Highlights from Imagine A World, Season Two
In this special episode of Imagine A World, a podcast by Knight-Hennessy Scholars, Sydney Hunt (‘23 cohort), Anson Zhou ('24 cohort), and Max Du ('24 cohort) curate some of the most memorable moments of the podcast's second season through the lens of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars leadership model. Across four segments—curiosity, inspiration, open-mindedness, and visionary thinking—they revisit several standout clips from scholars who pushed boundaries in science fairs, forged lifelong friendships, embraced mentorship, and built new paths for their communities.
Resources
- Sanaa Alam, Hannah Melville-Rea, Leona Neftaliem, Jocelyn Ricard, and Takondwa Semphere: Friendship and belonging as Knight-Hennessy scholars
- Jordyn Sanico and Christian Tanja: Empowering and serving a community
- Catharine Bowman: Falling in love with humanity
- Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng: Finding home in poetry and presence
- Gianmarco Coronado Graci: Making justice a right, not a privilege
- Eliza Ennis: Health policy, global impact, and community roots
- Khushi Malde: Empowered to empower
- David Jiang and Longsha Liu: Designing a healthier future
- How Imagine A World began
Guest
Imagine A World team
Imagine A World's theme music was composed and recorded by Taylor Goss (2021 cohort). The podcast was originally conceived and led by Briana Mullen (2020 cohort), Taylor Goss, and Willie Thompson (2022 cohort), along with Daniel Gajardo (2020 cohort) and Jordan Conger (2020 cohort).
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
Full transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors.
Willie Thompson:
Hey, what's up y'all? It's Willie Thompson. I'm a member of the 2022 cohort, and I'm wrapping up a master's in policy organizations and leadership studies at the Graduate School of Education after doing two years at the Graduate School of Business. And, I am joined by my amazing co-host this season for today's episode. As we wrap up season two of Imagine A World, we wanted to take a look at some of the greatest moments from our episode so far and distill them down into our greatest hits. So over the course of this episode, you'll hear from me, Sydney, Anson, and Max, as we talk about some of the most memorable Imagine A World situations from this season. And what better way to categorize these moments than by segmenting them by behaviors and traits associated with a Knight-Hennessy leadership model.
Now, our leadership model features nine traits and six behaviors, and we can't go through all of them, otherwise, this'll be a very long episode. But we're really excited to share moments from the podcast that touch on curiosity, inspiration, open-mindedness, and being a visionary. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy the hits of this season.
Sydney Hunt:
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning into another episode of Imagine A World. My name is Sydney Hunt, and I'm grateful to be one of your co-hosts as well as a member of the 2023 Knight-Hennessy Scholars cohort. I'm currently a second year PhD candidate in electrical engineering as well. First up, we have curiosity. Knight-Hennessy Scholars are known for their pursuit of knowledge and learning as well as their interests and fields beyond their own. So in this clip, we speak with Katherine Bowman, a PhD candidate in epidemiology and clinical research about how her curiosity led to her National Science Fair competitions.
Catharine Bowman:
This whole National Basketball Association of Science or the Kid Olympics of Science Fair, yeah, it's how I think of, we call it, ISEF, International Science and Engineering Fair. My early projects, I will say... I think, my first project was looking as to whether a coffee filter or... No, it was river moss was a better filter for water. And, it was very backyard. I had went to the river nearby, and then I scooped up a bunch of water, and then put it through a coffee filter and put it through moss. And then, I think I had a friend who had a microscope and maybe a friend... I think, I ended up weighing two different pieces of papers. See what had more sediment. Stuff like that were the early science fair projects.
Willie Thompson:
That's very cool.
Catharine Bowman:
It was very fun.
Willie Thompson:
Much more cool than volcano.
Catharine Bowman:
Well, yeah. Here's the thing, about that Volcano. So a couple of years later, another science fair project was, I think, I looked at whether reusable grocery bags had bacterial growth if you didn't wash them.
Willie Thompson:
Oh.
