Meet Our Members! Healthy Climate Wisconsin’s Alexandria Zielinski, DNP, APNP

Jay: Hi Alex! Starting off, where did you grow up, and where do you live now? 

Alex: Well, I moved a lot when I was a kid, but I went to high school in West Bend and now live in Milwaukee, which I absolutely love. I love Wisconsin! I feel like when I was a kid and as an adult, I’m constantly traveling and bebopping around and, I just, I don’t know, I love the state. It’s so beautiful. So even though I grew up in West Bend, I feel like I have an appreciation for other areas as well.

Jay: Thank you, would you tell me a little bit about the kind of work that you do?

Alex: Right now, I work as a nurse practitioner at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and I care for patients in an internal medicine clinic. So, that means caring for adults with chronic conditions, acute presentations, and also helping them with health promotion and disease prevention. I also teach at Marquette University, which I love. I help undergraduate nursing students there, which is really, really fun. I had left that position for a little while, and I came back to it because I knew that I was missing that holistic next-generation care. It's a really nice balance between working in the clinic and then also teaching at Marquette.

Jay: Awesome. I appreciate you mentioning holistic next-generation care, I think that that's an important perspective to talk about. But, switching away from work for a second, what would you do on your perfect weekend in Wisconsin?

Alex: Ooh, that's a great question, and honestly, kind of hard to answer. I am notorious for feeling a fear of missing out. So, I'm always wondering, how many things can I pack into one day or one weekend? I think my perfect weekend would include Friday night yoga and making dinner with my partner. Then, getting up in the morning on Saturday to go to the farmer's market to buy flowers and some vegetables for the week. I love going to the farmer's market. I think it's so fun! I met one of my closest friends at the farmer's market, and I just love being able to make relationships with all the people that grow food. It's a fun way to develop and also grow a community. 

And then after the farmer's market, I would get matcha somewhere and then enjoy the rest of my day outside, perhaps a hike, bike ride, swimming, or paddle boarding. Then, I would love to go camping because sleeping outside is so nice, especially with the cooler nights and warmer days at this time of the year.  On Sunday, I would make a slow return home. I love being able to get myself ready for the week, get groceries, make Sunday dinner, and just kind of organize the house and things like that as well.

Jay: Awesome, I love that. I am also a big fan of the cooler nights, warmer days, and then being able to jump in some water when it's so hot and humid like it is right now. It is so nice. 

Alex: It’s so nice! We are so lucky in Wisconsin to have such beautiful waterways, and I love how different they are too, right? Down here you have a lot of clear water, but there are a lot of homes on a lot of the lakes and things like that. When you go up north, you have cooler waters. I love the look of the tannin in the water and how dark it can look. But I love the more natural state areas or the waterways without so many homes on them just because they are so scenic and beautiful, and it is so fun to see all the birds and the different wildlife and everything. It’s fantastic. 

Jay: I completely agree. Protecting clean water is one of many things that brought me to this role. What brought you to Healthy Climate Wisconsin? 

Alex: I was a nurse practitioner student working on a clinical rotation, and I saw Rene’ Settle-Robinson, and she was printing out articles on foot infections and flooding. I was so interested in that because I've always, absolutely loved the environment. And I definitely feel the most at home outside, but I also really love public health and taking care of people. I loved this intersection that she was working on. So, I asked her about it. Of course, she told me all about HCW, and I was hooked. 

I've been a part of Healthy Climate Wisconsin ever since. And I absolutely love it. I think it's become like such a home for me. My partner, very kindly, jokes that I have dates with Healthy Climate Wisconsin at night or whatever, because I'm like, I have a meeting tonight or I have this tonight. And he's like, of course, with HCW. And I'm like, yes, of course, which I think is so funny. But it brings me so much joy. It's just like such a great group of people. I love that I can advocate,  educate, and just like work for two things that I love so dearly, right? Like, the health of people, but also the health of the world. So yeah, I love HCW, and I’m very grateful to Dr. Settle-Robinson for pulling me in. 

Jay: That’s incredible! In that same space, what is your favorite or one of your favorite projects you’ve worked on at HCW? 

Alex: Ooh, that’s a good question! Okay. Let me think about it. One of my favorite projects with HCW was a research and quality improvement paper on nursing education and planetary health. It has been so wonderful to work with Cameron Kiersch, Pam Guthman, and Andrew Delorme on this paper. We did a data theme analysis together and it’s been so fun to see it through, and I'm excited for next steps. Mostly, it’s such a good group of people. I loved that.

I would also say another one of my favorite projects was our tour at Ukwakhwa in De Pere. It was so wonderful, and I think that’s something that we’ve been thinking about a lot on the food and water justice team: “How do we create an area where all of us health professionals feel like we can experience the things that we love the most,” right? And kind of come back to those roots of gratitude, appreciation, excitement, joy and all of these things that so often don’t come up in our day-to-day. So, being able to organize this tour was so rewarding and fun. The folks there were fantastic, and everybody that came out that day shared so many laughs and smiles. So, that was a really special, more recent project that I’d say as well.

