Q&A: Claire, TO THE MARKET's Content Creator

We're introducing members of our team in our summer Q&A series. Today, we're getting to know our content creator, Claire.

Name​: Claire Hannum

Where You’re From: ​Detroit, MI

Where You’re Quarantining:​Brooklyn, NY

How do you practice sustainability in your everyday life?

One of my favorite sustainability practices doubles as a hobby - thrifting and secondhand shopping. I stopped buying fast fashion in 2016, and aim to buy as many things secondhand as possible. I love the hunt of vintage shopping, both for clothes and antique home goods. When something is no longer serving me, I try to pass it on to someone in my neighborhood, so we can keep products circulating longer and collectively avoid throwing things out.

What are your future career aspirations?

I love what I do. I get to spend my days chasing stories, getting to know interesting people, and writing about initiatives that matter to me, both for editorial publications and brands I believe in. (Like TO THE MARKET!) My goals for the future are all about deepening and expanding what I already do, because every day I wake up excited to get to work.

Who is your biggest inspiration and why?

The women in my family. I come from a long line of tough ladies. My grandmothers, my mom, and my aunts have thrived through all kinds of hurdles in a world that is not always kind to women. They've taught me by example along the way.

On hard days I think a lot about my mom's mom, Esther, who was born two years before women were even granted the right to vote - in the midst of the Spanish Flu, no less! As a young woman, she moved alone from small-town Iowa to Washington, DC so she could help with the World War II effort. She got a job working for the federal government and lived with a series of single gal roommates. Remember, she was a woman hundreds of miles from home on her own in the '40s - this was just NOT done at the time!

When she got married and started raising daughters, she made a point to teach her girls to be self-sufficient at a time when the rest of the world was telling young women the opposite.

If she could do all that in such a turbulent time in history, the LEAST I can do is get through a tough day every now and then. I try to always make choices that lift up other women, as a tiny "thank you" to everything my female elders survived just so that today's generation of women could have choices.

Pick a song to describe yourself and explain why you chose it.

"Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen. Even amid our lowest moments, life is meant to be joyful!