learn more, of how to keep learning.

“Life is like holding a magnifying glass up to something and really intrinsically looking at it then figuring out a way to approach it,” Gary said. “At first, it was more of thinking about how I can combine my interests, but later it became more of, ‘How can I really try to make a difference?’”