Thursday, April 27, 2017

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san antonio lawyer referral service

kalisha dessources: i wasable to jump around from room to room during both ofour breakout sessions, and heard just incredibleconversation taking place. so we have remarks from afew more speakers from the administration today, butwe are also going to share whole-group some of theaction items that came out of our breakout sessions. so i'm extraordinarilyexcited for that. our next speaker, vanitagupta, has served as the

head of the civil rightsdivision at the united states department ofjustice since october 2014. as the chief civil rightsprosecutor for the united states, miss gupta overseesa wide range of criminal and civil enforcement efforts,to ensure equal justice and protect equalopportunity for all. under her leadership, thedivision continues its critical work in a number ofareas, including ensuring that policies and practicesaround school discipline and

school climate comply withfederal law, in order to support all studentsaround the country. it's a privilege to welcomeher here to stage -- assistant attorneygeneral gupta. (applause) vanita gupta: hi everyone. it's great to be hear. i heard it's been a prettypowerful day, and i want to thank you, kalisha, for theintroduction and for

the welcome. i guess i want to just startby thanking my outstanding colleagues here today,including from the white house council on women andgirls, and my team from the civil rights division,from the educational opportunities section, andthe special litigations section. these two sections at thedivision work day in and day out tirelessly to protectthe rights of all children,

so that they can be in safeand secure and productive and constructive learningenvironments, and successful schools. and i'm glad that so manyof them were able to help facilitate a number of thebreakouts today as well, because it really enures tothe benefit of our work. i also want to acknowledge-- i know that secretary john king is going to bespeaking here shortly, before all of you, and hisextraordinary leadership

really motivates all of usto work harder, to ensure that our schools are servingall of our country's children. i also want to thank all ofyou, as policymakers and researchers and advocates,for your steadfast commitment to supportinggirls of color, and to protecting the rights of allchildren in our schools. you know, really throughoutamerican society, from our schools to our communitiesto the juvenile justice systems, we can see howtrauma can really inflict a

devastating impacton young women. whether that's due tobullying, or sexual assault, or discriminatorydiscipline, really the trauma of injustices andindignities can reverberate for years. and i'm sure that today'sseries of conversations have really focused on thedevastating impact. trauma can invade nearlyever area of a girl's life. it impacts familyrelationships.

it interferes withschoolwork and academic performance. it carries intoone's social life. even at awkward stages ofadolescence aren't bad enough, it makes everythingall the more difficult. and there's no question thatit can leave an emotional and psychological toll, thatmay not be the most visible harm, but that can lingerpainfully for years. and i want to thank theyoung women who spoke here

earlier today about theseexperiences, and about the importance of the work thatwe're all committed to doing. a trauma-informed approachto addressing sexual harassment and schooldiscipline and violence means really developingstrategies that are centered around caring for childrenwith compassion, with support, and with dignity. and it means addressing theroot causes of traumatic events, for example, bypreventing sexual assault,

and eradicating hostilelearning environments. it also means, though,recognizing how to sensitively and effectivelysupport students who have experienced serioustrauma, and integrating a trauma-informed approachinto our collective response. and in the civil rightsdivision, we are advancing that mission to create safe,supportive, and inclusive schools across the system. a core part of this work iscombating discriminatory

discipline and policingpractices that too often fail to recognize oraddress behavior that is trauma-driven. that lapse can fuel a prison-- a pipeline to prison, where children inparticular, of course children with color andchildren with disabilities -- who have already sufferedthe harm of trauma at school or at home -- ending upgetting a sentence of incarceration ratherthan a diploma.

we have a matter. it's very active inmeridian, mississippi, where among a host of due processviolations, we found students suspended fromschool, and some later incarcerated in a juveniledetention facility -- for behavior as mundane asviolating the dress code by wearing the wrong colorsocks, or leaving their shirts untucked. and these actionsdisproportionately impacted

children of color, andchildren with disabilities. in 2013, we reached anagreement to address discriminatory schooldiscipline practices, including referrals to lawenforcement by the meridian public school district. and under the consentdecree, the school system agreed to provide allstudents, including girls of color, with positivebehavior interventions and supports, before removingthem from school.

it also agreed to establishclear guidelines for the limited circumstances thatrequire law enforcement intervention, and it agreedto ensure discipline measures are fair,equitable, and consistent, based largely on some verytroubling facts that we found in the district. and last year, the courtapproved other agreements with the meridian policedepartment in the state youth probation agency.

the police and youthprobation agreement similarly seek to avoid lawenforcement involvement in alleged school-basedmisconduct whenever possible. and this meridian agreementwas really important, because it allowed us tokind of do work across a spectrum of systems thathave impact on kids' lives. not just in school, but alsoin the juvenile justice system, and in the probationsystems, and beyond. and when youth encounter thejuvenile justice system, the

meridian agreements reallywork to ensure that their civil rights are respected. and so together, ouragreements in mississippi focus on appropriateresponses and resolutions, rather than escalations ofschool-based incidents. we're also advancing thesesystemic reforms around the country, including in palmbeach county, florida, the nation's 11th largestschool district. a settlement agreement thatwe reached there required

the district to removelanguage barriers to students, and prevent policeinvolvement in routine disciplinary matters. and we're enforcing otheragreements elsewhere as well, from tucson, arizona,to st. martin parish, louisiana. we're also working to combatthe scourge of sexual assault and harassment thatthreatens the security of our schools, as well as thefoundation of a free, open, and safe society.

and in allentown,pennsylvania, where we reached a settlement toaddress allegations of sexual harassment in publicschools, we found multiple cases of security guardsharassing female students with inappropriate sexualcomments and touching. and one security guardeven tried to exchange inappropriate sexual contactfor a promise not to report the girl's disciplinaryviolation. as a result, we required theschool district to intervene

promptly and effectively,with strict guidelines and robust training forsecurity guards. and the agreement alsomandates that the school demonstrate a firmcommitment to investigate any complaint of abuseor unlawful conduct. but beyond the k through 12context, we're also working to address sexual assault atcolleges and universities. and for example, we'vecrafted impactful settlement agreements with state andlocal jurisdictions in

missoula, montana, wherewe worked to promote a victim-centered,trauma-informed approach to sexual assault anddomestic violence. and to help law enforcementaround the country advance this same approach, latelast year we released a guidance ongender-bias policing. and the principles in ourguidance include using trauma-informed interviewtactics that encourage victim participation,replacing prejudice

statements that assume whathappened with neutral, open-ended questions thatare focused on learning what actually occurred. the principles also advisepolice officers to adopt a victim-centered approachthat addresses the medical and emotional and safetyneeds of victims, including referrals toappropriate services. and in the juvenile justicesystem as well, we're working to protect therights of all youth to be

free from violenceand abuse. in 2007, a justicedepartment investigation uncovered juvenilecorrectional institutions in ohio falling painfullyshort of their legal responsibilities to supportthe safety and health and educational needs ofdetained children. and there was a particularyouth correctional facility in the city of delaware,ohio, where they were holding youth in seclusionfor actions as mundane as

refusing breakfast, andcursing, and talking in class. and in one instance, ayouth endured 14 hours in seclusion for arguingand using a racial slur. and state experts alsoconcluded that marion, ohio -- the correctional facilityin marion, ohio, their mental health care systemwas failing to meet minimally acceptableconstitutional requirements. these alarming andineffective and frequently unconstitutional practicesdemand widespread reform.

and over the past decade,we've responded with comprehensive approaches. after years of thoroughinvestigation and effective litigation and independentmonitoring, we agreed to terminate our consent decreewith the state last year, after it successfullyimplemented transformative reforms to their juvenilejustice correctional facilities. and these reforms spanneda whole bunch of different

areas, including eliminatingthe use of solitary confinement for punishment,and ensuring individualized mental health care, anddramatically reducing the population of youth in thefacility to begin with. at the civil rightsdivision, i think we're really excited aboutthis convening. and you know, the reality iswe're continuously seeking to improve the ways that weincorporate trauma-informed practices into oursettlement agreements, and

into the work that we'redoing around the country. and as we assessthe disparities and discriminatory practicesthat too often inflict trauma on our children,especially children of color, and leave them witha disadvantaged future, we need to continue respondingwith urgency and with action. because the reality -- andall of you know this -- is that if we don't address theharm, and if we don't deal with the trauma, and if wedon't really respond and

understand the pain thatyoung people experience in school, where do we honestlyexpect them to end up later on in their lives? how do we expect them tosucceed when the deck is so stacked against them, andthe system offers so little support to help? and these questions are notjust rhetorical questions that i'm asking here today. these are real questions,and these are urgent

questions, and they areessential, really, to building the future that allof our children deserve. a future of fairness and ofsafety, and of inclusivity. and so look, i know we allhave a lot of work to do ahead, but i'm really gladto be here today, to talk with all of you about thetough issues, and to know that we're working togetheron the path forward. and so i just want to thankyou all for your commitment to justice.

so thank you. kalisha dessources: andso i know that there are commitments that states aregoing to share, but we also have some externalcommitments that are being made today to this work. so i just want to invite tostage rebecca epstein again, who will invite to stagetwo others, who are making tangible commitmentsout of this work today. rebecca epstein: thegeorgetown law center on

poverty is going to buildon the momentum of this conference, by pivoting fromits role as a co-host, to serving school systemreformers who seek to implement trauma-informedapproaches that are responsive to the uniqueneeds of girls of color. so we're going to beinviting state teams that are here today, and otherswho want to participate, to provide more in-depthinformation about their needs in creatingtrauma-informed schools,

with the ultimate goalof the center on poverty serving as a centralconvener of these groups. so we're proud to make thatannouncement today, and you can look forward to hearingfrom me in the upcoming weeks. rebecca epstein: allisonbrown, are you here? (laughs) the executivedirector of communities for just schools funds, allisonbrown, has an announcement now. rebecca epstein: andelizabeth prewitt, if you want to come on up as well.

allison brown:good afternoon. hi. i am so excited to announcetoday that the communities for just schools fund islaunching a new fellowship program. the education anewfellowship will be a 12 to 18-month fellowship, andwill be housed at the southern educationfoundation based in atlanta, georgia.

the education anew fellowwill work closely with the communities for just schoolsfunds staff and grantee partners to develop a bestpractices institute, to develop -- that will be foreducators, from a youth and community-centeredperspective, to support the implementation ofalternatives to exclusionary school discipline, and thecreation of healthy school climates. our intent is to eliminateinequity in schools and

nurture holistically healthylearning environments. southern educationfoundation's soon-to-be-launched racialequity leadership network for school districtsuperintendents. so within a frame of racialequity, the education anew fellow will represent youthand community members to identify, shape, and helpimplement best practices that also are gender-awareand gender-specific, including trauma-informedpractices.

the education anew fellowwill foster conversations and collaborations betweenthe organizers that the communities for just schoolsfund supports, and the educators with whomthe southern education foundation works -- allfor the greater benefit of education, justiceadvocates, and school discipline reformefforts nation-wide. we will soon be acceptingapplications, and we strongly encourage youthleaders -- especially youth

leaders who have beenimpacted by exclusionary discipline practices, andtoxic or traumatic learning environments -- to apply. thank you. elizabeth prewitt:hi everybody. this is a great group. this is a wonderfulconference. i'm enjoying everyminute of it. i'm elizabeth prewitt.

i'm the policy analyst for aces connection network, and that of course stands for adverse childhood experiences. when someone early in theconference asked, you know, "who knows about the a. study?" and practically every handwent up, that's so unusual, and it was soheartening to see that. we wanted to inviteeverybody in the room, if you're not already a memberof aces connection, to join.

we have recentlyrestructured our education -- aces in education group,so that we can share more resources more efficiently. and so we'd like for you tojoin the overall network, and also to join theaces in education group. so aces connection networkis two -- has two parts. one is aces too high, andthis is a new site geared to the general public. people that are justinterested in the topic

overall, and they can learnabout what people and organizations and systemsand communities are doing to implement best practicesthat relate to aces sciences. and then the companionnetwork, which is really where a lot of the work getsdone, is acesconnection.com -- and we now haveabout 10,000 members. we started off with just,you know, a couple of hundred. jane stevens is thefounder and co-editor. many of youprobably know jane.

it was her sort ofinspiration, and she made it happen. both of these sitesare commercial-free. it doesn't cost anything tojoin, and part of the reason for that is that we aregenerously supported by the robert wood johnsonfoundation and the california endowment, wherea lot of the reporting is done. so aces in education groupwithin acesconnection.com -- we have about 300, mainlyeducators, and it's really

the go-to place foranything that relates to trauma-informed schools. resilience-building is --and solutions-oriented is sort of how we see things. it's not all doom and gloom,and our focus really is on telling the storiesabout the movement. so if you, you know, if youjoin the group you'll get information about webinars,tool kits, research studies, books -- anything thatrelates to this topic.

so i invite you to join. kalisha dessources:thank you elizabeth. kalisha dessources: andthank you to all three - rebecca, elizabeth,and allison. and a special thanks toallison with the communities for just schools fund, forbringing in our girls this morning, which weredefinitely a very important part of today's discussion. so we are going to move intoour state team deliverables

and do-outs. so you should have the oneperson identified from your team who's going tocome and step up. it's going to be15 of you guys. if you guys just want tomake a nice line over here, we'll pass this mic down,and we just want 60 seconds of what are the actionitems coming out. that's one minute each. (laughter)

kalisha dessources: -- ofwhat are the action items coming out oftoday's convening. and of course we have avery special guest here listening, before he givesremarks -- our secretary of education, john king. so colorado, come onup; d.c., illinois, massachusetts, maryland,minnesota, michigan, montana, new jersey, newyork, pennsylvania, ohio, oregon, tennessee,and virginia.

and please just kick us offwith your state, and if you're representing adistrict, what district you're representing, or whatentity you're representing from your state. brittany marigo: hi,i'm brittany marigo. i'm from the ohiodepartment of education. ohio spoke a lot aboutreally getting the message out statewide, and to dothat we have to help people understand the urgency ofthis issue, and help them

understand why girls ofcolor need to be understood in a different way. and to do that, we aretalking about cultural competency training, andreally letting districts know that it's okay to haveimplicit biases, but you have to be able to identifythat you have them, and how to get past that. during our state session, webroke it out into what ode is going to be responsiblefor doing, and what

districts can do to movethis message forward. ode is interested inpartnering with institutions of higher education, so ourteachers are prepared, and they understand mentalhealth issues and trauma before they get into theclassroom, so they can hit the ground running. we would also like toconvene a group of stakeholders, so statewideagencies can collaborate and partner, and share some dataso we can have a

statewide message. and we would also liketo review our existing structures, to get all ofthis work integrated into one consistent plan,especially as we're working through the everystudent succeeds act. our districts are lookinginto more sustainable family engagement, and that'smainly through partnerships with the community members,so they can actually target resources that are necessaryto get these kiddos focused.

and lastly districts havetalked about reviewing their discipline policies, andcoming up with creative solutions to keepkids in school. female speaker: i'm thankfulfor my montana team for joining me here today. they all exemplifycompassion in their work every day. i think we're all going totalk a lot about similar planning.

