 It is so humbling and amazing to be amongst you at New Frontiers and thank you so much for giving us all your time and full attention to co-create this event, it's been amazing and I've really fed your energy over the last few days and yeah very very excited to talk to you and also very excited to be standing next to the Lorax who's gonna keep me accountable to what I say. You know this question I've been asking myself for the last many years is who am I and how do I fit in society? What is my role in everything that we're doing? And Rumi summarized it for me by saying you are not a drop in the ocean but you are the entire ocean in a drop. That is how I felt when I grew up in Ethiopia, a country of about 100 million people today, we have 80 languages and 200 dialects. So it's quite a diverse place and as a kid I loved collecting stamps. I was one of those kids who just asked every single person if they received a letter or a postcard from somewhere in the world and I'm so proud to tell you, well I was proud back then, that I had stamps from 107 countries. Now that's a lot of countries for somebody living in Ethiopia and I learned that notion of being the entire ocean in a drop because I got to learn so much about many different cultures and countries through what they were putting on their postcards. In Ethiopia there are lots of street children in Addis Ababa and I felt like that entire ocean in a drop. The first day I asked my mother, why does that child not have a mother or a father? My parents didn't go to school, they didn't graduate from university, their parents thought education was not useful but they felt that it was important for me to understand and to be able to relate with the world. So they put everything they had and bored more to send me to good schools so that I can understand the world and so I ended up going to an international school where my best friends were from Eritrea, Ethiopian and Eritrea have been in wars for the last decades and we killed each other but I had best friends from Eritrea and my other best friend was from Italy which is a country that has tried to colonize us multiple times and a Greek friend and very, very different individuals but I could not just help how similar we were. I'm showing you some images from a little bit of the past. I learned to turn on a computer and write some lines on MS-DOS. Who's used MS-DOS here before? That was a radical time for me. I learned English, so I learned English from Italians first which was a terrible mistake and so I actually learned English on the internet. Most of my English I learned it using the internet. I used Ask Gives to ask questions and MSN Messenger, do you remember the first time you signed up to an online Messenger and you chatted with somebody who you did not know? That was a crazy time but that was a very transformative time for me because it really showed me that I was not just that drop in the ocean, I was the entire ocean and drop that were very similar to one another. I came across drug being 2003 during the World Cup. The key was that you would be so proud to hear this that it was so easy to support the old blacks and I actually got introduced to the old blacks through, who knows who that is, Rocofoco. He was an amazing player. I don't know if he's still around but that was in Tanzania. I learned about New Zealand from so far away of this sport I had no idea about but it was fun and we drank beer and it was amazing. I learned about liberal arts. I had no clue what liberal arts was about but when you're on the internet and there's this form of education where you learn to learn, not just learn to be good at what you do in a job or in a specific profession and researched a lot. I applied to 16 universities in America and I got a $200,000 scholarship to study at Harvard. My parents put the $1,000 that they have saved in my pocket and sent me off to the US and when I landed there and when I got in this community of individuals from many different corners of the world, I found myself connecting deeper with the people who were so different from me than those who came from the same continent that I was from. I've been asking this question like who am I? Where am I from? And to answer that question and many others asking that question, it's so hard. I don't know how to put it in one sentence. I'd say I'm from Ethiopia but I lived in Tanzania and Kenya for four years but I'm in America right now but I love London but I really enjoy El Salvador and I love traveling to Southeast Asia. And each time there were so many buds and it was so exhausting. And I'm not the only one who uses the word bud. For many of us here, if I ask you where are you from or where do you belong, you can pinpoint to one place or one specific community. And we're in a place where we're building communities of communities. We belong to many different communities around the world and around here. And so I've struggled to answer that question many, many times. When I moved here down the road, there's one of our neighbors who's lived here for a long time. He asked me the same question and I've been trying to rehearse and find shorter ways of answering that. And this really nice line that I found is, and I told him, when he asked me where is home, I said home is where I am. And his first reaction was, that is so sad. And I'm like, geez man, that's not helping. I'm really trying to nail this. And you're not helping me right here. But that's something that, you know, it's not just me who's having trouble pinning our identities to just one physical place or to one specific group of people. You know, my colleague Alina, we talk about that as well and she introduced herself like, I'm from Palmerston North, but I've lived in Canada, but I'm now living in Wellington and I do a lot of stuff in New Zealand and around the world. So my story is about trying to find who am I, where, how do we belong, and how do I belong and what we're creating here. And this notion of citizenship is something that I've been researching a lot, because I hold one passport and every place I travel to, I get a really hard time for having an Ethiopian passport. And when I search the Webster dictionary for what citizenship is, it says it's the qualities a person is expected to have as a responsible member of a community. And when I ask myself what community I belong to, well, I belong to many communities. So what citizen am I? I'm a global citizen. We have gathered here as global citizens, as citizens of a community of communities. But what is global citizenship about? To me, it is about acknowledging and enriching our interconnectedness. That one action we take has repercussions and implications to many communities. That what we do in one place affects many others. That we're in this network, in this web of communities, and we're all interconnected. To me, global citizenship is about service. It is about coming with humility, coming with respect, and a desire to have a positive impact on others. Not just the neighbor that I have here, but an acknowledgement that what I do has an impact on people elsewhere. And that I have the power to make either a positive or a negative impact on those individuals. And to me, global citizenship is about action. It is a license to operate. It's not about sitting down and just observing this network. It's about saying we have some great challenges in our hands today, and it's really up to us to do something about it. Brian has this line in his poem, we are the ones we've been waiting for. There's no one else we're waiting for in here. So as global citizens, we bring this mindset of interconnectedness, this mindset of service, and this mindset of action. It's about doing things that have implications on people, not just in our immediate vicinity