as a sophomore in college I was one of
about 40 people for my hometown to be
attending UC Santa Barbara I was having
the time of my life living on the beach
72 degrees year-round surrounded by
familiar friends going to an
academically solid institution yet
something in my head kept pestering me
this can’t be it I thought this is too
comfortable too familiar wouldn’t it be
cool if I could step out of my comfort
zone go somewhere new start over
transfer out of state so like any sane
19 year old living on the beaches of
Santa Barbara would I transferred to the
talk about stepping out of my comfort
zone yeah so this was my walk to class
everyday and all seriousness
transferring to Iowa is one of the
greatest decisions I have ever made I
met amazing people adapted to the
Midwestern lifestyle it forced me to
create a life for myself I started to
make deliberate decisions about who I
was and what I was doing
see if you analyze me statistically as a
male in the US I’m as ordinary as they
come
average height average weight average IQ
raised in a middle-class home no
particular athletic skills artistic
skills
I’m ordinary yet I’m not content with
ordinary and so my way of making
something extraordinary happened has
after graduating from from Iowa the
weather did get the best of me and I
moved back to California this time to
Solana Beach moved in with some good
friends North County San Diego living on
the beach working in coffee shops
waiting tables just kind of taken a
breath after college trying to figure
out what we were gonna do with our lives
my friends quickly started doing this
some were taking the GRE and the LSAT on
their way to grad school others were
launching their careers in corporate
America stepping on their professional
paths and those things just didn’t speak
to me I couldn’t see myself getting
excited about any of those paths at that
time
one thing I’d always told myself is I
wasn’t gonna do what others were doing
simply because it was a conventional
route and so I thought again wouldn’t it
be cool if I could step out of my
comfort zone this time leave the country
live in another country experience
another culture expose myself to a new
language maybe even be of some benefit
to the people I was living with at the
time I was part of an internship and I
had a mentor who years prior had been a
Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in western
Africa and hearing her describe her
experiences in Peace Corps and seeing
the picture she would pass around
sometimes when she bring her photo album
to work that inspired me that excited me
I could see myself stepping into that
the way the Peace Corps application
process which is a very long process and
so as my as I dive into this process and
I’m getting excited about potentially
going somewhere
of course thinking all along about my
average qualifications I come to find
out I had been selected had been offered
a spot in Peace Corps and I get this big
thick welcome packet in the mail at that
time
that’s how Peace Corps in even colleges
let you know you’ve been accepted is
through the mail and so I was excited to
rip it open and see where I was going
and what I was going to be doing I think
was my mentor she had been in Africa I
thought maybe I go somewhere in Africa
or Asia I knew Peace Corps is all over
the world one thing I knew was I was
going very far from home so I tear open
the envelope and and there on the cover
letter it says congratulations you’ve
been assigned to be a small business
development volunteer in Guatemala now
of the 141 countries where Peace Corps
operates Guatemala is the absolute
closest to California I could not have
been sent anywhere closer yet I embrace
this opportunity I embrace the
assignment I was excited I didn’t know
anything about Guatemala I knew I was
going somewhere brand new I was going to
start all over again and it was it was
an amazing experience I got the
opportunity to learn and to grow and to
teach and to discover myself and the
world and how I fit into it there were
also some things about my time there
that were a little unsettling as a
privileged young person I never come
face to face with oppression and social
injustice and you know I’d always read
about these things and see them on TV
but interacting with and meeting
marginalized indigenous women seeing
schools that were in poor condition
really lacking the basic resources and
necessities that kids need to learn and
meeting adolescents that weren’t in
school at all I come to find out that
around the world in many parts in many
countries young people stopped going to
school after sixth grade because there’s
a cost associated with secondary school
their families simply can’t afford these
things didn’t sit right with me and I
started to have all these wouldn’t it be
cool if so wouldn’t it be cool if more
women did have access to leadership
opportunities would it be cool if
schools everywhere were bright vibrant
learning
and wouldn’t be cool if every kid that
wanted to had access to a quality
education well during my service I
became very sick and peace corps sent me
back to DC to see specialists and they
thought it was best to keep me home and
so just like that I was my service was
cut short I was back in the US and this
time I decided to move to Northern
California to the Bay Area and life
really just took off from there I became
a middle school teacher met an amazing
woman who have since married we have two
beautiful children together I got
involved in a start-up not a tech
startup but more of an education career
development startup was joined the the
leadership team of that business and