Catharine Bowman:
So I just swabbed them. A friend of a friend knew how to run petri dish science stuff, taught me some things. So I did that. And through that project, I ended up being invited to partake in the world record for the largest baking soda and vinegar volcano in the world.
Willie Thompson:
Okay. How did you get from here to there.
Catharine Bowman:
Something here. So I think the Discovery Channel, which is a big TV channel in Canada and elsewhere, I suppose.
Willie Thompson:
Yes. In the U.S. as well. Loves Discovery Channel.
Catharine Bowman:
I wasn't sure. Yep. Alan Rickman was the guy who spearheaded this. He was looking for some youth scientists to help with this awesome project. So through the local science fair, because I think that grocery bag project ended up doing well at our local science fair.
Willie Thompson:
So what did you find? Because I actually have some reasonable grocery bags at the house right now.
Catharine Bowman:
You should wash them.
Willie Thompson:
Okay, good to know. All right. Okay, very normal. Okay.
Catharine Bowman:
A little at least. Yeah, it was a little bit not great. Yeah. Or you can just spray them with some antiseptic. Just be careful because there's food. Anyways. All that fun stuff.
Willie Thompson:
Taking notes.
Catharine Bowman:
Yeah. Honestly. But, through the local science fair, I think I won an award. And so, the Discovery Channel team reached out to that science fair, and I was one of a handful of kids. I don't know, I was 12. And so, you go, there's this huge volcano, and then it also exploded potatoes as part of it.
Willie Thompson:
Whole potatoes?
Catharine Bowman:
Whole potatoes.
Willie Thompson:
That sounds dangerous.
Catharine Bowman:
We had hardhats.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, okay, okay, cool.
Catharine Bowman:
There was safety equipment.
Willie Thompson:
Cool. I was thinking mashed potatoes. This is your basic russet from the Whole Foods aisle, or Safeway, or Trader Joe's where we get potatoes. Wow.
Catharine Bowman:
Yeah. So anyways, science fair brought me to those experiments, experiences both. And then, yeah, I think when I was grade eight or grade nine, that's when I started thinking back to that promise that I made to my mom when I was eight.
Willie Thompson:
Mm-hmm.
Catharine Bowman:
And I was like, "Man, I could use science fair as a platform to actually try it to take a stab at this treatment for lymphedema." Started doing a bunch of reading. I read a gardening magazine. I was eating lunch, and it talked about this lupin flower, and how they had anti-inflammatory properties. And, what I had learned about lymphedema so far was, "Well, my mom is inflamed. This talks about anti-inflammatory. What if I put them together?" And that was the big aha moment for what would send me off in 10 to 15 years of my life now.
Sydney Hunt:
Thanks, Catherine for sharing your story with us. You are a role model for a lot of members of the Knight-Hennessy Scholar community, including myself. In addition to curiosity, Knight-Hennessy Scholars are also known for their ability to inspire others. While you might think of that in the form of accolades, we've told some stories of impressive friendships that have been built as a result of our experience through the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program. In the following clips, you'll hear stories of how other scholars have developed meaningful relationships with each other.
Willie Thompson:
Takondwa I think will be the first of the six to retire her Stanford ID card to become an alumna. And, I'm wondering, how are you all planning on staying in touch, given the fact that some of you'll be here at Stanford a long time, looking at the terminal degree folks, and some will be gone sooner. Yeah, how are you planning on managing that?
Takondwa Priscilla Semphere:
I think we're just ignoring the topic for now. It's still a little raw. I don't know. But, this road will end. And when it does, we'll be somewhere other than where we are now. That is saying nothing. I think, personally, I'm feeling a little bit of existential dread. And, it's another fork in the road moment. And, I've been doing long distance friendships since I was 16. So I've spent pretty much half of my life just having the people I love scattered across time zones. And, yeah, it happens. We have WhatsApp, thankfully, our sponsor, that is not our sponsor here. And, I don't know, maybe I'm not going to go very far. Who knows? So I don't know what anyone else is thinking with that.