you know, these things kindof need to scale up and roll out in similar fashions. one of the things, i think,that we talked about specifically for montana, isour need to bring in focus groups of girls of color inparticular, to really get their earnest and honestfeedback about what sort of supports they needin their communities. each community is verydiverse ethnically and geographically in our state,and so we want to make sure

that we're veryspecific and targeted. we're fortunate in montanathat we have a large growing community that's becomingtrauma-informed and invigorated about this work. so we would like to, youknow, find our partners, find our stakeholders, and acoalition including tribes, schools, you know,mental health entities. everybody and anybody,to fold this work into already-existing and ongoingefforts, because this can't

simply be another add-on towhat we're already doing in schools. they need to see it assomething that can become integrated intotheir existing work. and really this isn't abouttinkering around the edges. this is about reform. this is about thinking abouta new way in which we work with schools; the wayschools are structured; the way school calendars exist;the way school schedules

exist; the ways we interactand work with parents and communities. it's about rethinking all ofthat on a much larger scale. female speaker: ditto. female speaker: i'mrepresenting district of columbia public schools,where we have been leading the nation ineducation reform. one of the ways we'vedone that is through the combination oftrauma-informed practices,

and increasing our schoolmental health work force from about 80 to 100, toabout 300 now, so that we can actually increase accessto school mental health services, so that at least10 percent of our population has a clinician available toserve them if they need it. we've also married theschool mental health work with the school climatework, because one cannot exist without the other. we have a transientpopulation that moves

between charter schools andpublic schools, and so one of the things we hope to dois to increase the district conversation aroundtrauma-informed schools. we also intend to look atthe model that we use for our military population, ourstudents that are coming from military families whoneed that extra touch when they're going into a newbuilding, going into a new state, and treating allof our students, that are transitioning and movingfrom school to school, with

that same compassion. one of the other things weheard a lot about today, that is a part of ourdeveloping comprehensive trauma-informed schoolswork, is that of self-care. we have, you know, battlefatigue if you will, because our teachers are struggling. our principles arestruggling, and so we want to incorporate thatimportant part of trauma-informed practiceto include the staff that

support the students. and so those are just a fewof the things that we plan to do in d.c.public schools. ines diavez: goodafternoon everyone. my name is ines diavez , andi'm from new york state -- the great state of new york. ines diavez: our discussionwas quite lively and energetic, as you can see. ines diavez: and you allhave heard the statement,

that they say"be the change." well we are the change. so we decided that the firstthing we had to do was create an infrastructure,and this team that was invited to come here tod.c., we're going to stay together. and we represent, you know-- we start out in new york city, all the way up to thewestern part of new york state. so we are talking about ameeting schedule, and really

what some strategies are forchanging new york, and some of them will include reallygender-responsive training for our teachers, traumatraining for our teachers and staff. and not just, you know-- just because you're trauma-informed doesn't meanyou're trauma-responsive. right? so we want to make sure thatwhen we train our folks, that we also give them thetools and the strategies so

that they can engagewith the young people. continuing our work withgirls of color and lgbt youth as well, addressingissues of race and gender, harassment, bullying, andbuilding a structure for transnational service, as wehave a representative here for juvenile justice. so we won't forget them. did i forget anything? alright, good.

female speaker: goodafternoon everyone. i'm here representing thegreat state of maryland, and we are so fortunate to bejoined here today by our colleagues frombaltimore city. so we had a very reflectfuland engaging conversation today. we have a verydiverse state. we have 24 (inaudible),all different needs. but really there's a commontheme across our state of mental health needs,especially for children

of color. and our colleagues inbaltimore city really are kind of leading theway with that charge. they've just recentlyreceived a 2.3 million dollar grant for promotingresilience, and they're coming up with animplementation plan of best practices and training for-- is it -- 13 different schools across the district. and so we work in very --collaboratively with our

systems, and so we'relooking to learn from them, just as they're lookingto learn from us. at the state level, we arecontinuing to meet with our state-level partners, sothat we can look at what -- take a census really, ofwhat the resources are that are in our state, howeffectively those resources are being delivered, and ifthey're really having an impact on the students theyare being delivered to. and we're looking at how tocollect those data, and look

at those data foreffectiveness. we've also been therecipient of a, you know, "now is the time" projectaware grant, and to-date we've trained over 2,000educators in youth mental health first aid. and so we feel this is agreat step toward helping to educate teachers, staff,community, and families when it comes to the needs,especially of children of color.

like many states, we reallystruggle to keep a balance. you know, we're a veryhigh-performing state, and so we want our kids to dowell academically, but we are really changing andreally sort of turning the corner, in terms of how welook at students with mental health services. so we were very pleased at-- two months ago our state board of education reallydeclared a focus on looking at students with mentalhealth, and so now we can

really freely allocate moreresources toward that. thanks. female speaker: hi, i'm fromnew jersey, and we sort of developed two goals. we have folks herefrom our state agency. we also have arepresentative from a district. so one of the main themes ofwhat we discussed was how to weave this into work thatwe're already doing, so that it's not just another thing.

avoid that sort of jumbledschoolhouse reform thing that we see so often. so in terms of our stategoal, we talked about -- new jersey is about to roll outa tiered system of support. this will be part ofour essa state plan. and so how can be build outa component of njtss that focuses specifically on thistrauma-informed approach that we've heard so muchabout today -- that we know is so critically important-- with a particular eye

toward girls of colorand their needs. so we're excited that thetiming is good, since we're doing some sort of(inaudible) outreach for essa anyhow. we're hoping to convene somegroups that can give us some insight as to their needs. so we also talked about thefact that, as a state, we have a responsibility, wethink, to sort of synthesize the information that wegather, put it into a format

that is easily digestiblefor districts that we roll it out to, and be reallymindful about how we roll out resources that wedevelop, and not just have it be sort of a mass emailthat could be easily missed. we're also going to reachout to other agencies and institutions across thestate, and determine what work they're already doingthat we may be able to support, and mutuallysupport one another. center for supportiveschools comes to mind.

you know, there are abunch of other out there. so our next steps are togo back and share this information internally. we actually have an njtssleadership meeting tomorrow, so we are going to starttomorrow in sharing this out. and then the district goal,that our superintendent who joined us came up with, wasthat -- she has a component of her district strategicplan that is fits into quite nicely.

and so she's going to makesure that this is, you know, deliberately discussed withher staff, followed up through walk-throughs andother mechanisms, and not sort of lost in the shuffle. so kind of, you know,striking that balance between not having it beyet another thing, but also emphasizing the importance. kate anderson foley: hieveryone, i'm kate anderson foley, and i'm from

the illinois state board of education. and we have taken theopportunity through essa to really reflect and lookat the whole child. our state's goals are verysupportive of that, safe and healthy schools. within the capacity of essa,we have built out some of the elements of asystem-wide system of support. within that then, nested,is a multi-tiered system of support.

and really looking at it,again, through the lens of the whole child -- and whatare those non-academic skills, if you will, thatwill lead to the outcomes that we want. it's not just about theacademic outcome, but to see outcomes that wetalked about today. so we've -- in a secondround of interacting with our stakeholders, gatheringtheir feedback, as our writing team for ntss, whichkicked off on friday -- they

are also going to beholding some focus groups. this will be a part of that,so we can bring a full educational systemto our students. jim palmiero: goodafternoon everybody. my name is jim palmiero. i'm representing thepennsylvania base team, which is sitting over there. so hello to my colleagues. and i'm really pleased tosay that we had multiple

stakeholders from thecommonwealth here with us today. and we were pleased to beable to be part of this whole collective of people. the learning that we grew tocome to appreciate today was really enhanced by theconversations and stories that started with the youthvoices this morning, and went all the waythrough the day. so we thank you forthis opportunity.

as we reflect on what ourwalk-away considerations are, i can't help but frameit from the perspective of promotion, prevention,intervention. what are we going to do topromote these key concepts and considerations, thatwe must keep in front of ourselves as we set ourgoals around ensuring equity for all? and in particularfocusing on issues around trauma-responsive approachesto supporting all children,

including youthand girls of color. one of the things that weare very committed to is continuing our work thatwe've already begun, with regard to considering theimplications associated with the work that we're doingwithin the commonwealth -- around preparing ourselvesfor the implementation of essa. one of the other things thatwe think is very important -- from a large state-levelperspective -- is the

advancement of oursecretary's commitment to community-based schools, andlooking at how community resource and assets -- atthe state and regional level -- are critical in termsof providing the kinds of supports that are necessaryin order to provide opportunities, and to reducethese issues that we see are so often complicatingmatters, with regard to supporting studentsstruggling with trauma. we believe that professionaldevelopment tools, and a

continuum of tools andresources, are absolutely necessary -- not only forin-service teachers, but for pre-service teachers. at the state level, we spenta great deal of time talking about what we can do withour partnering institutes of higher education -- who arethose pre-service teacher training institutes -- inpreparing the new generation of educators to understandthe implications of this kind of work, so that wehave good teachers entering

profession -- every bit asmuch as growing the good teachers that we alreadyhave practicing in our commonwealth schools. one of the things that wealso recognized at the state level is that we have a lotof assets in play that do align with supporting andadvancing this work - whether it's our statewideimplementation of pbis, positive behaviorinterventions and supports, and the work that we'retrying to do through pbis,

with regard to teachingpeople about vulnerable decision-making points, andhow to respond appropriately in the context of theclassroom or school settings. every bit as much as ourrelationship with our county partner in human serviceagencies, and our community-based resourcesthat are all around us. and so we have a lot ofconsideration to do, and a lot of work to be done withregard to lining our assets, to making sure that weare working smarter, not

necessarily harder, inaligning our efforts. and taking lessonsfrom our lea's. and two of them were heretoday, and i'd like to announce them by name -- theschool district of lancaster and the school district ofphiladelphia, who are every bit as much teaching us atthe state level what we need to do to best supportthem and their efforts. so it's with that i'd liketo turn this over to you. joyce harris: to thegreat state of oregon.

joyce harris: so myname is joyce harris. i'm with educationnorthwest. i'm a former director ofregion 10 equity assistance center for 21 years. and we have a unique team. i have a judge here. i have someone from theoregon department of education, and we also havea county commissioner. and so our whole approach isto look at, collectively,

what we need to do in ourstate to ensure that our young women are achievingto the highest potential. we need to focus oneverything other people are not focused on, acrossall of our systems. we need to teach accuratehistorical knowledge of students of color -- andexamine where we were, where we are now, and what we'redoing now, and where we want to go. that's what we want to do.

we want to convene a panelof experts, and this would include researchers, collegeprofessors -- and in our world, our communitymembers are experts. joyce harris: ourgirls are experts. and we need to change theculture, not only in our schools, but in ourcommunities -- and in all of the systems that impact whatgoes on in schools, starting with early childhood,through post-secondary. we plan to use evidence,practice, as compasses to

help direct state policy onthe need for culturally and trauma-informedinterventions and services -- once again, acrossall of our systems. we plan to do listeningsessions and focus groups with our young women, andeven with the younger ones. you know? it's not just the teenagers. the little ones havesomething to teach us too. we want to do an assessmentand need-sensing.

we want to talk to people. we don't want this to bean effort where you do something to fix thecommunity, but you do it in partnership withthe community. and so we want to bring thefaith community in; our law enforcement;culture-responsive social service organizations; thedeltas; other social groups; the black studies programsin our universities; the teacher ed programs; andwe're going to give a

special invitationto our governor. we want her atthe table with us. and other legislators. and based on my experienceas an eac director, i want our community to know theresources that are available from the u.s. department of education,office for civil rights, as well as u.s. department of justice --because that's where i found

a lot of the work that i wasable to do with schools and districts, camefrom those sources. so that is the greatstate of oregon. female speaker: thank you. female speaker: great. i'm representing thecolorado team in denver public schools and we'regoing to move from really tactical to longer term. so the first thing thatwe're going to do, that we

want to have completedby next month, is really thinking about how toincorporate aces into our expulsion process, knowingthat our girls of color are disproportionately expelledeven as we close our gaps, to really think both aboutinformation for our hearing officers, but also ensuringwe leave those students with the proper supports thatthey really need to be successful. then, thinking both aboutdenver and across the state,

we really want to thinkabout the alignment of our school-based health centersand the youths of aces and overall understanding oftrauma in those services that are being offered; it'ssomething that we really feel can expandstatewide very nicely. we want to really thinkabout title ix, it's connection with ourcomprehensive health education focus and reallylooking at schools where we have over-reporting,under-reporting and really

having of the importantconversations about what's happening to our girls inour schools and then we want to really make sure that, aswe move this work forward, we don't just take the easyway out and implement a bunch of universal supports,but that we really keep the spotlight, as it was today,on our girls of color and with that frame in mindwe're going to think about all of the networks that wealready have statewide and how we really raise thismessage up and even

hopefully move towards astatewide convening at some point in the future. sarah bird: good afternoon. i'm sarah bird. i am here representing ourdistrict from massachusetts; i'm here from reading, mass,but i also have the pleasure of being able to serve onour statewide safe and supportive schoolscommission. so in massachusetts we arereally blessed to have a lot

of the policy at the statelevel in place to clear the way for districts. we have some laws that havebeen placed for the past few years that are going tohelp us really focus on our discipline, rethinkingdiscipline; our chapter 222 has really reframed how alot of our districts are approaching that. additionally we have a lawthat's all about building safe and supportive schoolsand requiring that every

district has a safe andsupportive schools plan districtwide and thenbuilding-wide, which is tremendous because then itallows our superintendents and principals to beable to do the work. so at our state level wereally want to increase the emphasis on this topic. we have historicallybeen very focused on the academics, even withbuilding our multi-tiered system of support which i'veheard many of my colleagues

speak about. it's been really, surelyfocused on the rti side of things, looking at theacademics and how do we interweave the pbis but alsothat overarching piece of how do you look at theembedding of all of them together. we've been lucky enough inreading to have one of the school climatetransformation grants as well as the project aware,so we're using the next

three years that we haveremaining to leverage that locally and then how do webuild capacity at our state level? if we have -- we have threecommunities of practice in the state that have thistime to focus on that as a priority. how can we inform at thestate level so we can help build communities ofpractice regionally and make sure that people have peersthat they can -- you know in

education it's beg, borrow,and steal from those who do the work already. so how can we do thatfor our colleagues? similarly, we are reallylucky to have -- the safe and supportive schoolscommission has put a framework together and aself-assessment tool for schools and it's allpublically available and free for them all and it wasreally started by harvard law's trauma and learningpolicy initiative.

susan cole was here speakingin a couple of the breakout sessions from that. so when we're thinking aboutinfusing trauma into things, it's nice in massachusettsit was kind of done the other way around, that thetrauma work really informed our safe and supportiveschools framework. so how do we getback to our roots? i think we take that forgranted and i think we try to use this generic safe andsupportive schools and we

often lose thetrauma-informed side of things. so how do we continue tobring the attention back to that and my last otherthought is we have lesley university -- brings theeducation to the educators. so instead of requiringeducators who've gone through their education prepprograms and haven't gotten any information on this,they've actually put professors all over thestate to bring helping traumatized children tolearn four-part certificate

programs to our educators. so how do we continue toexpand that program and share that with other statesand share that with other communities so thateveryone can have the same information andsense of urgency? female speaker:it's okay to clap. sarah bird: thank you. i feel heard. alicia modley:hello, everyone.

my name is alicia modley andi'm here representing the great state of minnesota. multiple speakers:(inaudible) alicia modley: igot a little clap. new york, you guys kindof took the room here. alicia modley: (laughs) multiple speakers: (inaudible) alicia modley:but i'm excited to tell you about the work that we'regoing to be doing

in collaboration. i'm here also representingsaint paul public schools; i'm the interim specialeducation director and so one of the things i'm goingto share is the work that we're doing wheretrauma-informed schools does not exclude our scholarswith disabilities, nor does it exclude our multilinguallearners as well. so one thing i wanted toshare: first and foremost i wanted to thank the schoolsocial workers who helped us

launch and continue to -- ithink we need to just give it up for the folks who areon the ground every day -- -- doing the work and so insaint paul it's the school social workers and we'vebeen leading the work for four years, doingtrauma-informed schools to increase the knowledge ofwhat trauma-informed schools are and what they're --what they are not, most importantly as well andteachers simply just want to know "what do i do?"

