Translator: Mennatullah Mustafa Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
So, I’m very passionate about “firsts”.
You know, people who are the first to accomplish something incredible.
They could be the first in history,
or they could be the first in their families,
in their communities, their countries, their companies.
It doesn’t really matter if it’s world-history or personal-history.
Because either way, it takes guts.
It takes courage to stand up to critics, especially to your own inner critic.
And it takes passion and persistence
to charge towards goals
when there aren’t necessarily examples around you to follow.
It’s for this reason that one of my favorite questions to ask people,
is, “What are you the first to do?”
Or, “What will you be the first to do?”
I find that everyone has a different and unique story attached to their answer.
And sometimes when you’re sharing what you’re the first to do in your family
don’t be surprised if someone else says, “Me too!”
Because being a first is also an identity that unites us.
So today I’d like to share with you what I’m the first to do with all of you,
and then use that question to explore your passions.
Along the way, I will share three lessons that I’ve picked up
about pursuing your passion.
So what am I the first to do?
I’m the first in my family to graduate from university.
Now this isn’t uncommon,
I’m sure that many of you are also first-generation graduates,
or will be, am I right?
Any cheers from the first generation graduates?
(Cheers)
Right, awesome.
So, I’m from the suburbs of New Jersey,
just about an hour out of New York City.
And my parents and grandparents, after they finish high school,
went straight into the work force.
They had jobs ranging from office work to doing inspections,
working in the post office, custodial work.
And while they enjoyed aspects of their jobs for sure,
they wouldn’t have called them their ‘passion’.
It was just a pay-check.
Their passion was really taking care of their families.
So, when I was a kid, they would always ask me
what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Because they told me that I would have a college degree
and I could use that to do almost anything I wanted.
They had worked really hard to set me up for success,
and they were invested in my future.
They wanted me to be happy;
to have a job that when the alarm-clock went off in the morning,
I would wake up, excited to go to work;
that I wouldn’t count down the hours until the end of the day;
or that I wouldn’t dread Mondays.
So it took me until I was in high school to figure out what I wanted to do,
what did I want to use this launch pad
that they had built for me for?
I decided that since I was good at writing,
I would be a journalist.
I wanted to work for a newspaper or magazine,
covering really hard topics, tough subjects.
And one of my earliest articles was about gang violence, in my community.
So giving these serious aspirations that I had,
it was a little surprising where I wound up
after I graduated from university.
Because you see, despite being very shy in high school,
having never gone to a single dance in high school or college,
I wound up being employed by the most popular teen magazine –
17 – in the role of Prom Website Editor.
I worked in this world of poofy dresses and tulle and sequins and sparkles,
and at first it definitely seemed a little too superficial for me,
but the magazine industry in New York City is very competitive
and this was my foot in the door.
I was a reporter, so I knew how to ask questions and figure out
what I didn’t know.
And I came to really enjoy giving girls the confidence,
the boost of confidence they needed.
The kind of confidence I didn’t have myself when I was their age.
And more importantly, because it was my job to relaunch the website
and re-brand it, I was learning basically ‘Entrepreneurship 101’.
I got to work across all different teams with video producers, developers,
designers, writers, even the advertising and marketing teams.
So I learned the business side of media.
And I became really passionate about that,
about being an entrepreneur.
And that led me to my first lesson.
Which is realising that you can create passion.
it’s not always going to be apparent in the job descriptions
that you come across,
especially in the beginning of your career.
A lot of jobs are going to look boring or mundane, even superficial.
But you have to give them a chance,
because you have a lot to learn right after you graduate from university.
And if you pass up those opportunities,
you’ll never give yourself the chance to discover where your strengths are,
discover new skills you didn’t realise that you had.
And if you don’t master this lesson of creating passion whereever you land,
then you’ll never get to lesson number two which is the really good one.
That is that passion leads you down unexpected paths.
So, I’d like you to think of a hike that you’ve been on,
you know those big beautiful vistas that you see on the top of a mountain
and you take pictures of and post on Instagram.
You don’t see this at the outset of the trail.
No, you have to spend hours going through these windy pathways,
you know, wooded, lots of trees, kind of all looks the same.
The only way you find out where you’re going is by following
these trail markers.
And I liken that to the skills that you pick up in your first couple of jobs.
