Born in 1936 in Warsaw, Poland, Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz grew up in a country where the sea seemed far removed from everyday life. Yet her path eventually led toward the horizon. She studied engineering at Gdańsk University of Technology, graduating in 1962 with a degree in shipbuilding. In the coastal city of Gdańsk, the Baltic Sea became more than scenery: it offered a doorway into a world of ships, navigation, and exploration. Her engineering education shaped a

In the crowded harbor of Boston in the 1760s, a young girl carried a story that began thousands of miles away. She had been born in West Africa, probably around 1753, but the details of her earliest years were lost when she was seized and transported across the Atlantic aboard a slave ship. Like countless other Africans caught in the machinery of the transatlantic slave trade, she arrived in North America stripped of her name, family, and freedom. In Boston, she was purchased