 Hi, Roblin. It's good to see you. Hi, and on. Great to see you as well. So honored to be here with you today. One of the founders, CEO, one of the most successful in public charter schools in the country. One of the most inspirational leaders and one of our favorite impact in the lessons we've made over the last five years. I'm really honored to share the stage with you today and to showcase the results you guys have had. So my name is Anand Kasevin. I'm the founder and CEO of Equival Facilities Fund. We're on our way to being one of the largest education impact investors in the country. We've placed about $500 million in investments in under-resourced communities in the last five years. And we're honored to have one of those investments be Roblin and Freedom Prep. Roblin, you want to introduce yourself quickly? Yeah. I mean, your introduction was great. Bigger than me, I would say. So Roblin Webb, founder and CEO, Freedom Prep Charter Schools. And Freedom Prep is a network in Memphis, Tennessee, charter network with about five schools and more than 2,400 kids in grades 2K through 12. 2,400 kids. Well, I'm excited to get into some Q&A with you about your journey and the success you've had. I'll give a quick intro of what we do for folks in the audience who aren't familiar with us yet. We were founded in 2017. Equival Facilities Fund, or EFF, is a non-profit social impact fund. And what we do is we combine philanthropic funds with market capital to provide the highest quality public charter schools in our country with long-term, fixed-rate loans at some of the best terms available. The idea being if we can bring the cost of funds as low as possible, we can take the limited amount of capital that our public schools had, especially in our under-resourced communities, and to put them into the classroom to fund our teachers, the classrooms, and results for our scholars, which we believe, in the long term, will help solve the opportunity gap in our country today. So what we bring is access to affordable capital, and often this is the cap, this lack of access is what is holding back our best schools from growing. Because while schools do get operational money from the state governments, charter schools do not get money for facilities predominantly in most areas, and are on their own to use their limited resources to fund both their classrooms and their facilities. And philanthropy, as started to solve this problem over the years, but philanthropy can only go so far. So what we do is we take a limited amount of philanthropy, and to date we've raised about $250 million in philanthropy, and we match it with market capital. I know that's one of the things this sole capital audience is very interested in, is how we unleash the power of capital markets into the education investing world specifically. And we do this by piggybacking on 30 years of success in the clean water world, where the EPA used limited federal equity to fund these funds, these state revolving funds, which could lend to small municipal entities to clean up the water systems. It's been worked really well in 30 years, and our goal is to unleash that same power of the market into schools like Roblands, into schools in the communities that need them most, into schools that serve under-resourced children, often coming from low-income families, often coming from communities of color. And that's our mission, is to take this efficient philanthropy, leveraged market capital, and unleash it in the communities that need it most. To date we've financed more than $500 million in high-performance schools, over 100 million in savings back into those classrooms, 50,000 students supported, 75% of whom identify students of color, 65% plus qualifies low-income, and 90% of the schools we finance outperform the schools in their districts and neighborhoods. So one of those schools, maybe one of the ones we're most proud of, is sitting right with us today, and where we get to hear from Ms. Webb about her journey and the journey of her community. So, Robin, can you tell us a bit more about your journey in founding a Freedom Prep, maybe a little bit about your community, the scholars you serve, the parents, teachers, and what's been the most rewarding, what are the challenges? Yeah, so my journey was definitely non-traditional, unconventional journey to founding Freedom Prep. I am actually not a traditional educator. I was trained as an attorney. I like to refer to myself as a reformed attorney. My life's work and passion ever since I picked up my dad's copy of Autobiography of Malcolm X when I was like 11 or 12 years old was civil rights. And so how do I do the work that's going to help my people? I went to law school because I wanted to be a civil rights attorney at the time. It really wasn't that much of a practice. And so when I came back to Memphis and went to law school in New Jersey, I came back to Memphis to work in law and actually practice law for the city school district. So I worked for a law firm that was the counselor for the city school district thinking this was my way to make a difference and to help people of color and in my community. One, I hated practicing law. So it was a terrible attorney. And so that profession did not work, but I started to realize that education was really our modern day civil rights movement. And I can make more of an impact in education than I could as a practicing attorney. And so interestingly enough, what actually got me into founding freedom prep was while I was working for an education nonprofit, I volunteered to coach a mock trial team at a local high school here in Memphis. Fell in love with the kids. Kids fell in love with me. It was one of the first times that they