Aliya Marder - Class of 2007

“Small actions add up to a collective impact,” shares Aliya Marder from Overlake’s Class of 2007. Founder of Ridwell, a leading company in the field of sustainability within our region, Aliya is passionate about reducing waste. The company is a door-to-door service that helps individual households – and The Overlake School – reduce landfill waste by collecting items that can’t be included in regular curbside recycling. Ridwell began in 2018 and has now grown to 200 field employees led by a 50-person headquarter team.

Though Aliya, a graduate of Northwestern who taught herself UX design field and coding, has a history of working in digital startups in NYC and the Bay Area, her real passion is solving problems – and in “getting other people excited about solving world problems.” 

When she moved back to the Seattle area to be closer to her family, she was reminded of how recycling is second nature to those who grow up in the PNW, sharing “Recycling in the Pacific Northwest is ingrained in who we are, and it is part of our identity.” Aliya harnessed that green power to build the Ridwell business. 

Leaving the tech world for the world of recycling was an easy switch according to Aliya. “Recycling is very physical. We have a 60,000-foot warehouse that holds recycled goods from over 40,000 Seattle households. That’s very tangible and visible. You can see and feel the impact of our work,” she shares. Caring about the world around her – and especially about the landfills – can be traced back to Aliya’s time at Overlake. “I remember taking Dave Bennett’s Civics and Gov class and learning to be a world citizen. Overlake provides a fair amount of broader perspective and context for learning, as well as curiosity and a desire to learn. I think I had those qualities innately, but Overlake sparked them,” she shares. 

Aside from running a booming recycling business, Aliya also serves on Overlake’s Sustainability Board Committee along with Overlake faculty member and environmentalist Gerald Blycker. The aim of the committee is “to set a roadmap that helps Overlake reach a greenhouse gas reduction goal,” she shares, adding “I’ve loved getting reconnected with the Overlake community through this work.” To learn more about Ridwell, be sure to check out the company’s website.