 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori and this is Beyond the Lines. We are broadcasting live from the beautiful Think Tech Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. Today's special guest is an educator, author, the co-founder of Seeds of Peace, and she is the famous sister of our former President Barack Obama. She is truly an extraordinary woman who is also helping to advance the objectives of her brother's Obama Foundation. She is Dr. Maya Sutoro-ing, and today we are going Beyond the First Family. Maya, great to have you here today. So good to be here, thank you. I know that you were born in Indonesia. I was. Can you tell me about your early life? Yes, my mother, our mother, was a woman who was a pioneer in microfinance, and she worked with cottage industries and helped to create small businesses that allowed particularly women to contribute to their families and communities and to keep the economy resilient. So we went all over Asia in particular, and I was mostly living in Indonesia in my childhood and got to spend time with a wide array of communities and cultures elsewhere in Southeast Asia. I was homeschooled by our mother until middle school and found that learning moved well beyond the lines of prescriptive education and beyond the classroom walls. Wow, great. And when did you come to Hawaii, and when did you start Punahou School? We came to Hawaii when I was 14, and I started then, it was 1984. Nice. And then what colleges did you end up going to? So I spent a couple of years at Barnard in New York City. I got my master's in NYU in New York City and my PhD here at Hawaii. Nice. And your husband is Conrad, and you have two beautiful daughters, Suheila and Savita. Can you tell me what activities they're interested in now? Well, it's wonderful to see them kind of outgrowing me. Suheila is not only several inches taller than me, but at the age of 14, she has interests and capacities that stretch beyond that which I've given to her. And I think the wonderful thing about being a mother to these girls is that I'm constantly learning from them. They are my biggest teachers. And it's a pleasure to see them growing into compassionate, thoughtful, service-oriented individuals, and those are my non-negotiables. My youngest has green-blue hair, you know, obviously I don't much care what color your hair is, but she is creative and deeply loving, and they allow me to think about how my commitment to young people is about nurturing a world in which they will be safe and recognized, valued and fortified. And your mom sounds like she was an amazing woman, and you actually wrote a book about Suheila and your mom. Can you tell me about that? Yes. Sadly, our mother died nine years before Suheila was born. I came across, when I was pregnant with Suheila, two boxes of books and toys, and mom had written across the top of one of them for Maya's children, so that made me so sad, but it also made me realize the great gifts that I had been given by this extraordinary woman, and it allowed me to really think about what she gave to me that I would want to pass on to my daughter, but also what stories about her I could share so that the lessons that she imparted would have meaning to my daughter, and so this book is an effort to imagine an evening spent between my mother and my daughter, and so she comes down and invites Suheila up to the moon, a space that is healing, and mom really did love the moon. She said that everywhere you go, the moon is the same, and so it was for her a connecting force that governed the tides and allowed us all to be and feel together. So the book is sort of a peace education book about the need to see things from other perspectives, about the need to be integrated and to see our future and the future of others and to be compassionate and forgiving, and to recognize the strength of young people as well. I think the book is absolutely brilliant. I love the book. Every child in the world needs to have that book. Thank you. And your brother, your famous brother, but I also say that you're the famous sister. I don't know about that. Sounds like you both are very close. How's your relationship with him? Well, it's good, because he's such a good man, and I really think about leadership, you know, with him as an example, being about remaining grounded in your story, in your roots, but also connecting to so many people far and wide, so I think he's a wonderful international leader. For instance, I think that he is really focused now, even post-presidency, on building out civic engagement, on identifying other leaders. So it's a sort of generous leadership. It's not only democratic, but it's about uplifting others and engaging in transformative leadership that allows for people at the grassroots level, as well as the governmental level, to engage all of their skills and talents. So I'm very fortunate to have him as a brother and as an uncle to my daughters, but also I'm grateful now to be able to work with the Obama Foundation as a consultant to help to build the Asia-Pacific Leadership Program, which is about identifying leaders in the Asia-Pacific who have done a lot, but need perhaps support through wraparound mentorship and innovation and also philanthropy to take their projects to the next level. So these are leaders who are committed to the region, who are embedded. They are people who have boots on the ground, who are active and fully optimistic, but also in possession of strong awareness of the challenges of the region and who are working to prioritize and utilize all of the resources of the region, which are abundant. And they're committed to working with one another as well. So we had a wonderful convening in January that brought 21 leaders from all over the region together to do leadership development, futures thinking around issues like the intersection of climate and peace and also design thinking to help us design the future of programming that connected with high school leadership programs and did Huakai to get a strong sense of root and host culture and they fell in love with Hawaii. And it was a wonderful beginning. No, that sounded like it was a great, great convention. And and the Obama Foundation is just absolutely amazing. But I also have to interject there and say that your brother is lucky to have a great sister like you. Oh, thank you. Now, Maya, I want to ask you, how was your experience speaking in front of the Democratic National Convention? I mean, it was it was obviously awesome. And the in the original sense of that word. I think that the convention was one of the spaces where you felt the full energy and force of and wonder and power of the American people. And my hope is that we feel that again soon. We've got, I think, what promises to be a very interesting race in 2020. But what became clear to me at the convention and during the campaign