had seen someone that looked like them, talk like them, but it was an attorney. And so the kids wanted to be attorneys, but what was so disheartening for me was that at the time our state assessment was a joke. And so our kids were doing really well, passing with flying colors, our state assessment, but they couldn't get ACT scores high enough to go to four-year colleges and definitely not go to law school. And so I realized at that point that we were doing our kids a disservice and lying to our families to let them know, particularly our African-American and Latino people of color, our families, they were not prepared. And so I actually decided I needed to do more, never wanted to open one school, more or less, nonetheless, open five schools, but I ended up doing a fellowship called Building Excellence Schools that trains professionals across the country, regardless of whether you have an education background, to open high-performing college prep charter schools in your city of choice. And so I did the Building Excellence Schools Fellowship in 2007, opened the First Freedom Prep School with one grade of sixth graders, about 100 kids in the fall of 2009, and now we're at around 2400 kids, five schools pre-K through 12th. And I think you asked the most rewarding piece of that. You know, it's interesting. High school is hard and high school is expensive and tough. And the most rewarding, and I'll always tear up and cry, is when we do college acceptance day. And so when the kids walk across that stage and you see all these black and brown children holding up the penance of the colleges they're going to, that day is actually even more rewarding for me than graduation. It is like the most rewarding day for me, for sure. Wow. Yeah. So you were a successful attorney, and you no longer really wanted to be one. Well, I wouldn't say successful, but you could use everything. Then you met these children who wanted to be like you, but couldn't, because they couldn't get the ACT scores to. So you threw your hat in to solve the problem. Yes. And now you see that solution with these banners that your children, your 2,400 children will hold. So when you started that, did you have a number in mind? You have 2,400 students now. Were you thinking, I want to help this cohort of 30 kids? And how did you think about growth? How do you think about serving more of these scholars and Memphis who need you? Great question. So just like I refer to myself oftentimes as the reluctant leader. And so at every step of freedom prep and our growth and stages, I have said, no, absolutely not. We're not going to do this. We're not going to grow. I actually started, our first charter was a 6 through 12 charter. And I told parents when they brought their kids, if they brought their kids to freedom prep at sixth grade, they would never have to look for another school until their kids were ready to go to college. And so initially that was the plan. And so we were going to get those 100 kids straight through every single year to go to college. The reason we went and added additional schools and also added elementary schools is that we realized and started to see how far behind, significantly far behind our kids were. So we knew we had to do more to really prepare our kids and we had to stop just the cycle of remediation that we would do. And so that's how we started growing into more schools. And then the demand was there. And so there was a demand for stronger schools. I mean, in the city of Memphis, the reason I even started a college prep school, only about 20% less than that actually in the black community have a four year college degree. And so that'll tell you about kind of the demographics and economy of the city of Memphis. And I wanted to change that and change that narrative in our city. Wow, 20% before your college degree. And I've heard similar stats nationwide, especially in our communities of color, in our low income communities, that number in many places is closer to 10%. And perhaps even lower if you're a black male. And that's just, it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. So can you tell us a little bit more about the journey specifically as regards to access to capital? We've heard the stories that our under-resourced communities, our black communities are often left behind when it comes to access to capital. And that creates this opportunity gap. Can you tell me about how this challenges have affected you and freedom prep? Yep. So the way that I would, it's interesting because it sounds cliche, but I will refer to that challenge as a dream deferred because for me, I have been fortunate to gain access to capital but it's always deferred. It's always, I have to wait a little longer. And then just a simple example is, and particularly for charter schools, this is particular for charter schools in Memphis. It took me forever to find a bank that would offer a line of credit because they didn't understand how charter school financing worked. And so most banks in our area did not, they refused to give us a line of credit. They actually asked me to personally guarantee a line of credit prior to finding the bank that actually worked with us. And that took me years. And so with that, there were a lot of, there were significant challenges in the way that we had to work our finances because we were a smaller organization growing every single year until I found a bank that had access to capital. I would also say as a person of color and as a woman of color, I often don't see people that look like me sitting in the rooms that are making these decisions. And as people in general, I think that we carry just an unconscious bias and we want to work with people that are