Those are the trail markers, those are the breadcrumbs leading you along
to an opportunity and a dream that is bigger than you can imagine right now.
So for me my second year in that prom job, I guess I was good enough at it,
that my boss asked me if I’d like to do something else,
if I’d like to launch a second prom website.
This one called “Donate My Dress”, and it would be a website where girls
who couldn’t afford dresses, could find ones for free
because women who have a bunch of formal dresses in their closets
that they don’t wear anymore, could find these locations to drop them off at.
That was a turning point for me, because I had this ‘AHA!’ moment.
The reason that I did – I haven’t told you yet –
but by day when I was a prom editor, by nights and weekends
I was doing something else,
and it was actually that serious part of me.
I was volunteering for a foundation that was helping kids in Liberia
in West Africa.
I had written about this organisation as a college journalist,
and now as a volunteer I was helping them with their programs
to educate kids who had been abandoned or orphaned by the war,
and to meet their basic needs.
This is when my passion for the skill sets,
those entrepreneurial skill sets I was developing,
started to mix with this global issue that I really cared about,
of gender and education inequality.
And in that moment, an idea came to me,
called “She is the first”.
And I was thinking how,
sure, there are girls who don’t have dresses to go to prom,
but what about all the girls who don’t even have an education?
There are more than 50 million girls of secondary-school age
who aren’t able to go to school.
So I crafted “She is the first” as an online campaign,
that three years later became my full-time job,
and today is a global non-profit organisation.
We provide scholarships to girls who will be the first in their families
to graduate from high school.
We also have a big campus chapter movement at over 200 schools
across the US and the UK, all doing advocacy on behalf of girls like
Mariama from Sierra Leone.
These are girls who when they graduate are going to be
in the powerful position to break cycles of generational poverty.
Because when they graduate, they earn a higher income that they reinvest
back into their families and the community.
Mariama from Sierra Leone is going to be leading her country forward,
which just a couple years ago was devastated by the Ebola crisis.
Two of our other scholars are Vision Tina and Seen Firoza from Peru.
They just graduated in December.
If it wasn’t for the scholarship they had,
they wouldn’t have been able to attend a boarding school,
because otherwise their families live high up in those mountains,
and the nearest high school is a several-hours walk away.
To date, “She is the first” has raised nearly four million dollars,
and we are supporting over 800 scholars just like these three,
across 11 different countries.
I could have never imagined when I was a prom editor
that I would ever make it to this point of being able to do for my job
something that gives me so much purpose and that I’m so passionate about.
And this leads me on to my third and final passion point, which is that
you find passion in helping others, and that’s what “She is the first”
has really taught me.
It’s now have been a decade since I became a first-generation
university graduate.
But I’ve only recently reflecting on how my parent’s and grandparent’s passion
to support first-generation graduates, my sister and I,
is very very much the same as my passion today
in supporting first-generation graduates around the world.
I think that’s kind of funny, you may relate to it.
How you think you’re so different from older generations
only to find out you’re actually very much the same.
“She is the first” has taught me to look at firsts in a different light.
And there is a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that I wanted to share with you
because I think it expresses this point best of all.
He said “Keep feeling the need for being first.
But I want you to be first in love.
I want you to be first in moral excellence.
I want you to be the first in generosity.”
Think about it, the simple actions that you can take to support someone else
in being a first.
What if you thought about your passion as not only
what made you happy, but also what could help others.
So for instance, if you are the first in your family to graduate from university,
think of how you can mentor a younger student
who is following a similar trajectory.
Or how you can contribute to a scholarship fund.
Maybe you’re the first in your family to start a business.
You can incorporate giving back into your business model,
you can donate a percentage of the proceeds or of your time,
offering skills and services to those in need.
Or maybe you’re not literally the first to do something
in your family because you’re following the family business, and that’s OK.
Build on something that’s already been a success,
and use it to make a bigger impact
on the planet and on people in your local and global communities.
If there’s one thing that you take away from this talk,
one thing that you tweet out into your networks, let it be this:
Never underestimate your ability to make someone else a first.
You could be the first person
to support them and believe in their dreams.
And that will matter 100 years from now,
it will matter throughout the rest of their lives.
So now you know what I’m the first to do, I’d love to hear your answers.
You can tweet at me or come find me after and tell me, or if you’re watching
this on video later, leave a comment.
Because I’m ready to cheer you on.