and so having the space tohave that conversation and providing the tools issomething that we're doing now. continuing to walk to workcross-departmentally is what this work has to besustainable and there has to be continuity in the work. there is no one group whocan do this alone and so we're doing that in ourstate and more specifically in saint paul by isolatingrace in these conversations. race a lot of times getsleft out of the conversation

and so when you bring inrace, you bring in a part of the discussion that has ledto some of the disparities that we see. in addition to that we'realso making sure we're specifically talking aboutour girls, our girls, our scholars, our girls. so for next steps: so we'regoing to continually engage our district leadership,building that sustainability and continuity, also engageour scholars and most of you

guys have said -- guys andgirls and ladies have said -- making sure that ourscholars' voices and narratives are at the tableis how this work is going to be sustainable. i'm going to say that onemore time: making sure that our scholars' voices are atthe table and our girls' is going to make thework sustainable. so in saint paul we'vealready trained almost 3,000 teachers as part of, youknow, our induction and

coming back to school forour new teachers and our old teachers. all teachers were requiredto go through a module informing them of thebasic principles of trauma-informed schools;2,600 teachers. you want to learnmore, let me know. as in -- as of october the 1st, wewill have 30-minute -- nine 30-minute sessions oneverything including

self-care to historicaltrauma and we're also not excluding ourpara-professionals, our bus drivers, folks who make surethat our scholars are safe and welcomedevery single day. so how do we do this? we move from -- we move frombeing reactive to proactive and so one of the thingsthat we're doing is -- similar to what one of mycolleagues said is we're going to do the same thingfor our state, so we're

taking your idea, we'removing into the state of minnesota and eventually ourgoal is to have this meeting in minnesota in thesummer, in the summer. alicia modley: so far ourstate department offering aces training and educationon what that is and making sure that's available forall; also continuing to work interdisciplinary -- workingwith our interdisciplinary teams for collaborativetrainings. how can we worktogether as a state?

in addition, i don't knowhow many of you folks in the room met before you camehere, but we're going to continue this when we leavethe white house, of course, and that's how to make thework more sustainable. most importantly, we'rethinking about doing a youth summit and making sure thatour work does not exclude, once again, our scholars andalso does not include our scholars with disabilitiesand our emergent bilingual scholars as well.

so we're excited and we arealso bringing together all the folks in minnesota tosay "hey, we're going to lead the nation." we lead the nation in somany things in the state of minnesota and when wedesegregate, guess what? for our folks of color, notso much, not so much, and so we're going tocontinue the work. female speaker:good (inaudible). pat conner: i'm pat conner.

i am the director of safeand supportive schools for the tennessee department ofeducation, the great state of tennessee. pat conner: and it really struck melistening to all of you folks, we do not do enoughat the state level to support our districts inthis work at all and so one takeaway that we have movingforward: in two weeks, and jim will be there as one ofour keynote speakers, we

have our first everstatewide conference on trauma-informed schools andto create compassionate schools. we do not have any trainingas of yet for our teachers on trauma and so i have theinformation about trauma, now what? how do i apply thatin my classroom? what do i do? what are the tools? what are the resources?

so that's in progress. we have not looked at ourdiscipline, our student code of conduct at the statelevel for several years and we are in the processof doing that as well. we haven't really examinedour chronic absenteeism rate, but we'redoing that now. so we've got a lot ofpositive things that are going at the state level,that will take time and resources and lot of manpower and when i say those,

i get really overwhelmed,but you have to start somewhere in this. our commissioner ofeducation, candice mcqueen, her strategic goal hasone section -- goals, one section is "all means all,"it's girls of color, boys of color, people who areorange, red, purple, every student in tennessee willreceive and be treated the same way, but we are not, asyou said, looking at girls of color and exactly whatare we doing to them and not

with them? we do have student andadvisory councils that we meet across the state andone takeaway i have from today is we are not meetingwith girls of color in these student advisory councilsand we have got to do that. so i think our districts,memphis and nashville, are some really bright spots inour state, are doing some really great work aroundtrauma and around those disparities, discipline anddisparities, but again i

think it all -- it comesfrom the top down, it needs to come from thestate and work down. we've got to support ourteachers and our districts. we have 144 districts; 88percent have 10,000 or less students in them; very ruralstate, so how do you reach those rural pockets andthat's our challenge, but you know what? we've got a positiveattitude, we've got hardworking people who lovestudents and care about kids

and we can do it. female speaker: everywherewe go we (inaudible). female speaker:(inaudible) we are. female speaker: pat and ihave known each other for a long time. i'm from the wonderful stateof virginia, just down -- round around the corner hereand i bring with me two individuals that i work realclosely with at the state department.

i'm the director of studentservices and i have three awesome school divisionleaders here: richmond city schools, petersburg cityschools, and norfolk city schools. let's give those schoolsa round of applause. they work really hard andthe reason they came here was because oftheir hard work. at the state department ofeducation we -- i've been in my position a little overa year and a half now and

we've really done some --taking it to the tipping point and we'reabout to go there. three years ago wegot a school climate transformation grant and aproject aware and we opened up a center at one of ouruniversities called the virginia tiered center ofsupport, research, and implementation center andwhat we've been doing there is not talking aboutnecessarily all topical issues, but how do wetransform the way we do work

and it's really aboutbuilding systems and building capacities so thatas issues come up -- and so that we can address thethings that are in our data. it's all about data-driven,it's all about the tiered systems, but we'veintegrated the whole behavior thing, we havelooked at social emotional, we've had lots ofprofessional development and we have developedcoaches for our state. so we have about 50 coachesthat we've trained, that go

through a training and partof their job for three years is to work with a schooldivision, we have 132 school divisions, to help themtransform the way they do work and the way they lookat their data and that data means disproportionality,looking at girls of color, looking at academics,because what we don't want to do is to put anotherthing on their plate because we'll just -- they'll shootus and then we'll have a lot of problem in virginia.

so how do they -- and how dowe empower our local school divisions to use thatinformation to build the capacity that they need intheir division with their communities? a big part of what we'redoing is looking at how to reach out to the community. who are your communitypartners that you need to be working with and what arethose efforts and how can you do those wraparoundservices and how do we, most

of all, take careof our staff? you know, children -- i meani love them to death, but they're going to go throughthe system; our staff is going to be there forever. how do we take care of thestaff, to bring back to them the love of being able toteach, so it's not just about academics and not justabout testing, but that whole, human, socialemotional piece of being a teacher and bringing thatpiece back to what we're about?

dr. bedden from richmondreally kindly said, "remember: we've got --we have been focused for several years on academicsand just testing and we've almost gotten -- we'vegotten to be like little robots and we've gotten awayfrom that social emotional piece of connecting as humanbeings and before we can teach, before we can learn,we've got to do that connection." so when we get back tothe state, we're going to

incorporate what we havelearned today, bring our three leaders from ourschool divisions together -- they're all doing littlepilots -- and see how that goes and how we can createthat through our systems of care, kind of process andour vts systems framework to take that throughoutour state. i'm really proud of wherevirginia is; we fought hard to get where we are todayand so thank you and thank you for all thepeople from virginia.

tarence wheeler:(inaudible) thank you, thank you. female speaker: (inaudible)tarence wheeler: my name is tarence wheeler. i represent river rougeschool district, but also the great state of michigan. go blue. tarence wheeler: we're alsorepresenting flint, so i would be remiss if we didn'tacknowledge the flint crisis.

it's unlike anybody in herein terms of the healthcare and water crisis. that pain is going to begenerational; we don't know the effects of those -- thatoutcome in terms of the water poisoning. also from the state levelwe're looking to address the truancy and have flexibilityin our zero tolerance, create trauma-informedschools and approaches that work with our existingsystems, deepen our

partnership with healthcareand mental health systems to collect data on aces. we also realize that it'snot the conditions of our young people, but thedecision-making of adults that determinetheir destiny. tarence wheeler: their success is predicated on our participation. we've got to do all that wecan for as many as we can and, mr. king, we inviteyou to river rouge school

district and walk the hallsto meet and greet our young people. all lives can't matteruntil black girl's matter. female speaker:that's right. thank you to eachof our states. female speaker: and i hope that with the work that georgetown plans to do moving forward thatwe can hold each other accountable for thecommitments made today.

there is no better way toclose out the conversations, collaboration, andcommitments that have taken place here today than withour last speaker, a former massachusetts teacher andschool leader and former commissioner of educationfrom the great state of new york. multiple speakers: yeah. female speaker: a producthimself of new york city schools, this individual hashad to think about school

discipline on the classroomlevel, the school level, the state level, and now atthe national level as our nation's secretary ofeducation, not to mention, perhaps most importantly, asa father of two school age girls himself in thehome level as well. please welcome to the stagea leader who is committed to ensuring excellence andequity for all students, our secretary ofeducation john king. john king: goodafternoon, everybody.

multiple speakers:good afternoon. john king: so i come tothis conversation both from the experience of aneducator focused on our kids who are most at risk andtrying to support their success, as a parent of twogirls, but also a child who experienced trauma in hislife, was saved by school. my mom passed away when iwas eight, october of my 4th grade year. i lived, after my mompassed, with my dad who was

quite sick with undiagnosedalzheimer's and lived with my dad till -- as he gotmore and more sick; he passed away when i was 12. i moved around after thatbetween family members and schools, but at the end ofthe day what saved my life, the reason i'm standing heretoday, the reason i'm alive today, is the work of newyork city public school teachers, who saved my life. what they did for me wasthey -- they could have

looked at me and said,"here's an african american, latino male student, familyin crisis, going to a new york city public school,"and they could have assumed that i couldn't possibly besuccessful, they could have given up on me, but insteadthey didn't and they made school a place that was safeand supportive and nurturing and engaging and interestingand challenging and compelling every day. we read the "new yorktimes" in 4th grade; we did

productions of "midsummernight's dream" and "alice in wonderland" inelementary school. i had teachers who, when ifinished a book, they were there with the next; wheni finished a math problem, they were there with thenext one that was a little bit more challenging andteachers who made school a place where i could be a kidwhen i couldn't be a kid outside of school. i can remember i had ateacher, miss dee, my 7th

grade social studies teacherand i had the chance when i was commissioner ofeducation in new york to go back to my mark twain juniorhigh school classroom with miss dee, who was stillthere teaching middle school social studies. i walked into miss dee'sclassroom and 7th grade was when my father was most sickand i worried every day, i would sit in class and iwould wonder if he was okay and what had happened athome and i didn't know why

he was sick and i didn'tknow why life at home was so unpredictable and it wasduring that period that my father once woke me up, twoin the morning, telling me it was time to go to schooland i didn't know why and i remember hanging onto thebannister in the house saying, "daddy, no, it'snot time to go to school. it's not time to goto school," and not understanding what waswrong, but in miss dee's class i was focused on whatmiss dee was trying to teach

and what we were tryingto do in 7th grade i came to her class, walkedinto her classroom on the day that i was visiting andshe said, "oh, i want to show you something," andshe went to the back of the classroom and she climbed upand, you know, in new york city public schools are bigclosets in a lot of old classrooms -- she climbedup on top and she started rifling through papers -- female speaker: (laughs)

john king: -- and shepulled out the project from 7th grade social studies. the project where i was sofocused on being the best aztec newscaster that -- -- best aztec -- the bestaztec sportscaster there had ever been -- -- that i wasable to really be a kid and be a learner in herclassroom and she'd saved that project and she did notknow then the difference

that that project, thatexperience was making in my life and so today'sconversation is about policy, it is about ourevery student succeeds act implementation plans, itis about how we support professional development fornew educators and current educators, but ultimatelyit is about how we create school environments thatsave kids' lives, how we create communityenvironments that save kids' lives and this isn't aboutthe heroic act of a single

individual, itcan't be, all right? we have to create systems ofsupport for our kids and so this conversation -- i wantto just take a few minutes to review the importance oftoday's conversation because it is about all of usleaving here and asking what can we do to strengthen oursystems of support around our young people. you've talked today aboutthe notion of adverse childhood experiences, whatthose mean in young people's

lives, the effect of traumaon young people's lives, and we have to remember thatevery day educators and mentors and schoolcounselors and bus drivers and the school secretary,they are experiencing with kids the effects ofthose adverse childhood experiences on thosechildren and the results of the experiences that they'vehad and they may not know. i often say to folks, i'mthe first secretary of education to have beenkicked out of high school,

but i hope not the last. right, and i was kicked outof high school because even despite all the investmentthat teachers made in me, all the hope that they gaveme, when i was a teenager i was still mad, mad aboutthings i'd experienced, confused about how -- myrelationship with adults and i acted out and rebelledagainst adult authority. so when you think aboutwhat trauma means, what trauma-informed educationmeans, it means all of us as

adults understanding theimpact that those traumatic experiences are havingon young people and understanding their actionsin that context and if people had not given me asecond chance, i wouldn't be here today either, right? so it's not so simple asinvest in children a sense of hope; it's how yousustain that even when they push against it for reasonsthey may not themselves understand and so this workis about how we build those

systems that create thosemeaningful second chances for young people, the kindsof second chances that saved my life. now you've talked todayabout what it looks like to do trauma-informed care asa community, how we have to bring together schoolsand community-based organizations toaddress students' need. i think dr. burke harrisreferred to it as the need for a movement around thiswork on students' behalf.

well, so we've got to askourselves what does it mean to be a movement, right? in part what it means to bea movement is we have to think beyond our silos,beyond just our functions, beyond just ourinstitutional loyalties. we have to ask: how dowe connect across the intersectionality ofchallenges that our students face? how do we connect acrosseducation and healthcare and

housing and transportation? how do we connect mentalhealth service providers with schools in anongoing partnership? right, not just refer out,but ensure that there's a continuing partnership insupport of our children and we focus particularly on thechallenges facing our young women of color because weknow how significant the obstacles are intoo many schools. i'm sure today you talkedabout our civil rights data

collection, survey data thatshows we have 1.6 million kids who go to a school thathas a sworn law-enforcement officer and no schoolcounselor and those are disproportionally studentsof color, low-income students, that is youngwomen of color in schools who have no one to go to forsupport, but see that sworn law-enforcement officerevery day at the door. right, we know that -- alsofrom that same civil rights data collection, we knowthat african american girls

represent 20 percent of thegirls in preschool, but 54 percent of the girls who aresuspended from preschool; four-year-olds suspendedfrom preschool -- disproportionally youngwomen of color and we've got to confront that; we've gotto ask what are the systemic interventions that willchange that reality? we know that six percent ofthe kids in k-12 experience out of school suspension,but that for african american girls that's 10percent and for white girls

it's two percent and we'vegot to confront that, we've got to confront thosechallenging issues around race and around class andthe impact that they have on you've talked today aboutthe sexual abuse to prison pipeline. that's a conversation somefolks are uncomfortable having, but we've got tohave it for the sake of our kids and you've talkedtoday about the power of trauma-informed schools, butacknowledge that there are

still only a few hundredschools that are deeply engaged in that practice. we have a lot of work to do. so i'm thankful to thefolks who are in this room; grateful to the councilon women and girls for organizing us and the staffat the white house; grateful to our colleagues at thejustice department for their partnership in this work;grateful to the georgetown law center on poverty andinequality for being a

partner in this work;grateful to our many speakers today; gratefulto the aft and the nea for their partnership andsupporting teachers around this work; grateful to mycolleague catherine lhamon and our team at the officeof civil rights who are fighting every day to ensurethat districts and states fulfill theirresponsibilities to our young people and grateful toall of you for gathering for this important conversationand i want to flag and it

was powerful to hear theaccounts of what you are committed to do and i hopein the moments as you are listening to other statesand districts, you are also thinking about, "oh yeah,that's something they came up with that we didn't haveon our list; we're going to add it to our list," andi want to -- i want to reference some of theresources and tools i hope that you will take advantageof and some of them you've heard about today andsome of this may be

