Hey, people.
Hello.
It's good to see you.
Look at this outstanding group.
So nice to see you.
Rhea, nice to meet you.
Everybody have a seat.
Well, it's good to see you guys.
I've been reading
all about all the outstanding
work you guys have been doing.
As you may have heard, Brian and I
decided that we should collaborate
and figure it out how we can
help the new generation of leaders
get the kind of education that they want
and also get
exposed to the wider world
as part of their education.
Because of technology,
because of globalization,
the world has continued to get smaller.
And as the world gets smaller,
people that are different
from one other bump up against each other,
which is why we want to make sure
that they're exposed to travel.
But they also have to be able
to afford to go into public service.
What we thought would be useful
would be for us to actually talk about people
who've already been through this journey
so that you guys could tell us
what are the barriers as young people
to making that mark.
I was a scholarship kid,
so I depended on scholarships,
and I knew I couldn't really give that up.
Now, I get to leverage data and tech
to support the students that look like me,
low income, first generation students of color.
I know a lot of people who are living
lives of necessity and survival,
and that's all they know.
So I think to even step outside of that
for a minute to think about
what your ideal world would look like
is a privilege and is an opportunity.
And I think that this is an example
of how you can extend that privilege
to people who
have never gotten a chance to think about
what would happen
if the world was thinking about them.
I would not have been able to pay tuition to
gain my degree at the most prestigious
journalism school in the whole country.
So just really having that investment
and knowing that someone sees
something in you is powerful
and it can make the world of difference
in like your next steps in life.
Studying abroad changed my life completely,
and I'm so happy that I pushed myself to do it.
And I think what shocked me was to go abroad
and find out that I had community
in other places in the world.
I was the first person in my family
to graduate from college
and also the first person in my family
to go on a plane.
I went to Peru when I was 15 years old
and I set up
bake sales in my local grocery store
to get the price of the trip covered
because I knew that
this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I didn't really have to explore, connect
with my Asian-American identity until college.
And it was in Peru
where because of,
you know, global representation,
people would come up to me and
my other Asian-American classmates and be like,
‘Chinese, right?’
I think I realized
how little thought I had put into the kind of
the context of
race and identity in the United States,
because I really didn't have to.
I do think back to how pivotal
and transformational these
these experiences are to learn about other cultures
and to learn about yourself
and to learn about other political structures.
I don't know if I would have
had the opportunities
if it weren't for programs that were funding
or supporting me on these journeys.
I remember the first time
I took Michelle to Kenya
and after we'd been there
for about two or three days,
and there's no indoor plumbing,
I remember Michelle saying,
‘You know,
I didn't realize how American I am.’
But what she came to realize
coming out of that travel was also,
oh, there's, you know, so many of my attitudes
and values are shaped by
the very specific experience of
growing up in this country,
and that can be powerful as well.
The President I met fortuitously
because I became a global entrepreneur
for ambassadorship in 2015.
And I got to meet entrepreneurs
around the world, young leaders.
This was a program we had set up to promote
entrepreneurship,
and Brian was one of our ambassadors.
I went on that trip with you
and he gave a
President Obama gave a speech
and he said we plant a seed
not so we can watch it grow,
but for the next generation to watch it grow.
And I think that's kind of what this is for us.
We're going to need bridge builders who recognize
we're living in a global community,
but we also acknowledge
what makes every single community different
so as to not make them homogenous.
What travel does is
it opens your mind to other possibilities and
if you want to make the world better,
you have to be able to imagine
what better looks like.
And part of what we want to be able to do
is to make sure that we are
supporting the kinds of experiences
that will lead people to be more connected
and to create a community
within the people who receive the scholarships
so that they're staying in contact and
working together.