 I stand before you, the proud product of a public school education. Born and raised in New York City, the third of five kids to parents who immigrated from the Philippines in search, like many before them and many after them, of the American dream. They knew about the promise of public education even from afar. They knew the power of public schools, particularly in New York City. And, like Sonia before me, if there was ever a mantra spoken at home, it was that school came first. Before dating, for sports, before friends, for any extracurriculars, school always came first. And so, for all intents and purposes, that promise of public education was realized to some extent. Here's me in the first grade. Let me get this going. I mentioned I have four siblings, so among the four siblings, we have two lawyers, one PhD and one medical doctor, all five of us products of New York City public schools. We owe so much, obviously, to our time there and couldn't be where we are and who we are because of that. But earlier, I said to some extent, because it wasn't all easy. I grew up at a time when rote memorization and teaching to the test and staying within your lanes was reinforced not only at school but at home. There were inputs and there were outputs and there wasn't much in between. The school at the time was not reinforcing things that we've grown to know and call global competencies, this ability to demonstrate and practice empathy, to be critical thinkers and problem solvers, to navigate the world through ambiguity, to understand the connections to the greater world around us. And so, without that preparation, as you could probably imagine, the next stage in higher education, I struggled. After the first year, I quickly found myself on academic probation and I almost failed out of school. Luckily, through the support of friends and family and professors and academic advisors and counselors, I made it through. And not surprisingly, it was education that brought me back. I ended up volunteering and eventually teaching for a few years at our local preschool. And for me, it was this opportunity to nurture in these young students those very global competencies that I was only strengthening as an adult. This ability to see the world as much bigger than it was, to make connections, to ponder questions like, why is the sky blue? Why do we laugh? Why do we cry? You two are fighting over that same toy. How can we problem solve and figure that out together? And so, as I was volunteering and as I was teaching the promise of education was becoming promising once again. So my next chapter in my journey, it took me to graduate school where I was earning my master's in education and I was learning about how do you nurture the whole child, the cognitive, the social, the emotional, the artistic, the ethical parts of the child so that they reach their full potential. You all know that we're living in a vastly changing world. And in order to prepare our students to be successful in that world, we need to really evolve how we're teaching. And so in my work as a CEO of a national nonprofit called World Savvy, our team has really invested how are you developing these global competencies, these skills, these values and attitudes in the very fabric of teaching and learning so that the students are ready to face these new realities. And so we work all over the country with public school teachers, private school teachers, charter school teachers, you name it, to develop these skills, these attitudes, these beliefs, these dispositions. And the results are phenomenal. I had an opportunity this past May to visit one of our partner middle schools in San Diego and the students had been grappling with some of the world's largest issues by focusing on the United Nations sustainable development goals. And we had been empowering their teachers through professional development and coaching to guide their students through a design thinking process to begin to address how these global issues are manifesting locally in their communities and take a stand, make a difference, take some action. And so I met a group of seventh graders who were studying sustainable communities and they learned that they lived in a food desert. They didn't have consistent affordable regular access to healthy produce and food on a regular basis. And so what they did was they found a food truck that wasn't being used two days a week. They found some farmers who were always looking for more consumers, they married them together and created this business plan where everyone profited and they would park that food truck in their neighborhood two times a week so that their families could benefit from that partnership. I met a group of sixth graders who were also studying sustainable communities and human migration and they were noticing patterns in the changing demographies of their communities and they said, these folks are coming into our communities. We can do better in how we welcome them and how we support them. So they designed the skeleton of an app where in their home language these folks can access resources around food, shelter, jobs, you name it so that they would feel more welcome, more productive and more contributing to their community. Now I don't know about you all but when I was in middle school I don't think I was ever this empathetic, this action oriented and quite frankly have this desire to make a world a better place. And so when I think about that promise of public education, in some regards it's fulfilled. These students will go on to go on to more education to the workforce and the foundation that's being built by the teachers that are caring for them, it gives me so much promise. I feel so much promise for the future. So as you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of public education. I had my own ups and downs but I made it through. I have the privilege and my team has the privilege of working with these teachers every day all over the country and get to reap the benefits and see the results of their hard work. But now I'm also a parent of two young boys, one of whom is six years old, he's in the first grade and he attends our local public school and yes, there's a farm on that local public school, go California. And these global competencies that I've been talking about, they're embedded in the very fabric of that school. It's a project-based learning school with mixed age groups where social and emotional wellness are key to everyone's success. And the way that they're approaching teaching and learning is awe-inspiring. Case in point, one day I come home from work and before I could even take off my backpack and take off my bike helmet, my son Cole comes up to me, he's five at the time. He says, hey dad, can we go to Ushuaia? I said, what? He said, you know, Ushuaia. And I said, can you tell me some more, Cole, because I don't understand. He said Ushuaia, so he goes and runs and he gets his globe and he spins it around and he finds at the very bottom, Tierra del Fuego, is Ushuaia. Ushuaia is a city that often uses a jumping point to go to Antarctica. His class had been in the midst of what ended up being a three month long unit on penguins because the kids were just so engaged in the content and the teacher was hitting all of her learning standards and goals that she just kept going with it. And so now he comes home and he wants to go to Antarctica so that he can visit the penguins. But this is what we're talking about, right? This is public education. This desire to make connections, to understand, to see, to touch, to feel, to recognize that there's something much larger than you but you can be part of that, to embrace the world and to traverse the globe with arms wide open. And so now I need to plan a trip to Antarctica. But one of the other competencies that they're developing in this school and what we're trying to do in our work is this desire to make a difference, to make a positive difference. So I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Lorax by Dr. Seuss, but it has an environmental theme and at the very end of the book, I've read this book millions of times to Cole. It says, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. So one night Cole looks up to me and he says, "'Hey dad, could we go plant some trees?" I said, of course, let's go plant some trees. We hooked up with the local nonprofit. We planted some trees and I said to myself, "'That's what we want education to be.'" Again, this ability to nurture in our youth and our students this desire to engage and explore the world with ambiguity, with curiosity, with arms wide open. So when I think about the promise of public education, I couldn't be more excited. Thank you.