reinforcement, but i want tomake sure that you make use of these tools. one of those is our healthystudents, promising futures toolkit which is about howwe connect schools and health and one of therealities is schools are today leaving money on thetable that could support school-basedhealthcare services. i know folks frompennsylvania talked about community schools; well, youdon't have to wait for a

promised neighborhoodsgrant or some other kind of federal grant to createcommunity schools. there are community schoolresources that can be taken advantage of under theaffordable care act and medicaid today and so whatthat toolkit talks about are two things: one, how youcan get reimbursement for school-based provision ofhealth services, including mental health services,also it talks about the importance of using theenrollment process and other

administrative interactionsof schools with families to make sure that familiesare enrolled in health insurance, even thoughlow-income families are guaranteed access to healthinsurance due to the medicaid program, we knowthat there are children who are not receiving regularhealthcare and we engage in a partnership with thechildren's defense fund and the national superintendentsassociation just to say we need to take that step atthe beginning of the school

year to make sure we simplyask families the question: is everyone enrolledin health insurance? all right? making sure that folks aretaking advantage of those health insurance dollars. there are school improvementgrant dollars and school climate transformation grantdollars that you've heard about today. as states think about theirimplementation of the every

student succeeds act,there's an opportunity to think about how they betterleverage school improvement dollars in support ofthis work, how they might leverage those dollars tosupport school-based mental health services, leveragethose dollars to hire school counselors, leverage thosedollars to provide training to school staff. there are the serv grantsthat you heard about, our school emergency responseto violence grants that are

specifically targeted toschool communities that have experienced significanttrauma and there are lessons learned from those granteesthat can be shared. there's our work onrethinking discipline, that is part of the work of thecouncil on women and girls and also part of the work ofthe president's my brother's keeper initiative, butthrough the -- through the rethink discipline effort,we've organized regional convenings to share bestpractices and i hope you

will take advantage of someof the resources developed there to help schools findalternatives to exclusionary discipline and as we dothat, we have to remember it's not just about thepolicy change, it is about culture change. it's not just about sayingdon't suspend, it's about helping support teachersand principals with the practices that will allowthem to create safe and supportive communitiesinstead of using suspension

and expulsion. we recently put out a jointpolicy statement with our other federal partnersaround the importance of eliminating exclusionarydiscipline practices in early childhood; i hope youwill use that as a resource. we also just recently putout guidance on the role of school resource officers toreinforce for all school communities that disciplineshould be done by educators, not by police in schools.

discipline should be done bytrained educators, not by police in schools. there may be -- that's right. there may be ways toproactively engage police officers as mentors andparticipants in the school community, but it is not asthe folks responsible for day to day discipline ofstudents and we put out that guidance to support that.

we also put out companionguidance to higher ed institutions about theimportance of campus police receiving the same kinds oftraining and best practice that the taskforce on 21stcentury policing recommended for police departments,because on too many campuses the campus police aresending the message to students that this is nota place for them and so changing practice of campuspolice is also critical. we have resources andcatherine described the safe

place to learn resourcesthat we released today, but resources around enforcementof title ix, around strategies to combat sexualviolence and sexual assault. we have our project onchronic absenteeism, every student, every day. we've got 30 communitiesaround the country that are engaging thousands ofmentors to help 10s of thousands of students get toschool and the challenge of chronic absenteeismis a huge one.

even the best teacher can'tsucceed with a kid who's not in class and so the questionbecomes how do we support -- how do we get at the rootcauses that are getting in the way and support studentsin getting to school and so i hope you will takeadvantage of those resources and join that effort. we talked today -- severalof the states talked about the role of the everystudent succeeds act conversation.

there is a tremendousopportunity in the new law to focus on a broadeningof the definition of educational excellence. yes, we know studentsneed english. yes, we know they needmath skills; those are foundational, but they arenecessary, not sufficient for success. students also need scienceand social studies and art and music and opportunitiesfor socio-emotional learning

and states can stand up forthat broader vision through the every student succeedsact process, but it won't happen if you're not at thetable and so one of the things to think about withyour teams that are here: who's voice is in thoseevery student succeeds act implementationconversations? how are you helping to shapethe implementation of the law? the law also creates animportant flexibility around the interventions instruggling schools.

a struggling school couldtake advantage of the resources of our pbistechnical assistance center. a struggling schoolcould use federal school improvement dollars tocreate a community school with extended day programsand healthcare programs and dental services, but thatwon't happen unless you are actively engaged in thosestate-level conversations. ultimately what we've beentalking about today is a public health crisis that wecan solve together through

systemic strategies thatsupport our students and you heard about examples of bestpractice, you heard about schools that because oftheir trauma-informed approach are seeing gainsin graduation rates and academic outcomes. this is solvable. we can do better by ourstudents, but we have to do it together and we have todo it in a way that cuts through some of thebureaucratic obstacles that

sometimes get in the wayand so i want to close with this: i'm joined here by mywife who came and she came today because she has spenther career researching these very issues, but began asa first grade teacher in harlem, realizing that shewas underprepared by her teacher preparation program-- which was very good, by the way -- to confront thechallenges of the trauma her students had experienced andshe'll describe the story of a student who would hidewhen something got difficult

in the classroom and thencoming to understand that the reason he would hide wasbecause he had witnessed his parents -- was it one ofhis parents, both of his parents? -- both of his parents beingkilled and so his reaction to stress in the classroomwas to go hide, but as a new first grade teacher shedidn't necessarily know that that was why he was doingthat, nor have great strategies for how torespond to that situation

and so she ended up gettinga doctorate in human development and psychologyto try to better understand how to address -- that verychallenge, but our systemic challenge is we know thereare boys like that young man in classrooms allacross the country. we know there are girls inclassrooms all across the country who have beenvictims of abuse. we know there are boys andgirls in classrooms all

across the country who aredealing with their parents' substance abuse, withdomestic violence in the home, who've lost a parentor both parents, children who are homeless, childrenwho move between foster care families, children who havea parent or parents who've been incarcerated. we know those children arein our classrooms and yet we are not doing enough toequip new teachers or current teachers with thetools they need to support them.

shame on us as the adultsif we don't take that on. so our collective challengeis to make it different; make it different tomorrow,make it different next month, make it differentnext year and the president has charged us to do as muchas we can to support you every moment, all the waythrough january 20th -- -- and we intend (laughs) -- -- (inaudible) and weintend to do exactly that. thank you so much.

female speaker: thank youso much for joining us today. have safe travels home andonward with the work ahead.

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>>in our first season ofstudio sacramento, leah albright-byrd joined usas part of a discussion to put the neglected horrorof sex trafficking on the local and nationalradar as a priority issue. leah helped lead thefight in california to pass proposition 35, aninitiative putting in place the strongest publicsanctions in the country to combat sex trafficking. she led that fight froma place of authenticity,

having once beentrafficked herself, and escaping thatenvironment in order to bear witness to thecountless thousands trapped in a system of pain,violence, and desperation. leah is the founder andexecutive director of bridget's dream and joins usagain to share her journey form sex traffickingsurvivor to advocate. >>leah, welcome back. >>thank you for having me.

>>what's changed inthe past two years, since we last got together? >>well scott,a lot has changed, things have changednationally, they've changed inour state, my organization, bridget'sdream, has definitely evolved in its capacity to serveand meet the need locally. >>how so? >>well, we've been able toacquire some very strategic

partnerships with otherorganizations in the community and we continue toget more and more referrals for girls and women thathave been exploited which lets us know that there's anincrease in identification of those victims whichis exciting for us, it doesn't necessarily meanthat the problem has grown exponentially but it doesmean that our community is seeing these victims andthen referring them to us, and then lastly,i feel like i've evolved.

i started offreally passionate about the local issue,and have over the last two years become a nationaladvocate around the issue of human traffickingand now soon to be an international advocate. >>yeah, well, there's a... you have a trip coming up,what's that? >>i do, i'm actually leavingfor england tomorrow and i will be there forabout nine days

training england's firstlong-term safe house for human traffickingsurvivors there. >>really? >>yes. >>wow, wow. now is- is-is trafficking in england as significant an issueas it here- is here in theunited states? >>it is not as significantan issue, however, it is another industrializedcountry and

wherever you have children,you have vulnerable children so it's something thatthe united kingdom definitely wants to beresponsive to. >>and, and, and in terms of,of california itself, has, with the passage ofthe proposition, has the- the flow of peoplebeing trafficked diminished or is it the same? >>i think it's too soonfor us to say, i think we've just startedto move in a direction

of data gatheringaround this issue, especially withlaw enforcement, but what i can say isthat we've had an increase in convictionsunder prop. 35 and the law enforcement training forthe state-wide training has been fully developedand is being launched so our law- law enforcementofficers across the state are being educatedaround the issue. >>now, some of us who this istheir first time meeting you,

don't know your story. tell us a little bitabout your journey. >>sure, sure, so i, like mostyouth that are vulnerable to being preyed on by predators,had come from an environment that was marked by traumaand dysfunction, there was a lot of brokenness in myfamily and i- before i ever ran away from home and becamea human trafficking victim, i was a survivor ofdomestic violence, i had grown up in a homewhere there was

substance abuse and so bythe time i was 14 i was searching desperately forlove and acceptance and belonging and completelyoblivious to the fact that there were predators in mycommunity that would prey on my vulnerabilities like somany of the children that i now have the opportunityto work with and so my exploitation lasted from 14to 18, i met a guy that was selling drugs here insacramento and like so many drug traffickers he turnedto the trafficking in human

beings cause he felt like itwas more lucrative and less, less risky for himcriminally and so, my exploitation, like i said,it lasted for four years and it was, you know,definitely one of the worst seasons of my life. >>and, and you have aninteresting insight into why traffickingin humans is, can be more attractivethan the drug trade itself. can you share thatwith us again?

>>sure, so...when you'reselling drugs, you have circumstantialevidence right? you have evidence, if youget pulled over in car and you have substancesin your car, then you're automaticallybeing taken to jail. if you get pulled over inyour vehicle and you have a couple of girls whoare under-age, who you probably havedressed up and made them look like they're older,and you've developed

an allegiance andloyalty with them, either through fear ormanipulation and coercion, they're less likelyto tell on you. and so prosecutors willtell you that traffickers are some of the hardestcriminals to prosecute because of thosevery factors. but now with thepassing of prop. 35 a minor doesn'tnecessarily have to be in the courtroom to testify,

it's just given us a lot moreopportunity to prosecute. >>remind us what are thetools of prop. 35 that have changed the landscape incalifornia. >>absolutely, so with thepassing of proposition 35 it increased the penaltiesagainst human traffickers so that when force, fraud,or coercion is used with a minor,that trafficker is facing fifteen to life in thestate of california. it also mandated lawenforcement training

throughout the state sothat we can make sure that all of our officersare aware of this humantrafficking issue. and there's one facet ofprop. 35 that's unfortunately being held up in thesupreme court and that was the disclosing of all emailand internet accounts by registeredsex offenders, so.... >>oh, this is- thisissue about the phones, if it's on your phone,there's a dispute as to

whether it's protected bya privacy claim, right? >>no, that- that's alittle bit different, it's more so thesupreme court. the initial argument wasthat it was a violation of their first amendment rightsand they basically have to disclose so much aboutthemselves, so we- we- i personally don'tunderstand what the big deal is about emailand internet accounts, especially when we havesuch a huge issue

with internet exploitationand children, so.... >>the, let's go back tothe night that the proposition passed. >>sure, mmhmm. >>one, what was that like? what was that momentlike for you? >>so it was- it was- it wasa bunch of things scott, i mean for one, you know,we were watching it alongside the presidentialelection, so waiting to see

whether or not obama wasbeing re-elected and then waiting to seewhat- how we would do, and the to see that webroke state record with 81.3 percent ofvoter support. >>really?i didn't know that... >>yeah, that was a highestrate of voter support, highest- highest amountof voter support in the history of thestate of california. so to see californiansbe so invested

in protecting childrenand invested in addressing the humantrafficking issue for me as a survivorwas just overwhelming, and i remember looking at the founder ofcalifornia against slavery, the organization thatstarted this whole campaign and she and i literallywere laughing and crying at the same time,so it was one of those, you know, joy filledmoments that...

>>validating? >>yeah, yeah. and you-you look back on the tapestry of your-your life, you know, i look back and i go, "wow,look at all of the things that i've experienced toget to this moment." and i've officially,through my involvement and though the support ofall of the californians and the people that investedtheir time and their- their- their money into that,into that campaign,

we've left a legacy forchildren in our state, you know, and thatwas a powerful moment. >>connect that to yourfriend bridget and bridget's dream. >>sure. >>how- when- when youwere in that moment, did she ever comeinto your mind? >>absolutely, so one of thecampaign tools that was used was a picture of her andtwo other young ladies

who'd been trafficked. and to realize that herpicture and her story had been spread acrossthe state in a way that i know i could havenever, it was- it was the people who werepromoting this campaign. but you know, i don't knowthat the pain of losing bridget will evergo away completely, but in those momentswhen you see that such amazing things arehappening as a result of-

of her story, and as a resultof me having the opportunity to share that story,it's just profound. >>was there even anamazing thing or moment that happened duringthe campaign, when you knew that you hadturned the corner and yes, this is gonna happen? >>hmm... yeah, there werequite a few. i- i think- i think honestly my first press conferencewith prop. 35

>>yes, because i saw the congresswomanjackie speier there, and chris kelly,who's one of my heroes, part- he's one of theowners with the kings now. go kings![laughter] and, you know, but being inthe presence of people who are really, really invested,and seeing the momentum, i just had this momentwhere i thought, "we're gonna do this, we'rereally going to do this."

especially because therewere so many other things happening across thecountry that were really pushing us as a statein that direction, so... >>and how- how has this, thepassage of this proposition and the fight that you'releading, how has that resonated in other partsof the country? >>well, i mean california'sincredibly- an incredibly powerful and influentialstate, and i think people- there were states that werewaiting for us to catch up.

>>yes. so the polarisproject's an international- excuse me,national organization, and so they basically doreport cards for states and california hadreceived an 'f' compared to some of theother states that were implementing thingslike safe harbor laws. and so now, we've beenable to catch up. i mean, you'd think that wewould have been at the forefront and we weren't,and so i think the

rest of the country'svery excited about that, especially because wehouse three of the nation's top highesttrafficking cities. >>when we last got together,one of the things that you spoke about was the needfor officer training, which is a part of theproposition, but it had to do with essentially deconstructingnot only behavior, and giving people newbehaviors- officers,

but also taking down someof their assumptions that led them to effectivelyvalue the trafficked less than other victims thatthey might see. how- how do you think thatwith the passage- how will we know if the passage ofprop. 35 is working? >>right, well one of the-one of the ways that we'll know that it's working isthe number of prosecutions. so before we were getting,unfortunately, traffickers with slapson the wrist,

especially when it cameto minors. i mean that was the biggestfocus of prop. 35. i think to speak to theother point that you mentioned with law enforcement, whatwe're really looking at, not just with lawenforcement but with our state and our country,is a cultural shift in perspective aroundthis issue. >>to where we stop saying, "oh, just thoseprostitutes," right?

to, "wait a minute,these are children. the average age of entryis twelve to fourteen, that's a junior high orhigh school student." and so i'm excited to beable to share that i actually am one of thesubject matter experts on the state-wide lawenforcement training and helped to developthat training. and a big part of thateducation piece is helping themunderstand victimology.

so when you have avictim that doesn't present like a victim,then naturally you're not going to feel inclined toprotecting this person, if they're aggressiveand abrasive. but once you understand thebackstory and you understand how they're being groomed,how they've been recruited and manipulated to respondthe way that they are, then it starts to shiftyour perspective... >>"groomed," what-what's that?