beforehand is that there is so much creativity. There is so much loving kindness. There's so much determination and strength in leaders all over this country. Leaders who are unseen very often unsung too often. And really, it helps me to fall in love with this country and all that it promises and provides to the world and to its citizens when it is at its best. And so I want everyone to get involved and to really participate to become civically engaged, not only to vote, but also to think about building actions that will help us to be and feel strong and benevolent and connected with one another. Maya, I've always been curious about this. When your brother first won the presidency, what was it like for you walking into the White House for the first time? Well, as a U.S. history teacher, I was quite moved by the experience being able to participate in such intimate ways into bear witness to the way that government works in this country was instructive. And it was powerful. I think that what you do see is that the White House is a place that has the mark and the story of so many. It's wonderful that people get to take tours of the lower floor and that this is a house that does belong to the people. And I thought that that was important symbolically. And it was a beautiful space. And there is an opportunity to really see now, as I look back, that my brother, who is no longer there, that he did make an impact that was quite profound in terms of, in my view, helping to increase human rights and civil rights and expectations and to empower voices that didn't feel powerful. And I remember the White House being lit up with the rainbow, for instance. And at various times, the house, I think, it reflects not just the occupants, in other words, although they leave their mark, but it also reflects the will of this nation. How has your brother changed through the years? Have you seen any change in him? No, I've quite frequently said that he remains true to himself. He is really unchanged in his demeanor, in his relationships, in the things that matter to him, in his work. I think that, of course, he has learned a lot about the world, and he has developed a very strong and unique commitment to thinking about what he has the power to do moving forward. So he's writing his book, and in it, we'll get a chance to see his vision and his experience. But also in the foundation, there is still an ongoing commitment to the kind of leadership that he developed and honed over the years. Yeah. No, and so I have a question, Maya. How do you do to keep him humble and grounded? What do you do as a sister to help him in that way? Well, again, I think he is just sort of naturally grounded. I don't know about humble, but he's grounded. He has a strong sense of connection to his past, to the people who know him and love him. He has a strong sense of loyalty and commitment to the communities he continues to serve. So I don't have to do that. That's what I will say is that through the relationship that we have, I think I present sort of continuity and a safe space for him to receive love and to be reminded of who he was before he became famous and to, I don't know if I can really impact his humility. You have to have a healthy ego to run for president. But I think that I helped him to remember what is important and who he is. Yeah. No, those are great insights there. Maya, we're going to take a quick break. And then when we come back, I want to talk to you about your amazing seeds of peace organization. All right, sounds good. You are watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest, Dr. Maya Soutoro-ing. We will be back in a quick minute. Hey, Aloha, and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii Studios. I'm Andrew Lang, the host of Security Matters Hawaii. I'm airing here every Tuesday at 10 AM Hawaii time. And I'm trying to bring this community information, security information specifically, that will help you live a safer life, help keep our community safer, and help keep our businesses safer. So join me, because Security Matters, Aloha. Aloha, I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My special guest today is the extraordinary Dr. Maya Satoro-Yng, and today we are going beyond the first family. Maya, you're a co-founder of that incredible organization called Seeds of Peace. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, Kari Yorosevic, who's an early childhood and family expert, she and I co-founded Seeds of Peace a few years ago to help rebrand peace and to expand to schools and to the community. And the idea is to bring together educators, family, and community leaders in a 360 approach, and to work on the algorithm of developing peace within, peace between, and peace and service to the community. And so our hope is that by doing these workshops that involve three part series where not only do participants hear from extraordinary organizations, initiatives, nonprofits, educators, and youth in the community, but also develop action plans that all of the participants also present. I can see that in these efforts that people feel empowered to do more, so families feel empowered to contribute to the schools, schools feel empowered to connect to the community, community leaders give richly to the schools and offer space for families to be healthy and happy together. So there is a sense of bridge building, of course, but also of individual empowerment so that each person understands that there is so much that we can individually, as well as collectively do to begin activating the resilience of our communities and through the utilization of the incredible resources that we have. So it's a real strength-based approach. And it's about seeing pieces action oriented about our daily commitments to one another. So our action plans may involve mural building for an artist that creates a community space or prosecutor's office creating opportunities for restorative practices or children authoring books together in the first grade on their definitions of peace. So they're really a wide variety of action plans. Well, knowing you, you have a passion for peace. I mean, it's amazing your passion. How did you get that passion? Did you have some experience that kinda guided you in this way? So I think that for me, there were both negative and positive experiences that guided me when I was young. I did experience some of the discrimination. I witnessed in communities where many people were poor and underrepresented and under resourced. I also saw people who were violent towards one another even though they were good people who discriminated against Chinese, for instance, in Indonesia because they had scapegoated Chinese people and thought that Indonesian Chinese were responsible for their economic problems or that sort of thing. And so what became clear to me was that we need to prioritize the work of mining our own