Abby Falik - Founder & CEO of Global Citizen Year | College Can Wait, Finding Your Purpose Can't

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary the success story Podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network and the blue wire podcast network the HubSpot podcast network has incredible Podcasts like my first million my first million is hosted by Sam par and Sean Perry. They feature famous guests They discuss how companies made their first million and then some they brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace Here are some of the topics you talked about if you like any of these you will love the show Three profitable business ideas that you should start in 2022 drunk business ideas that can make you millions asking the founder of Grammarley how he built a 13 billion dollar company or SAS companies that anybody can start if these topics are up your alley go check out my first million listen to it wherever you listen to your podcast Today my guest is Abby fallick. She is the founder and CEO of global citizen You're now global citizen year is a non-profit helping shape the next generation of leaders They recruit talented students to spend eight months overseas Somewhere with a host family serving a local community through an apprenticeship similar to an internship attending classes Learning and participating in the culture. Abby is a Harvard Business School graduate She is an award-winning social entrepreneur. She has been profiled by the New York Times Washington Post NPR the Chronicle for higher education. She speaks globally She's been featured at forums including the Aspen Ideas Festival the Obama Foundation Summit Fast company innovation festival pop tech and the Nandtucket project She is named one of America's top 25 philanthropist speakers. She was named That one of the most intriguing entrepreneurs for three years by Goldman Sachs And she was also named one of the most creative people in business by fast company as well She has created the global citizen year to help shape the next generation of leaders So we spoke about her origin story how her time abroad growing up gave her different Perspectives on the world on Different cultures and then ultimately on social entrepreneurship and how she tries to teach over her experiences through global citizen year We spoke about Ultimately what social entrepreneurship is what it isn't why we have to work towards making it the de facto form of entrepreneurship How to define social entrepreneurship we also spoke about why education is broken and some ideas on how to fix it Most notably focusing on things that allow you to be successful in 10 20 30 years from now when the jobs that you're going to be having and holding Our jobs that may have not even been invented yet. So we have to fix education We have to focus on social entrepreneurship. We have to redefine Success we have to redefine how companies measure success and we have to redefine how to communicate the stakeholders how to Measure success as an organization through impact although profits are important How do we measure through impact and then lastly how do we redefine leadership and give people agency and help them understand the They can implement and invoke change across Across the globe through the actions they take whether or not it be building a company or Working in an organization. So social entrepreneurship lessons Entrepreneurship lessons some ideas on how to fix education and some ideas on how to just be a better person in the world and how to incorporate that into the businesses that we build Let's jump right into it. This is Abby Fallick. She is the founder CEO of global citizen year All the way back Well, I grew up in Berkeley, California And had the enormous fortune of having parents who valued travel as the highest form of education They had experienced that themselves, but later in their lives as as young adults before having kids They had taken all their savings quit their jobs and spent a year traveling around the world in 1978 And so that goes way back But I think that was then such a formative influence in our childhood and upbringing where we were young and following them through Villages and you know visiting schools in Southeast Asia and South Africa and Latin America And having experiences that really just shook me out of the bubble of context I'd been born in and gave me a sense that the world is huge and very unequal and I had won a birth lottery and I had no choice but to orient my life toward Equalizing opportunity and figuring out how to use my access and various forms of privilege and education toward the end of Creating possibility and helping other young people reach their potential as well I love that the story makes sense when you're exposed to that You you understand you understand the like you mentioned the privilege we have in North America being north born in North America But not everybody does something about it either like I think it's it's it's a lot of work to Assume that you can just fix the world sometime. So what was the what was the first iteration of of Of you wanting to do something that did have a positive social impact and how did it evolve over your career? I have been wired entrepreneurially from as long as I can remember So I remember selling neck ties my dad's old ties the lawyer Door-to-door in our neighborhood to make some money and then when I was in middle school started a summer camp for local kids We didn't have anywhere to go during the summer and so I've always just been someone to identify an opportunity and a need a missing piece and then Sort of why not be the one to connect the dots and the resources to make something happen And when I finished high school I was so Tired from the treadmill. I had been what I now could call an excellent sheep I had you know followed in line done the things check the boxes