 Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us today. We are thrilled to talk with will. I am seven-time Grammy Award winner musician Superstar as we know but today we're talking about an insight an idea of a different sort with will good to see you will Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you Well, you have started a foundation years ago. You have focused on Education as it relates to young people I want to ask you about the foundation and what else you're doing, but first why is education so important to you? I was born and raised in east Los Angeles A part of east Los Angeles called Boyle Heights And it's a pretty poor neighborhood riddled with gangs and All the things that come with gang activity drugs drive by a lot of my friends are dead in prison and Some of them moved out and have families but I was uh Rescued because I was a part of a magnet program ever since I was seven years old I went to Brentwood science magnet part of every junior high school in pacific palisades and was blessed with a great education And now things are different than they were when I was seven years old to 18 going to school You know the world's change and technology is getting smarter and smarter and smarter Um, and the reason why I want to focus on education In the ghetto that I come from kid in our kids building robots making apps Creating maps on esri gis maps is because you know Right adjacent to every ghetto a couple of miles away is a prison and prison is big business Um, it's private and there is no private sector for education doesn't really exist So you want to combat business with business So you want to get these kids equipped and skilled around the biggest thing in the world right now and that's technology So they can you know boycott those prisons by never going there by putting their mind in things that you know allow people to connect and Live fruitful full lives via the technology that they bring to market like imagine if what's app came from watts What if twitter came from Boyle Heights and stayed in Boyle Heights? Like so that that's the vision and the goal Um, and what I try to encourage our kids to take an interest in I want to get to the performance and what you've seen already and what you've achieved in a minute because the numbers are Pretty extraordinary and I know the audience wants to know that but first let's zero in on some of the things You just said you said robots you said teaching these young people things that they didn't know before Why did you choose robotics? Why did you choose those specific things for these kids? Do you think that's where the growth and jobs are of tomorrow? Why robotics? um, so There's a movie called waiting for superman And I mean it talks about the american education system more importantly Roosevelt was highlighted in that movie and my mom went to roosevelt And uh and the reason why that movie hurt me is because the title was waiting for superman It's not waiting for congress. They're not waiting for like Obama It said waiting for a superman And this guy is not a real guy and they're waiting for a fictitious character to solve real problems So and then I went out and met people like dean came in and lorraine jobs and jack dangerman Who are like superheroes to me and jack and dean came in has a program called first robotics And when I saw it I'm like wow that can be in my neighborhood. How much is the cost for that program? So then I found out about how much it costs So I use some of my money to bring robotics into my neighborhood So it's not when when you say robotics, they're not building like humanoid robots They're building like, you know machines that can do autonomous tasks and um, and it's engineering really right? a cooler tangible way of saying, you know electrical engineering and computer science um Same kind of uh, you know rovers that are on mars are the kind of things that these guys are building And when you're when you're doing first robotics competitions. So now our kids compete every year in st. louis Building robots and uh, there was one girl named synthia. She was like, you know willy because I come from all mexican neighborhood And she was like, you know willy I was always ashamed of my father because he like was staying outside in the corners to get jobs to go out and Fix people's houses and I was always ashamed that he had school drivers and things like that a building because everyone else My friends their fathers had like regular jobs, you know Because you know, we're illegal But now when I built my robot For the competition my dad helped me build my robot Right, he helped me build it and I appreciated that my dad can make things with his hands And he was so he was more skilled than the the um the robotics mentor that we had brought to help the kids Build the robot to compete. So it really put, you know, father teacher You know child and created this this triangle of uh, you know participation and encouragement and appreciation Um, and it really changed the grade point average and the kids attendance and and the other school program And and through your fame and popularity You've been able to connect the dots because the children of yesterday didn't grow up saying I want to be an engineer. They grew up saying I want to be a musician. I want to be a fireman I want to be something that perhaps may not have yielded the success from things like robotics Yeah, so if you take like Technology as a whole if you take hardware software operating systems telcos and you couple them all up That's like a multi-trillion dollar industry. It's like super big. It's the biggest thing on the planet And you would think it being so big that kids will wake up every morning and say ma'am trying to be like michael dell Trying to get my michael dell on And michael dell is awesome like think about that Bill Gates is awesome steve jobs is like awesome awesome So why isn't that it's not the first thing on their minds? And I think you know as a as a as a culture media music Popular culture we need to start celebrating Today's rock stars Right the Beatles to me is Facebook Rolling Stones is google There's new rock and roll stars in in popular culture and we need to start You know aiming our youth to dream down that avenue When did it click for you? I mean you talked a minute ago about growing up and seeing some of the kids around you Going to jail doing doing the wrong things What was it that? Triggered something inside of you that said that's wrong and I want to go this way So my best friend his name is apple um And he's from the philippines and he came to america in 1989 And he was adopted by a guy by the name of joe bin hudgens and the program was called pearl s buck foundation And apple came from the philippines didn't know any english And he came to my ghetto and was like i want to live here. I was like you want to live here? And he was like no I do he was like The way he could communicate he was like I come from a village called pumpanga angela city And I pump water out the ground we wash our clothes on rocks in the river To me this paradise. I was like don't it's not paradise here So that friendship That's the guy I started black eyed peas with That friendship of like two odd couples. There was a tv show called a perfect strangers with cousin larry and belky And I was like cousin larry. He was belky and uh that friendship You know just opened my mind up to like one day I want to go to the philippines because my best friends from the philippines And I stopped hanging out with the kids in the neighborhood. It was like apple changed my life Because I was hanging out on the streets one day um, you know A friend of mine came and said, um I don't want to say his name, but uh Got shot in the face. He's dead. I remember that like if it was yesterday A walk by not a drive by they walked Right, I knew it were teenagers like wow And but apple changed my life that guy It changed my life and we started something called the black eyed peas and it took us around the world And that's the reason why philanthropy is a part of our dna Because if I didn't meet apple philanthropy is what brought us together joe ben huggins changed our lives by You know those programs on tv just five since day apple's one of those kids Yeah, mr. Huggins gave apple five since a day and then adopted him and brought him to america And the first After he got off the airplane he came to my house And my uncle was homeless and he hung out with mr. Huggins at a bar and was sleeping on his couch And like what is mr. Huggins is an awesome guy? To let my uncle sleep on his couch and my mom babysat apple And we we started a group So philanthropy is something that i'm obligated to do And so is apple a guy is like an awesome dude So somebody helped you and now you're helping so many others Everybody just needs an opportunity to get a shot to actually move the needle in their own life Tell us about when you first started the group and how tough it was you knew you had real talent So you started this group black eyed peas. Yeah, so there was a teacher by the name of miss montez and she uh used to encourage me to You know dance and perform in uh recess or and lunch in her classroom And when you have encouragement from your teachers the mr. Right william that was great You know That goes a long way And um when the gang members in the neighborhood were like hey willie rap homes That kind of stuff changed my life Because they could have said hey willie hold these drugs homes They could have said hey willie hold this gun homes They were like hey willie rap Encouragement like when you got to encourage kids Um, it goes a long way. So when we started black eyed peas We knew that we had something because the people that surrounded us, you know They they gave us a nudge of Do it for us and um, we had a bond of A band of you know misfits that played musicians the instruments were poets Um, and if I had to do it all over again If we if I was 15 right now 2015 it wouldn't just be musicians and poets. It would be coders There'll be developers Right, and that's why I'm really encouraging these kids not like when they say I want to do music now, you know You want to do you want to create? Music platforms You can always do music But you create your own instruments nowadays Right nowadays, there's there's not even the sky's the limit saying the sky's the limits limiting Right, there's It's infinite. Yeah Well, when was it that you figured out? Okay, I've got this talent I'm popular and I could actually use this to help a lot of people On the issues that really matter when you were going along in your career and you Started to see your music really resonating with people. Um One day, uh We were in Africa And I was really excited to go to Africa to perform We were on stage and I looked out in the audience I'm like, we're the Africans Because we were we were in Cape Town I'm like, where's everybody at? I really thought I was gonna see like where were they from You know, it was just they're Africans in Cape Town. I was like, we're all the black people at And so then they said, uh, your ticket price is high Because most of the people that you thought were gonna show up couldn't afford your ticket So then We did interview on tv and in my heart I knew if I were to ask management to come back and do a free concert We would never do that So I went on tv and said we're gonna come back to Africa do a free concert So people could come see us And by doing that forced the issue for us to return back to Africa and do a free concert Then we had people from Sueto and everyone come to our show And then my birthday hit 2005 My birthday, they said, what do you want to do for your birthday? Let's party. I was like, nah, I want to go to Bandaiache So I went and did tsunami relief on my birthday All right, and I noticed that all the time the natural disaster happens They call musicians to raise awareness And I realized that there's a natural disaster that happens all the time in the hood Right, it's a tsunami of neglect It's an earthquake of no opportunity And so I wanted to use the platform to address things that are happening in my own neighborhood that shake it every day You know Because we all they call us to sell products. They call us to raise money And raise issues and then we ignore the day to day ones You know, no education lack of opportunity No encouragement Females are really not a part of the conversation when it comes to tech Little to no tech female tech entrepreneurs So hanging out with Marissa today from Yahoo that she's like a superwoman to me She's like an awesome force And more more females I wish one day she could mentor Cynthia because that girl Cynthia is a promising little superstar in my after school program So you're teaching kids code. You're teaching kids robotics. What kind of uh performance have you seen? These numbers are extraordinary in terms of what you've seen in a short period of time. Well, so I don't I don't mean disrespect by mimicking the accent. It's just that when I was little I talked like that And my accent has changed because where I traveled but like where I'm from, you know, there's one little girl. She was like, you know, really like Really, you know, I never really thought like going to school really made anything because like There's people in the neighborhood that are already they're making money. I was like, but you don't want to make quick money quick money means you're gonna The results are not good Trust me. Just take your time I know the peer pressure is hard. So these kids were like failing beyond failing like 1.2s And in lower like fs fs fs fs fs Attendance like a week out of the year. They were ditch like crazy So these kids I started with 60 now have 300 And a waiting list they went from having 1.2s now they have 3.4s and 4.0s Some of our kids are going to go to mit and you see your Where else And and and we work with good good folks. It's not just me. It's a cocktail. So it's college track learning jobs. Thank you so much for You know opening opening up your whole program to come to Southern california because Initially, they were just in the valley and I saw her program I was like, I need college track in my neighborhood But more importantly, I don't want to just send kids from the hood to college And when they graduate, they just have debt. That's the worst thing to do So can you be open to coupling your college track with a robotics program? So I want to take college track and couple it with first robotics And then I met jack dangerman who has gis maps and I asked him if I could use his maps for my classroom So jack said, what would your kids possibly do with my maps? I'm b2b You know, we don't even have a consumer facing product. These are serious tools So I look at my kids as sensors. I can't ask your maps how many drive-bys happened in the past four months Or how many helicopter chasings or pursuits happen Look at our kids as sensors to provide more information and data for your maps. Teach them how to build maps So we did that in my after school program And it started off as a case study and this year the white house jack dangerman pledged 1 billion dollars in gis maps for k-12 Kids across america, but that that program is what was the case study for that. So they build maps. They they write apps One of our partners when I do hackathon. I was like, no, you can't use word hackathon And they were like, why I was like, no, you can't use hackathon to kids who would otherwise be in gangs You don't use the word hack You use apathons or opportunity building Let's get rid of the hacking word If you're a bank, you don't want to have a freaking hackathon. I don't want my money in your bank. You can hackathons So our kids build apps They write maps they build robots every year they go to china for extruding exchange program with state department And all these programs cost money And when I don't raise money, I gotta work it out Which I don't mind doing because the results are awesome and um You know, I'm really proud of the people like synthia discipline in themselves and you know Fighting through the pure pressure because it could be kind of geeky in the hood If you're you know building robots and stuff, but this is still in that ghetto I mean, this is still in your neighborhood. How do you make this bigger? um scaling it um partnering up with folks that Have deeper pockets, but I got tight jeans my pockets ain't that deep And you've you're using a lot of money in those pockets already Yeah, so have you been able to raise awareness raise funds from the elite group that's here in davos this week? Yes, and no because uh there's a lot of uh, it's my first time here And I would rather meet folks that have programs That I could bring to my neighborhood than have to peddle cash from people I don't feel comfortable like hey help me out with what i'm doing. I like to see folks Um what I've been doing up here was like wow, that's a nice program Can I bring that to my school and then figure out how to fund it? But I just don't feel comfortable like uh going around asking people for money I didn't I didn't get here doing that So if if people see what we're doing and want to help out that's great But if you have programs that our kids could benefit from that's even greater If you could help us scale it and take it from Boyle Heights to other cities like fifth ward, mississippi more importantly papanga apple Why can't why does this just have to stay in america could go to philippines too? so But what we're doing there is something that could be you know Adopted and ported out to other cities. We know the metrics. We know how much it costs for each one of those programs Um and first robotics is an amazing program. So is college track So this isn't my stuff But the idea is a couple is you know Project-based learning right because what I notice is you know if you ask have a have a um 11 year old niece Like hey maranna. What do you do for fourth period? Do you guys like code? now So you guys aren't coding in fourth period. I remember when fourth period I took wood class I don't know what that wood class killed gave me What did you do in wood class? I used to make medallions and stuff. Okay But I'm just saying like you would think as big as technology is Every fourth period kids are coding It's not I don't get it. I don't make any sense to me at all That kids aren't taking ios microsoft android mandatory I don't I don't get it. You would think that's what it would be. So education reform should be on everyone's You know to do less no matter what country you're from and it's a cycle because if you if you have a shot to do well And learn this kind of stuff at a young age Then it happens in the next school and the next school and the college and the next school Well, you know, so dean came in one day. I was in london and he calls me up and he says Well, I am you know get her right now. I'm at the royal academy of engineering I got everybody here with noble prize winners. If you know dean came in that's how he's really excited god He's developed a lot of cool stuff. You need to come here right now. So I went there and then they said, um, You know, I I was to speak before dean so they announced me and everyone started chuckling ha ha ha And I was like wow, I'm embarrassed. I don't even know what to say people were chuckling like what is he doing here? and so I said, you know It's funny that i'm here But what's funny is that my industry doesn't have a shortage of singers and if I was playing football There's no shortage of football players if I was an actor an actress There's no shortage of actors and actresses There's no shortage of baseball players and football basketball players and every single junior high school in high school There's a football field basketball court and a baseball field and only three companies benefit from that kind of skill set That's nba, nfl, fifa, right those kind of things Right, there is a shortage of engineers and it's not my fault And that's not funny But it is kind of funny because if I was to show up at a nfl event There wouldn't be chuckles. I'm here to help Anything I can do to encourage kids to become engineers So some engineer doesn't make an engineering app to where we never need an engineer again That's the thing that we need to worry about is when the engineer the lack of it becomes an application right Because people creating awesome things like zaha hadid is an amazing woman And the building that she the buildings that she make her and her team are amazing and I would hate to see a day where that is just an application All right, and it may sound funny, but that's not far out that You know advance, you know architecture is just going to be some Application or you do it on your laptop or your tablet or your watch If you would have told me if I would have told quincy jones in 1989 I'm going to make music on a tablet and share it out to 100 million people at once People like get out of here. This is impossible Now you make music on a tablet because And and the same thing could happen to engineering So you want to encourage kids to you know be electrical engineers and scientists and technicians And I'm saying that as a musician you know and and doing all I can to do to To change that In in popular culture. So if you were starting out right now would you Start and learn code and go a different route than music The question is am I learning code right now? And you are yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so in my in my company. I am plus there's like I adopted a company out of Bangalore, India and A lot of the folks that I work with are teaching me how to code and Folks at MIT gave me They accepted me to be a MIT student. Well, I don't have time to go but But uh, you can teach but I really wanted You know I want to put my work in Because I think it's a great place to create where are the teachers and sort of the leaders At the foundation come from how did you get the talent to actually teach these students code and robotics and such Okay, so when you for families out there, I encourage you to get your kid Into first robotics and if you don't have first robotics Around your neighborhood apply for one And what first robotics comes mentors? So we We have the the benefit of being mentored by folks from NASA Leland melvin and a bunch of folks come and mentor our kids and it's a it's an awesome program So the program itself provides the tutorial and encouragement with mentors and stuff like that And then we have people like Enrique Legaspi and the local folks that We teach the teachers as well What's been the hardest thing in terms of breaking through A certain mentality In these tough neighborhoods getting to a child getting to a young person to make them believe that in fact It doesn't have to be this way There's always like a couple of kids that are open-minded and you have to be very Strategic is a bad word for what You have to be strategic on the first ones you adopt so they could go out and spread the word But if we could start at nine years old the reason why I say nine years old because gangs are starting at 10 years old Like you you got to know your competition And the people that are competing for For your kids gangs are really sophisticated And so you got to compete with those That that mentality so you want to get the kids at nine years old Even younger. So at first robotics, there's nine year old building robots out of Legos. It's an awesome program first And it's so awesome. Yeah, you could do your own thing But why why waste all that time when you can adopt and apply And couple things that probably would never intended on being coupled together so as we start as early as 13 And with more capital and and support we could go as young as eight Because what's happening in inter cities is uh It's sad the things that are happening. And then there's the I am college track Talk to us about that how kids move through the foundation as they get older to learn More and more. Yeah, so college track is um Lorraine job started college track and um, it's a great program to get kids on track to go to college And so you they get their grades up. It's um, a lot of tutoring and mentoring Socializing and communicating with them in a friend in a friendly kind of way Where you know that the person there is not just there for because they're getting paid So the mentors and the uh, the teachers that we have at the after-school program at college track is an amazing thing But I was concerned if the only thing they were doing is going to college And if there was in any skill set where they can become entrepreneurs And create jobs on their own Right, that's the worst. That's the last thing I want to do is to get a kid to go to college And then they just have debt They're better off not going to college if that was the case So we have a great cocktail to where they go to college They apply themselves and the result is a skill set to where they there's a job waiting for them right away Or they have the ability to create their own jobs And have a career Where does the I am come from I am will I am college had to come up with that Uh, just my name is William That's it. That's where the goddess is Yeah, I know I just it just um, it became a way for me to Not have to worry about naming something and just say I am scholarship Um Or I am scholars Then I had a I launched a program on Oprah called I am home Where one day I got a dj gig and paid a lot of money And I was up there a dj and Like wow, I'm playing other people's music And they just paid me a shitload of money And so I told my my folks I'm like, hey, do you guys mind like You know not commissioning this money so I could Give it away on Oprah to kids who go to school And so Oprah let me um start my scholarship program by giving away my dj money And then the next year we did the same thing again So I gave the money away and started a mortgage program And we called it I am home where we would you know buy out people from Losing their home by taking over their um their foreclosure um and paying off their Their their their bills so they could keep their Their home like it was sad that they were losing their home because they couldn't pay You know $20,000 because they lost their job So I'm like I asked my mom hey ma do you mind if I do this is everybody okay in the family willy everybody's okay I don't mind if that's what you want to do with your money. It's your money So I did that did that home the mark that I am home And then from there I just wanted to continue to do more And utilizing my money and Ron Conway mark benioff let me go to their homes and and talk about what we were doing to Sustain the activities that I started myself And mark mark has been a champion and helped me do those kind of things And and what has been the biggest change in the music business that you've seen as you have risen Oh, so 2005 there was uh So 2004 when we released wears of love there was tower record sam goodie Who was uh warehouse? there was uh all those hmb's and then 2005 came around and hmb Sam goodie and warehouse closed And then 2008 Tower records closed And then 2010 version megastore closed And everything was on itunes And what that means is our industry used to sell hardware Right rca started this whole thing called the record industry by When rca purchased victor's talking machine Rca was also radio rca's ntsc technology for visuals on tv or pal if you're in europe Rca was an awesome company and we were software which is music and hardware Which is the appliance that you hear it on but then we they stopped caring about the hardware When the cd was introduced by phillips and the amount of money the record industry was making hand over Over and over again with cds because everybody had to then rebuy all the stuff they had on vinyl and cd To work to the point where they stifled anything that came after The cd like the mini discs stored more information, but for some reason didn't take off um, and then File sharing happened and the music industry instead of creating a platform that was about data Right, so here we are with twitter facebook. What's that? Nobody had to pay anything for it for some reason them like it's worth a lot of money Part of my language and i'm sorry for cursing But from the music industry a lot of people feel that way How can something be worth billions of dollars and nobody ever exchanged a dollar? When our industry is always about selling selling selling When in theory now that you look back what we should have done was create a platform that was about sharing and listening and owning the platform Data so our industry Was ran by folks that didn't see tomorrow And now our music our software is selling other people's hardware I have a new song on itunes go download it for nine nine cents The artist doesn't really get that much money in that 99 cents So i got a feeling it's still one of the number one downloaded songs on itunes so mastercard Visa and american express take their percentage apple takes their 30 The record industry takes their percentage and we get our percent from their percent. What does will i am get? We get a percent from their percent And when you add it's like pennies It's pennies to every download And then there's beats So in beats we got smart and realized that we should be in the hardware business And so And it shows you that when you couple content and hardware Um Software and hardware you do amazing things and you're really selling something And so music if you're just making music you're not selling anything You're just allowing other people to sell things around your music And then you're waiting for a licensing deal where your music is licensed to sell somebody else's product Or publishing is uh, there's always king So publishing will You know doesn't hasn't really You know failing and falling apart So that's re one of the reasons why we at i plus are making smart fashion product Because the intersection of fashion and technology we haven't seen that yet and it's coming around the corner really fast Is that like the watch you have on yeah, so we created this device here I found it and funded the company back three years ago and we create um fashion Um technology and we base it off of Chanel cuff or a fendi bangle or a gucci bracelet And you make phone calls without the use of a phone SMSes full emails and responding composing Instagram facebook twitter music Uh quantifying yourself From all the phones you have now that all the watches that people are coming out with now Require a phone for them to be functional So we were like We don't sell phones So why am I going to tell you to you know buy my device to talk to a phone? I just want people to be able to be out there and look fresh and connect Which brings you right back to coding robotics and education will i am musician entrepreneur and philanthropist