interiors of reflection, of remembering who we are at our best and making sure that we hold one another accountable so that requires a development of compassion and we need to understand each other's stories and so forth. And so the positive work of peace building that I witnessed was probably in New York working in schools that were community oriented where I could see that together a community could build a space could transform abandoned lots into community gardens and could create both safety and greater sense of social justice and inclusion, that sort of thing. So I really started thinking in New York about the work of schooling as being about the humanizing potential that comes from learning and growth and trying to move away from the memorization of discrete facts to be regurgitated and then quickly forgotten and into education that is about meaningful and purposeful connection and action and contribution to community. And so that for me is a definition of peace. It's really about, it's about community, it's about connection and it's about having a growth mindset so that each of us can contribute to human rights and social justice and environmental justice and we can negotiate and feel compassion for one another and we can feel also a sense of personal peace. And empathy as well. Yeah, so it's so everyone's definition is different which is why there are innumerable pathways and why the work is prevalent and never done. Yeah, Maya, what's an important lesson you've learned in your life so far? So one of the lessons that I've learned and this is related to my purpose as a peace builder in this idea of looking at peace again, rebranding it as being very pragmatic and is that people who are perhaps in positions of conflict are just not aware of one another's universal needs but that when we become aware of the fact that each of us really at any given moment is just searching for love or understanding or a sense of hope or a sense of family or safety that we can really be generous with one another. One of the ways that I learned this was by looking at the online presence of a woman who was being very harsh with me and my family but I could see that she had a lot of love for her children and for her pets and I recognized the human being in her and began to see that she was doing the best that she could with the information she had and that it's important to become aware of one another's needs so that we can think about how we can contribute to how I can make her feels safer and heard that for instance. Yeah, totally. And Maya, I wanna ask you who inspires you? Is there someone or some people that inspires you? So historically I guess the people who are committed to nonviolent social change are the most inspiring. You know, everyone thinks about Gandhi King and here Lilo Kalani but there are so many others who are sort of unsung or lesser known when I was in India a couple of months ago I had the chance to work with the United States Institute of Peace, I'm on their advisory council and I worked with a group called Generation Change. It's a group of young leaders from conflict spaces. So these are young leaders from Myanmar, from Afghanistan, from Syria, from Congo, from all of these different countries all over the world and every day they do this work of championing democracy or helping to create greater inclusion or healing people's traumas and educating the future generation and they do it in very difficult circumstances with a lot of tension and few resources and they were really inspiring to me. The Dalai Lama gave them several hours a day for three of the days to engage in dialogue about peace building leadership. I admired his commitment given he's not a young man, he showed great tenacity and energy I thought. Well that's amazing about the Dalai Lama. And Maya, you know, every, I mean you're obviously making a huge positive impact with countless people and you're very successful. I wanna ask you, was there an obstacle or a challenge that you had to overcome in your life? Well I think we all have to overcome obstacles. The truth is that life is hard and suffering, you know, abounds but I would say that I've had fewer obstacles than most but I did struggle quite a bit in my earlier years with gender discrimination, with sexual harassment, with sexual abuse, with, you know, microaggressions and you know, that's something that now is being talked about in earnest and I'm grateful for those conversations and I think that an important part of the future of leadership is to really help us to think anew about what it means to be a woman or to be a man or maybe we're just breaking down those gender dichotomies altogether but just thinking about the humanizing need to be respectful, careful, kind and thoughtful with one another. I think that a lot of the women that I'm meeting these days do have a bit of trauma and I think we are in need of healing, you know and I'm hopeful that a lot of the dialogue and movement building today can help us get there. Yeah, no, I agree with you completely and Maya, before we wrap up, I wanna ask you one more thing. You've accomplished a ton in your life already but what do you hope to aspire to achieve in your future still? Well, I do really feel like there's still a lot of work to be done to sort of rebrand peace and I want to do more writing and I want to really support these leaders, not just in the Asia Pacific but around the world and help them to enact and engage their talents and skills and courage to think about helping others. I talked about healing a moment ago and I really think the key to healing is servant leadership and really contributing to others and I want, as is noted in your book, the importance of purpose is something that I'm aware of all of the time. I want to help young people, lots of young people to find and name their sense of purpose and to do more collaborative work and to connect. We live in a globalized world but we underutilize, for instance, technology as a source of connection we use it a lot to criticize each other or to get lost in spaces that are not loving or productive and so I really want to think about how to forge strong and enduring connections in a world that needs it. Maya, we need more time. Yeah, it's been fun. I have to, I want to thank you for being on Beyond the Lines today. Thank you so much. You are someone that definitely go Beyond the Lines. You're so inspirational. You have great positive energy. Thank you, likewise. Thank you for everything, Maya. Thank you, Allah. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii and a special thank you to my clothing sponsor, Eolani Incorporated. For more information, please visit my website, RustyKamori.com and my book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all Costco stores in Hawaii. I hope that this show inspires you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.