>>well, unfortunately whena- a trafficker targets a victim, he beginsto manipulate her and- and it's not very difficultwhen you have a child whose brainisn't fully developed. so you have atwelve year old, you can tell atwelve year old anything, and that power dynamicwith you as an adult, this trafficker as anadult exploiting this child, that child is continuing tolearn and to develop,

and embracing those beliefsthat that person is trying to get him orher to believe. so it's- it's very hard-hardwired, right? i mean just like,i'm sure you can think of things thatyour parents told you that you can hear themsaying in your head. >>never leaves[laughter] >>right. so then when you're twelveyears old and the streets

are raising you, in essence,and you have someone who's very unhealthy and, attimes, psychopathic, because they don't have-they're not showing empathy or compassiontowards their victims, you start to really believewhat you're being told. >>you also mentionedthat there was an ethnic dimension to this problem,and that disproportionately women of color andafrican american women in california have beeninvolved in trafficking,

and- and i'm wondering,does- how- how goes the effort toengage those communities in being betteridentifiers and supporters of getting victims outof that life? >>right. well that'sone of the things that bridget's dream isactually focused on. we just did a, for example,a presentation with san joaquin delta collegelast week with their african american historystudents wanting to

influence the nextgeneration of leaders and helping them understandthe disproportionate impact in low-incomecommunities and in communities withwomen of color. and so we continue toeducate our community as much as we can, and a-probably about 85 percent of the girls that we're workingwith identify as either being african american or ofafrican american descent, which is alarming for us.

and so we've been discussingwith some professors and other professionals, africanamerican professionals, therapists that areinterested in this, to begin to talkabout how can we raise awareness on abroader scale so that our communities of colorare being educated and they're awareof their vulnerabilities. >>is- is there recep- isthere receptivity to receiving this typeof training?

>>absolutely, i think- see,the unique thing about, and i can only speak forthe- the black community 'cause that's the communitythat i represent, right- we still have thiskind of, those are just those fast little girls,kinda old school... >>...thought process aroundit, which parallels a lot with our perspectiveof mental health, and whether or notwe feel like it's taboo to getcounseling support.

so there's a lot of... >>you're soft ifyou do that. >>right, right. and there's a lot ofrelationship building that has to take place. i think the beautifulthing is that i, as an african american personcan go into my community and pull some coat-tails,so to speak. you know, i can bring upthings that- that might...

>>make people come correct,right? >>right, right, right-that might be uncomfortable for other people to mention. and we can have some open, honest conversationsabout this, and as we do, i've seen people go,"yeah, i have..." you'd be- you'd be amazed,i don't know amazed, either amazed or-or shocked or horrified, at how many people withincommunities of color

have been impacted byhuman trafficking. >>wow. >>not just because ourancestors were human traffickingsurvivors, right? but because it continues totouch our communities in ways that i think we haven'teven begun to address. >>wow, wow... so you- you've beenon this journey, an all of these thingshave happened, and you've

impacted events and lives-how have they impacted you? >>hmm... that's a greatquestion, scott. so... i thought thati was going to be able to inoculate myself better. >>from? >>from- from- fromrelationships with the girls that we serve. and let me clarify, that'snot to say that i don't want to have intimaterelationships with them,

but you have to have goodboundaries when you're working in themental health field, right? and so- and that's forthe sake of self-care. but i realized that someof that inoculation is tied to myfear of loss, right? so when bridgetwas murdered, and i felt in many wayspersonally responsible because i recruited herwhen i was fifteen, there was something thathappened in my heart

where i wanted to fight,and at the same time it produced an overwhelmingamount of fear. and so, with the love that-and the resiliency that i see in the girlsthat we work with, there's no way not tolove these girls, there's no way not to getclose and attached to them. and we do life together, youknow, they- they come to events and we do- we- wecan't keep some of the... >>we do life.

>>we do life together,mmhmm. and that's- that's theonly solution to any- any brokenness, really. whether it's human traffickingor substance abuse, is relationship,and so we- we get to live our livestogether, and grow together. so i know i've definitelygrown, i've been forced to- to look at areas wherei still need to heal, as a result of thework that i do,

and it's just all goodin the end, so... >>i'm curious, this- thismovement that you're part of the birthing has grown, andbefore it came into itself and the propositionpassed, it was a group of very committed,dedicated individuals. and now it's gotorganizations and structures and,you know, all of the accoutrements of beinginstitutionalized. and the cynic in mewonders though,

whether or not the-when something grows into- from a movement into acottage industry... >>mmhmm. >>...whether or notexploitation happens again under another name. >>mmhmm, mmhmm. and that-that's- that's a great- that's a great pointyou bring up, and i think before i'm-before i address that, i have to say, you know,i have been a part of this

movement but there are peoplethat have gone before me, that are made what'shappening now possible. and that's people likedr. lois lee, the founder ofchildren of the night, an organization that's beenaround since the '70s. that's rachel lloyd, thefounder of gems in new york, an organization that's beenaround since the '90s, and nola brantley. and, i mean, there's so manypeople that i can look to,

and a lot of them aresurvivors that have pioneered and put theirlives on display for the world to see, so that wecan experience the change that we're now experiencing. and so i just get to bea part of that, right, but to speakto your point, what i've seen is a lotof re-exploitation, unfortunately, becausethere's such a push for survivor involvement, whichi'm- i'm very happy about,

and at the same time, ifgirls and women and- and men that've been exploited arenot being educated on how to share their stories withoutre-traumatizing themselves, because that's verypossible, and they're not being educated on how tointeract with the media, right, then nextthing you know, you- you face a newform of slavery, kind of, like in the wordson w.e.b. du bois, right? where instead of beingexploited sexually,

now your story's beingexploited for the sake of the developmentof an organization. and so with bridget's dream, i'm really sensitive tothat as the leader. we've had a lot ofsurvivors get involved and want to serve,and the question is always, "do you understand what theramifications are of you sacrificing this partof yourself and sharing it?" because, i know for myself,my- the most intimate

parts of my life arenow public display. >>right? and so youreally have to be at a place whereyou're emotionally and psychologicallyprepared for that, and i don't think thati was initially. so we- we want to keepthat from happening, but unfortunately,like you mentioned, it does happen, so... >>so... what's the next biggoal for the movement itself?

>>that's a great question, i'm excited thatyou asked that. so there are two bills on-on the books right now that actually justpassed appropriations. and one is a senate billthat will mandate sexual abuse and sexualtrauma education, and all of the junior highand high schools in the state of california,which is really, really exciting, that's ahuge preventative effort

that i believe our communitywill benefit from for years to come as long aswe're able to get it passed. the other... >>is there opposition to it? >>there's not oppositionbut, you know, i mean you never knowwhat can happen. >>the legislature is like forest gump's boxof chocolates. [in unison] you never knowwhat you're gonna get.

>>[laughing] that's right.so- so, the other bill that i'm really excited aboutis a demand bill to address the demand side,and so we can continue to provide victim servicesand we can continue to prosecute traffickers, butif we're not preventing and educating our community,and if we're not addressing the demand, which is a basiceconomic principal, demand and supply, right?supply and demand. and so that demand bill willincrease the penalties

against sex-buyers, andit will require them to experience a mandatoryconfinement, and fines, and potentially education,wherever a first offenders program is availablein the state. >>and- and i don't know,i'm not in law enforcement, i don't know if this is true, but one of the thingsthat i had heard was, that prior to the passageof this proposition, the consequences wereactually more severe

for a dui than it was forbeing a sex-buyer. >>absolutely, unfortunately-well, not- not prop. 35, prop. 35 focused primarilyon traffickers. this new senate bill that's-that's just been, like i said, just passedappropriations, that will changethat dynamic. so we had an incidentrecently where a young lady wasreferred to us, and her story actuallymade the news locally,

where the- the sex-buyerthat was arrested during that sting received aslap on the wrist and a ticket,and was on his way. we cannot continue- continueto allow that to happen to people who are buyingchildren in our community. >>now, with your advocacy,not only here in california, but nationally and nowgoing internationally, and the fact that your lifehas been exposed in service of this movement completely,you put it all out there,

and you're in the forefrontof trying to protect and- the victims and-and get them safe, do you ever worry aboutyour own safety? because you're so visible-you're so visible, and for those for whom this is theirbusiness, you're do- you're disrupting theirincome and their livelihood. >>i have had moments wherei've thought about it, probably not as much aspeople would think, primarily because ofwhere in my faith lies

around this situation. and then the other part isi have some very strong connections with lawenforcement and a lot of support with the fbi, andwe do take safety measures around my involvementin certain things. for example, we had anincident where a trafficker got ahold of my phone numberand called about 25 times trying to locate the girlthat we helped rescue- we helped her escape,excuse me,

i don't even like theword rescue, but we helped her escapefrom that situation. and he called repeatedly andthen eventually i was able to tell him, you know,we have fbi affiliations, we know your name,he stopped calling. but i'm very well awarethat it could be worse, but it's just not something that i spend a lot oftime focused on. >>okay. in our final moments,tell us what's next

for leah albright-byrd. >>where is she in thefuture? >>right, thanksfor asking that. so, my big focus goingforward is writing a book. and one of the thingsthat i've realized as i've travelled and spokenat different places, and spoken to a wide varietyof audiences and age ranges, is that the common theme ishealing for people. i've had people that havenot been through the same

thing that i've experiencedreach out to me and say, "hey, how did- how were youable to forgive? how were you able to heal? what treatment workedwell for you?" and i wanna be able to sharethat part of my life with people thathaven't necessarily experienced the same thing, and give them hope sothat they know that it's possible to growand move forward.

>>well, maybe thatbecomes the next visit, where it is that you can-you can share that- that piece of work whenit's complete. >>alright.well thank you, leah. and good luck andsafe travels. >>thank you, thank you. >>alright, andthat's our show. thanks to our guests,and thanks to you for watching studio sacramento.

i'm scott syphax,see you next time, right here on kvie. >>at five star bank,community is at the heart of what we do. every day we strive tohave thoughtful solutions is vitally important tothat prosperity. >>all episodes ofstudio sacramento, along with otherkvie programs, are availableto watch online at

kvie.org/video â 

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- i'm allan trotschanov. i'm the chair of the mfaproducts of design department, where you are now. so, we are really excited tohave matt manos here today, who took a red eye to be here, so that's full commitment, and he has the best name ever, which i think i referred to lots of times as his business name.

very nice, and so, everybody in the room knows that i remark and joke often about filteringfor nice in this department, so you are the nicest. it's actually in your name. also, i got an email fourminutes ago from somebody who is looking for leads for work, and, in this sentence, writes,"i'm generally rather nice, "and also like other nice people,"

to which i responded, "ineed your okay to read "that sentence in the next six minutes, "'cause i'll be introducing matt manos, "and want to use it. "i hope you get this email," and i did not get clearance. (laughing) so, that's anonymous, sothere's that, so, anyway, so, i was looking at your biography,

which is just completely ridiculous. i just, i. it's hard to believe that anybody, particularly with just thenumber of years you have under your belt could haveaccomplished all this much. i like the fact thatyou're calling yourself a neo-philanthropist. matt's worked with unicef,and, you know, nations, and, walt disney imagineering,

and facebook, and just all ofthese incredible organizations and brands, and then, there'ssomething else in here. decks for parks i did not know about. i have a new interest in long boarding, so we're gonna have to talk about that. - [matt] yeah. - but then, he does mentionin the bio side projects, this is his computer. - [matt] oh, if you just touchthe mouse pad, we're good.

there we go. - okay. so, you mentioned sideprojects in your bio, and i have met more and more people, as i've also said to you, who really, in some sense,judge people or hire people based on their side projects. even people like at google. it's like, yeah, we don'teven look at the resume.

we look at their side projects, and if side projects are interesting, then they're interesting, andthat seems very consistent with not only what you might believe, which i don't know, but certainly, how you've led your life, so that's pretty amazing, so, this is a bit of a long introduction, but we're really excited to have you,

so please welcome matt manos. - [matt] all right, thanks so much. - this is kate, by the way. (applause) (chuckling) kate's our guest tonight. she's crashing the talk. we'll use this for q&a. - cool.

well, thanks again so much for having me, and happy to be here. i was telling allan right before, it kind of feels likei'm in somebody's home, because of the kitchen,too, in the background, which makes this just so much nicer than talking in a regularold conference room, as well, but yeah, so this, i'm gonnakinda throw several things at you, but in general, thisis about being very nice.

giving half, creating models of impact, and inventing the future, so i'm gonna try to walk youguys through a little bit of my story, as well assome of these side projects that are going on, someof these new projects that are just wrappingup as well, and then, hopefully, we can have alittle bit of a discussion about what you guys are doing, and we can use this time to help you out

with your projects too,which would be great. so, i always start mystory with this number, which is $8 billion, andthat is the amount of money that non-profit organizationsin the united states, alone, are spending every singleyear on people like me, on design and marketing professionals, and i don't know about you guys, but that number, tome, is very disturbing, because i like to imaginewhat the world would look like

if they could have the samereally important access to those great services,without this hefty, this hefty amount, right? so, in my mind, you know, ifwe could actually allow them to invest more in theircause, we might be able to make even more impactin the world, and again, design and marketing is reallyimportant, they need that, but maybe there's new modelsto make it more affordable, or to lower the barrier toentry, and if we can do that,

and if they can investmore in their cause, perhaps we can solve some of the world's most persistent problems, like hunger, like housing,water access, etc. the list kind of goes on. this is sort of where "pro-bono" comes in. "pro-bono" is shortfor "pro-bono publico," which literally means, "forthe good of the public." it got its start in the legal industry.

actually, in new york,and it soon trickled into a lot of other industries, especially the design industry, around the time when thead council was emerging. you guys have seen a lot of like smokey the bearadvertisements, and so on. they would recruit a lotof designers and marketers to volunteer to create thesepublic service announcements, and soon people startedto really see the benefits

of pro-bono, and seethat it's really helpful for the world, but also, it'svery gratifying for yourself, and for your own practice. i got my start as a pro-bono practictioner when i was 16 years old. that's when i could do stuff like this. i used to skateboard, competitively. so happy to give you longboard lessons, allan, for sure, although i've never beenthat great at long boarding,

'cause i'm strangelyafraid of going down hills, but being upside downis no problem for me. although, you know, i canonly do this probably on like a one-foot ramp at thispoint, but, i try, right? so, anyways, because i wascompeting as a skateboarder throughout high school, and pretty much, like maybe my first year of college, and that's when i stoppeddoing it competitively, i was always training, andthis was in the bay area.

i grew up in silicon valley. this park is in sunnyvale, california. i would be there every saturday,sometimes every saturday, and sunday, and there would always be kind of the regular crew ofpeople that were hanging out, and trying new stuff, butthere was one weekend, where i saw a man in awheelchair in the bowl, actually do a flip overone of the channels, and it completely blew my mind.