but around the world. But my friends, let us not be mistaken. That global citizenship is not about transcending our responsibilities to the communities that we belong to. It is not about extracting value from one community and moving it to the other all the time. It is not a means of avoiding tax because out of a sudden you say, I don't belong to anybody because I'm a global citizen. Global citizenship is not about abandoning our identities in the communities that we're a part of. For me, a question I've been asking is, I've been in New Zealand for the last three years and asked myself, so am I less Ethiopian by being here? I feel a lot more Ethiopian because I feel a lot more connected to the values of the land that I come from and to the people who raised me and the people I grew up around. But I also feel more Kiwi because I truly connect with the values and the history and the heritage and the people of the land that I'm on right now. And so global citizenship is not about abandoning where we come from or it's not about giving up our responsibilities. But it's about acknowledging that we belong in one community and we have a responsibility to that community but we're in a community of communities. And that's a very, very powerful time to be in and that is a very powerful tool that we have. Now, you can say, well, that's amazing but the life of a global citizen is not easy. Yes, I'm the first one to raise my hand and let you know that. One of the biggest things that I've noticed is a lot of our infrastructures, legal infrastructures and systems haven't fully caught up to this notion of global citizenship. One of the ways that that manifests is through immigration, movement of people from one place to another. Humans have organized themselves in nation states and so that's the part that we're working within. Moving from one place to another is not easy and just to share with you a personal story. I told you how I went to Harvard and $200,000 and had a fantastic time. I moved to Silicon Valley and I've been working there with Matthew and Brian having a fantastic time and really at the heart of the technology space. And then I got a letter from the US government basically telling me that the Harvard degree that I held did not necessarily match the requirements of the occupation that they used to match the job title that I had in my work and therefore that did not qualify me to work in the US. And so change your status here or go elsewhere. And I was like, geez, I just got here, I've been here for six years. You paid for my education and now it's hard for me to give back to the ecosystem, to the community. And that was very frustrating, not just to me but to the senators and congressman's offices that I contacted and they were like, this does not make sense. Obama says this does not make sense. The president of the country says this does not make sense. So it is not just about the people who are empowered, it's also just the systems, institutions need to evolve, need to adapt. And I think we're probably 30 to 50 years behind in a lot of the infrastructure that we have that actually prevents our nations to fully capture the value of people who are not fully capturing the value of humans of global citizens. Now, that was not an easy time to go through that process because the government told me, well, you've got to stop working today, which was not fun to get. But now I really want to send them a container full of NZ wine and thank them for it. One because I empathize with the people doing that. They're just part of the grind and it's not an easy job to have. And two, it allowed me to take a step back and actually reconnect with my global citizenship and see the world and that's how I go to explore Aotearoa and I'm absolutely loving this place and feel like I'm in the right place to be right now. But what's really different is I talked to you guys about how the congressman and the center's offices were saying they found it absurd as well. What was the differences here? There were a couple of people from immigration here. Are you guys still here? They might have left. We're facing a very different situation here. We had the head of immigration here a few days ago. We're actually to have these serious conversations. And we've been talking with them for the last year and a half about what does actually true global citizenship mean and how can a nation like New Zealand lead? And so finding great value and actually being in a small agile place that can innovate in this place because the opportunity is out there. I'm not the only global citizen. Many of us are and there are many people around the world. And if it comes with this sense of responsibility, this sense of commitment to service that keeps in mind the communities that we belong to and the communities around us, then global citizens go and create value wherever they are. And I'm so thrilled to hear that the government here has been very open-minded to this notion of global citizenship. And we've had two announcements from the Prime Minister that are exploring a new visa program specifically attracting global citizens. And that is something I'm very excited about because it is for us to lead. It is an amazing opportunity to have a high concentration of individuals who are thinking globally, acting locally, creating value that address and solve problems here, but thinking about the global systems that we're in and taking those to many corners of the world. That is the economy that we're moving towards. And so while many countries are trying to catch up to this whole notion, some are moving faster than others. Not because, you know, I talked about America, not because America is bad, they're just bigger. It's just harder for hundreds of congressmen and senators to get stuff done. It is harder for the most powerful person in the entire world to do this. So we're facing some real challenges, but I think we have an opportunity here. We have an opportunity to create a template to lead in a way that allows us to get the best, in my opinion, and allows us to have a high concentration of change makers working to solve the world's problems in one place. And that is the aspect of incubation nation that really excites me. And one of the things that I'd like to share with you is that KiwiConnect has been exploring with the Hillary Institute of Exceptional Leadership to create a fellowship program that is targeted at global citizens. And when I mean global citizens, not just people who do not have any zillion passport. There are many global citizens in this room. There are many global citizens in Wellington and Auckland and Christchurch and Dunedin in many corners of this country. But have a high concentration of individuals who are thinking of the immediate community that belong to and the communities around the world and using the infrastructures that we have, the network that we have around the world to create solutions that can reach millions and millions more people than just the four and a half million people that we have here. And so through this collaboration, we'll be seeking collaborators and supporters and friends. And if this is a notion that resonates with you, please come talk to us afterwards because it is not just for up to us to create this home base for global citizens. It is a collective process. It's a collective activity. Global citizenship is about bringing the human race together in some way. It is actually weaving the connection between the human race organized in communities and a network of communities. But that's just the first step because the human race is one community of communities that belongs in a much larger community. We belong in a planetary community. And global citizenship to us is a bridge to planetary citizenship. Thank you.