gotten into college and I knew something was missing I felt like I was letting school get in the way of my real education and I desperately wanted to spend some time Outside of a classroom in the real world in a way that would shape my values and perspective and identity and sense of purpose in a way that I knew You know my freshman year of college couldn't So in many ways ever since then since I was 18 and looking for something like global citizen year I have been fixated on how to bring this into the world And and walk people through like what global citizen year actually is because I think it's a very novel concept Right, I think a lot of people explore after college after university, but that's that's not what you're looking to achieve So tell me tell me about that Well the insight is the sooner we can develop a set of practices that help us recognize our own agency resilience ability to take risks Insight that there's no path we're forging the path as we go The sooner a young person develops that sense The further from the origin they end up and in so many cases we wait till a midlife crisis or you know Something later in life that shifts your perspective, but what if It became normative that 18 year olds had an experience that was like a right of passage that shaped their Orientation and in our view an orientation around what they can do to line up their talents and abilities with what the world needs most Kind of as a counter force once they're then in college of being swept along Accounter forced all the pressures that say optimize for your own personal advancement Maximize profit generation for yourself or your entity What does it look like to embed a sense of civic responsibility that extends so far beyond Yourself and personal gain but to hold people in our planet as as your bottom line US what global citizen year does which I didn't answer at all Or a nonprofit on a mission to redesign a life stage emerging adulthood so that young people worldwide have an Experience of themselves in the world whether it's through travel and immersion or a very intensive Online leadership course that we've designed that helps young people find their people their purpose Their power to drive impact and that that is then the foundation from which they begin rest of their life And you basically emulate the experience that you had As a child when you're pushing people out of their comfort zone, right? Because I think you you actually put them in parts of the world where They're spending time with with other cultures other families and they're not in their comfort zone That's part of it correct. It's huge. That's a huge piece of it and um for me I ended up going straight to college because there wasn't something like global citizen year And then I took a year off during college and it was living in working in Latin America And I wasn't in a study abroad. I wasn't in a formal program. I was on my own and The experience was more formative than anything I had in my formal education And that was a key and foundational insight for me was the things that we gave credentials and credit for Are quite disconnected from the skills and abilities that are actually most essential to building a meaningful life And to being a human who's equipped to thrive in the world as it changes And so my mission has been how do we create the right amount of structure not everybody's gonna take a backpack and a you know Book of Portuguese verbs and show up in a Brazilian city to figure it out I mean, I'm glad I did it that way and at the same time there were real constraints to what I was able to learn So what we do is take that experience and scaffold it with a cohort of peers with a curriculum with a coach and adult who guides you through the experience We don't want to stifle your learning, but we want to keep you in your stretch zone and You know, we talk about everyone has a comfort zone a stretch zone in the panic zone But we only learn in one of those regions And our job is to hold kids in the stretch so that they can become who they're supposed to be What I think is interesting is is so I want to talk about education And I want to talk about our traditional systems And I want to talk about why I think education is broken And then I also think you take it a step further, which is incredible Which I actually have never made that argument before But this is why I like speaking to you in particular because I think traditional education is broken And I think that there's some that merit to it But I really do believe that there's some more entrepreneurial focused education Framework is important, but then you take it a step even further than that You you layer on civic and social responsibility But I still feel like we're two steps away I feel like we have to like move away from traditional and entrepreneurial when that seems to be like the de facto Then then we can start to understand how do we because we were just just before we went on or like How do we change social entrepreneurship into just entrepreneurship Yeah, right? How do we just make it to the fact that and it's not the de facto by any means That's why we saw conversations about what is social entrepreneurship versus just regular So let's talk about education And then I also want to define what social entrepreneurship is and what it isn't And I think that's an interesting point as well But what are your like what are your opinions on education? What is the existing system set up to achieve how do we fix change modify All of that institution Into something that can actually create smarter better more impactful whatever that word is people coming out of you know They're 20s into their 30s. I guess we'll actually their teens into their 20s. Sorry. Yeah The paradigm hasn't changed in Generations it's a factory model of education where we see students as inputs We see a teacher as sort of