this was pre-youtube, also,so it was before you saw really cool things all the time. so, you know, obviously, i was intrigued. i wanted to approach him,wanted to introduce myself, just kinda learn what was going on, and i noticed that he wasn't alone. he was with a bunch of little kids, who were also in wheelchairs, and it appeared as thoughhe was teaching them,

basically, how to dothis, and it turned out that he was the founder of anon-profit that, at the time, taught kids in wheelchairshow to participate in extreme sports. this was kind of mind-blowing to me. i had never met the founderof a non-profit organization, before. growing up in the siliconvalley, everyone and their mother literally is the founder of something,

but i had never met thefounder of a non-profit, and that passion thatreally radiated from his was very inspiring to me, and i knew, this was the kind ofperson, the kind of thing that i wanted to dedicatethe rest of my life too, and so, you know, i didn'thave any money, really, to donate to him, aside fromsome allowance, you know, from doing random chores, and what not? i also was not personally in a wheelchair,

so i can't really teachsomeone in a wheelchair how to do things, 'causei wouldn't even know how to do it, but i figured, you know, about like the week or two prior, i had gotten my firstpirated copy of photoshop from my godmother who wasstudying art in australia at the time, and i wasstarting to learn, you know, the really important designskills of kind of making your head really big, orchanging the color of your hair,

or, you know, the thingsthat all of you did, and maybe won't admit whenyou first got photoshop. i figured, you know, why notput these incredible skills to good use, and offered todesign him some stickers, and that became my first pro-bono project, before i knew what pro-bono was. it was my dad that toldme what pro-bono was, after i did that, 'cause he's a lawyer, and again, in the legal industry,

there's some really strong ties there. so, flash forward, actuallyjust three years after that, when i was 19. i launched verynice. from my college dorm room, basically, and it's now a globaldesign strategy consultancy that gives half of its work away for free to non-profit organizations, so still, very much inspired by thatmoment, at the skate park,

and really trying to figure out, how can i make that anintegral part of what we do, as well. we work with all kindsof different clients. half of them are non-profits. the other half are really,really big non-profits, or start-ups, or big businesses,or mom and pop shops, etc. really kinda all over theplace, and that's something

that makes us a little bit interesting. i'm gonna talk a little bitabout that later, as well. when we originally launched,we focused exclusively on visual design, so especiallybrand identity design, website design, etc. and then, over the lastfour or five years, we've really transitioned tobalance that more visual work on the left with morestrategic work on the right, as well as developing ourown tools and resources

that we can offer to our clients, and to the world at large, soover the course of that time, what's been interesting iswe kinda keep accumulating more and more services that we offer, so instead of replacing services, we just kind of keep stacking it on, and they really expandthese four categories, the visual communications, so again, kind of where we started,what you might think

of a very traditional graphic design work, to digital product design,so entering that ux/uy space, design strategy, which is a huge section of what we do now around business design, brand strategy, marketing strategy, etc. and then, even strategicforesight, so really looking at long-term implicationsof things for our clients researching trends, etc. our work is equally as diverse.

this is just kind of a fewquick ones to go through. this was a paintingthat we had commissioned from a good friend of mine, dan everett. he's the one that'spositioned in the right image, right there. he actually, his mom lived in a home that was really affectedby fracking issues, and at the time, we were working with nrdc on their demand clean power campaign,

which was all about fracking, and the keystone xl pipeline, etc. and we thought, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we got an artist that'sbeen sort of touched by this cause toparticipate in this somehow? so, we locked him in a room for 24 hours, him and myself, and filmmaker, and we basically videoedthe process of him creating a painting that wasinspired by that experience

that he and his momhad, and so, the result was this really weird thingon the left, which i love, that kinda depicts like a upper world, and a lower world, aswell, and they ended up, you know, having thiskinda in their collection, and was part of the biggercampaign that we did. also, branding, so katy,my wife's in the audience. she did the branding forthis project with us, called the pasadenamuseum of california art.

if any of you are ever in california, this is one of my favoritemuseums, personally, 'cause it focuses exclusivelyon california artists, and themes and images thatare inspired by california, in general. it's actually really small,so it almost has the feeling of a gallery, and equally, it rotates through exhibits all of thetime, and so, as a result, what we did with thebranding and the identity is,

we had the letters, the imagethat's filling those letters change with every newexhibit that they have, so it's a dynamic identity,and we basically instruct the museum to take aclose-up image of whatever the primary piece is in the new show, and that, essentially, becomes the logo, so it's been really fun. we did this maybe twoyears ago at this point, or almost, and watchingthem kind of take that on,

and evolve it over time, and seeing it constantly changehas been really gratifying. i mentioned, we do digital products, too. this was with the keepa breast foundation, that a lot of you might know from the i love boobiesbracelets that they make, so they focus on breast cancer prevention, but at really, really young age, so they target high schoolmen and women, essentially,

and they wanted to create an app, and they wanted it to be something that was actually useful,and that actually contributed to their mission, so we developed this, which is essentiallya self check reminder, so you'll, every month get a text message that reminds you toperform a self check exam for breast cancer, and it'sbasically a push notification. it's really simple,but when you accept it,

it gives you this step-by-stepguide of how to do it, and really helped themkind of expand their reach, through an app design, which is something that i enjoyed about it. a lot of times, you'reapproach to do an app, because an app is cool,but this is something that actually contributedto their mission, and actually, you know, helpedthem make even more impact through their education work.

this is another project that we did. this is an example of when aclient kind of reaches out, and says, "hey, we have two jumbo trons. "can you do something on them?" you gotta kind of, youknow, grab that opportunity, because you don't normally getthat much lenience, really, and this was with theculver center of the arts. this museum is positioned directly across from the city of riverside's city hall,

and riverside is in southern california. it's kind of eastern southern california, and around this time, they were facing a lot of foreclosed homes,a lot of empty storefronts, etc. and there was just kind of this sense of what should we do? right, how can we kindof reimagine riverside? and, so, that's the name of this project. also, around this time,i was living in pasadena,

and for years, therewas a mcdonalds there, and that mcdonalds got boarded up, and i remember, i gotreally excited for a moment, thinking, hey, is this goingto actually be something new? like, something different? that's not mcdonalds, andthen, after about a year of construction, they took the wood down, and it was just a nicer mcdonalds, and i remember thinking, whoa,

what if, you know, what ifwhat shows up on our streets could be democratized in some way? what if the communities could help pick what fills these storefronts,when there's opportunities, so just try to sort ofimagine that potential future, where people would tweetusing the #reimagineriverside ideas of things they'd liketo see in their community, and basically, they wouldshow up on these jumbo trons. what was nice about it beingpositioned directly across

from city hall, is that kind of dialog that was taking place,but also, what i loved is that some of theideas that were submitted were really kind of emotional and serious, and others were justreally playful, you know? and, so it had thisreally human vibe to it. in the sense of that participation, which made it so special. we also launched a civicinnovation fellowship position

with the city of losangeles, and the big goal with that, like some of you might know, la and a lot of cities, they have these open data initiatives, where they're tryingto make government data more accessible toentrepreneurs, or to anybody, and the big problem withthat is it tends to look like endless excel sheets,so it's really hard to be relatable, and one waythat we thought it could go,

and what this fellowship position did, was basically trying to geomap that data, to at least make it relatable to us, in literally where weare, in our community, so that went on for about a year, and a fellow made maybe 20 or 30 of these different diagrams, which is really, reallyawesome experience for them. we also still, like i mentioned,

do more traditional graphic design work, so this is some editorialdesign and infographic design for the downtown women's center, which is in skid row,in downtown los angeles. some of our team went withthe downtown women's center to survey, basically, thehomeless women living there, on what their needs are,and this publication is really great, because it'sshared with all organizations that are supporting thiscause, so it becomes a resource

for everybody to kind of share in, and design and visual communication became a really great wayto make that very tangible for people. decks for parks, you mentioned that. that was a side project of mine. i wanted to start a skateboard company that gave half of its proceedsto help build skate parks, so we made this as a prototype,

and there was a skateboardshop in san francisco that ended up adopting itand selling it for a while, to raise some money with it, as well. what i like about thisproject is it was something i really wanted to do,but then, ultimately, realized i couldn't kindof manage that, and so, instead of giving up, youknow, trying to find somebody that would be interested init became a really good path for this, so that it couldactually live on, as well.

we do a lot of workshops. this is one where i'm popping a balloon. another recent projectthat was really fun, this was a collaboration with google, where we worked with them to rebrand, and do some product development for an app called billion acts. this was short for onebillion acts of peace, and essentially, it's a portal for people

to find opportunitiesto just do nice things, in their community, tocommit some kinds of acts of peace. that can be as big ashousing a homeless person, or it can be as small aspicking up some trash, but these acts of peace are logged here, and peace jam, who's theorganization that runs it, they've actually been nominated for multiple nobel peace prize,

because of the projectsthey do, and this was one of those that sparked anomination, so being a part of something, you know,that could have that kind of recognition, wasreally, really amazing. so, all of this work, and more, actually as of this week, we finished 1,000 pro-bono projects, so it's a huge milestone for us, and all of that has totaled up to a gift

of over $6 million worth of services, since we've launched, and this is a number that i'm really proud of. you know, it's a lot morethan i ever thought we would be able to do, andit's still growing, right? but, it's really not enough,and what i mean by that, when you compare it tothat $8 billion figure that i shared at the very beginning, that's something that's spentevery single year, right?

and our 6.25, it took usalmost a decade to do that, and so, clearly, something'snot adding up, right? we're not gonna be able toalone tackle this issue. if our mission is to helpnon-profit organizations save valuable resources,so they can invest more in their cause, we kinda can'tdo this on our own, anymore, and so, this realization came around 2012, i think right when i hadmet you, allan, as well, and at first it was a littlebit of a point of depression,

and then, it was areally cool opportunity, 'cause i realized,well, what we have to do is make our model go fromsomething that's unique to something that's standard, and that sparked an interestin actually open sourcing verynice's business model,our "give half" model. that started with a lot of,kind of sketches, illustrations, writing, and then it ended up in a book that's in its second addition, now,

called how to give half ofyour work away for free, and it's essentially our business plan, and our business model, openfor anybody to download, at any price that theywant, or to purchase the hard copy as well. so, this is obviously adog-friendly book, also. that's my dog, charlie. perfect kind of liketongue moment right there, for that photo capture, as well,

and what i spend a lot of my time doing, kind of like i'm doing right now, is going around, talking to people, and tricking them intodoing pro-bono work, basically, and telling themthat pro-bono is awesome, and spreading this kind of message, and the result has been thatthousands of practictioners, now, are giving their work away for free, inspired by these toolsthat we've created,

and there's even some thatare giving half as well, which is really kind ofa bar that we try to set, but we're surprisedthat about a dozen or so of these "give half" companies now exist all around the globe, sowhy are they doing this? it turns out that there arebenefits to pro-bono work. some of these, i found, sortof along the way, by accident, and some of which, youmight actually read about. there's been more and morestudies around this, lately.

one is karma, of course. so, that's on scientificbenefit of pro-bono. if you help people out, that the universe will hopefully help you out, right? another that's a little bitmore strategic is networking. something that reallysurprised me is the majority of the non-profit's we're working with, they either have no paidstaff, so everyone's volunteer, or they have very, veryfew, and that means

that they all have dayjobs elsewhere, and so, those day jobs havebecome referrals for us. that's actually beena big source for a lot of our paid work, becauseyou're working with somebody, you're proving that you'regood at what you do, they're gonna wanna work with you, in this other context as well. another opportunity with networking, with some of the biggerorganizations that we work with,

a lot of their board of directors are ceos at really big companies,and that's how we get our foot in the door with a lotof the kind of bigger brands that we work with. that's how we got hooked upwith disney imagineering, actually, was through helping a non-profit that the person that wasworking at imagineering was on the board of, so these connections are really, really helpful,and it's a good way

to kinda spread the good vibes, and help each other out, as well. another third one is education. i mentioned that we kinda went from this visual design space, this more design strategy space. that really was only possible because we asked various non-profitsif we could try stuff with them, right?

no risk, because we weren't charging them. the risk was entirely onus, 'cause they might choose not to use it, but all of a sudden, we were accumulating theproof that we could write a business plan, orcreate an app, you know, or anything that we wanted to do, but we didn't really have that proof, or that client list behind. we all of a sudden were ableto equip ourselves with,

so that's been really, really helpful. so, this is progress. you know, people are out there,they're doing pro-bono work, we're doing great, that's awesome, but, it really is just the beginning, right? and, what i mean bythat, with "give half," what's kind of interesting, the moment we open sourced it, weactually, we really did go from unique to not standard yet,

but unique to less unique,and so, this big question of, well, what is our value proposition? what makes verynice unique now, if everything that we'redoing is kind of open to everybody else came up, and it became a reallyinteresting question to think through, and westarted to try to think okay, well, how is it that we are, you know, not just another design studio, right?

there's probably hundredsof thousands of them, and what we realize isthis "give half" model gave us a really unique position, where we had feet kindof equally in the private and the social sector, and so, as a result,we're able to really take some best practices from one sector, introduce it to another,and vice versa, and also, had a really good sense ofthe trends that were happening

in both of those sectors,which became something that was one of our real true values to the people that we work with. and so, "give half," youknow, was one of those models, but really what we realizeis it's kind of one of potentially hundreds ofmodels that are out there that we could share withpeople, that we could open up to people, etc. and so, that became a projectcalled models of impact,

that began a researchproject of trying to collect as many of these models as possible, map them out, see who's using them, how do they work, how arethey related to one another, how are they differentthan one another, etc. and it turned into aseries of infographics that we developed of kind of cross axes, that we're really tryingto investigate these. across the productspace, the service space,

and just revenue models in general. and then, we kinda had all of this stuff, and didn't really know what to do with it. you know, it was kind of fun to look at, and we put it online, and alot of people were looking at it, but something that,you know, i'm passionate about is education, and actually,having people engage with the materials as well,but before i get into that, some examples of justthese innovative models.

one is homeboy industries. has anybody ever heard of them? so, they're in la. whenever you say, "hasanybody heard of them?" and you're in la, everybodyraises their hand. they're a really amazing organization. they're one of the largest, if not the largest gangintervention organizations in the us, and they are based,

maybe like, what? a mile from our office. so, they're in chinatownof downtown los angeles, and what many of you mightknow is once you've been in jail, or if you have a bad record, it's pretty hard to get a job, and so, they actually launched aseries of social enterprises under their non-profit umbrella, that they then hire theseformerly incarcerated people, or people that aretransitioning out of gangs,

to run, and to actually be employed by, so this is one example of a bakery, but they also have asilk screening company, a tattoo removal business,all kinds of things. another cool model is the"pay what you want" model, which radiohead reallypopularized when they came out with in rainbows. this was in, i think, 2005 or 2006. it's a model that i really like, as well.

we use it for models ofimpact, also, but, basically, they came out with this,really at the height of the music industry kind of declining. you know, people were piratingeverything left and right, people weren't seeing the value of music, sales were going down, etc. and so, what they decided,is instead of trying to go the traditional route, what if we make a websitewhere people can pay

whatever they want, evenif it's zero dollars, to download our music, and what they found is that their kind of netprofit was actually higher than when they went the traditional route, so something about thattrust, in that exchange between a consumer and aprovider of goods or services turned out to be a really smart model, and more and more companiesare using this, now. another model is the"product for service" model.

so, a lot of you haveprobably heard of one for one, which is, like tom's shoes, where you buy a pair ofshoes, and they donate a pair of shoes. the problem with thatmodel from a lot of critics is that it assumes that somebody else wants exactly what you want. that's kind of a very american way of doing social impact stuff in general.

you know, you fly toafrica, and throw crayons at somebody, and then get out of there, but with listen headphones, it's kind of a nice revision, where they're not assuming that kids want hipster headphones, right? instead, they're tryingto think, well, okay, this is what the customer wants. now, what could we givethat's kind of attached

to our story, and in theircase, they donate hearing aids for every pair of headphonesthat are purchased, so it's a really beautifulconnection between music, and what they found intheir field research was actually a need in the communities that they wanted to help, so it's called "product for service." it's when a product enables a service. this is another kind oftrending start-up right now.

they're called meathead movers, and basically, they are student athletes that get hired to move yourstuff, when you're moving, so they're really goodat picking things up, and moving them places, but, you know, they were thinking,well, what kind of impact could we create? and kind of like listen headphones, what kind of impact could we create,

but that is really playingto our core competency, and in this case, it's theability to move things, right? so, they actually do a smallpercentage of their moves for free, for victimsof domestic violence. so, really, again, likereally kind pf emotional, you know, give back program that they have that really plays to their strengths, so it feels very authentic, as well.