Thank you.
(Applause)
So, I’m very passionate about “firsts”.
You know, people who are the first to accomplish something incredible.
They could be the first in history,
or they could be the first in their families,
in their communities, their countries, their companies.
It doesn’t really matter if it’s world-history or personal-history.
Because either way, it takes guts.
It takes courage to stand up to critics, especially to your own inner critic.
And it takes passion and persistence
to charge towards goals
when there aren’t necessarily examples around you to follow.
It’s for this reason that one of my favorite questions to ask people,
is, “What are you the first to do?”
Or, “What will you be the first to do?”
I find that everyone has a different and unique story attached to their answer.
And sometimes when you’re sharing what you’re the first to do in your family
don’t be surprised if someone else says, “Me too!”
Because being a first is also an identity that unites us.
So today I’d like to share with you what I’m the first to do with all of you,
and then use that question to explore your passions.
Along the way, I will share three lessons that I’ve picked up
about pursuing your passion.
So what am I the first to do?
I’m the first in my family to graduate from university.
Now this isn’t uncommon,
I’m sure that many of you are also first-generation graduates,
or will be, am I right?
Any cheers from the first generation graduates?
(Cheers)
Right, awesome.
So, I’m from the suburbs of New Jersey,
just about an hour out of New York City.
And my parents and grandparents, after they finish high school,
went straight into the work force.
They had jobs ranging from office work to doing inspections,
working in the post office, custodial work.
And while they enjoyed aspects of their jobs for sure,
they wouldn’t have called them their ‘passion’.
It was just a pay-check.
Their passion was really taking care of their families.
So, when I was a kid, they would always ask me
what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Because they told me that I would have a college degree
and I could use that to do almost anything I wanted.
They had worked really hard to set me up for success,
and they were invested in my future.
They wanted me to be happy;
to have a job that when the alarm-clock went off in the morning,
I would wake up, excited to go to work;
that I wouldn’t count down the hours until the end of the day;
or that I wouldn’t dread Mondays.
So it took me until I was in high school to figure out what I wanted to do,
what did I want to use this launch pad
that they had built for me for?
I decided that since I was good at writing,
I would be a journalist.
I wanted to work for a newspaper or magazine,
covering really hard topics, tough subjects.
And one of my earliest articles was about gang violence, in my community.
So giving these serious aspirations that I had,
it was a little surprising where I wound up
after I graduated from university.
Because you see, despite being very shy in high school,
having never gone to a single dance in high school or college,
I wound up being employed by the most popular teen magazine –
17 – in the role of Prom Website Editor.
I worked in this world of poofy dresses and tulle and sequins and sparkles,
and at first it definitely seemed a little too superficial for me,
but the magazine industry in New York City is very competitive
and this was my foot in the door.
I was a reporter, so I knew how to ask questions and figure out
what I didn’t know.
And I came to really enjoy giving girls the confidence,
the boost of confidence they needed.
The kind of confidence I didn’t have myself when I was their age.
And more importantly, because it was my job to relaunch the website
and re-brand it, I was learning basically ‘Entrepreneurship 101’.
I got to work across all different teams with video producers, developers,
designers, writers, even the advertising and marketing teams.
So I learned the business side of media.
And I became really passionate about that,
about being an entrepreneur.
And that led me to my first lesson.
Which is realising that you can create passion.
it’s not always going to be apparent in the job descriptions
that you come across,
especially in the beginning of your career.
A lot of jobs are going to look boring or mundane, even superficial.
But you have to give them a chance,
because you have a lot to learn right after you graduate from university.
And if you pass up those opportunities,
you’ll never give yourself the chance to discover where your strengths are,
discover new skills you didn’t realise that you had.
And if you don’t master this lesson of creating passion whereever you land,
then you’ll never get to lesson number two which is the really good one.
That is that passion leads you down unexpected paths.
So, I’d like you to think of a hike that you’ve been on,
you know those big beautiful vistas that you see on the top of a mountain
and you take pictures of and post on Instagram.
You don’t see this at the outset of the trail.
No, you have to spend hours going through these windy pathways,
you know, wooded, lots of trees, kind of all looks the same.
The only way you find out where you’re going is by following
these trail markers.
And I liken that to the skills that you pick up in your first couple of jobs.