embedding knowledge that then needs to be Typically regurgitated on a final exam and then somebody gives you a credential because you've checked a set of boxes The problems with this are that we live in a world where robots can already pass the college in entrance exams Literally, so we are teaching to tests that robots can pass and every most efforts around education reform are just trying to improve test outcomes But once you recognize that you know the the metrics are actually the wrong things to be measuring on We need to step back and say They sort of standardized one size fits all approach. It's breeding conformity That's that's making kids risk averse. I mean high school is a high stakes game to get into selective college In the US today and what that means is that kids are terrified of Exploring their interest or their curiosity until they know that they can do it well right There's such a fear of failure and yet if you zoom out and look at What the world will require of a young person in today, you know the jobs they'll hold have not been invented yet They need to know their own I would call it like what you said. It's got about their entrepreneurial power and When I talk about entrepreneurial being entrepreneurial with your life or with your education It doesn't mean go out and be a quote entrepreneur. It doesn't mean everybody needs to start a business In fact, you know, that would be disastrous, but what it does mean is Seeing yourself as in the driver's seat because if you're not in the driver's seat You're in the passenger seat and you're just being pulled along passively But what the world needs is everyone to know their ability to drive their own car To choose their own path But when you take people out of this this setting and and you do Emerson in a different type of education I think it that imbues civic responsibility, but how does that teach them entrepreneurship? How does that okay? How does that teach them entrepreneurship in the you're in your control of your own destiny? Think outside the box Learn thing learn how to learn so that you can't have a job that hasn't been invented yet in 10 years from now How does that solve for that? Well, so we see the global citizen here as the equivalent of a year of your education To have your senior year of high school and then you moved toward a global citizen here But it is a year defined on your own terms So there's not a syllabus. There's not a final exam the you are in charge of finding your teachers It might be your four-year-old host sister in the home you're living in and a community in Senegal It might be the physician at the clinic where you're supporting an apprentice In Pune India and there's there's an opportunity To consider and most 18-year-olds who've been sort of shuddled along this conveyor belt have never stopped to think what do I learn? When it's not required Who are my teachers when they're not assigned What are the things that like me up or break my heart that I can't not do something about and so I really appreciate Scott that you're making this link between a sort of civic and social engagement Approach and an entrepreneurial orientation because I think that gets at the heart of what drives me in the world is How do we equip Gen Z to see themselves at the intersection of those two things? That's where I think that that's where I think that we have to solve for that's what you're solving for That's what I think we do have to solve for and I want to now. This is what I want to understand what what is social Entrepreneurship what isn't and I ask that because if somebody's looking at for example like a like an Elon Musk and and He's you know putting people on Mars and he's creating an electric car and he's doing all these incredible things And he's like well, that's advancing humanity. How is that not to the benefit? But ultimately that's driving incredible profits. There's shareholders stakeholders Obviously, he's incredibly wealthy himself So how do we define what social entrepreneurship is what isn't it? Is there some gray area for some causes or is it very black and white? Oh, it's definitely not black and white. I think Nothing is very There's few things are ever black and white and I think that the lines between You know what we've called entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship are blurring I think the lines between the sectors the traditional sort of nonprofit for profit public sector distinction Also totally blurring and frankly don't make sense anymore I think those are outmoded and not useful designations in many ways For me my favorite definition of of entrepreneurship is the pursuit of resources the person sorry the pursuit of an opportunity independent of the resources under control It's this notion of stepping off a cliff and having confidence that you will assemble the airplane or the parachute as you before you land But it's a pursuit of an opportunity before you know where the resources come from and in social entrepreneurship I Think that the the opportunity you're pursuing holds people in our planet and and some sense of social purpose as your bottom line I think we get tied in circles when we think about double and triple bottom line businesses So this is probably the gray area Where you know when push comes to shove at the end of the day and you're making decisions as a leader of an entity one line Is on the bottom Period So we set ourselves up as a not-for-profit at global citizenry by design so that we could be clear that impact and not profits at the end of the year Were the singular bottom line that doesn't mean we don't raise You know money or think about revenue strategically or fine-paying customers It just creates a clarity about to what end we will make decisions when things are marquee Very smart and how do you measure impact? transformative experiences for young people Who wouldn't