Hello! My name is Calvin Herrmann and I am 26 years old. I am from Shabbona, IL (about 70 miles west of downtown Chicago), and I grew up on my family’s farm. My favorite hobbies are watching or playing sports. I am a diehard fan of the Fighting Illini and the Cubs, and I also enjoy watching the Bears and Blackhawks. As far as playing sports goes, I have played basketball and baseball all of my life, but I enjoy almost anything. I love being outside and I try to stay in shape as best I can. I was fortunate enough to attend and graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Business Administration/Management in 2015, which was a lifelong dream of mine. Once I graduated, I began to work for Target in a store management role. I enjoyed aspects of my job at Target, but I wanted to do more impactful, eternally-relevant, Christ-focused work! This lead to me going on the World Race in 2017. During this trip, my squad and I went to 11 countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana for 2 months because Burkina Faso was canceled, Montenegro, Romania, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia) in 11 months. It was a truly life-changing experience, and during those 11 months, I learned more about God, myself, and how to love others than I had in the previous 23 years of my life combined! God has been very good to me throughout my life, and I can now see what he was doing in certain situations where, at the time, I thought he was MIA. I am so excited to Squad Lead for World Race Gap Year because I have the chance to be a small part of the incredible things that God is doing in the lives of these young men and women!