similar to us. And so it has been challenging kind of navigating those networks where I often am not seeing people that look like me at the table and making those decisions. That is absolutely changing. That's changing in your, your organization is changing that narrative. Charter School World Fund is changing that narrative. But I've seen slow changes in that. So it would take me, when I would watch, for a variety of reasons, I would watch my white male colleagues receive facilities funding. I would see them build buildings from the ground up. Up, whereas it's taken me years and to get to the size of around 2,400 kids to basically have access to those opportunities. Well, dream deferred. Yeah. Dream deferred. When you have millions of students waiting to go to college, this generation cannot afford to be deferred. It's been deferred long enough. And you're really solving that problem on the ground. How has this challenge impacted your ability to grow and serve your students? So I would say, I would rephrase and say the way that I've attacked the challenge is through creativity, ingenuity, and asking for forgiveness, not permission. And so I've been very creative around facilities and how I've gained facilities. The majority of the facilities that we operate in now are previous district facilities that were closed. So the challenge with that is that these buildings often are buildings that have had decades of neglect. And so our buildings, even to this day, what frustrates me and hurts me is my inability to give my kids world-class facilities that they absolutely deserve just because of how much money and how much work these buildings need. Now, I would say on the flip side, I have been able to get access to these district facilities. And I've also, I would say, kind of played a chess game with the district. And one example is I had a building because we took a school as a turnaround school. And so I had a building where we were not paying rent there. I had one charter that was the turnaround charter. I moved another charter that I had that was not a turnaround charter into that building at the same time without permission from the local district at all. They found out a few months later, but my kind of approach was, what are they going to do? Kick 300 kids out of a building in the middle of the school year. And so I really had to be creative about how we access buildings. Also, we've had to move schools. I can't even count the number of times we've had to move schools. So we have four buildings now, one, three that we own, and one we're in the process of purchasing. And I have literally had to move one middle school, probably four or five times in the course of over 10 years of our schools operating to be able to make facilities work with the number of kids we had and the demand that we had. Wow, I bet you didn't think you were going to be running a real estate company when you started a community school. Not at all. Not at all. And I hear this time and time again from our school entrepreneurs that we want to spend our time in the classroom. We want to spend our time helping our teachers, helping our parents, helping our children, helping our communities. What we don't want to do is spend our time on, you know, with a bunch of bankers and PowerPoint decks and talk real estate market. And it's not fair that you guys have to spend so much of your time on that. So I commend you for doing that. You're a gritty entrepreneurial. And we would like to see all that grit and entrepreneurship go back into the classroom to help your teachers, help your students. And I think this community, the SoCAP community, the community of impact investors, it's our job to help lubricate those wheels so that you can grow without these growing pains of how do I get along? Yeah. Yeah, right. There's a lot of people out there who don't have to ask that question. How do I get along? Yeah. Yeah. It's the opportunity to do this. Yeah. So you talked a little bit about being a woman of color, a woman leader, a school leader of color. How, you can answer them separately if that works better. How does that affect your journey? And how does that help you with your students and teachers? So it's helped significantly. Just being a woman of color, it's so important for our kids and actually our school community to say the least, particularly in a city like Memphis where the population is around 65% African-American. One, kids are seeing someone that looks like them and knows how to walk the walk and knows how to move in different circles. And so they're learning just by, kids soak up so much, they're learning just by watching what I do and what my leadership team does in general. The second thing I would say is that we, as a leader of color and as a woman of color, I feel like we build a strong community around our kids. And so not only are we providing them a strong education, but we're also, which is a challenge. It's a challenge and it's an opportunity for us is that we also figure out ways to help our community in all holistic ways. And I think people started to ruleize this even more so during the pandemic. How much schools do for the community? Particularly when you're serving communities that have generations and generations of poverty. So we become the social workers. We become the folks who provide food for our families. We become the psychiatrists for our families. We even provide it at some point during the pandemic, financial assistance for families that were struggling throughout the pandemic. And so I don't know if that's necessarily a, if that's necessarily a tribute to me being a person of color, but I do know as a person of color, we use the phrase umbuntu, which means