have otherwise had them we the framework for Training and measuring what we call the real 21st century skills are EAL These are resilience empathy agency and leadership and leadership we define not as a position or an arrival point or a title or salary Leadership as a practice and there's that a behavior so we believe our leaders need to exhibit It's practicing curiosity before judgment Aligning your life with your convictions have encouraged to do hard things connecting across lines of difference to build empathy and Our belief is that we can embed those behaviors and practices in young people when they're 18 And create a community that supports them in continuing to exhibit them as they move into their careers So over time it's about launching new leaders who will approach their sense of responsibility in a completely different way And how do you as because obviously businesses don't operate in silos? So how do you convince the the shareholders the stakeholders the investment the The philanthropist how do you convince them that this is the model that's going to move the needle and in the future Because that's probably a very difficult conversation That's that's half the battle with social entrepreneurship, right? It's how do you how do you get everybody on board with it? When I have an opportunity to sit with somebody and if they are open To listening and to reflecting on their own lived experience. It's pretty universal that education was formative It's fairly universal that there's a distrust and frustration with the way that leaders across sectors are approaching Their roles and responsibilities And it's not a leap of faith to then recognize that if we want the future to look better than the present The input to that shared future is changing way we approach education The status quo will get us more of the same And revolutionizing our approach to education gives us a shot at actually preparing young leaders A new new cadre of leaders who are more representative, more courageous, more humble More empathetic and who can actually outpace the existential challenges work against Incredible. So when when you're when you work with these so this is this is something that you've noticed Like it's just a matter of having the right conversations Just like I guess I always hear the opposite. I always hear how do we how do we remove that that fiscal component because at the end of the day people just care about that that hard bottom line and Even even one of the quotes that you put out is I think the last few years it's an opportunity or sorry It may have been like a someone else's quote. I don't mean to miss quote you But it was the last year it was an opportunity to disrupt the status quo But most most philanthropist just reinforces that as quote. So obviously it's not It's evident if I get Abby in front of somebody, but how do I multiply Abby? How do I get Abby and grained in What VC firms what you know what in Drieson, Horowitz or Blackrock? How do I get that level of of investor to To sort of follow this framework that you're that you're living and breathing and evangelizing and championing because I I agree with you But it also has to be the big players the soft bank set that also believe in this right Well to start my goal is certainly not to replicate the Abby's I think there are I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now as a leader You're always on the lookout for more ways to arm yourself with knowledge the books the seminars and most important The podcasts that help you make the best possible decision for you your company your customers Because when you know more you can apply more and you can grow with HubSpot CRM platform You can store track manage and report on all the tasks and activities that make up your relationships with customers With the birds eye view over all your customer interactions HubSpot and powers your decision making like never before So you can give your business and your customers all the good you've got learn how to make your business grow better at HubSpot.com You know there's a desperate need for varied backgrounds and and exposures and experiences and minus just one slice But I do believe that what we're doing is creating is kind of like a Trojan horse approach here when I think about You know a non-profit speak we talk about a theory of change one of the various assumptions we have about what can move the needle over time and for us It's that theory is foundational around leadership. It says if we can identify Young people on the cusp of adulthood before they've landed their decisions about what to study in what careers to pursue And we can rewire their orientation around the things that matter most to the world that we are then Seeding these high achievers who are impact first oriented Into positions of power and influence across the soft banks and across the you know all all industries and sectors So it's really Beginning through an an approach that changes the sort of creates a an army a movement of young people who can help Live and act and reflect a different approach to You know what it'll take to to save us on this share I appreciate that it's a smart strategy and if you are going to speak to somebody who's earlier on in their career And maybe they want to figure out where they should end up next in their career. They maybe even want to start a company What is your advice for starting that company or what direction they could move it? I guess more it's probably more applicable to if they want to start a company because realistically if you do want to make an impact There's probably organizations that you would gravitate towards any ways that are like their vision is aligned with what you'd like to You know to be part of your career but starting a company like canvas is blank Yeah, I mean it can be in the social entrepreneurship space as well So I think we have