really helped grow it my wife and I
fortunately were able to buy a home here
in Silicon Valley a near impossibility
for young families these days life was
full my life was complete yet there was
that voice in my head again is this it
what about those social and Justices
what about that impression what are you
doing to be a part of a solution my the
person I was working for at the time
knew this about me and he came to me
with an opportunity to take a dormant
non profit and revive it and repurpose
it the thing about this opportunity was
it wasn’t going to be instead of my
full-time job but in addition to in
other words continue with my
time-consuming demanding job that was
helping feed my family and live here in
Silicon Valley and on top of that start
and grow a non-profit the the the
prospect of that was very daunting to me
to add to my already full plate but the
thing that really helped me say yes was
one I had stepped out of my comfort zone
before and I knew that that was a way to
make extraordinary things happen and two
I didn’t want to look back and ask what
if I didn’t want to look back and regret
not having taken a risk to be a part of
something special
so I embraced this opportunity I jumped
in I was all-in and thought back to
those young people in Guatemala and and
and around the world really that weren’t
in school and thought about those women
that were denied access to opportunities
that they really deserve to have
and thought wouldn’t it be cool if we
can get groups together get them in
school provide them with scholarships to
pay for secondary school and train them
empower them to become leaders and
change agents and so that’s what we did
we started an organization called dream
volunteers the youth empowerment program
that we run is called young dreamer
Network and the first thing I did was go
back to Guatemala and find a group of
young people that weren’t in school
connect them to a quality to a quality
school and start to work with them on
service and leadership in their
communities and just to give you an idea
what this looks like and the exponential
impact we were looking to help them make
I want to tell you about this young
woman a yellow blouse here in the middle
of her name is muddy Belle she was one
of the first members to join our our
program and actually her and the girl in
front of her tell me there were the
first two girls in the history of their
village to ever go to high school and
money Belle was exactly the kind of
person we were looking for she was
brilliant hardworking full of positive
energy and a magnetic personality that
really drew people to her and so as she
as she moved along in our program from
grains were stellar she got the best
grades in her class she became a strong
leader in her peer group and as we
started to bring groups from here to do
short-term service trips in her
community she would welcome them and
receive them engage them in our
community and engage them in service so
Marty Belle just rose up as an all-star
in this program and really was the
vision that I had originally had five
years after joining our program she
became the first woman the history of
her village to graduate high school and
just a few months after that see
Guatemala you actually pick a profession
you choose a concentration in high
school and so in high school she focused
on education so just a few months after
she graduated she became a teacher in
the village that we sponsor where our
young dreamers live there had never been
a local member of the community to teach
at this school before because nobody had
ever been qualified from the community
to teach there before the significance
of her teaching there is that this is a
hundred percent indigenous Mayan
community
and teachers had always been bust up
from a nearby city well-intentioned
hard-working teachers but they didn’t
represent the cultural background of
these kids now for the first time they
could see somebody in there they could
see themselves in their teacher not only
was she a fantastic teacher and
hard-working but she injected her joy
and a positive energy into this into the
school and to the children little girls
looked up to her as a role model
somebody they could identify with
somebody that they could emulate not
just little girls but adolescent girls
now had a leader in fact a few years ago
we started a young women’s empowerment
program Marybel is lead helping lead
that program where she’s teaching
teenage girls in her community about
their bodies and how they work about
their rights and how to stand up for
them she’s teaching them to gain and
confidence in self-esteem and you don’t
have to understand what she’s saying in
this video clip to understand she’s
become a powerful mater when you step
into your wouldn’t it be cool if so when
you take action on visions you have for
the way things could be you say isn’t it
cool that isn’t it cool that money Belle
is having an exponential impact not just
her own life has been transformed but
her family’s life in her community isn’t
it cool that we now have dozens of young
dreamers in Guatemala dozens more in
India isn’t it cool that one of them was
on her way to becoming a child Bryan
just three years ago instead today she’s
a 12 year old girl happy healthy going
to school living as a little girl should
dreaming about her future isn’t it cool
that we have young dreamers in Ghana and
Vietnam and Costa Rica and when you
start to experience these isn’t it cool
that’s more wouldn’t it be cool if
submerged
years ago we thought it wouldn’t be cool
if we can take student groups from here
and connect to our young dreamers abroad