But, honestly, I feel like just in general with HCW- all of the tiny things, all of the projects, and then all of the things that kind of started because HCW members got to know each other.-those are some of my favorite things too.

Jay: Thank you so much. With that, if you could broadcast something to every Wisconsinite about climate and health, what would you say to that?

Alex: I would tell every Wisconsinite that we all have this shared foundation of values that are super important to us. So, we all care about our family and our friends. We all care about the health of our family and friends. And we all have this intrinsic relationship to the land in some way, shape, or form, right? So, all of us have stories about how land has impacted us, has maybe made us feel less alone or given us a spark of joy when we needed it. And I think when we think about what would move Wisconsin forward and how we can be the best state that we can be – and the healthiest community we can be – that includes making sure that we take care of not only our earth but also everybody in our communities.

So I just think I would encourage all of us to think about what matters most to us. Are we trying to live by those values on a daily basis as much as we can? And how do we ensure that all things around us are flourishing, and not only just ourselves, right? Because we're all connected, and for us to flourish, everything else needs to be doing well too. 

Whatever we can do to kind of make the world a better place together, I think is important to try. I would also say we have so many strengths and we also have weaknesses as human beings. We are not meant to do all things and that's the way that it works as a human. I think leaning on each other and creating a community with one another so that we can pick each other up when we need it and come together to actually create shared goals is so important too.

Jay: I love that, thank you for sharing those things. Switching to something a bit lighter, what is a topic that you really geek out about? 

Alex: Oh, let me think about this. There's a lot of things that I'm kind of obsessed with! Oh my gosh. I feel like I can't answer this, even though it should be so easy. Well, I really love plants and I love gardening, and I love learning about soil science and how plants grow and how they pick up nutrients. I also love animal facts. I think those are so fun. So I love watching all of the Animal Planet types of shows or whatever National Geographic shows and learning about that. 

I really love cooking too. I love thinking about how we pull in whatever's local and seasonal right now to make food more interesting but just better in general. Oh my gosh, I love so many things! I also feel like I geek out a lot over a new thing that I've been learning a lot about. And, I have to give a little shout out to my friend, Kristen for this, but, it’s my ancestry! Like, where my people have come from, because I think all of us have this foundation of caring for the land, but that's been severed because of lots of different things that I probably don't need to get into right now. But, I think that coming back to that is really important. So, I've been learning about like Celtic history and different plant medicines and different theories and ways of living. It's been really enjoyable and it's also really fun. I think so much of who we are is shared so much more than we think we do. And so much of that also comes from our ancestry and the people before us. And so that's been really fun to learn about. 

I also, honestly, love, love food. So I just love going to good restaurants or there is nothing better than having an incredible meal. I recently went to a village farmstead and they did a dinner farm-to-table dinner to raise money for their new hoop house that they wanted to build. It was so amazing just to learn about the food that they put on our table, how they grew it, and how they put it together. I love food, that's a huge thing that I totally am obsessed with.

Jay: Not an official question, but because I am curious, as far as the kinds of restaurants you like to go to, which are your favorites? Would it be more of a farm-to-table experience, a private dinner, or a more community focused experience? 

Alex: I love a farm-to-table restaurant. I love being able to see what's in season. I think it tastes the best. Whenever we go on vacation, we're always looking up farm-to-table spots., Where I find it tricky though, is when we think about equity and accessibility for people, a lot of times the farm-to-table scene doesn't always allow certain folks to be there. But, at the same time, agritourism will hopefully inspire more people to care about a relationship to food and to advocate for better systems. That will then hopefully create a better system for everybody. Even if certain folks can't be at that table at that moment, hopefully they can be there another day. I also love hole-in-the-wall restaurants. I love a little bit of everything. I love food. It's such an experience to get to be with people and share. I love to eat with folks, you know, I don't want to eat by myself. I want to eat with people and I want to make an experience. I want to talk about food. It's just way more fun that way. Do you feel the same way, Jay? 

Jay: No, I do! One of my friends said this to me as more of a joke, but he said food is an experience either way - we were eating something that tasted very bad. And, I was like, yeah, that’s a good point. It's just opposite ends of the spectrum. So I'm totally with you. And, again, food is one of those things that's deceptively divisive, because people don't have access the same way that other people do. But, for the last question that I have for you, I feel like it fits into what we were just talking about, but what is something that brings you hope? 

Alex: I find a lot of hope, honestly, when people come together and we share stories and we think about solutions together, and so for example, I find a ton of hope, whenever HCW gets together. It's funny, I think at our last strategy retreat, there was an icebreaker at the beginning, that talked about where you are between hope and despair on this scale and everybody had to move to different areas of the room. So many of us talked about how, even though we may have been feeling much more despair previously, once we come together with people that share values, suddenly that hope becomes much larger. So, I definitely find a lot of hope in being around others with shared views. I would also say that I find a ton of hope being outside because you see the resilience of different animals and plants. I think it can be a great metaphor for how resilient we are and how resilient life is, generally. Despite whatever is occurring, we have the ability to grow and change and that is something that's super beautiful.

Jay: Awesome, thank you for taking the time today to let us get to know you more, Alex!