way too many nonprofits in the world and way too many college students starting you nonprofits because it You know it seems like a a cool thing to do and we hold that up on a pedestal and And you know shower those entrepreneurial leaders with awards and I think what's really needed is um You know rather than thinking of ourselves as problem solvers. Can we see ourselves as solution accelerators So if you can see a figure out what's working somewhere and I think this applies in the social sector and also in the business sector Figure out what's working and take it to where it's needed and it is likely that the finger passion about an envisioning and and sort of Called to bring into the world has been tried in some context So before you start anything you got to become the world's leading expert at the intersection of all the things that you're trying to solve for And then from there it's figuring out when what's the right form for this? What's the goal? What's the ultimate purpose? You should figure out your tax status i.e. Are you a nonprofit or for profit? Based on the goal not based on whether you want to I am always frustrated when young people will come to me and say well I really am a nonprofit person or I want to work in a nonprofit and to me that doesn't say a thing about what you actually do want I mean, I think the term nonprofit is diminishing of what that whole sector exists to do we should call it the for purpose or for impact sector But I think young people shouldn't define um Their passion or path based on the again that sort of tax status of the organization as opposed to What is it you're here to get done? What role do you think you distinctively can play? Are you the founder leader? Are you the first mover? Are you the first follower? Which is just as important? Are you an entrepreneur? Are you an entrepreneur? So it really comes down to knowing yourself and figuring out how you align What you're distinctively good at and what gives you energy with a problem? You're really passionate about solid I think that that's probably one of the smartest ways to frame entrepreneurship a solution accelerator Because there's too many people that try and almost reinvent a problem that doesn't even exist To be honest, they're trying to solve something or they're trying to re you know reinvent the wheel and they don't have to as an entrepreneur They really don't have to that's a very smart. I've never heard that before. I like that. That's like a quote That's a that's a quotable for sure a solution Good, I'm sure I could not make it up. I wish I could attribute it correctly But yeah, anything that's worth quoting probably Came in the mishmash of my brain from all the people I look up to and learn some you You also you speak to incredible people too and you bring them into into the global citizen your community One of the like this is one quote that just stood out and I just wanted to understand the context for this quote Because a lot of what you do is is changing frameworks changing lenses I think it was with the conversation with Deepak Chopra any it was from that conversation I'm not sure again. I don't know where these quotes come from if it's him or if it's you commenting on on that talk But it was how will we change the world from the inside out? What does that what does that mean to you to to us? Leadership is an inside job happiness Meaningful life all of that happens it starts from the inside out and I Believe you know again, it comes to my theory of change and our organizations theory of change is that you can't change the world until you change Individuals first and that begins by mapping being as committed to understanding our inner landscape as As the outer context and our schools certainly never focus on that teaching self-awareness Helping young people discern between different emotional states really develop a um an intimate and evolving relationship with themselves It sounds so Trite or cheesy But really the only way we can change the world is by changing ourselves first You know, it's funny all the things that sound cheesy all the all the True it's so true like you know, I'm gonna ask you I'm gonna this is my next question to you you you always You keep speaking about redefining leadership and then we speak about how leadership is like you know It is one way and and this is the way that we've always seen leadership in us But it shouldn't be a position or a title or a salary ship and but When you keep saying these things you hear them again and again We should redefine leadership. We should be socially conscious. We should look at the world through you know We have to fix education and then we have to and also this like this depock Chopra We have to fix ourselves our businesses from the inside out. It's all true But the issue is that it's not actioned on enough. It's there's not enough change So people like speaking to it and people it sounds great, but then I feel like maybe either we haven't heard it enough or we cave to Cave to what we're comfortable with or I I'll take myself as an example Obviously, I feel like leadership should be one way. I feel like companies should be run very much in line with what You the way that you speak about how companies should be run But as as a as a business leader, I also You know in the conversations with the board you start talking about the you're not talking about impact You're talking about financials you you default to What's what's comfortable and what's defensible and what's normal and Actually, I'm gonna ask you a question on that one first Then I just want to talk a little bit about leadership But when you find leaders that are listening to this and they're like yes I do want to have more of an impact. I want to take my organization in one way But I'm in this particular position and when I report my Q1 financials My board doesn't you know care that