immerse them in these communities engage
them in service isn’t it cool that today
hundreds of students from the Bay Area
and around the u.s. are traveling to
these communities engaging in service
middle schoolers high schoolers college
groups families are taking meaningful
travel experiences with us over there
Spring Break or in the summer to make an
impact and to come back as ambassadors
isn’t it cool we now have a gap year
program where some students are spending
an entire semester or year immersed in
these communities sharing and growing
and cultural exchange isn’t it cool that
when you bring people from completely
different backs backgrounds together
completely different walks of life you
break down cultural barriers you break
down borders that’s how the world
becomes a better place that’s how human
connections happen is it it cool that
this young man is a middle schooler from
Palo Alto and this young woman is a high
schooler in Costa Rica and they’re
collaborating together to convert a
conventional coffee farm to organic is
that it cool that that project is
restoring this cloud forest in central
Costa Rica which serves as part of our
planets respiratory system which all of
us depend on to breathe and live here
and isn’t it cool that that young woman
I just showed you his name is Mariana a
high schooler in Costa Rica in the
middle of this tiny little village in
central Costa Rica two years ago told us
about her dream to one day being able to
do just like so many people had come to
her community to serve and share and
grow to someday be able to travel and
connect and help in other countries and
last year I was down in Costa Rica and I
was making a video for our donors back
here in the US to show them the profiles
of some of the young people they were
supporting through these scholarships
and I happened to capture a little clip
of money on the talking about this
and my biggest dream beats travel around
the world to help people when you work
hard when you dedicate yourself to
something bigger than you and when you
let your dreams be known to the world
sometimes the universe conspires to help
you achieve them isn’t it cool that
just like money bail in Guatemala
Mariana is a brilliant high school
student but she’s also a
transformational leader having an impact
on her peers on her community and now on
our community
she’s been here traveling around the Bay
Area meeting with student groups sharing
exchanging taking in the sights that are
amazing Northern California has to offer
and really just opening her world up to
possibilities so all of this was made
possible because an ordinary person took
action somebody very average took a step
in the direction of his wouldn’t it be
cool if so what’s your wouldn’t it be
cool if and what are you doing about it thank you very much
about 40 people for my hometown to be
attending UC Santa Barbara I was having
the time of my life living on the beach
72 degrees year-round surrounded by
familiar friends going to an
academically solid institution yet
something in my head kept pestering me
this can’t be it I thought this is too
comfortable too familiar wouldn’t it be
cool if I could step out of my comfort
zone go somewhere new start over
transfer out of state so like any sane
19 year old living on the beaches of
Santa Barbara would I transferred to the
talk about stepping out of my comfort
zone yeah so this was my walk to class
everyday and all seriousness
transferring to Iowa is one of the
greatest decisions I have ever made I
met amazing people adapted to the
Midwestern lifestyle it forced me to
create a life for myself I started to
make deliberate decisions about who I
was and what I was doing
see if you analyze me statistically as a
male in the US I’m as ordinary as they
come
average height average weight average IQ
raised in a middle-class home no
particular athletic skills artistic
skills
I’m ordinary yet I’m not content with
ordinary and so my way of making
something extraordinary happened has
after graduating from from Iowa the
weather did get the best of me and I
moved back to California this time to
Solana Beach moved in with some good
friends North County San Diego living on
the beach working in coffee shops
waiting tables just kind of taken a
breath after college trying to figure
out what we were gonna do with our lives
my friends quickly started doing this
some were taking the GRE and the LSAT on
their way to grad school others were
launching their careers in corporate
America stepping on their professional
paths and those things just didn’t speak
to me I couldn’t see myself getting
excited about any of those paths at that
time
one thing I’d always told myself is I
wasn’t gonna do what others were doing
simply because it was a conventional
route and so I thought again wouldn’t it
be cool if I could step out of my
comfort zone this time leave the country
live in another country experience
another culture expose myself to a new
language maybe even be of some benefit
to the people I was living with at the
time I was part of an internship and I
had a mentor who years prior had been a
Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in western
Africa and hearing her describe her
experiences in Peace Corps and seeing
the picture she would pass around
sometimes when she bring her photo album
to work that inspired me that excited me
I could see myself stepping into that
the way the Peace Corps application
process which is a very long process and
so as my as I dive into this process and
I’m getting excited about potentially
going somewhere
of course thinking all along about my
average qualifications I come to find
