Helen Turner Hill ’85

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Charleston’s goodwill ambassador

Two weeks after Helen Turner Hill became executive director of the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), Hurricane Hugo hit north of Charleston. How could anyone imagine a bigger challenge to a new position?
Twenty-four years later, Hill has proven she was more than up for the challenge. Under her leadership, Charleston is world renowned with back-to-back No. 1 rankings from readers of Condé Nast Traveler magazine as the nation’s best tourist destination and, last year, best-in-the-world.
The Charleston native earned her degree in parks, recreation and tourism management and returned home to put her education to work. She was concierge at Wild Dunes Resort before moving to the Charleston CVB to sell ads for the visitors’ guide and later was sales manager for meetings and conventions. Her hard work and natural fit to developing tourism moved her into the executive director position.
When Hill came to Clemson, she wanted to join her father, the late Robert M. Turner ’61, working for his mortgage company.
“In my second semester at Clemson, I knew accounting wasn’t my thing, and I thought about doing something else,” she said. “I asked myself, ‘What else could I major in and transfer all of my credits?’ I looked around, and tourism was it.”
Hill says that working with the College of Charleston’s Office of Tourism Analysis guides their purchase of advertising and marketing programs to help contribute to economic development. Statistics have shown that 4.83 million visitors brought in $3.58 billion to the Charleston-area economy in 2012. That’s about one-fourth of all tourism dollars in South Carolina.
“It’s the history that makes us special,” Hill said. “There is not another place like this in the United States of America. This is not Anywhere, USA.

James D. “Jim” Martin ’86

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A relationship with the land

“Choose a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
For Jim Martin, Charleston Parks Conservancy program director and James Island farmer, no saying could be more apropos.
“I’ve always known I wanted to garden. Even as a tiny child, my parents always let me have a little garden plot of whatever I wanted. And I knew I wanted to study horticulture at Clemson when I was in the tenth grade,” Martin said.
Martin has spent his entire working life acting on his childhood impulse to make things grow. He has worked in public horticulture throughout South Carolina for more than 25 years. At Riverbanks Zoo, he played a pivotal role in conceptualizing and developing the zoo’s 90-acre botanical garden. He was instrumental in master plan development for the Mepkin Abbey Botanical Garden. He has also been vice-president of horticulture for Brookgreen Gardens on Pawleys Island.
In 2007, S.C. businesswoman Darla Moore invited Martin to help launch the nonprofit Charleston Parks Conservancy, which partners with the City of Charleston and local communities to renovate and maintain the city’s parks and greenspaces through its Charleston Park Angels program.
“The Park Angels program is founded on the concept that if you give people the opportunity to help with their parks and greenspaces, they will make it happen,” Martin said. The group is currently filling bare patches of dirt with lush plantings and replacing decades-old playground equipment with the latest and safest at 27 sites.
But Martin’s life wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t also grow vegetables as he did when he was a child, so in 2012, he started a small boutique farm on Johns Island where he leases 1.25 acres through Lowcountry Local First’s incubator farm program. Martin sells his seasonal vegetables and herbs to local restaurants by focusing on what each restaurant’s specific needs might be and what he as a small farmer can grow for them. Martin says that the evolving “foodie culture” in Charleston has resulted in the understanding that buying fresh, locally grown, high-quality produce results in a better product.
“I’ve had a great career. I love what I’m doing. And what I did at Clemson helped get me here,” Martin said.

Matthew E. Szymanski ’01

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ReSpace

Orange is a defining color for most Clemson Tigers. Matthew Szymanski, however, also identifies with green. Szymanski, a design major, left Clemson with a desire to actively make a difference in his community.
At DesignSpec, an architecture firm based out of Chapel Hill, Szymanski works on projects ranging from architecture to interior design, with an emphasis on sustainability and a modern design aesthetic. Additionally, Szymanski encourages the use of sustainable design while serving as board member of the Triangle American Institute of Architects and director of the Young Architects Forum & Emerging Professionals group. Szymanski’s leadership within the design industry allows him to make his voice heard about the environmental implications inherent to every design project. But now, he’s redefining the way we think about design with one word: ReSpace.
Szymanski, looking for a new way to raise awareness about reusing materials in design projects, joined forces with like-minded industry professionals to found ReSpace LLC. The organization’s goal is reflected by their largest effort, the ReSpace Design Competition, respace.org. This competition requires designers to develop project designs to be built with salvaged materials. Once the top design is selected, volunteers build it in just a 48-hour period. Szymanski hopes the event will help students, architects and builders realize the importance of reusing materials whenever possible. “We cannot sit back and watch vast quantities of materials that still hold value be carted off to the landfill without a second thought,” said Szymanski.
The 2012 ReSpace Design Competition received submissions from across the globe — Europe, Australia, North America and South America. “The purpose of this competition is to serve as a catalyst for excellent design with salvage materials,” Szymanski said. By getting designers directly involved in the process of sustainable small space design, ReSpace will be able to make a larger impact in the overall sustainability conversation.
“That’s what I love about the competition,” he said. “One by one, we are getting people to take up the cause and do something.”Szymanski credits his Clemson roots for inspiring his actions.
“Clemson taught me the importance of caring about your local community while taking responsibility for wider, global causes,” he said.

My Clemson: Mac Segars ’10

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Passion for global health

My friends say that going to Clemson was one of the best decisions of their lives. For me, attending Clemson wasn’t much of a decision; the education and scholarships offered by Clemson made it an unbeatable option. I couldn’t sit still when I found out I’d been accepted; I’ve had a lifetime of love for Clemson and couldn’t wait to be a Tiger.
Though I studied math, Clemson helped me explore another passion of mine: global health. I took a discussion-based course on infectious disease and worked with faculty to complete a senior research paper on the prevention of influenza transmission.
Most importantly, though, Clemson’s Honor College allowed me to spend a summer building houses in an impoverished community in India. That experience exposed me to the material needs of developing nations as well as establishing my ability to assimilate in their cultures. It gave me the passion and confidence to join the Peace Corps after graduation.
My two years with the Peace Corps in Mozambique has been a challenge. I arrive to my community via canoe (mind the hippos!) and have a six-hour hitchhiking journey just to check my mail. I teach 11th grade math in Portuguese, a language that I saw for the first time only 10 weeks before classes started. Aside from teaching, I’ve helped coordinate a provincial science fair and a national women’s empowerment organization. I’m also finalizing plans to develop a sustainable school meal program at a nearby primary school.
The passion I developed for global health at Clemson has only grown as I’ve experienced the reality of health care access in rural Mozambique. It’s a reality that still shakes me every day. Though I work primarily as a teacher, I also volunteer at my community’s health center. HIV, tuberculosis and malaria are all very common, but nothing has affected me more than witnessing infants with severe malnutrition. If they weren’t cradled in my arms, it would be hard to imagine children whose parents are too poor to feed them.
My work at the health center has inspired me to return to medical school and study to become a pediatrician. I hope to split my time between working with America’s urban poor and the most health care-deprived populations in the world via Doctors Without Borders. It’s a future that I can’t wait to start and one that I owe, at least in part, to Clemson.
Though I studied math, Clemson helped me explore another passion of mine: global health. I took a discussion-based course on infectious disease and worked with faculty to complete a senior research paper on the prevention of influenza transmission. Most importantly, though, Clemson’s Honors College allowed me to spend a summer building houses in an impoverished community in India. That experience exposed me to the material needs of developing nations as well as establishing my ability to assimilate in their cultures. It gave me the passion and confidence to join the Peace Corps after graduation.
View a video about Mac’s experiences in Mozambique: