 Well, it is my pleasure to bring to the stage Erin Jones who has been involved in education for the past 24 years. She has taught in a variety of environments from predominantly African-American to predominantly Caucasian to some of the most diverse communities in the United States. Erin received an award as the most innovative foreign language teacher in 2007 while working at Stewart Middle School in Tacoma. And if you go there, used to go there or go there, all right, all right. And was the Washington State Milken Educator of the Year award winner in 2008 while she was teaching at Rogers High School in Spokane. She received recognition at the White House in March of 2013 as a champion of change. She works as director of the AVID program in Tacoma and she recently declared her run for the state superintendent office of public education. I don't know if you all know this, but Erin is the first black woman to run for a state office in the history of Washington State. What? What? She has two children in college, one joining the army and a husband James who was a teacher in North Thurston School District. So would you all, young, educated, ladies leading, give a loving welcome to Erin Jones. Okay, good morning. I heard a shout out for the high school, but where are the middle schoolers in here? Okay, ladies, okay, I just want to make sure we coverage y'all too. Okay, good morning. How many of you have heard me speak before? Okay, okay, so some of you. My name is Erin Jones as she said, and what you see here is not at all my story. And that's part of the message that I want to share with you today is we often tell the stories of the women we see by what we see on the outside and what you see here is not, it's just a piece of my story. I want to start by talking about my hair, because my hair is a very conscious choice for me. I choose to wear my hair natural as a way to show you, ladies, that this is beautiful. That our natural hair is beautiful. It's a conscious choice for me. And I didn't make that choice until I was 40 years old. It took me all the way until 40 to decide to embrace, yes, I am older than 40. I'm about to be 45, okay? Two weeks. As my husband says, black don't crack, okay, right? So, but I made a choice. I was working here in Fredowaway, and one of my friends said, so what does your hair look like natural? I said, I don't know. I haven't seen it natural since I was about 12 years old. Let's see. And so I went home and washed my hair and came back with my hair natural the next day. And here's what happened. I happened to be visiting an elementary school that day, a third grade classroom, and I walked into the classroom, and about 10 minutes into my visit, the teacher came over to me, and the teacher is a white woman in her late 20s, young teacher, and she came over to me and she was crying. And I said, what just happened? And she said, there's a little girl in this class who's never spoken until today. It was October. She'd never spoken. And she said, when you walked into the classroom, she said, that lady is beautiful and her hair looks just like mine when my mommy washes it. The first word she said all year. And I knew from that moment I needed to wear my hair this way, and I never went back. And this is a conscious choice for me to embrace that beautiful as many things. And whether you choose this, whether you express you. We got that on film. But whether you choose to wear your hair straight or in braids or however you choose to wear it, I wear this to show you that however you choose to wear your hair is beautiful, and don't ever let someone else tell you what beauty is. I also wear heels every day, and I have my little heels on today. And you may notice that I'm kind of tall. I'm six feet tall without my shoes on. And I typically wear heels every day, at least three-inch heels. These are really little ones because I have to speak all day today. I had to wear the eight-hour heels today. I got two-hour heels and I have eight-hour heels. I got the eight-hour heels on today. But here's something that I hear a lot of times from people. You're already tall. Why you got to wear those heels? Here's my answer to them, because they make them in a size 10. And I like them. Ladies, do not let other people tell you who you can be. If there is one thing that I leave you with today, the most important lesson that I have learned in almost 45 years of life is that too often as women, we allow other people to tell us who to be. We allow other people to tell us what beautiful should look like. We allow other people to tell us what brilliance looks like. And I will say to you as a mother, as an educator for 25 years, as a daughter, that you get to decide what your beautiful is. And your beautiful is the best beautiful. Your beautiful, your independent beautiful is the best. And here's another thing I will tell you. You will always fail at being someone else's beautiful. Let me say that again. You will always fail at trying to be someone else's beautiful. And so a Beyonce is your hero. You will fail at her kind of beautiful. I don't care who that image is of the girl that you put on your wall. I'm going to challenge you today as I share my story to embrace your kind of beautiful. And I just saw Mason Middle School. Hello, Mason. I see you all over there. Okay, I was just in their school this week, so I get happy when I see young people that I've been with. But your kind of beautiful, ladies, is what I hope that you will get out of today. I want you to push in today and begin to really open yourself up to hearing some new things. I think the greatest challenge of middle school and high school, and I was a middle school and high school teacher for 11 years, I think the greatest challenge is that you are trying to be like the people around you. And that is the greatest mistake that you can make in life. And we have done that to you. Many of the adults have done that to you. Social media will do that to you. And so today as you hear my story, those of you who've never heard it before, I'm going to challenge you to own your own kind of beautiful. To own this journey that is womanhood. And here's another thing I'm going to challenge you with. There is not a girl in this place. You are all young women. I want you to own that today because when you begin to see yourself as a woman, there's a different way that you show up in spaces. I begin to see myself as a young woman really as a middle school student. Not that you can't play because I still play. I went dancing last night with my husband. I know how to play. But here's what I'll tell you. Your choices matter right now. And I want you to begin to see yourself as someone who could change your world right now. Not when you're 18, not 21, not 30. But right now, you matter. Your voices matter. I think what makes me so happy about today when I look out at this room is there are far too many people who would say that the voices of the ladies who are right here don't matter. You're too young. You're brown. You weren't raised in the United States. You don't speak English well. You have an accent. And I would say that's exactly why we need your voices. And this is what makes me happy today. I'm running as the first black woman to run for a state office. And part of the reason I'm running is because I want a model for you all, that being a leader is possible. Not that you need to run for the office I'm running for. You can run for any office you want to. But the fact that I'm the first black woman to run for a state office in 2016, is mind-boggling to me. And so I'm going to challenge you today, too, to think about where could I lead? Where could I lead? Where could I make a difference? Because every last one of you in this room is a leader. Somebody is following you. And maybe a little brother or a sister. And maybe that girl in your classroom who likes to hide out in the corner. Somebody's watching you. Where are you leading them? So I'm going to back up with you almost 45 years. My birthday is literally in two weeks and I'll be 45. Almost 45 years ago, I was born in a hospital and given away. The name on my birth certificate from my father is Negro Man. Negro Man. The name on my birth certificate from my mother says Norwegian women. I do not know their names. I know that he was 65 and she was 20. I didn't ask for that. Some of y'all are giving me looks. I didn't ask for that. I just got born. And this was in Minnesota. Now, what's important about Minnesota? For some of you, you look around in your schools here on the I-5 corridor and you see all kinds of biracial kids. Do you know that there are more biracial kids black and something else in the Pierce County, South King County area than anywhere in the country because of joint-based Lewis-McCord? And so you look around and you think that's normal. You understand that this is not normal in most places in the country and where I was, it was unacceptable. And so my mother gave me away the day that I was born. And here's what I will say to you. Your beginning does not have to determine your ending. Do not allow your beginning to be an excuse for why you can't or shouldn't or won't. And I was really fortunate. And at three months old, I got adopted by a white couple. And for many years, most of my childhood, I thought they could have children or they couldn't have children and that's why they chose me. But I learned as an adult that my mother could have children. But she and my father chose to adopt children that no one wanted. And so they adopted me in 1971 and then three years later they adopted a little boy who was also biracial. And when I was five years old, my father who was a teacher came home from school one day and he announced to our family we're moving to the Netherlands. And I thought, Neverlands? Peter Pan? That sounds awesome to me. And my dad said, oh no, it's a country across the ocean. I don't know about you all, but at five I didn't know what an ocean was or a country. So we just got on a plane for 15 hours. And we flew to this country all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, a country that my parents had never seen before. They were following a dream. And we landed in this country where it sounded like people were choking on their words. The Dutch language is not the prettiest language. I'll speak a little bit of it because you may never ever hear a black woman speak this language ever again. Never ever. My name is Erin. I live in America now, but I've lived in the Netherlands for almost 12 years. I came here almost 25 years ago. I have three children. They have 19, 20, and 1 and 20 years out. Yeah, that's what I walked into. And I thought, oh my gosh, these people are spitting all over me. What the heck? And I'm landing in the land of the blonde giants. The Dutch people are the tallest people in the world, and I am six feet tall now, but I was not at five years old. And they were all tall, and they were all blonde, and they were all spitting at me. But here's the greatest thing. From kindergarten to 12th grade, did anyone ask, why are your parents white? Not one time. Not one time did people ask, why is your hair like that? Not one time. I ended up going to one of the best schools in the entire world. My school today for kindergarten cost $30,000 a year. Just to give you a little bit of context, that's like going to the University of Washington for a year. For kindergarten. But I went for free, because my dad was a teacher there. See, that's how it works. And so here I was, this little girl with one pair of tennis shoes that had to last me the whole year, sitting next to kids who lived in houses that were as big as this building. I went from orphan to outcast to suddenly sitting next to people who were part of a royal family. I met my first princess when I was nine years old. She was the princess of Egypt, the country Egypt. Her husband had just been assassinated in a coup. There had been a takeover of the government. And he was killed. And instead of going into hiding, she made a conscious choice, I am going to travel the world and talk with young people about the importance of peace and forgiveness. And so she came to my elementary school first. I don't know how she ended up there first, but she came there first. And she did a talk, and we got to sing with the famous American singer who's been dead a very long time. But those of you who are adults may know the guy John Denver. And we got to sing with John Denver. And then afterwards we got to listen to her talk. And three little kids were chosen to eat lunch with her. And I was chosen as one of the three kids. Now, I suspect, looking back, that it was probably because I was the diversity in my school. Sometimes you got to take that. Quit complaining about it. Just use it. So I got a seat at the table because I was the brown girl. You know what? Sometimes you just got to work what you got. And so here I ended up at this table with the princess. And in order to talk to the princess, you had to come ready to share with her about how you were going to change the world. Well, I had already decided at nine years old that I was going to solve the Middle East crisis. Now, let me paint a picture for you of what the Middle East crisis meant to me. In my class in fourth grade, there was a little girl from Israel. Also in my class was a little boy from Palestine. And those two countries have been at war for generations, hundreds of years. And I had decided already at nine years old I was going to solve their problem. They'd been fighting for generations like I was going to solve this little black girl. I believed it. And so I had already started teaching myself Arabic and Hebrew at lunchtime. Everyone else is out playing on the playground. I was teaching myself Arabic Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Hebrew Tuesday, Thursday. I knew if I was going to solve their problems I had to speak their language. So when the princess came, we were asked to make a poster describing how we were going to change our world. And I spent hours crammed on a piece of paper describing my dream of solving the Middle East crisis and I came to that lunch and rolled out my poster and I was so proud of my work. And then my two friends who were invited also to sit with her rolled out their posters. And who do you think had made their posters? Their parents. And understand their parents were rich and had secretaries. And so their posters looked much different than my poster. And suddenly I was really ashamed. And what I would say to you ladies, we need to stop comparing ourselves to other people because in that moment I went from being so proud of how I was going to change the world to feeling so small. And I allowed my comparison to drive who I thought I was for a hot second. And then the princess asked me, so Erin describe your poster to me. Explain to me what's on here. And I said, wow I have this girl in my class from Israel and this boy from Palestine and I just want their families to get along and so I've taught myself Arabic and Hebrew. And she was so blown away and so proud of me. And when she turned to my friends to ask them what their vision was for their future, of course neither one of them could describe the way they were going to change the world because they hadn't made their poster. And I learned that day a really important lesson. You don't have to be rich, you don't have to be white to have a dream. You don't have to be rich or white to change your world. And I made a conscious choice that nine years old, I will be great. And I went back to my fourth grade teacher the next day and I said, okay Mrs. Parlier, I've decided I'm changing my world, what now? They don't teach you how to answer that question in teacher college. So she just kind of stared at me and then she gave me a packet of 50 pages of fractions. I don't know how much y'all like fractions, but she hates fractions. 50 pages, here's what I thought. Mrs. Parlier was, she was like the president in my mind. Whatever she said, I must do. And so because Mrs. Parlier said 50 pages of fractions, I said, okay Mrs. Parlier, I'll have them back to you tomorrow. She's like, oh honey you can take the rest tomorrow. And I went home and I sat under my blanket in the dark with a flashlight all night long and finished all 50 pages of fractions. And I brought them back to her the next day and I said, okay, now what? And she said, oh well how about another 50 pages of fractions? Here's another lesson I learned in that, especially young women of color, but young women, period, if you are good at math, and math is not something you're just born to do or not do, math takes work for a lot of us. If you are good at math it will open doors for you. There is money from colleges if you're good at math and math is a choice. I became the best math student in my school and that opened doors for me. I'm not naturally good at math. I begin to really practice, but here's the more important lesson that I learned that I want you to either write down or type into your cell phone. So I need to get out a piece of paper, you all have paper in front of you. Put this down. I know you all have a little notebook, so I'm going to ask you to take a note here because I am a teacher. So here's the note that I want you to write down because this is the most important lesson I learned in that process. Being average is absolutely simple. Being average is absolutely simple. All average requires is that you show up. Being great requires doing what others won't. Being great requires doing what others won't. Being average is absolutely simple. All it requires is showing up. Being great requires doing what others won't. Ladies, greatness is a choice. Greatness is not something you're born into. Greatness is something you choose to become. It's a way that you choose to do life, and I'm going to ask you today, ladies, to choose greatness. And so what did that mean for me? It meant that when I turned 13 years old in the eighth grade, and in my country there was no drinking age, no smoking age, and you could smoke weed legally in public. When I turned 13 years old, I made a promise to myself that if I am going to be great, I will never drink, I will never smoke, and I will never do drugs. And I will say to you at almost 45, I have never touched a cigarette, I have never done any drugs, and I've never touched alcohol. And I say that because I made a conscious choice. I did not choose that because I thought I was better than anyone else. I made that choice because I knew if I was going to live a lifestyle of greatness, I'm going to wait until you stop talking. If I was going to choose a lifestyle of greatness, there were certain things that I could not afford to do. Ladies, you cannot afford to give yourself away in those ways. I'm going to challenge you. And if you're that young lady who's already smoked, I've already tried some weed, I've already tried some alcohol, here's the great thing about life. You can always change. It's not about what you did yesterday, it's about what are you going to do tomorrow? Are you going to choose to live differently tomorrow than you did today? And that's my challenge to you today, ladies. Are you going to choose greatness? Greatness is not about being perfect. I fall down all the time. I make mistakes all the time. Greatness is not about not making mistakes. Greatness is about when you make mistakes, are you willing to get back up and do something different? And that's where I'm going to challenge you, ladies. I found a quote this morning that I want to read to you. And you can't see this from way out there, but it is in the shape of a high-heeled shoe, which if you know me at all, this is me. I have over 200 pairs of shoes. And most of them are from Goodwill. I'm actually proud of myself that way. My goal is to spend less than $20 on everything that I buy. So my goal actually is my whole outfit to be about between $20 and $25. And I always look sharp. Always. Everywhere. But I love shoes. I kind of have a shoe thing. But here's what this quote says, and I want you to embrace this for yourself. It says, before you put on clothes, slide into heels, spray perfume, or accessorize to step into the world, there is a wardrobe that every woman must first put on. Bathe in forgiveness, dress in self-esteem, adorn yourself with praise and slip into joy when you are fully clothed in self-love. You are always in fashion. And I would say to you ladies, part of greatness is recognizing when you need to turn on a different path, when you've been going down the wrong path. I think my greatest challenge today with American culture, with your generation, is too many of you are not moving. You're stuck looking at a screen, stuck on your phone not moving. Here's a little lesson for you. As long as you are moving in a direction, you can change direction. If you are not moving at all, I can't get you on the right path. Your teachers can't get you on the right path. If you're just sitting, and so I'm going to challenge you, if you have not started moving in a direction yet, begin to move. So when I was 18, I decided to come to the United States by myself to go to college. I knew that greatness for me was going to require coming to the United States to go to the best college in the country. My goal was to become a lawyer and go back to Europe and serve as an international lawyer and solve the world's problems. That was my goal. And so I came to the U.S. by myself on a plane. How many of you are juniors or seniors in high school? Okay, a lot of you. So here's what I will tell you, little lesson from my mom. Do not go to a college you have not visited before. I was not a rich kid, and I lived in Europe, and I had to trust the little brochure they sent me. And so I applied to Princeton University. I got accepted at Princeton University. It was a little too big for me. I also applied to the sister school, the women's division of Princeton. The brochure looked beautiful, and there were all these beautiful brown women there. And the buildings looked amazing. And I thought, that's where I was coming. And I discovered that every brown person on that brochure had graduated by the time I got there. Do not go to a college you have not visited before. I get to the United States at 18 years old, September of 1989. And the first sign I see in my college town is Bryn Mawr Cricket Club. No Colors or Jews allowed here. And for those of you who might think that was so long ago, the sign just came down four years ago. No Colors or Jews allowed here. Right next to my college campus. My second week on campus, a white girl came up to me. She looked me in the face and she said, you are only here because we have to have ten of you. Now mind you, I graduated from my high school with a 399 GPA, speaking four languages, having taken 11 AP classes, triple varsity athlete, MVP and captain of all three sports. And she had the nerve to look me in the face. And she had the nerve to look me in the face and say, you are only here because we have to have ten of you. And here's the sad part about that story. I didn't rise up like I should have