out I had been selected had been offered
a spot in Peace Corps and I get this big
thick welcome packet in the mail at that
time
that’s how Peace Corps in even colleges
let you know you’ve been accepted is
through the mail and so I was excited to
rip it open and see where I was going
and what I was going to be doing I think
was my mentor she had been in Africa I
thought maybe I go somewhere in Africa
or Asia I knew Peace Corps is all over
the world one thing I knew was I was
going very far from home so I tear open
the envelope and and there on the cover
letter it says congratulations you’ve
been assigned to be a small business
development volunteer in Guatemala now
of the 141 countries where Peace Corps
operates Guatemala is the absolute
closest to California I could not have
been sent anywhere closer yet I embrace
this opportunity I embrace the
assignment I was excited I didn’t know
anything about Guatemala I knew I was
going somewhere brand new I was going to
start all over again and it was it was
an amazing experience I got the
opportunity to learn and to grow and to
teach and to discover myself and the
world and how I fit into it there were
also some things about my time there
that were a little unsettling as a
privileged young person I never come
face to face with oppression and social
injustice and you know I’d always read
about these things and see them on TV
but interacting with and meeting
marginalized indigenous women seeing
schools that were in poor condition
really lacking the basic resources and
necessities that kids need to learn and
meeting adolescents that weren’t in
school at all I come to find out that
around the world in many parts in many
countries young people stopped going to
school after sixth grade because there’s
a cost associated with secondary school
their families simply can’t afford these
things didn’t sit right with me and I
started to have all these wouldn’t it be
cool if so wouldn’t it be cool if more
women did have access to leadership
opportunities would it be cool if
schools everywhere were bright vibrant
learning
and wouldn’t be cool if every kid that
wanted to had access to a quality
education well during my service I
became very sick and peace corps sent me
back to DC to see specialists and they
thought it was best to keep me home and
so just like that I was my service was
cut short I was back in the US and this
time I decided to move to Northern
California to the Bay Area and life
really just took off from there I became
a middle school teacher met an amazing
woman who have since married we have two
beautiful children together I got
involved in a start-up not a tech
startup but more of an education career
development startup was joined the the
leadership team of that business and
really helped grow it my wife and I
fortunately were able to buy a home here
in Silicon Valley a near impossibility
for young families these days life was
full my life was complete yet there was
that voice in my head again is this it
what about those social and Justices
what about that impression what are you
doing to be a part of a solution my the
person I was working for at the time
knew this about me and he came to me
with an opportunity to take a dormant
non profit and revive it and repurpose
it the thing about this opportunity was
it wasn’t going to be instead of my
full-time job but in addition to in
other words continue with my
time-consuming demanding job that was
helping feed my family and live here in
Silicon Valley and on top of that start
and grow a non-profit the the the
prospect of that was very daunting to me
to add to my already full plate but the
thing that really helped me say yes was
one I had stepped out of my comfort zone
before and I knew that that was a way to
make extraordinary things happen and two
I didn’t want to look back and ask what
if I didn’t want to look back and regret
not having taken a risk to be a part of
something special
so I embraced this opportunity I jumped
in I was all-in and thought back to
those young people in Guatemala and and
and around the world really that weren’t
in school and thought about those women
that were denied access to opportunities
that they really deserve to have
and thought wouldn’t it be cool if we
can get groups together get them in
school provide them with scholarships to
pay for secondary school and train them
empower them to become leaders and
change agents and so that’s what we did
we started an organization called dream
volunteers the youth empowerment program
that we run is called young dreamer
Network and the first thing I did was go
back to Guatemala and find a group of
young people that weren’t in school
connect them to a quality to a quality
school and start to work with them on
service and leadership in their
communities and just to give you an idea
what this looks like and the exponential
impact we were looking to help them make
I want to tell you about this young
woman a yellow blouse here in the middle
of her name is muddy Belle she was one
of the first members to join our our
program and actually her and the girl in
front of her tell me there were the
first two girls in the history of their
village to ever go to high school and
money Belle was exactly the kind of
person we were looking for she was
brilliant hardworking full of positive
energy and a magnetic personality that
really drew people to her and so as she
as she moved along in our program from
grains were stellar she got the best
grades in her class she became a strong
leader in her peer group and as we
started to bring groups from here to do
short-term service trips in her