Sanaa Alam:
I'm just in denial. I'm going to keep living in delululand until I graduate and have to come to terms with the fact that, yeah, I won't be able to see you guys every day in Denning anymore. But yeah, so I've just been trying to live in the present as much as possible. Because I tend to wallow in existential dread as chapters come to a close as well.
Hannah Melville-Rea:
But I think, I mean, echoing, you Takondwa. I feel like I've also had a lot of long distance friendships and really strong friendships that I still think of as so dear, even if they live in very different parts of the world. And, I really feel like with this group of people, it's like, "You're going to be at my wedding. You're going to be at those big moments. And it doesn't matter if we don't see each other all the time, we're going to just catch up and it's going to be like nothing changed." And I think, I really look forward to that longevity in friendship. And, yeah, I have so much faith that it's not going to be a problem. Or, yeah, you're going to always be in my life. And that's when we're going to listen to this podcast in 10 years, and I think we'll be crying together. But yeah, I really truly believe that.
Takondwa Priscilla Semphere:
Yeah. It's also an excuse for y'all to visit Malawi now, which we'll continue yapping about until that group chat opens.
Hannah Melville-Rea:
There's a KH trip to South Africa, and I'm like, "I need to be..." I am trying to get on that, so we can go to Johannesburg after.
Takondwa Priscilla Semphere:
And I will sneak into your suitcase.
Jocelyn A. Ricard:
Yeah, I was just going to echo Hannah that I really believe that these are lifelong friendships. So no matter where we are in the world, we'll always be connected in some way.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah, I was catching up with a friend this weekend and we were reminiscing about how the true time of friendship is like, your catch-up doesn't have to be on the calendar.
Longsha Liu:
But then, I was like, "Does this story actually sound that plausible? It's a really great hotel, would they really be having this issue?" So then, we utilized David's extraness. David's known to be very extra with his gestures and everything. So we were like, "David, why don't you just do this as a surprise for us as Christmas-time or a late Christmas gift." So basically, David then told Kristen, "I have a surprise for you. Wait here." So basically, that whole time, David's actually going upstairs ... turning on each of the candles.
Anson Zhou:
Yeah, tell us your perspective.
David Jiang:
So what happened was this man had a wild idea of buying 200 individual electric candles.
Ashley Yeh:
Beautiful. As it should be.
David Jiang:
It looked amazing. And I'll show you pictures of it later. It looked absolutely amazing. But the problem is the battery doesn't last for that long, right?
Longsha Liu:
And we weren't sure how long it was.
David Jiang:
Yeah, exactly. So then, if we turned on the candles before dinner, we were afraid that it was going to die, right? So I was like, "Okay, I have a surprise for you." I went upstairs. I'm in my suit, by the way, at this point. And I'm crawling on my knees, turning on every single candle. And then, Longsha is texting me like, "Are you done, bro?" In the meantime, I'm again, laboring, turning on every single candle. I'm just like, "Dear God, again, what have I gotten myself into?" Finally, everything's turned on, everything's set. And then, I went downstairs to get them.
Longsha Liu:
Oh, and David also played an instrumental part in terms of carrying the ring, because even the ring itself, I found a time when Kristen was driving to her work in Southern San Francisco and I biked to the ring store to pick it up, so that way she wouldn't be suspicious, right? And then, I handed the ring to David so he could bring it in his camera box.
David Jiang:
I almost forgot that camera box.
Longsha Liu:
Yeah, you almost forgot that camera box.
David Jiang:
Right before leaving for Asia.
Ashley Yeh:
I'm glad you remembered it.
David Jiang:
Exactly, exactly.
Longsha Liu:
And there are also a few more complications too. Chinese customs rejected all the Amazon orders I sent to the hotel, because it exceeded the $500 limit. And basically, it got flagged and returned. And, we were already in Japan at that time.