much about the impact there when we're not making the money that we're supposed to be making How do you Remove yourself out of that position? How do you make your situation better so that you can focus on or prop or perhaps better Educate the people that you work with about that long-term vision. What's your leadership lessons for getting people on board with what you believe How do you change that change management? That's tough I think if I'm understanding right it starts with the foundational purpose of the entity And I think so many businesses have been founded um With a very singular and focused and easy to measure and define profit maximizing purpose period And I think it's actually really hard. It's not just about managing change around that. It's about a whole Reset that says whoa as an entity we exit what do you exist to do Because what met what you measure is what gets done. It's what you manage toward And the form and the function of what you're actually oriented around follow from what's that north star So I would just encourage people who are thinking of starting new businesses To be very clear about what the purpose is Um and and what externalities you're accounting for right so you can have a I don't mean that those sort of profit maximizing Orientation is necessarily bad. I think the problem is when you're not then accounting on your balance sheet for all the externalities or harm You may be causing So it doesn't work for society to have companies You know maximize profits for shareholders with while ignoring other stakeholders including humans and Health and the planets sustainability and then out of those profits You give some of it away to help you know, you've made the money in one hand and you're giving it away with the other to sort of often put band-aids on problems They may have contributed to solving So it's just a much more holistic way that I think we need to see the role of the corporation In society as accounting for its positive and detrimental contributions Very good. I love that um and it's something that hopefully if you are in an organization You can you can move towards and start to bring up those ideas so that you're right If it's a large organization, it's hard if it wasn't founded on the on the correct principles or or principles It should be matter should matter, but ultimately um that's the direction you should be moving in And I share one thought Scott as you're talking you've used the word should these are the things we should be doing should be doing And I just to hear that as a little bit of a I think that's a really hard Place for as a human to respond from because it feels like an obligation or a A corporate social responsibility. This is our responsibility And so there's something that needs to shift from the should to the must to the I can't not do it this way Because of experiences I've had because of the way I see the world And I think that's where the clarity comes from and we get quite mushy or gray When there's a well we do it this way, but we should be doing it this way And so I think the language may matter as we're inspiring people to think about new forms and functions for business I just want to take a second to think the sponsor of today's episode swag.com now You know if you've ever received a corporate gift or swag in the past How many of those gifts did you actually keep probably not many Which is probably because the stuff you got was not so great. I've gotten Like a lot of stuff from great shows and from companies in the past that I've just thrown out the second I get it So this is why you need check out swag.com. 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It's easy to manage From their online portal, which you obviously get access to So if this is something that you think would benefit you if you have clients or customers or a team And you want to go the extra mile and you actually want to give gifts that people appreciate Which is the whole point of giving these gifts in the first place go to swag.com For the perfect swag and custom gifts right now They're giving everybody who's a success story podcast listener special offer It's 10% off your entire order But only when you go to swag.com slash success and enter promo code success 10 remember for 10% off Go to swag.com slash success and use promo code success 10 I agree that's smart. I appreciate you catching me on that too because I've definitely I've definitely been part of organizations that haven't cared about this So it's difficult to reframe the way you look at business. I think it's I think it's a very important that you at least if you're using that language You're already understanding without even if you use that language Then you have to understand that you're already thinking from potentially not the right perspective If you are using too much of a should versus a must or this is how it this is how it has to be or this is how what we're doing Like it's almost like I like I like that a lot. Okay very interesting. All right Um, I want to get your perspective on on leadership because I thought that was a good point as well So let's talk about what leadership is and what leadership isn't um From your definition Leadership is is what exactly how do you how do you become a leader what is a leader leader is not just a title or a role or a salary Leader is leadership is how you approach the world is what what is leadership and who can be a leader Leadership is knowing your ability to exert power and influence from wherever you stand I'm sorry being grounded in a place that only you stand and only you know from the full accumulation of your experiences and and life and view on the world and It's knowing that inside of you as an engine to make choices that inspire and influence people around you And every single person every single person has that inside them Absolutely Absolutely has