immigrants brought up in Eastern North
Carolina I am the product of my of
course my parents but my dad is an
electrical engineer my mom and
entrepreneur and I was destined to
become a doctor and I thought that was
gonna be the route I take I was a
science fair junky when I when I was
starting at 12 years old working in
scientific laboratories and I published
my first paper scientific paper when I
was 16 years old and majored in
neuroscience in college but I received a
fellowship when I graduated to give me
the opportunity to travel from Thailand
to Pakistan for a year I had wonderful
professors who said to me if you want to
understand people’s motivations
aspirations get a backpack and start
traveling for a year I was 22 years old
and I did that and it was in India where
my parents are from I was coming off a
train station and I saw 50 kids sitting
in a circle learning how to read and
write these children obviously were poor
and destitute and I spoke Hindi my
friend spoke oriya the the the local
language and we asked what was going on
with that teacher right there and she
said these children live on and around
the train platform they work they play
egg they sleep they eat but they don’t
and that that’s one of those young kids
you know working on a train platform but
what ended up happening was a teacher
named Inderjeet karana came on the train
platform every day and saw these kids
and she said you know if these kids
can’t go to school I’m gonna bring the
school to the train platform and I asked
her I asked this teacher I said that’s
really cool how much does it cost to run
one of these schools and at that time it
costs about $400 to educate 50 kids with
the hot meal every day and I also asked
how come I don’t see more train platform
schools all over India and the teacher
said well this social entrepreneur in
there Jeet Khurana wants to make that
happen and it was there that I had my
moment of obligation I decided not to go
get my MD PhD I decided to found a
global fund for children the Global Fund
for children invest small amounts of
philanthropic capital into very
innovative grassroots organizations
serving the most vulnerable children and
youth in the world I founded the
organization when I was 24 years old and
I received seed capital to start it I
think the folks that gave me my first
investments thought that I had enormous
hallucinogenic optimism and and I
decided you know there was nothing to
lose and everything to gain because
there were thousands of energy kuranes
in the world who were founding very
innovative local organizations serving
the most vulnerable so
I took it I went on a journey for 17
years and one of those is in Afghanistan
in the 1990s the Taliban had made
education for girls illegal if you are
caught educating a girl you could be
stoned to death killed there was an
extraordinary social entrepreneur named
Sakina a Kuby it was going from Peshawar
Pakistan to Kabul Afghanistan teaching
women and teachers how to teach girls
secretly
I remember meeting Sakina and she said I
need $5,000 to teach girls secretly a
thousand girls and I said well the
Global Fund for children will back you
fast forward today the Afghan Institute
of learning serves and provides health
and education to 450,000 women and
children in Afghanistan
we at the Global Fund for children take
a little bit of pride in the fact that
we were able to support sakina’s work at
the very beginning here in Bangladesh
there’s a young man named rez Wan he
lives on the waterways of Bangladesh
went to University of Dhaka and he was
very concerned that many of the
waterways in Bangladesh were becoming
flooded because of climate change and
children were not being able to go to
school we came across one of his boats
called school those they they go from
from village to village educating
children they are powered by solar
panels the Global Fund for children took
a bet on res one and we gave him a grant
to go from one boat five boats we gave
him a ten thousand dollar investment and
he went and made it happen but what was
even better is five years later his
organization got a Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation Excellence in learning
award for 1 million dollars that allowed
him to replicate these boat schools
throughout Bangladesh we take great
pride again in res ones moment of
obligation in helping to support him and
we go to Cambodia the group called
kisara a young man who founded this
organization he was the victim he was he
was um he escaped from Pol Pot he
decided to come back because he had an
obligation to give back and he works
with children who work at the garbage
dumps and their families these kids do
not go to school they are doing
hazardous labor so he created these
mobile health clinic and
that go by the garbage dumps and provide
health training give the necessary first
all of these examples I want to multiply
because what we were able to do it’s
been able to invest in nearly seven
hundred of these organizations
throughout the world investing nearly
forty million dollars and touching the
lives of nearly ten million children I’m
a founder and you know I thought pretty
seriously that I could do this for the
rest of my life but something happened
at the fifteen year mark where I started
thinking you know it’s better if someone
else comes and takes over the Global
Fund for children it’s probably the
hardest thing I’ve ever done in my
career of letting go of something but it
was the right thing to do because it
opened up a whole new journey for me
remember when I told you that I was a
science fair junkie I did science as a
kid that was what I was destined to do
was become a scientist well after I left
the Global Fund for children and I was
on sabbatical at at Johns Hopkins I was
approached to become a CEO and president
of the Society for science and the
public and the Society for science in
the public is best known to inform
educate and inspire all people about
scientific advancements we’re best known
for our world-class science competitions
for young people young innovators were
anywhere from the age of 14 to 21 who
are using science and engineering to
solve the world’s most in track
durable problems meat sahith e she lives
in bangalore to 17 years old her moment
of obligation occurred when she saw a
fire in the inn in bangalore on a lake
and she was very concerned about the
pollutants that were across all of these
lakes in bangalore so she created a
crowdsourcing platform using a testing
strip that would test the waters of
whether pollutants were there or not
she’s using citizen science now to scale
this throughout the world that they can
use this app and this testing strip and
and collect data about fresh water fresh
water lakes throughout the world think
about that
she’s only 17 years old and then there’s
new ha she’s also 16 years old she’s
from Indonesia she lives on the island
of vanga she where she lives
is the second-largest tin industry tin
ore industry in the world she started
seeing freshwater fish and coral reef
dying so she as an engineering student
created this filter which would take
affluence or water waste and clean that
water so fresh fresh fish and reefs can
grow again she actually is taking this
prototype to market and working with
some of these companies to say yes it’s
important for this mining to happen for
our industry but at least let’s do it
properly and here’s Emily Emily’s from
here in the United States and she her
moment of obligation happened when her
father a firefighter introduced her
two children who were burn victims and
she was so taken by by their pain she
said we have to do something so she went
into a scientific laboratory and found a
new way of using a protein that would
help regenerate cells cells for burn
she’s only 15 16 years old you know
there’s there’s a famous quote from
Steve Jobs at a Stanford University
speech where he says you cannot connect
the dots looking forward but you can
connect the dots looking backwards and
for me being the founder of the Global
Fund for children and now the CEO and
president of the Society for science in
the public and working with young
innovators throughout the world who are
solving the world’s most intractable
problems those dots fit perfectly but
what has been pushing me has been this
obligation moments of obligation and
each one of the these individuals that
you’ve met today have had these
obligations coming from very very
important places from their own
backyards
their own family histories so I leave
you here today asking you what your
moment of obligation is what do you
think that you think that you can do to
make the world a better place thank you [Applause]