you all have heard of thesharing economy, obviously, but this is kind of afunny magazine cover. strangers crashed my car, ate my food, and wore my pants. tales from the sharing economy. this is arguably one of thebiggest new impact models of our generation, atleast, and the reason is because it's enablinga couple of things, with all of the controversiesthat it's brought.

one is this kind of gig economy, and really growing thatfreelance workforce, and allowing people to takeon really kind of micro gigs that can support them whilethey pursue other things, like maybe music or the arts,or whatever it might be. the other is the real impactof promoting a lifestyle where we all own less stuff,which things like owning cars, it's not really part the newyork culture, necessarily, but in la, this is alreadyhaving a pretty profound impact,

and the decrease indui-related accidents, as well, because of this, so it'sreally something to kind of keep an eye out for. it's growing like crazy. so, like i mention, wecollected all this stuff, we ended up writing upa glossary that defined over a hundred of thesemodels, put it online, etc. and started just to be interested. well, how can people engage with it,

in a workshop kind of setting, so we started prototypingthat, and eventually, came to a toolkit, really a curriculum that we were happy with,that we are willing to kind of put onlineand share with people to have them downloadand use in the classroom, or at work, or wherever it might be, and it's, now, it's beingused in 75 countries, so all over the place,people are doing these models

of impact workshops to develop their own business model ideas, kind of like those ones thati showed you, and, really, the basis of it, is what webelieve a business model is. a lot of the times, when you ask somebody what a business model is,i found that they tell you this half of it, whichis the revenue model, a sustainable way ofmaking money, basically, but what we found, with thepeople we're working with,

is that it reallyrequires a balance of both of these things, an impactmodel and a revenue model, so an impact model being a sustainable way of making the impact thatyou're trying to achieve. that doesn't have to besocial impact, necessarily. that could be environmental impact, that could even be personal impact. you know, the idea of kindof what is your why, right? or what's your purpose?

balancing those twothings, we found results in a great business model. the toolkit, itself, hasfour different steps, learn, invent, programand report, and basically, takes you through an educational process of just what models are out there, then how can you makesomething new, and then, how can you actually kindof plan that new thing, and then report, how canyou get feedback on it.

it's a very basic gist of it, but what makes it really funto me is the invent phase, and that's because, in the event phase, randomization is reallycritical to our process. so much so, that we actually use dice. we use polyhedral dice,like you would find in dungeons and dragons,or anything like that, and it sounds kind ofcrazy, but it really works. the reason why randomization is great,

especially with business models, and especially with creative people, is these are things thatare kind of scary, right? like, designing a businessmodel, it's kinda scary, or it's kinda boring,and the moment that you are facing something that'skind of scary or boring, you go to the first thing you've heard of. but, by doing so, youmight have missed out on hundreds of other opportunities,

so when you randomize it,you kind of have no choice. you roll the dice, and you haveto go with that combination of impact model, revenuemodel, or other factors, in general, that kind ofget thrown into the mix, and you just have to play itout, and see what would happen. so, that's where we'veseen some success with it. to give you guys justkind of a quick example, if i were to have asix-sided die right now, i would roll that die three times,

and that would give me one item from each of these three lists. the other factors are, in this case, just things that interest me in general, but the impact models and revenue models are taken straight from our glossary, so if i rolled three times, you know, maybe i'll get lava lamps, recycle, and in-app purchases,and now, i would have

to come up with a businessconcept that connects all three of those things, so maybe, this is a lava lamp thathas an app attached to it, where i can buy differentcolors, or sounds that come out of it, and maybe, it's made in a sustainable up-cycled manner, right? so, that's just kindof a real quick example of trying to go throughthis thought exercise. after you do that, we have you go through

an actual business planning process, to make it really tangible also. so, we've done this ineducational settings, kind of incorporatinginto various curriculum at different schools, forcorporate clients as well, for non-profit organizations, with architecture for humanity, many of you might haveheard they went bankrupt, and they actually respawned

as open architecture collaborative, and we helped them do thatthrough this toolkit, as well, so helping them see through several models that they could have, 'cause ultimately, architecture for humanity went bankrupt because of a lack of a business model, so how can we have newopportunities to explore? this is me teaching it tothe city of west hollywood, as well, so we've beenstarting to get this

into the public sector as well, around how they can use the kind ofmodels that are commonplace in the social and privatesector, and use them to create new initiatives,within government as well, and beginning of this year,i did something really cool, where i went to russia,to teach this to a group of russian entrepreneurs,and to film an online course as well, that kind of madeit available in russian, so somebody pointed outto me that i have unlocked

the life goal of having avideo with russian subtitles, so that's pretty cool, anda lot of this randomization, it actually comes fromless practical places, and i wanted to share thiswith you guys, because, and not that this wasn'tpractical, but it wasn't in a corporate setting, right? 'cause you guys are in the middle of going through your mfa, and thisdirectly relates to what i was doing when i was atschool in art center.

i was really interested in theidea of generative business, or serendipitous business,and the way that that started, i went on a walk, and i basicallycame up with some rules. i walked a hundred steps. i took a picture of thefirst non-living thing that i saw, and that would be my product. then, i walked another hundred steps, i took a picture of the firstliving thing that i saw, and that would be mymarket, or my audience,

and then, i walked another hundred steps, and i took a picture ofthe space that i was in, and that would be myindustry, or my environment, so this business is park benches for dogs at railroad stations, andyou can imagine, you know, if you actually had to,as product designers, design that park bench forthat dog at a rail station, railroad station, what would it look like? it's a really kind ofinteresting jumping-off point.

then, i thought, oh,what if it's not a walk, but it's kind of likea set of playing cards? those are kind of hip these days. so, i made a card game,you know, version of it, as well, where people woulddeal these three factors, randomly, and they would have to fill out a very simple business plan template, to kind of populate their idea. then, i thought, well, what if it's more

of like a community workshop, where people are coming together, so i prototyped this in the city of merced with a bunch of different peoplethat were living there, and working there, and then, well, what if it gets a little less human, and is actually kind of a littlebit more machine generated, so this was a workshopcalled box and button, where basically, students at art center,

they'd press a buttonthat would then generate some factors on a screenthat they would then have to come up with a business concept for, so just gets a little more technological than the card game did. and then, i thought, well, what if i take the human out of it, completely, so i had an algorithm that wrote a thousand business plans, basically,

that just kind of spit them out. some of them are really like gibberish. some are kind of plausible,and some are oddly offensive. but, i shipped all of them to the top venture capitalfirms in silicon valley. that project was calledfor your consideration, and didn't get a singleresponse, but, you know, maybe they will someday, soall of that was documented in a show that kind of show this process,

and it's funny, right? you can see how it directly correlates to what :i'm doing nowwith models of impact, so with you guys, hopefully, you can find that connecting point to that project that you're doing, and bringing it intoyour practice, as well. it's been a huge help for me. the last thing that i wanted to do,

i just released my second book, which is called toward apreemptive social enterprise, and a big part of it, or a real something that i'm excited about it is a manifesto, so i wanted to read that to you guys, but, what i wanted to say about this, i was talking about how oneof the values we've found from verynice is that wehave our feet in both worlds, private, social, and so, wecan kind of take some things

from one, give it to the other. what we realized about the social sector is that they're often born out of a state of emergency, or out of a kind of reaction to some terrible thingthat already happened, versus in the private sector, they become really motivatedto start something new, based off of something kind of imaginary, like a future trend, oran emerging technology,

or whatever it mightbe, and there was kind of this question of well,hey, why is that happening? you know, why is it that way? could we teach the social sector some of those kind ofstrategic foresight tools, to get them to be more preemptive? and what would that actually allow us? so, i'm gonna read it, and hopefully, you guys like it.

it's the first time i've everread it out loud to people. so, toward a preemptive social enterprise. social entrepreneurship isa field defined by reaction. social enterprise is built around the art of reacting to somethingthat has already happened. this is always a reactionto something terrible, and this reaction representsthe heart and soul of an organization's core values. could a non-profit organization exist,

if not for something terrible? no. could a social businessexist if not for something having gone awry? could a venture-backedstart-up exist if not for something terrible? yes. in the fields of business,peripheral to social enterprise, innovation in times of greatprivilege or convenience

is encouraged and incubated. the encouragement to think preemptively is among the key differentiatorsbetween a social enterprise and a traditional enterprise. the entire premise of social enterprise relies on reaction. ours is a field ofbusiness that is built upon the failure of a naturalor societal system. ours is not a field thatprofits from the contemplation

of the signals of failuresthat have yet to exist. social entrepreneursare inspired into action by the trauma of the present, and innovation is only bornout of an existing state of emergency. social entrepreneursperceive trauma as permission to innovate. this is not a responsible assumption. by relying on trauma to beour leading incubation tactic,

for new social enterprises, we are distracting our industryfrom its unique potential to go far beyond the opportunityof yesterday's catastrophe. while profit-mindedenterprise finds success on the basis of balancingreaction and preemption, the conscious-minded enterprise misses out by exclusively investingits energy into the art of reaction. reaction is necessary,but reaction can no longer

be revered as the holy grail,or singular expectation of the new social entrepreneur. social enterprise has failedto encourage a discipline that can deviate from thetrauma of the present, and these strict expectationshave failed to encourage a diverse set of theories and initiatives centered around a traumathat has yet to exist. the new social entrepreneurmust also be preemptive. the preemptive socialentrepreneur understands

a new suite of previouslyunimagined problems, as well as the next evolutions for the present day'smost persistent social and environmental issues. the next wave of socialentrepreneurs must include a community of those whochoose to focus on the future. these are innovators whorefuse to wait for the bomb to explode. the preemptive socialentrepreneur imagines a future

that is bespoke. a future that is ideal. the preemptive socialentrepreneur works backwards from the ideal. the preemptive socialentrepreneur is a visionary, and concerns themselves with the study of systemic interventions. they imagine implications,they author scenarios, they plan strategically.

the preemptive socialentrepreneur balances theory and practice, and thepreemptive social entrepreneur is not necessarily a business owner. we mustn't all focus on cleaning beaches, we mustn't all focus on feeding the poor, we mustn't all focus onhousing the homeless, we mustn't all focus on curing diseases, we mustn't all focus ondonating goods and services. the old social entrepreneuris fueled by this kind

of course, socialentrepreneurs must be engaged with the trauma of the present, but the preemptive social entrepreneur must also consider thetrauma of the future. the new social entrepreneurwill strike a balance between reaction and preemption, and the new socialentrepreneur asks: what if? the new social entrepreneuris a facilitator of change. the next generation of social enterprise

must welcome the preemptivesocial entrepreneur. the preemptive social entrepreneur is the new social entrepreneur. preemption and reaction,preemptive and reactive. reaction to the preemption. welcome the new social entrepreneur. we need you, we're glad you're here. all right, and with that,these are some links to stuff that i do.

i'd be happy to take questions,and the first three people that ask questions geta copy of the new book. yeah. - [woman] hi. - hi. - [man] and the fourth one gets it signed. - [matt] yes. gets a future signature. signature that doesn't exist yet.

- [woman] this is awesome,and very inspiring, and thank you for reading it to us. - yeah, you're welcome. - [woman] i'm really curious about the way that you've thought aboutdeveloping your employees at your company. - yeah. - think about kind of internal, you know, within the business model,

how does the peopleoperation piece of it work, and how do you think about creating spaces that can be the most creative, and kind of balance the different parts of the person? - yeah, that's a great question. it's something i've beenthinking more and more about as we've kind of grown as a team, as well. one of the things that i did originally,

when we were growing was, it wasn't in a very strategic manner. it was very reactive, actually,instead of preemptive, you could say, and now, youknow, my focus with growth is have one person thatis really great at one of our core competencies,and once we fill all of those slots, we kind ofhave the team that we need, and that's not necessarily,you know, a massive company. it doesn't really have to be.

we also work a lot with peopleremotely, too, you know, which is kind of another co-opportunity, but in terms of how wecan really grow the team, kind of intellectually,involving them in these kinds of internal initiatives that we're doing. we're doing more and more of those lately, and next year, we'regonna kind of announce another really big one, kind of that scale of models of impact, thatthe team doesn't know

about yet, but i wantto kind of coauthor it with them, so gettingthem involved in that, so that they're balancing,you know, being kind of challenged in theclient work, but also, having that room to do theirown thing a little bit, too, is definitely a directionthat i want to go in. we're doing a retreatat the end of the year, and one of, our art director wanted to do a workshop on designing kites,

so we're letting her do that. so, it's like, you know,just trying to kind of hear people out, withthings that they're excited about, so now, we're all gonna make kites in palm springs, so that's great. yeah. yeah. - [man] i'm curious aboutthis idea of preemption, and, for instance, the, thankyou for that, by the way. for instance, the social side of i-d-o,

ido.org one of the ways that they're able to really understand the kind of design that people who needthe design might need, is to do a lot of design research, and fieldwork, and that kind of stuff, so i'm curious how you think, if you're trying to preempt something, and you don't know yet if somebody

hasn't been impacted by something, and it's not reactionary, how would you start to tryto research and develop a solution for something that's there? i mean, i love the idea of that, but i'm trying to thinkthrough the logistics of that. - yeah, absolutely. well, one of the thingsthat i think's interesting to note is that there is a whole field

called strategicforesight, and this is one that i was introduced toby a colleague of mine, you know, five or six years ago, and really blew my mindwhen i learned about it, because what it taught me is that there actually are futurists,like that's an actual thing. it's not a crystal ball,necessarily, you know, like you might imagine. they have actual strategicmethods that they use.

they never say to predict the future, but to invent it, or to kind of, at least, tango with it a bit, and so, one of those tactics is called the archetypes of thefuture, and that is a tactic where you take an existing issue, right? it could be something that you gather from that design research workthat you do, and then, you run it through four different filters.

one is a transformation scenario. so, that's a scenario of the future, where you can imagine like the jetsons, like everything's going great, we've got everything, socially, economically,politically, and what not, so what does your idea looklike under that scenario? then, you run it throughone called growth, where it's positive, butit's not transformational,

right, but things are still possible, things are growing, there's some kind of steady growth. it's not like a huge spike, and then, there's the two that aresometimes fun and sad. one is collapse, which is thatkind of apocalyptic scene, so what happens to your ideawhen all of a, b, c, d, e, f, goes wrong, and thenthere's constraint, where, that's the fourth archetype,where literally nothing

changes, so you have tobe incredibly resourceful, so that's just one of aton of different tactics that are out there, and again, you know, the goal of a preemptiveentrepreneur, from my perspective, wouldn't be to tell thefuture, or to predict it, but to just create thespace for a conversation about that, 'cause veryoften, non-profits, they're kind of running on a treadmill, because of funding issues,or whatever it might be,

and so, they're notreserving the time to think about this, mainly becausethey think that it's a huge project, but it'sactually just a thought exercise, at the bare minimum, you know, and so, that's kind of what i'm hopingto spark in some people, yeah. - [woman] first of all, thank you. oh, thanks. thank you for coming and talking to us.

it's really refreshingto get this perspective. i am wondering about, howdo you strike the balance of the value of pro-bonowork, which, i mean, i'm convinced that this is worth doing. - i tricked you? nice. - [woman] you didn't have to trick me. i was there already. but, i will say that likesomething that i think about a lot, i come froma background in theater,

and i have a lot of friends who work in like the ngo sector,and i think that there's an expectation that whenpeople are doing something that they care deeply about,and feel is important, that they don't need to get paid. - [woman] and, yeah, so i, the question's in there somewhere. - yeah, yeah, yeah. how do you maintain your sense of value?