David Jiang:
That's an emergency come up with some way to get more supplies there. So it was a whole thing. It was a whole thing. So he now is about to get married. And, since he embarrassed me publicly, I will embarrass him, which is to say, I have the honor of being his best man slash co-best man, excuse me, slash officiant. I have to give a speech. So if you, listener out there, know Longsha and know him from his past life, please email me with your anecdotes about him in the past, and then I will gladly put it into the speech.
Anson Zhou:
Give the audience your email.
David Jiang:
You could find me at D-A-J-I-A-N-G@stanford.edu.
Ashley Yeh:
Someone needs to record this speech so I could see it afterwards. I'm so curious. But also, question, how was the Michelin Star restaurant?
Longsha Liu:
Oh, it was really good. That's a great question.
David Jiang:
It was fantastic. It was fantastic.
Anson Zhou:
What cuisine was it?
David Jiang:
It was Southern Chinese, right?
Longsha Liu:
Southern Chinese and Cantonese.
David Jiang:
Oh, Cantonese.
Anson Zhou:
We'll hit you up on the-
David Jiang:
But, I think, hopefully, this conversation give you a dynamic of what our relationship is like. He wants me to mention this, which is, after we became friends, one of the things that we realized is none of us really like cooking on the day-to-day basis. And, part of the community aspect, I think, is that, we really wanted ways to just hang out on a more casual setting. So then, Longsha, Kristen, and I, we would do family dinners, which is to say, on Mondays, I'll cook. Tuesdays, Kristen will cook. And then, Wednesdays, Longsha will cook. And then, we'll just rotate. And so, for every dinner, we'll just go to somebody's place, right? So not only did that reduce the workload burden on the day-to-day grind, it really prevented me from feeling really lonely. And we got a chance to bond a little bit more, to meet more people, because we would invite different friends to come in for family dinners.
Anson Zhou:
... That's beautiful.
Sydney Hunt:
I want to give a special shout out to Gianny for listening to my practice presentation, especially on a day that I was perhaps not feeling super great about how, yeah, my qualifying exam was going to go. I think, you restored a lot of faith and trust in myself, so I appreciate you. And especially, as a lawyer too, listening to people talk about, yeah, brain-computer interface research, electrical engineering. I think, it's a special part of the KH community. And yeah, the friendships that we formed. We're not afraid to learn about new things. Do you want to tell the listeners what happened yesterday? I was very fortunate to be able to witness it in action.
Gianmarco Coronado Graci:
I just want to go back to that practice session. Sydney worked out a miracle, because she managed to make me understand what her research is all about. I've known her for over a year. And now, I finally kind of get it. So that's definitely a miracle. The moment she went through her slides, I was like, "Okay, if I can get it, her committee will be more than impressed."
Sydney Hunt:
Thank you. That's very good.
Gianmarco Coronado Graci:
So kudos for that. And yeah, yesterday, Sydney joined us at the law school. We had the visit from a Mexican Supreme Court Justice, Justice Margarita Rios Farjat. She gave a presentation. And then, I was really honored to interview her and ask a couple of questions and then take some questions from the audience. And, I cannot promise that my presentation was as good as Sydney's presentation for her qualifying exams, but hopefully, you did understand-
Sydney Hunt:
Absolutely.
Gianmarco Coronado Graci:
... A part of the legal things that were discussed there, which aren't very user-friendly or very non-law friendly. So I really appreciate you for being there.
Sydney Hunt:
Of course. No, it was my pleasure. I was bragging to my lab actually. I was like, "Bye guys. I got to leave. I'm going to go see my friend's talk."
Will Dwyer:
Meet a Supreme Court justice.
Sydney Hunt:
Yeah, exactly. And I think that was also very special, right, because she's from Mexico and you're also from Mexico. And so, I think it was really cool to be able to, yeah, see you have that little bond. And now, I'm like, "Dang, should we do this episode in Spanish?"
Will Dwyer:
Please no.
Sydney Hunt:
What do you think?