Those are the trail markers, those are the breadcrumbs leading you along
to an opportunity and a dream that is bigger than you can imagine right now.
So for me my second year in that prom job, I guess I was good enough at it,
that my boss asked me if I’d like to do something else,
if I’d like to launch a second prom website.
This one called “Donate My Dress”, and it would be a website where girls
who couldn’t afford dresses, could find ones for free
because women who have a bunch of formal dresses in their closets
that they don’t wear anymore, could find these locations to drop them off at.
That was a turning point for me, because I had this ‘AHA!’ moment.
The reason that I did – I haven’t told you yet –
but by day when I was a prom editor, by nights and weekends
I was doing something else,
and it was actually that serious part of me.
I was volunteering for a foundation that was helping kids in Liberia
in West Africa.
I had written about this organisation as a college journalist,
and now as a volunteer I was helping them with their programs
to educate kids who had been abandoned or orphaned by the war,
and to meet their basic needs.
This is when my passion for the skill sets,
those entrepreneurial skill sets I was developing,
started to mix with this global issue that I really cared about,
of gender and education inequality.
And in that moment, an idea came to me,
called “She is the first”.
And I was thinking how,
sure, there are girls who don’t have dresses to go to prom,
but what about all the girls who don’t even have an education?
There are more than 50 million girls of secondary-school age
who aren’t able to go to school.
So I crafted “She is the first” as an online campaign,
that three years later became my full-time job,
and today is a global non-profit organisation.
We provide scholarships to girls who will be the first in their families
to graduate from high school.
We also have a big campus chapter movement at over 200 schools
across the US and the UK, all doing advocacy on behalf of girls like
Mariama from Sierra Leone.
These are girls who when they graduate are going to be
in the powerful position to break cycles of generational poverty.
Because when they graduate, they earn a higher income that they reinvest
back into their families and the community.
Mariama from Sierra Leone is going to be leading her country forward,
which just a couple years ago was devastated by the Ebola crisis.
Two of our other scholars are Vision Tina and Seen Firoza from Peru.
They just graduated in December.
If it wasn’t for the scholarship they had,
they wouldn’t have been able to attend a boarding school,
because otherwise their families live high up in those mountains,
and the nearest high school is a several-hours walk away.
To date, “She is the first” has raised nearly four million dollars,
and we are supporting over 800 scholars just like these three,
across 11 different countries.
I could have never imagined when I was a prom editor
that I would ever make it to this point of being able to do for my job
something that gives me so much purpose and that I’m so passionate about.
And this leads me on to my third and final passion point, which is that
you find passion in helping others, and that’s what “She is the first”
has really taught me.
It’s now have been a decade since I became a first-generation
university graduate.
But I’ve only recently reflecting on how my parent’s and grandparent’s passion
to support first-generation graduates, my sister and I,
is very very much the same as my passion today
in supporting first-generation graduates around the world.
I think that’s kind of funny, you may relate to it.
How you think you’re so different from older generations
only to find out you’re actually very much the same.
“She is the first” has taught me to look at firsts in a different light.
And there is a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that I wanted to share with you
because I think it expresses this point best of all.
He said “Keep feeling the need for being first.
But I want you to be first in love.
I want you to be first in moral excellence.
I want you to be the first in generosity.”
Think about it, the simple actions that you can take to support someone else
in being a first.
What if you thought about your passion as not only
what made you happy, but also what could help others.
So for instance, if you are the first in your family to graduate from university,
think of how you can mentor a younger student
who is following a similar trajectory.
Or how you can contribute to a scholarship fund.
Maybe you’re the first in your family to start a business.
You can incorporate giving back into your business model,
you can donate a percentage of the proceeds or of your time,
offering skills and services to those in need.
Or maybe you’re not literally the first to do something
in your family because you’re following the family business, and that’s OK.
Build on something that’s already been a success,
and use it to make a bigger impact
on the planet and on people in your local and global communities.
If there’s one thing that you take away from this talk,
one thing that you tweet out into your networks, let it be this:
Never underestimate your ability to make someone else a first.
You could be the first person
to support them and believe in their dreams.
And that will matter 100 years from now,
it will matter throughout the rest of their lives.
So now you know what I’m the first to do, I’d love to hear your answers.
You can tweet at me or come find me after and tell me, or if you’re watching
this on video later, leave a comment.
Because I’m ready to cheer you on.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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