- [woman] well, and howdo you maintain your, you know, you need money to live, so like, like, how does that balancewith like getting paid, and being able to even continueto do the work, or like, not getting burnt out,because you're taking on so many projects tosustain the pro-bono work. - yeah, totally, so, ihave a couple answers. one i think is around thevalue, 'cause this is something that we figured out, thatreally worked for us,

'cause originally, we weretaking on pro-bono work, and doing it, and then, you know, all of the bad things thatyou hear about pro-bono were happening to us,like a project went on for two years, and we couldn'tlike break up with it, the scope went crazy, allof that kind of stuff, and then, what i realizeis, hey, you know, with our paid clients,that doesn't happen. how come?

oh, it's 'cause we havean agreement, and so, we came up with this idea ofhaving pro-bono agreements, where there's no money, right? it says zero dollars, orif it's a partial pro-bono, it says what the market rate would be, and shows the discount, and it lists out the scope and the time frame,and both parties sign that, and magically, there'snot been issue since, of kind of overstepping boundaries.

again, even though it'snot a financial exchange, necessarily, just that actof kind of that commitment has really helped. the other nice thing i mentioned. we get a lot of our referralsfrom pro-bono clients. well, you could imaginethat one potential nightmare would be that we get a referral that says, "oh yeah, these guys are great, "and they do it for free, all the time,"

you know? but these contracts actuallyshow what that market rate would have been, so they know, when they're kind ofpitching us to others, "oh yeah, that would have cost this, "but we were lucky enoughto get it for free, "because of our non-profitstatus, and what not," so that's kind of that answer,and then, with the balance, it's really about justbeing really strict,

so if we're at 50-50,we're not even looking at the applications that are coming in, for new pro-bono work,so it's kind of been about learning how tojust stay really strict to that balance, in terms of having more bandwidth, to be able to cover all that,really opening up our doors to volunteers, to help us out. something i didn't mention.

we have almost 500 volunteersthat we team up with, all over the place, when we're kind of low on resources, 'cause we have a small team. we fluctuate probably betweenlike 12 and 15 people, so it's not a huge company,but we tap into this network to help us out, you know, on a kind of per project basis, which has helped us be able to afford thatpro-bono work as well. yeah, yeah.

- [man] thank you. i was wondering aboutthe question of, like, measuring impact, because i took the class in my undergrad calledsocial entrepreneurship, and the question always came up was like, how we measuring theimpact of like the models that you're creating,and like, is there a way you actually approach that? - yeah, so that's a realhot topic, for sure,

and i would say no onereally knows exactly how to do it right, yet. you know, i think everybody'sstill trying to figure it out, 'cause this is a fieldthat's still pretty new, relatively now, but whati've found is a lot of times, the impact measurement,it's easy to accidentally just do that for yourself,so what i mean by that, is like for your marketing purposes, like it'd be easy for us to just say,

"hey, look," you know, "we did a thousandprojects, and it's worth "over $6 million," andthat's where we stop with measuring, but you have to remember that the measurement's not just for you, it's also for the client, and so, one of the things that we started doing, whenever we would offer aclient a pro-bono service, we would ask them, "whatdid saving that money

"allow you to do?" a lot of the times, that doesn't work, because, in some cases, it allowed them to do nothing, sincethere was just no money, whatsoever, but in somecases, it did, you know. like, we worked with 826 los angeles. they're kind of a national organization, and they told us, you know, they were able to do x amountmore tutoring sessions,

and x amount more books,because of the work we did, 'cause they had that budgeted, and then, they all of a suddendidn't have to pay for it, so they actually couldmove their money around, so we hear things likethat, and trying to get that feedback from clients,has been the best thing that i've found, and for us, you know, i keep a log of what causeswe're serving the most, so that i know like whatare we really kinda high on,

what are we low on, so rightnow, healthcare and education are our two biggest,and the environments one of our lowest, and so, by measuring that, i know that we should be exceptingmore environmental causes to help out in the future,to kind of balance it out, so hopefully that helps, you know. it's not really one wayto do it for everybody. that's what i've found,just talking to people. you kind of have tosee what works for you,

for your own benefitand remembering that it has to benefit the client, too. - [man] the dsi, the socialinnovation department, downstairs, is putting together an entire full-dayconference on (mumbling) - awesome. - [man] coming up, soon,so you should be at that, if you're interested. - yeah, you guys shouldgo, 'cause that would be

very cutting edge. there's, again, there'speople are doing it great, but there's not a consensus at all, so, that's a real fresh conversation. you have the mic. - [woman] i do. i'm going to ask you areal question this time. - all right. - [woman] so, you mentioned something

that really sparked my interest, 'cause i've done a littlepro-bono work in the past, myself, and you said that whenpeople have to do something that's scary or boring, theytend to do the first thing they think of. - mm-hmm. - [woman] but i imagine thatyou've probably encountered some scary and boring stuffwhile you're trying new things in your business.

how do you keep it from getting you down? - yeah, yeah. wow, good question. well, a lot of the times, it's by trying to do multiple angles on it, so if we come to a solution that was kind of boring, a, i mean, the first thingis try to get excited about it, 'cause if it's a solution, that's kind of exciting, right? you helped someone out.

even if it's not thecoolest way to go about it, i always try to see thepositive in it, you know. sometimes, we'll have aproject that's just not, you know, we're probablynot gonna wanna put it on our portfolio. that happens, of course, you know, but, that doesn't mean thatwe were bummed about it, because the client was happy, and it made some kind of impact,

so trying to see some good in it, kind of like with the way i answer the impact measurement questions, see it from the client's eyes, too. i found, you know, we'vedone so many projects, right? that projects, in general,you could easily have them be less and less exciting over the years, but the moment that you start doing that, you kinda have to snapout of it, and remember,

that for that client,this was their first time ever doing something like this, and they're gonna rememberit forever, you know, and so you see it from their perspective, and you get that excitement, i feel like. also, by doing a lot of projects at once, and having side projects,like allan alluded to, that, i mean, to me, that'show you kind of keep it fresh. i even do side projectsoutside of verynice.

i have to, you know, for my sanity. i have an instagram calledthe dumpster decipher, where i go around and i takepictures of tags on dumpsters, and i turn them into poetry,so it has nothing to do with social impact, whatsoever. i mean, i could connect it somehow, but i'd be kinda lying to you, you know. i just want to do it. and so, finding that is anotherway to keep things fresh,

too, no matter how weird it is, even if it's just for yourself, yeah. - [woman] hi, thankyou so much for coming. this is really inspiring, as many of my classmates have said. i'm wondering to what extent your social and environmental valuesand goals translate into the private sector as well. do you ever integratethose, and how do you get

those clients onboard? - yeah, good question,so, in the beginning, it was much harder too,because we were still kind of establishing a brandfor ourself, and so on, but one way to answerthat, what i've noticed, a lot of people ask me, you know, oh, do you ever have, you know,like bp reach out, right? or somebody that's justnot doing so great, and what will you say to them?

will you turn them down, or what? and the nice thing is,because of the brand is so much in this do-good space, those kind of people thatdon't care about that, really just don't reachout to us, i found, because it's not gonnabe a good fit to them, or they see it, and they're like, uh, like why do you give half? i don't get it.

you know, i don't want to talk to you. and we'd just rather nottalk to them, anyways, so that's one kind ofunhelpful answer, i would say, is, well, helpful, and unhelpful, 'cause it means that by really, you know, being loud about your brand,and what you care about, the right people will find you, i found. that's almost always the case, especially the moment youfind a couple of them,

'cause those lead to referrals of other like-minded people, too, but when it comes to theprivate sector, you know, we've been having more people coming to us that are in the privatesector, but are kind of blurring those lines, like we are too. models of impact has really helped us, in capturing more of thosekinds of people, for sure, so that's been a huge value, you know.

it started as a side project, right? that was kind of just aresearch thing, and it's really actually been transformativefor helping us find those right clients, andget them excited about it. the other thing, if youever have naysayers, or i just call them high-hanging fruit, they're really easy tojump onboard when they see that someone else similarto them has done it, and succeeded.

that's the best thingyou can do, is just throw a case study at them. like, hey, you know, suchand such person donated this thing, and that grewtheir social media presence by x amount, you know. even those kinda littlefacts, which are good for you to collect, anyways, you know, to be kind of on top of it. - [woman] thank you.

- [man] i'll just project. - [man] is this sort of a corollary, or a tactical follow up to like expression about like finding balance, but half is such like anawesome, and lofty objective and i'm sure, also, part ofthis is probably answered in the first book, but, i guess, my first question isjust how do you measure half, like how do like, is it, is itquantity of active projects,

quantity of included projects for a year, like hours of work, like howdo you choose to measure that, and maybe, what are thechallenges associated with that? and then, i guess you're partially honest, but like how do youseek that balance, and, how do you make that work? - yeah, so, in terms ofhow we're measuring it, it's funny, 'cause itcould be, in a lot of ways. you mentioned several of them, right?

for us, it's never beenbased on a backlog. it's always been based off of right now, at this exact moment,and we don't measure it, necessarily, by, i don't know if we, wedon't necessarily measure it by time, either. just literally by project. and so, as a result,you know, some projects, they're done in a week, somethey're done in a few years,

and we just, we actually,i have a trello board. i don't know if you guys have used that, but it's just kinda likea glorified to-do list, and i have one list of the pro-bono ones, one list of the for-profit ones, and that's how i monitorit, to be honest, so, it's always at that exact moment. an easier way to go about it would be, like a historical balance,

a 50-50. that would be easier. it's pretty aggressive tosay at any given moment we're giving half, butthat's just kind of the bar that we set for ourself,and we make it work, a lot of the times,because of these volunteers that we get involved init, so you can imagine, you know, it gives a smallcompany the bandwidth of kind of a big company,if need be, or by scheduling

the projects in the right way. the pro-bono projectstend to have a little bit more leniency on due date. we do, we have the contracts,so we commit to it, but they tend to not say,"oh, we need it yesterday," you know, like everybody else does. so, hopefully, thatanswers that a little bit. - [man] hi. i think i would like tocontradict a little bit, like,

are you really balancing,or is this just the way you're living your life, i mean, you've said it yourself,one of the goals (mumbling) - mm-hmm. - [man] you know, and ithink about people giving up on work-life balance. - yeah, that's a good point. mm-hmm. - [man] 'cause they don'thave to like balance, anymore.

- [man] this is how i live my life. - [man] becomes more activelike on social media, and sometimes, i don't... - [man] so, i wonder, like i just, i don't know if you're, you know, the point is to encourage people to re-balance, in orderto like choose, you know, how they want to be inthe world, you know. (mumbling)

- [man] so, even livingthis life, of your own kind, and i think that there wasa point in your career, where you needed to message this out, and maybe there willalways be that requirement, but i just, i'm wondering, (mumbling) like this is not how you actuallyspend your time thinking. - right. no, yeah. you're right, you're right. well, what's interestingis we literally balance it,

because of having thatpublic commitment, basically, but i think like you said,it really is just a way of living, you know, and, what i realize pretty quickly. - [man] give as much as you take. - yeah, give as much as you take, or even, as much asyou can, in some cases. i used to be a lot more kindof harsh in my perspective, saying, "oh, everybody has to give half,"

you know, but now, it's alittle bit more around the lines of, everybody should setthe bar that they think they can reach, but itjust should be a priority. why we landed on 50%was mainly symbolically, because it, the momentthat you do something more, with more than half of yourtime, it's all of a sudden not an extra curricular activity, it's really integrated intoyour life, like you said, and so, setting that bar has been helpful

in maybe finding that way of life, and, it might not be necessaryto measure it forever. it's possible, yeah. yeah, i like that a lot. - [man] i know that aiga, for a long time, offered job work as alsolisted pro-bono work, and has, you know, a couple of sentences about the benefits of pro-bono work, especially for people starting out,

and i'm wondering, since you have a number of flow of clients thattend to want pro-bono work, and you seem to be morearticulate in your benefits of pro-bono work, if you have, or if you thought of consideringpairing up with them, because they're such a major funnel, and have cast a wide net. - yeah, yeah. - [man] if you thoughtabout putting something

out for you there, tohelp disperse the work that comes to you. - well, you know, i'venever thought about it, in terms of the job board. it might be because of beingworried about who ends up taking it on, will theydo a good job or not. will it kind of seem likeit's my fault, almost? that might be the honestanswer, but one way i have worked with aiga, i'm on the board

of the la chapter, and ihelped bring the design for good initiative there,and we do kind of mini, pro-bono hackathons. those are real event-based. you know, not very long-term, right? some of them are 24 hours, some of them are three hours, more like strategy sessions, but that's been my mainway of kind of linking up

with aiga. i think that aiga could do more, kind of like how the legalindustry really, just, all got behind the idea of public service just being part of a riteof passage to that industry. i've written about that before, with not so much response, you know, but, the idea that every designershould do some pro-bono work to kind of have a rite ofpassage into the industry.

i love that idea. not everybody likes that idea, though. but, yeah, aiga's doing really cool things around design for good. the former white housecreative director, ashley, is doing a bunch of stuffwith diversity and inclusion, or racial justice issues,or anything like that, so if you're interested in that, i mean, they, it seems to keep on developing.

new york's obviously thebiggest chapter, too, so you guys have all kindsof stuff for your fingertips, which is cool. - [man] there's a greatwomen's initiative, as well, that launched last year. - yeah, yeah, yeah, women's initiatives. we were doing some women'sdesign salons in la, that were really popular as well. i thought that was a reallygreat kind of addition,

having people have a spacewhere they can just be who they are, you know, and not, you can't really go to eventwith a woman on a panel, and you like, checked thediversity box, you know, it has to be more integrated,more inclusive, yeah. any other questions? - [man] any other books? - not yet. - [woman] what about your computer sleeve,

or assigned backpack? what else do you got in there? little swiss army knife. - it's like you guys are trickor treating, or something, and all i have is a goldwatch to give you, or, yeah. but i don't wear watches though. - [man] i mean, that laptop'slooking a little old. with the stickers on it. - [man] let's throw it out.

- it's got character. - [man] it's gotta be agreat question, though. - it's got character, yeah. well, if you are... oh yeah, yeah, go ahead. - [woman] going back to thepreemptive social entrepreneur, in the way just that you think about this, i'm trying to get a senseof kind of how brand a visionary you're imagining this to be,

like sort of how, how farout, and to what extent, then, how do you see designing for like users, like actual people in the world now, with a vision that's further out? well, that's part of why ithink it's really important. one of the last lines if, youknow, reaction and preemption, and balancing both of those things, because it can't be anexcuse to not help people. that's one way this could be interpreted,

which wouldn't be a correctway to interpret it, but it's more that wejust, we have to balance thinking about thefuture, too, so in terms of getting people onboardwith it that are here, right now, that's actuallya great design opportunity, because design is reallygreat at making things very tangible for people. so are the arts, in general, right? the future is really intangible.

we actually can never be in the future. it's like it doesn't exist, right? it's always just an idea, and as a result, we're the only people thatcan either screw it up, or make it cool. or make it helpful, maybelike those three things, so, yeah, so using design tools, to make that a tangible experience, whether that's like an experiential thing,

like a performance, orwhether that's a product, that's kind of like adiagetic prototype of sorts, you know, that just kindbrings things back to earth, for people, so that it doesn't have to be this big visionary thing, you know. i don't think. not only steve jobs is allowedto think about the future. it is a privilege tothink about the future, but i don't think it has tobe that much of a privilege,

you know, hopefully, it canbe a very accessible thing, and you guys can help do that, yeah. - [man] great, well i thinkthere'll be lots of people who want to ask you questions one on one, so an incredible spirit of generosity. - [man] thank you so much for your time. - yeah, well, thanks for having me.

 
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