that inside them and it is not a role. It is not a salary and if you feel Like you cannot influence your incorrect So I would say Own that own that a little bit more and whatever you do whatever you do in your life It's important to know that you do have that power You have that agency too your agency, which I think is Clear word in this was I thought a bit about this but thinking about um Uh, you know in an era when Big tech and social media hijack our attention and sell it um Unless we know our ability to choose How we respond what we attend to What we invest in with our time and energy and resources If we are just carried along without a sense of our own Independent decision-making ability We end up in a you know spot where there's a threat of authoritarian leadership or uh we we are the product um and We live at a time that requires Every human to know Impartundate talks about sit to citizen is a verb everybody knows their responsibility to contribute to solving problems big or small Because without all of us having that orientation We will just get sort of swept along and swept off a cliff um We need everybody to sort of see their power as change agents I love that um I want to uh, it's a beautiful way to to sort of wind this down I want to pivot into some rapid fire questions as well just to pull us into the sides from you Before I pivot any final closing thoughts on on any of the topics we spoke about um on what you'd hope people Take away from Like global citizen citizen year um any of the work that you've done Also Most importantly where do people reach out to connect with you uh and go learn more socials and websites and all of that What I would say to anybody Listening who cares about Contributing to a future that looks better than the present Is that we can't miss this moment that the pandemic um Arendati Roy wrote about the pandemic as a portal A door that we're walking through from one era of history into the next and we choose what we carry and we choose what we behind And in this race to get back to quote normal I think so many sectors and industries are missing the opportunity to rethink everything And my mission is to make sure we don't miss the moment in reimagining education to um Better align What young people most need to learn with what the world needs most um That's that's my view and yeah, I you can find more on uh linkedin Twitter Instagram. I'm abby phallic across each of those and then through our website at global citizenyear.org where we are constantly on the hunt for extraordinary young people coming at a high school um for speakers to come to sort of join our faculty to present and train with our students um and for supporters You know, we we raise a very significant scholarship fund each year to make sure that our experiences are accessible um, and so always excited to find values aligned um philanthropists who See this as a vehicle for investing in in the kind of change they believe in Amazing. Okay, let's do a couple rapid fire Uh the biggest challenge you've overcome in your own life. What was it? How did you overcome it? Biggest challenge has been defining myself worth based on other people's reactions and perspectives that leads me into a place of being really hitched to what other people think about me Um, and I think that like it's related to a human instinct around comparing always bigger or smaller than someone else Um, and it's something I've done a lot of work on and really feel like I'm starting to get free of which is knowing my Worth independent of other people's judgments Amazing, and that's something I'm pretty sure Everybody is now suffering from due to social media To some extent even before social media obviously, but I think even even uh more so now because of how easy it is to see um The perfect version of someone else's life too. So it's easy to Really get lost in your own thoughts. That's a big one. Yeah, yeah And I think social media puts us in a position of comparing our insights to other people's outsides You say everything I say just always in losing saddle always in the battle I I need you to like paraphrase everything. I need to just keep your rounds in paraphrase on my point. You're awesome Yeah, we're a good team here Okay, uh, if you had to choose one person obviously there's been many but pick one person who's been incredibly influential in your life Who is that person? What did they teach you? There are many I look up to so many other social entrepreneurs people who are 10, 20, 30 years ahead in this journey of driving social change and just being relentless and um putting the the mission before their own personal priorities I think are there are there are there people that people Names for students and leaves equal justice initiative Igen Poo the national the domestic workers alliance Wendy cop the founder of teach for America and now teach for all People who have aligned their talents and abilities and Power with the kind of change that's moving the world Amazing um a book podcast something you'd recommend people go check out that's influenced you Every morning every some pema children actually have it right here. This is my current favorite This is sort of my Bible comfortable with uncertainty, but I find that if I just open to a page at random Be where you are it may say make friends with your fear every day. It's spot on. It's like a stroke of magical serendipity in the morning So read pema listen to pema um so grounding Amazing uh if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be? Things take the time they take don't worry Good advice and then last question what does success mean to you Success means Aligning My life with what I'm here for spending my time and my attention and my resources And my energy in the service of something bigger than myself And doing things that bring me more to life so that I have even more to contribute You