and said, you know what, young lady, I earned my spot here. I didn't do that. I was alone in this country. And instead of embracing my beauty and my greatness, I shrank a little bit that day. And then two weeks later when two young men drove by and they're Jeep at the top down and they screamed at me, nigger get out of our neighborhood, I shrank back again. I had never heard that word before. I remember calling my dad on the phone, collect in Europe. That was probably about a $20 phone call. I called my dad and I said, daddy, these boys just called me a nigger and I'm not really sure what it means but it didn't feel good. And he was like, my dad is Norwegian and he didn't like to talk about sensitive stuff. So his only response was, nigger means a stupid black person and that's not you, click. That was not very helpful for me at 18 years old. But I allowed those words and they came about every two weeks something like that would happen and I allowed myself to shrink back and to shrink back and to shrink back and by May of my freshman year of college, just before my 19th birthday, I began to consider committing suicide. I went from being the second in my graduating class, student star athlete, to allowing the world to tell me who I could be and that I was not beautiful and that I did not belong. And then in May, right about now, of my freshman year of college, just as we were finishing our first year, I got a call from my parents. They said, Aaron, the Dutch government has just decided that we need to pay taxes. They're 40% of our salary and we can't afford to fly you home this summer. Can you just find us a place on campus? Now, understand I had never said a word to my parents about wanting to commit suicide. The only thing my dad knew is that I'd been called the N word once. He had no idea about the other things. And so here I am considering suicide, not knowing how to tell my parents. And so I say nothing to my parents. I said, you know what, I'll find a place on campus. And I became one of four girls on campus that summer, three foster kids and me. And I have never felt so alone in my life. And we all worked in this beautiful kitchen on campus where all the rich white women would come and we would serve them. We were not allowed to speak to them because we were called the help. We just brought their food to them. We were not allowed to speak at all. And so I would go every morning and work in the kitchen, bringing food to these rich white women to my dorm every day after lunch. And I would sleep on a bed that was not even made, literally directly on top of the mattress I never turned my light on. I was so depressed I just wanted to die. I didn't want to take pills and I didn't want to shoot myself. I prayed that God would take me, that I would just disappear. And then one day this little voice inside me said, Aaron, put your tennis shoes on. Go for a walk, leave this place. And so I did. I listened to that voice. Ladies, I will tell you there is a voice inside of you that will always speak truth. Do not shut that voice off. Listen to it. And so I listened to that voice and I went for a walk that day and I walked and I walked and I walked and I walked into a neighborhood that I'd never seen before. And I heard the sound of basketballs bouncing in the distance and like a true baller, I followed the sound of the basketballs. And right in the middle of this little tiny black neighborhood understand where my college was, it was all white, rich, rich, rich white people, there was a tiny little black neighborhood. And right in the middle of that neighborhood was a beautiful basketball court and a guy named Dr. Julius Irving, Dr. Jay had built a beautiful court right in the middle of this community. He owned Pepsi Cola at the time. He's a former NBA superstar and he'd built a beautiful court right in the middle and he happened to be playing there that day. Now I had no idea who he was because I had not grown up watching the NBA, but he was tall and he could dunk from a standing position under the hoop. He was tall and he saw me from a distance and they had nine guys on the court at the time and they said, hey, big girl! Now I was about 100 pounds heavier but the gentleman I told him, now do not ever call a girl big girl. I don't care how big she is. They said, hey, big girl, you look like a baller, come play. Now, first of all, I had never played street ball before, ever. I am from Europe. We do not play street ball. Everything is by the book, okay? Lots of rules. I was like, okay, I had no idea what I was about to get into that day. So I got to play street ball with a former NBA superstar and his two sons who at the time were playing in South America, but it wasn't that that would change my life. It was after the game and I was left on a court with six young men who were probably between the ages of 16 and 19 and I began to talk to these young men and I asked them questions about where they went to school and not one of them was still in school. Not one of them was planning to go back to school. Not one of them believed he was going to live to be 21 years old because the gang violence in Philadelphia was so bad that these young men, basketball was all they had and they knew that some day they were going to get shot and killed just like their brothers, just like their aunties and uncles. And I knew on the side of that court that day just as I was turning 19 years old I knew exactly what I had been created for. I knew that I was black and white for a reason. That I was European and American for a reason. I was an academic and an athlete for a reason. And I knew that I must do the very thing that I had promised that I would never do. I will never be a teacher like my parents. I will never be a teacher like my parents. I will... I must be a teacher. And I decided on that sideline that day how I was going to live my life. I was going to become a teacher. And that began a journey for me that would take me across the country. I started my career in North Philadelphia where I taught in a school of a thousand kids and 400 of them had no running water or electricity. They lived in those boarded up houses. Have you ever seen the drug bus where they board up the house? 