that we are a community. I am because we are. And so we really attack community that way. And then as a woman of color sitting at the table, the other interesting thing is that we teach our kids, we teach our kids, and I have learned throughout the years, how to code switch. So I am a black woman from Southern Arkansas, a small town in Southern Arkansas. I've been all over the country and I've been all over the world and I've been in so many different spaces. And I have had to learn how to code switch and switch my language, which switch my mannerisms, depending on what community I'm talking to and what community I'm coming from. And so the benefit is that we also, at Freedom Prep, we find how important it is to teach our kids to be able to do those same things to navigate the world effectively. So that there is nothing wrong with the language that they use at home, the way that they speak it at home, the mannerisms that they use at home, but there is a different language that you have to speak at a table with investors. There's a different language you have to speak at a table with educators, and we teach them how to use those languages too. And so that I think is so important for me to be in this space, to acknowledge that to our families and to our kids and to say that this is okay, and we're going to teach you all the ways of operating in the world so you can have every opportunity that you want. Wow, thank you for sharing. I want to dig in a little bit more because you said you're just code-switching for investors. Tell me why, and tell our social impact investors sure why investing in education is such a great social impact investment, both from the impact side and from the credit side. Yeah, I mean, you know, I can just give what I think about particularly investing and investing in communities about our kids. So for instance, we have a state award-winning rugby team, girls' rugby team, and we have some girls who actually receive scholarships to go to Dartmouth because of their, because from rugby. And Anand, I don't know if you're still there, your screen went away. Your screen and your mic. I'm still here, thanks. Thanks, but I can hear you okay. And so I think that it's important because it transforms communities. And so if you've got a community like Memphis that, again, 65% in a significantly community, investing in education and investing in kids in this community to go off, get an amazing education and come back and provide impact for their communities and change their community significantly. My goal with starting Freedom Prep was always so that our kids had access and a choice to go to any college that they wanted to in the country. But I also wanted them to come back to Memphis to make a change in Memphis. Anytime people say the city of Memphis, all you hear is high crime. It's crime, it's crime, it's poverty, and it's all the negative things about society. I do think that those things can be turned around and will be turned around eventually to hire the population of educated people in the city of Memphis. That's interesting you mentioned that, right? You mentioned Memphis, you think of crime using a poverty and then you talk to investors and that creates a cycle. Oh, Memphis, this is where the need is for, these are the communities from Detroit and this is where the need is for our impact investment money. But then from an investor allowance, that goes to, oh, that's high crime, high risk. Your property values aren't worth as much as drives appraisals down, which then chases bank lenders away. And then we're sucking this race to the bottom for our communities and the race to the top of other communities. And Alice's investors are driving part of that problem and that's why we're called equitable, which is trying to alleviate that, which our highest impact communities, our communities of color, our low income communities aren't necessarily the risky ones. We need to change our dialogue to realize that the freedom perhaps of the world are the highest impact and reasonable and a risk profile. And this is the kind of work that impact investors should be doing which is the kind of work you're doing. Two more questions for you. One of them's about choice. How do you talk to your students, your scholars about the choices they can make? They're making a choice by going to your school and you made a choice going from being a lawyer to starting a school and how does school choice and kind of personal choice really work into all of your pedagogy? Yeah, it's an interesting question because I often get, particularly from folks across the state of Tennessee, why college prep and why do you not focus on technical education or technical schools or community colleges and things of that effect? And so for me, it all comes down to choice. What we've had in our communities previously and what I experienced, particularly with the kids that I coached at the mock trial team is those kids did not have a choice. They weren't prepared to even make a choice to go to college. And so for us, now I'm always going to promote college because for me, college gave me opportunities and choices. I've been able to change careers pretty much three times and can continue to change careers because of my college degree, college degree, master's degree and law degree. I want the kids that I serve to have those same choices in life. Whether they choose to go to college or not, I'm always going to say go to college, but I want them to be prepared to have that choice and in the past they have not had that choice. And for me, we talk about technical education and they say, well, you know, electricians plumbers, what is wrong with them? And they make the same, they make great