Faces of Berkeley: Student Helps Broaden Horizons

Imran Farooq loves to travel, so when 14 of his high school classmates told him that they wanted him to organize a trip to the Galapagos Islands, he thought "what the hell, it'd be kinda interesting."

Farooq's friends knew that he was the man that could make it happen.

His decision to take on the Galapagos project eventually led to his raising $58,000, which covered the group's research-oriented trip, and ultimately to the creation of a global nonprofit organization.

In this first trip in 2001, he, along with his student colleagues, mostly studied the post-El Nino effects on penguins and sea cucumbers around the islands, he said.

The effort, which became the Global Student Education Project, won a $10,000 grant in 2002 which it used for a second trip-this time to Florida.

When Farooq came to UC Berkeley as an intended business major, he decided to apply what he learned with his high school program to create his own natural-minded organization. He founded the Organization for Maintaining Natural Interests, or OMNI, in an attempt to "expose people that wouldn't normally be exposed to scientific realms."

The aim is to integrate as many perspectives as he can into the common goal of preservation and sustainability, he says. OMNI, he says, can change the way politics, business and environmentalism work together.

"We all want the same thing," Farooq says, his eyes beginning to show a glint of passion. "We are just so polarized in our perspectives."

OMNI is anything but limited in its perspectives. Since its founding in 2002, branches have been started in Southern California, Washington, D.C., Boston, India and China.

All the power lies in the hands of students, who are responsible for finding grants, community outreach and global communication.

"I want students to be involved in every aspect of OMNI," he says. Farooq is determined to destroy the notion that students "get a major and we are focused on a specific field of study."

Student outreach has included a DE-Cal class that Farooq taught last spring and a publication, OMNIS, comprised of articles dedicated to the pursuit of sustainability.

"It's important that businesses see that sustainability can be in their best interests, too," he says.

The main focus of OMNI, like Farooq's high school program, has been to give students of all disciplines the chance to travel and pursue research opportunities.

With money raised through nonprofit campaigning at local businesses and community organizations, Farooq and three other OMNI members went to Anchorage, Alaska, this summer to work with biologists, professors and government officials on issues of sustainability and responsible business decisions.

Farooq also traveled through Europe and Greece this summer, stopping to watch judo in this year's Olympics. His summer travels were part of his job as an international business consultant for a Southern California-based executive health company. He met his employer through OMNI, and when Farooq heard that his boss wanted to take the business international, he jumped at the opportunity.

"I gave him a proposal of what I could do to take the company international, and he hired me to do it," he says. "It's my dream job."

The environmental businessman plans to develop a Web-based program that would match business surplus with community needs, he says. He hopes that such a program would be beneficial to businesses as well as the community.

"It would be good for the company's public relations and would make for good resource allocation."

His advocacy for interdisciplinary study has been an attraction for fellow students, especially those in his DE-Cal.

When she met Farooq in the residence halls her freshman year, Taiyang Liu was impressed by his organization's open-minded approach to researching environmental and business solutions. She also saw that he had a knack for business.

"He has an extraordinary view of the future," she says.

This year, Farooq will begin handing over his leadership to other OMNI members, as he heads toward his graduation in May.

He plans to continue working with the executive health company in his efforts to improve global sustainability.

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