400 of our students lived in those homes without electricity and running water. Every summer, kids would bake to death in their homes because the heat would get so bad and when you have no water and you have no air conditioning your body dies. And little kids would die from our school every summer and every winter they would freeze to death. And that was one of the biggest news at least one child. And I knew at 19 and then 20 and then 21 years old I knew how I wanted to make a difference. One kid at a time. And so I want to challenge you ladies to think about what is that thing in you that you know you've been called to that you've been running from? Because maybe somebody told you you're not good enough. Maybe your parents said what is that thing that just makes you happy? I'm going to challenge you to become so good at the thing that you love that someday someone will pay you to do that thing. And that must begin now. Do not wait until you're 18, 19, 20 to begin to invest in that thing that you've been called to. Did I know I was going to be a teacher at 9, 10 years old? No. But I knew that I was invested in greatness. And I began to study hard and 10 years old. What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to invest? Because I want to challenge you that if your dream is not good enough to die for, then it also is not good enough to live for. And I believe that's what's killing this country right now that you need to have a dream. Here's what I believe about each one of you in this room today. Every single one of you is beautiful. Every single one of you in this room is gifted and talented. Every single one of you. And I don't need to know you to know that. It's what you were destined to. And if you're willing to believe that about yourself, you will become it. And so I'm going to challenge you today to think about who you are. I want to read you my absolute favorite poem. It was made famous by a guy named Nelson Mandela. Anybody heard of him? I hope you all have. He was in school. He did not write it. He was actually a woman named Marianne Williamson who wrote this poem. But this is a poem that I read everywhere because it's what I need to remind myself but also my prayer for you. This is what I believe for each one of you in this room and I want you to hold on to this. This poem is called Our Deepest Fear. If you've watched Coach Carter or if you've watched Akilah and the Bee one of my favorite movies ever, I'm such a nerd. This poem is read in both of those films. Here it goes. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate or less than. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It isn't everyone. And as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. We are liberated from our own fears. Our presence automatically liberates others. And so ladies, what I would challenge you is that each one of you is brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous. And too many of us in the room don't believe that. I believe that is our number one job the adults who are in this room to reflect your beauty and talent. I'm going to close with a couple stories but before I do that I want to share with you three children. They are 19, 20 and 21 years old. Bang, bang, bang. Don't do that. Well it kind of part of it was by accident part of it was I was told all the way through college you will never have children. My doctor told me every time I went to see him you will never have children. You will never have children. So I got married and I said we'll never have children. And then six months later I got pregnant. And then I stopped nursing and my husband was like I think we're going to have children. And so we have two of our own biological children and then we had a little girl dropped off at our house when she was six. Her mother was one of the founding members of the Hilltop Crips one of the largest black gangs in the state of Washington. And her mother was having a really hard time with life and she needed a place to put her daughter that was safe and so she said Erin you're not teaching for the summer can you keep her for the summer and she never came back together. Imagine being six years old thinking we're just going to go hang with Auntie for a couple of minutes and then mother never coming back. And so she had to go to school with my kids at the beginning of her first grade year and my baby son who's not at all a baby now he's 19, 6 foot 4 300 pounds of not athletes. That's a lot of not athletes. I mean this kid is a monster kid but he came home from his first day of kindergarten he was already taller than everybody in his kindergarten class and he came home from his first day of kindergarten and he announced to the whole house. I have decided I'm going to the University of Washington and I'm getting a degree in computer technology. Five years old, yeah. We knew he was kind of special. He is doing computer technology by the way now at 19 years old so he called that. He called that at five years old. He's not going to the University of Washington though because another college gave him $50,000 so we said, guess where you going to school honey. But he lives but he came home from school that very first day and he was fired up about where he's going to college. And then we asked our older son, Malachi he was seven, where are you going to college? He said, well