money. I agree. And if our kids decide to do that, that's fine. But I often say, if you're an electrician, if you have some type of business that requires your hands and requires something of your body, if you injure your hands permanently, what's your fallback plan? With a college degree, you have multiple fallback hands. If any multiple fallback plans, if anything happens to you. And so for me, it's all about making sure that our kids are prepared to make the choice to be able to go to college to change careers as much as they want to in the future. Thank you for that, Rob. So inspiring to hear you speak. It's inspiring to come visit your schools. It's inspiring to hear about the 2400 and hopefully growing number of scholars you serve in your communities. And this concept of choice, that that your parents have a choice to come to your school, that that you made an important choice to go into this work. The fact that your kids will hopefully have even better choices with college, if they so choose and beyond. You know, it's really a calling for the rest of us to think about the choices we are making, especially as philanthropists, as investors, to think about the power of investing in that community, what that choice creates, and what our role is in breaking that cycle. I'm only wanting to invest in certain things because they're safer or because they're easier to find. It's a good calling for me, for our team, and for all the impact investors here on the phone to to think about education and the power of investing in education. So thank you. Thank you for everything you do. And I can't wait to see the future of Freedom of Pride. Thank you. Thank you. And so is it my turn to ask you a few questions? Oh boy, you're going to put me on the spot? I am. Okay. So you've talked about this a bit, but you've worked, and I don't know if you even talked about this in your background, you've actually worked as a charter operator before and an investment banker. And so in your opinion, why do you think schools are a great investment for folks looking to make a social impact and also gain a return? Oh, that's a question near and dearer to my heart. And my background is somewhat unique. I started my career as an investment banker, so focused on credit. And why, talking to investors about why investing in governments and schools were such a great investment. That's what I did for my first career. My second career was helping folks like you who were starting schools. I was CFO of a charter school called KIPP down in Austin. And then I got into the philanthropy world and realized there was this nice little fit between investors, schools, and philanthropy. My third career is in philanthropy. And then EFF is the conglomeration of those three schools. Can you find a product that optimizes limited philanthropic capital optimizes investor capital that wants impact and wants some financial stability and then optimize about schools really need. So today we got to hear from you about schools really need. So why did these two stools, right, the philanthropy and investor stools really want to invest in schools? And for me, this is a no brainer, right? Everything you just said about what education and opportunities, education creates for communities is an answer to impact. I can't think of that many higher impact investments that have the social impact that investors like us want that helps solve racial inequality is helped solve income inequalities that helps solve the education gap and things that I think are the highest impact and highest leverageable for our country's future. Match that with something that you put in a risk box that's actually moderate. You know, our schools are funded by state governments. We've seen how strong state governments have performed even in a pandemic. We've seen how strong, I mean, we have a, we hold more than 100 different campuses in our investment portfolio 35 different school, different school organizations. Almost every single one of them has actually done better in the last two to three years financially. From an investor's point of view, this is a home run, right? We've helped our communities of color, our low income communities of education, I need a most, in a tough time, and we've seen a credit optic, right? And it's a home run for impact investors. So we preserved all our capital. In fact, we had a small return on it and a high philanthropic return on it, right? And we're going to continue to grow. So to me, this is really like one of the few, yeah, investments out there for the investors in the room. This is what we call seeking alpha and investor returns. It's hard to find and philanthropic alpha here is really hefty when it comes to finding people like Roblin to invest in. And so why the shift? And I think EFF and even organizations like EFF Charter School World Fund started to make it this shift, even prior to the racial reckoning this past summer with George Floyd. So why the shift in focus? Like, why is it important for you to bring financial markets, bring together financial markets and communities of color? Because you all started this even prior to what happened this past summer. Why is that important to you? Thanks for asking. I mean, we've been working on this for a long time, but this past summer really made us think about how important it is to remind us that even though we've been working on it, your generation's ahead without us working on it, that we need to do more. And what we're doing what we were doing before is not enough. And what we're still doing is not enough. And this is an investment community of color. It can't just be something we do as part of our business plan. It has to be our business plan. And that has to lead the charge in how we set our goals, how we hire, how we think about the schools we invest in, how we source our deals, how we do our underwriting, how we try to find bias in our system, in our own systems. And, you know, the reason we do this, you know, the simplest way I can put it is I walked the halls with you in your school and it is just jaw-dropping to see your sixth graders looking up at you and knowing they can beat you one day. And knowing that you're leading 20 of us down the hall and you're the boss of all of us and you're running the school that they're at. It is, I don't think there's anything that can match that for our children to see that, to see more leaders like you, which means as investors, we need to find and invest in leaders like you. And that's what I'm most excited about. I'm most excited about seeing a woman of color running a 2400 person school not be an exception to celebrate, but to be the norm and to have more sixth graders like yours being able to look up to more leaders like you. If we can even be a small part of that in the next decade, I'd be really proud. That's what excites me most about this. And to that, and I'll say, while we did a little bit as before, and I appreciate you saying that, I don't think we did enough, I think we are now about to announce a very large initiative to specifically support schools run by leaders of color. And we're going to announce a $500 million allocation to it. It's $500 million that we are going to put to work in the coming years to schools run by leaders of color. And it's a bold gesture on our part because it's not easy to do. But the real work is being done by your colleagues on the ground. And if there's enough of you guys doing great work, you know we can find the investments and help our communities more. I do think that we as investors hold a lot of capital. And it's our choice, the way that you made bold choices in your life and your children can hopefully make bold choices in their life, we need to start making bold choices with our capital. And this $500 million allocation to communities is our bold choice. And there's other organizations doing it too. And we'd like to see them successful. And we'd like to see more organizations start to put this line in this pretty high bar. We're going to change the way our business works if we're going to hit that goal. And that's putting the onus back on us to do that. I'm so excited to hear that. So I mean personally, of course I'm excited to hear that. And I'm so excited to see the changes that have been happening even since I've been in this work. So I've seen significant changes. I was the first African American female CEO in the Charter School Growth Fund portfolio in 2013. And to see where we've gotten today, it's just exciting and encouraging to hear. Yeah, it's amazing. Because to think about that Charter School Growth Fund portfolio back when they first, I used to work there, so when we first announced the Leaders of Color initiative, you think about this. And I think this should be inspirational to folks on the phone. Your decisions, our decisions about starting these cohorts has a ripple effect. And it might seem small to have a one investment in a Leader of Color or a few million dollars. But that's what creates schools like Freedom Prep that start becoming much bigger. Start creating leaders like Roblin who can proliferate 100 leaders like her over time. And the ripple effect of you guys on the phone, the investors, the philanthropists, the social impact funds are huge. And I've been in this business long enough to see that next generation of folks. It's great that you mentioned some of the folks of Charter School Growth Fund who came before us in this initiative has been part of what inspired us to do this. I hope we can inspire more folks to have fund allocations like this. Absolutely. So we're going to pause, and I think we have a short Q&A session. So I'll turn it back over to the moderator. Let's see if there's any questions, Roblin, for you in the chat box. In the chat, yeah. So there's a question about influx of money into funds for small minority business enterprises and do these funds invest in Charter schools? Yeah, I don't know the answer. I think that there isn't a large allocation of the money that's coming into minority businesses into Charter School yet that I've heard of. A lot of this has been post-George Floyd. I do think that the full choice movement in general and education world can tap into more of these funds. I think there's a big demand from philanthropy and investors in asking the question, where can my limited philanthropy, my limited investment dollars do most good? Like I want to do something about solving racial inequity problems in this country, but I don't know what to do. And that's what we hear from a lot of smaller family foundations, donor-advised funds. I think that there is an opportunity there. There's an opportunity to invest directly into schools. And I say invest because it can be a double bottom line investment like the one that we have, where you actually get your capital back, maybe a small interest rate, but then a large ROI to society. By investing in, say, Roblin's next facility, a $10 million investment in helping you find another home for another set of students, I think it has a really large ROI to folks who specifically want to make investments in racial equity. So I'd be happy if there's folks who are interested and I'd be happy to talk to them. And there's a question here that's interesting. I've been thinking a lot about, about how do you incentivize folks to stay in these areas, agreeing that in tough areas, proportional to educated individuals in