community she would welcome them and
receive them engage them in our
community and engage them in service so
Marty Belle just rose up as an all-star
in this program and really was the
vision that I had originally had five
years after joining our program she
became the first woman the history of
her village to graduate high school and
just a few months after that see
Guatemala you actually pick a profession
you choose a concentration in high
school and so in high school she focused
on education so just a few months after
she graduated she became a teacher in
the village that we sponsor where our
young dreamers live there had never been
a local member of the community to teach
at this school before because nobody had
ever been qualified from the community
to teach there before the significance
of her teaching there is that this is a
hundred percent indigenous Mayan
community
and teachers had always been bust up
from a nearby city well-intentioned
hard-working teachers but they didn’t
represent the cultural background of
these kids now for the first time they
could see somebody in there they could
see themselves in their teacher not only
was she a fantastic teacher and
hard-working but she injected her joy
and a positive energy into this into the
school and to the children little girls
looked up to her as a role model
somebody they could identify with
somebody that they could emulate not
just little girls but adolescent girls
now had a leader in fact a few years ago
we started a young women’s empowerment
program Marybel is lead helping lead
that program where she’s teaching
teenage girls in her community about
their bodies and how they work about
their rights and how to stand up for
them she’s teaching them to gain and
confidence in self-esteem and you don’t
have to understand what she’s saying in
this video clip to understand she’s
become a powerful mater when you step
into your wouldn’t it be cool if so when
you take action on visions you have for
the way things could be you say isn’t it
cool that isn’t it cool that money Belle
is having an exponential impact not just
her own life has been transformed but
her family’s life in her community isn’t
it cool that we now have dozens of young
dreamers in Guatemala dozens more in
India isn’t it cool that one of them was
on her way to becoming a child Bryan
just three years ago instead today she’s
a 12 year old girl happy healthy going
to school living as a little girl should
dreaming about her future isn’t it cool
that we have young dreamers in Ghana and
Vietnam and Costa Rica and when you
start to experience these isn’t it cool
that’s more wouldn’t it be cool if
submerged
years ago we thought it wouldn’t be cool
if we can take student groups from here
and connect to our young dreamers abroad
immerse them in these communities engage
them in service isn’t it cool that today
hundreds of students from the Bay Area
and around the u.s. are traveling to
these communities engaging in service
middle schoolers high schoolers college
groups families are taking meaningful
travel experiences with us over there
Spring Break or in the summer to make an
impact and to come back as ambassadors
isn’t it cool we now have a gap year
program where some students are spending
an entire semester or year immersed in
these communities sharing and growing
and cultural exchange isn’t it cool that
when you bring people from completely
different backs backgrounds together
completely different walks of life you
break down cultural barriers you break
down borders that’s how the world
becomes a better place that’s how human
connections happen is it it cool that
this young man is a middle schooler from
Palo Alto and this young woman is a high
schooler in Costa Rica and they’re
collaborating together to convert a
conventional coffee farm to organic is
that it cool that that project is
restoring this cloud forest in central
Costa Rica which serves as part of our
planets respiratory system which all of
us depend on to breathe and live here
and isn’t it cool that that young woman
I just showed you his name is Mariana a
high schooler in Costa Rica in the
middle of this tiny little village in
central Costa Rica two years ago told us
about her dream to one day being able to
do just like so many people had come to
her community to serve and share and
grow to someday be able to travel and
connect and help in other countries and
last year I was down in Costa Rica and I
was making a video for our donors back
here in the US to show them the profiles
of some of the young people they were
supporting through these scholarships
and I happened to capture a little clip
of money on the talking about this
and my biggest dream beats travel around
the world to help people when you work
hard when you dedicate yourself to
something bigger than you and when you
let your dreams be known to the world
sometimes the universe conspires to help
you achieve them isn’t it cool that
just like money bail in Guatemala
Mariana is a brilliant high school
student but she’s also a
transformational leader having an impact
on her peers on her community and now on
our community
she’s been here traveling around the Bay
Area meeting with student groups sharing
exchanging taking in the sights that are
amazing Northern California has to offer
and really just opening her world up to
possibilities so all of this was made
possible because an ordinary person took
action somebody very average took a step
in the direction of his wouldn’t it be
cool if so what’s your wouldn’t it be
cool if and what are you doing about it thank you very much
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