I can't decide if I want to go to Oregon state like daddy or Montana state like Uncle Jesse. I don't know, but one of those two and I'm going to become a teacher. Awesome, my kids know where they're going to college at five and seven. And then I turned to our niece and I said, so where are you going to go to college? And here's what she said and I will never forget her words and I remember exactly where I was sitting at the time. She said, I am never going to college because my mom had never finished anything and she taught me that black people don't go to college and you're just a white lady with brown skin. Six years old. Six years old. And I will tell you those words by a six year old were like a punch in my stomach. I had to actually walk away and go into my bedroom and cry and by the way my husband is a big ex football player and black man by the way just in case you were curious. He's the little brother of Jesse Jones Cairo News. Okay some of you know who that is. Anyway but my daughter said these words and it felt as if she just shoved a knife into my heart because I'll be really honest with you as a black girl raised by white people as a young person I really struggled with who am I? I have invested my whole adult life and students of color lived in black neighborhoods for much of my adult life and when she said those words it again pushed at this nerve these questions that I had about my own identity and I was crushed in that moment and I went to my bedroom and I cried for a while and it was that fire that rose up after the tears. I said if a six year old can already decide what she can't do then as a teacher I have so much more work to do and I began to fight for young people. I began to fight to turn the tide for her. My daughter today is just about to finish her sophomore year of college and she is now my daughter because three years later her mother overdosed and died. Her dad will get out of prison this year after 27 years and here's what I would say to you ladies some of you have stories like that some of you have brokenness in your story and your beginnings my daughter has a lot of reasons to not be successful and yet she is she has chosen to push into her greatness she has chosen to not allow the loss to destroy her and so some of you out there have also experienced those broken places you've been wounded somehow you've been neglected you've lost parents you have a parent who's incarcerated you have a parent who's on drugs who's an alcoholic, who's a gambler here's what I would say to you ladies do not allow those things to be excuses for why you can't be great again your beginning does not have to determine your ending my daughter has now performed in New York she's an actress and at 17 years old she won an award here in Seattle and got to go perform in New York at 17 what happens with your parents doesn't have to determine where you end up as a young person it was life easy for her, no for my three kids she struggles more than any of them but I will tell you she's one of the most beautiful people that I know she is an overcomer she has made a choice not to be a victim but to be a victor to overcome and that's your opportunity today as you listen to speakers today as you get to see other powerful women don't try to do us don't try to be us what's great from us is that each one of us has been through struggles every last one of us has been through struggles and here's what I will promise more struggles are to come greatness is not about not encountering struggle greatness is about what do you do to overcome that struggle there's something beautiful about being a woman I've been playing basketball with men for the last 20 years and one of the challenges sometimes for us as women is we feel like we gotta be like men in order to be great and I would say to you embrace your woman embrace the fact that you are beautiful and you're a nurturer embrace that we don't have to become like men to be great we need to become our version of our best self I'm gonna close with another quote and then I will stick around for a little bit after I am done if any of you want to speak to me and Hailey Gage I wanna honor my buddy today so Hailey can you stand up for a second this is Hailey Gage and Hailey is my traveling partner for today and she has business cards so if you are interested in getting my information she has business cards for me if you're interested in getting that information and I love sharing with young people if I can be an encouragement to you if I can be in any way I do have a TED talk so I have a talk that you can get to from my website if you're interested if you need that day you're having a hard day we all have them sometimes I have to listen to my own TED talk okay but if you're having a hard day if I can be an encouragement to you I will be here's my last poem to you dear women too smart, too beautiful, too strong too much of something that makes a man feel like less of a man which will start making you feel like you have to be less of a woman the biggest mistake you can make is removing jewels from your crown to make it easier for a man to carry when this happens I need you to understand you do not need a smaller crown you need a man with bigger hands and so again much like the poem I read before do not shrink so that other people will feel secure around you rise up, young ladies rise up I know when I look out over a crowd of this size there are some of you who've been abused some of you who've been assaulted I know that because the facts are pretty clear and I would say to you today rise up, young women whatever it is that's been trying to break you do not let it fall there is beauty inside of you that is waiting to explode out of you let it explode be beautiful brilliant, gorgeous and talented thank you