commerce. And I think that's a chicken and egg question, particularly when I think about Memphis. Memphis, the economy in Memphis is run by logistics. We have logistics capital of the world. Throwing boxes and shipping boxes does not require an educated population. And so I don't know if it's the educated population that comes first that demands different opportunities that require more educated workers, or if it's the organizations come, and you have to have educated workers and you also have to have better schools. Because middle to upper income people want stronger and demand stronger schools for their children. And so my work, at least on this end, is to provide that educated population, college educated population that is here. But I also think that our local economy has to figure out a way to provide the job opportunities as well too. Because a lot of our kids move away because there aren't jobs for them here. We have another question here on Freedom Fellows Institute. Yep, yep. If it's going to expand beyond the Southeast, so right now, not yet. We focus the Freedom Fellows Institute. So what that Freedom Fellows Institute is to train other leaders of color to open charter schools across the Southeast. The reason I focus on the Southeast, I'm originally from Arkansas. I went to school in Memphis, and so I'm a product of the South. What I've also seen and know is that the majority of African-American students and African-Americans are in the South and the Southeast. And on top of that, the investments in education have been on the coast. The majority of investments, I say until probably in the past five to 10 years, folks have started to focus more so on the South, but the majority of investments have not been in the South. And so the reason we're focusing on the Southeast right now is that that is where we believe the biggest impact can happen. And we can transform schools in the South that are actually in the bottom, always in the bottom academically in the South. And so that's why right now, we have the Freedom Fellows Institute focused on the Southeast, where we believe it's the greatest need and we can have the biggest impact. Great program. We'd love to see that expanding when the time is right. There's one more question here, and we do have time for one more if anybody wants to put it in. Are there any relevant public equities or bonds for investing in education equity? There are a handful, that's a great question, because I think this is where there's a big opportunity for family offices, for individual investors. We offer, we're going to offer an education impact note in the coming years, and something that's kind of tied to, that gives investors a small rate of return and gives them kind of full faith and credit in our schools as a credit. We do offer public bonds. Our Equitable Fund does issue public bonds every year that are rated as social bonds by a third party and a-rated financially by S&P, which are very high impact investments. We are going to offer even more impact-oriented notes that will be, I think, good investments for family offices and folks who are looking for a double bottom line. You can find more about that at ESRFinvestors.org or look us up on our website. Feel free to reach out to me if you have ideas. We'd like to give impact investors more of an opportunity to access schools like Freedom Prep. It's part of our mission. So please do reach out to me if you have any suggestions. Rob, I might have time for one more question. There's a couple at the end here if you want to take one of those. But push back against charter schools and progressive politics. So that definitely happens. Charter school leaders often have interesting friends and allies. If you are progressive and liberal and often it's the conservative party that's more in favor of charter schools. My response to that usually is... I don't know if we win those debates, but my response is how could we deny parents an opportunity for a better education for their child? That's a period. So parents that cannot afford a private school education, how could we not provide them a choice or another opportunity for their child? Traditionally, the response is what would just give the money to the public school system? And my response is so how long are you going to wait for that to work? That our kids can't wait. We cannot experiment on them and we have to provide everyone the opportunity to have a choice for the type of education that works the best for their child. Thanks, Rob. And I do like how you always make it about what's best for the child. And we do get stuck in adult politics and issues a lot. And at the end of the day, you're the closest to this work with the children who benefit the most from the work we all do. Well, I think we're just about out of time. I will say thank you so much, Ms. Webb. This is your inspirational to all of us. If anybody has any more questions about freedom prep, you can reach out to either one of us. You can find a lot of information online on the success of the school. If you have any questions about EFF, why we do what we do, how you can replicate it in your field, whether you're in education or any other kind of social impact field, you're in a different country. You can start a fund as modeled after ours. It works. These revolving fund models work. They work for impact. They work for credit. They work for sourcing investors, and they're really smart use of land or government money. So we're happy to advise on that to anybody who wants to think about starting a fund like this to help more schools like Robin. So thank you very much, everybody. It's a pleasure being here today. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Anand.