Alexandra Valdovinos ’25 seeks to bridge sustainability and Latino community

Classical music may not be the most obvious path toward sustainability science. But it’s the one that got Alexandra Valdovinos ’25 there.

And now she’s looking for ways to bring others along with her.

Valdovinos worked this summer at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site through a fellowship funded by The Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities. In July, as part of her fellowship, she was the sole college student invited to present at a National Park Service educational webinar for Latino Conservation Week.

“I think it’s important to take what I learn and apply it back home,” said Valdovinos, who grew up in East Flat Rock, Noth Carolina, just minutes from the Sandburg home.

She offered a personal, collegiate view on the importance of Latino conservation during a 15-minute presentation that was part of the Latino Conservation Week Environmental Education Webinar. Valdovinos also spoke about her decision to work with the National Park Service, explained how music led her into the world of sustainability and shared how Furman is helping her combine those fields with her passion for entrepreneurship.

“It definitely provided a very different perspective,” she said.

Valdovinos is concerned about “barriers that lie between sustainability science facts and the Latino community,” she said. She considers language the primary barrier, but location also can limit the spread of information. Her own grandparents, for example, live in an isolated part of Mexico and don’t have exposure to the ideas she’s encountering.

“Not everybody has access to that information,” she said.

Valdovinos, a first-generation college student, played both saxophone and flute in high school. She started her Furman career in the music education department but found that the practice required to work toward a major in the field was making her dislike what she had once loved.

She knew where her interests were directing her next. Since high school, Valdovinos had been aware of the waste associated with reeds used in instruments such as saxophones and clarinets.

One of Valdovinos’s slides

Serious musicians keep multiple reeds in use at a time and replace reeds frequently.

“And I’m just one musician out of probably millions in the world,” she said.

Before she even got to college, Valdovinos floated the idea of more sustainable reed to Colton Stewart, her band director at East Henderson High School.

“Definitely you’re on to something,” she remembers him telling her. “But I would wait until you get to Furman so you can really let it thrive.”

Stewart was on to something, too. In March of her first year at Furman, Valdovinos won Furman’s Paladin Pitch competition, sponsored by The Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

With the help of the $10,000 award, she’s creating Monte Valle, a company that will make more sustainable reeds for clarinets and saxophones by sourcing the raw materials sustainably, developing a production model that uses those materials more efficiently and using packaging that is environmentally friendly.

Reeds are typically made of cane, but Valdovinos will be testing a type of bamboo, which is more sustainable and available domestically through a small business.

The first prototypes will be ready in the next few months. They’ll be tested by the band at East Henderson High in in East Flat Rock.

The Park Service webinar gave Valdovinos the chance to share her journey from music to conservation to entrepreneurship and, hopefully, inspire other Latinos to make similar connections in their own spaces.

Meanwhile, she can’t leave music behind entirely. While studying sustainability science and starting a small business, she still makes time to play flute and piccolo in the Paladin Regiment, Furman’s marching band, and in Symphonic Band.

“I work with all fields,” she said. “I’m not a person who likes to stay in one spot.”