Gianmarco Coronado Graci:
Yes. It definitely was very special. I had followed her career, a couple of years ago, started reading some of her decisions. I think she's amazing. And, having the opportunity to just have a conversation with her and just walking with her around the Stanford campus, it was truly, truly amazing. And, I don't know, there's a weird thing, I guess, when you meet someone you admire and you figure out that they're also a normal person, and that they're actually nice, and they laugh, and then they have coffee like any other person. I think, the human factor is just amazing. And to your second point, I think we definitely should have the episode in Spanish. So Will, you can always open ChatGPT or something, and I'm sure it can help.
Sydney Hunt:
Yeah, I'll say, [foreign language 00:16:29] Imagine A World. [foreign language 00:16:31].
Willie Thompson:
Okay, so you're flexing.
Gianmarco Coronado Graci:
She's flexing. [foreign language 00:16:51].
Sydney Hunt:
Yeah, Will is trilingual. So you may have heard some French in his episodes. But, no, no. Yeah. Well, actually, it's not necessarily false, because we all went to Mexico together as a friend group, yeah, over Thanksgiving.
Gianmarco Coronado Graci:
Not sponsored by KH or Stanford by the way.
Sydney Hunt:
Not sponsored by KH. Just a friendship.
Gianmarco Coronado Graci:
We legally have to make that disclaimer.
Sydney Hunt:
Yes, exactly. That was just a bunch of friends getting together and spending time with people they love.
Anson Zhou:
My name is Anson Zhou. I'm part of the 2024 cohort and an MD MBA student currently at the School of Medicine. The Knight-Hennessy leadership model extends beyond the scholars and even to team members. One Knight-Hennessy leadership trait is open-mindedness, which requires being open to new ideas or ways of thinking and guidance from people in your life, like mentors. In these two clips, we speak with Jordan and Christian, two members of the Knight-Hennessy admissions team, about how they've remained open-minded in their relationships with mentors. We also speak with Eliza, a PhD candidate in health policy and decision sciences, as she shares how a community-based field project influenced her ideas about health policy. So I'm curious today, who are the people who formed that circle give you that sense of self and gave you that mentorship?
Jordyn Sanico:
Well, I think, beyond my mom, one of the first people that comes to mind for me was an elementary school teacher, Mr. Sutherland. Shout out to Mr. Sutherland. I think he's still in Hawaii teaching. But he was my teacher in fourth and fifth grade in a gifted and talented program that I was lucky enough to be a part of. And, he would give me books that were well beyond what I thought were my reading level. I was reading The Hobbit and Watership Down in fourth grade. And, he would hand me these giant books. And I thought to myself, "There's no way this is for me. There's no way that I am capable of delving into this material." And he's like, "No, you can do it. Just try."
And so, he got me into the broadcasting background. There was a morning broadcast that we hosted in elementary school. And, I learned how to do stop-motion. And all of that was in elementary school. And he continued to push all of us to delve into all of these different things. And I think without that initial gentle push of, "Yes, you can do it. Even if you don't think you can, just try." That was one of the, I guess, guardian angels, one of my first guardian angels, I would say. And then, now currently, I would say, it's people like Christian and Michaela, who's also in the room taking lovely photos of us. Shout out Michaela! And many others on the team who have been my behind the scenes champions. I'm very early into my career. And, KH, this is my first job right out of undergrad. And so, they've both been incredible, not only thought partners and how to move forward in my career, but also just move through life. They've been incredible resources. And so, I'm grateful to them both.
Christian Tanja:
Yeah, I think, for me, mentorship, there's so many layers to it. You can have mentors who are your exact same age who see around a different corner than you. Of course, we know mentors who are many years ahead of us, big brothers, sisters, and siblings who are ahead of us. And, it's a multilateral exchange of insight. So I think that's really where there's a core mentorship relationship, that it's not just downloading everything that you know into a person, but there's actually a dialogue there. So even when listening to Jordan reflect, I thought of all the different teachers, Mrs. Haas in fifth and sixth grade, Mr. Bulsat, my English teacher who said, "You're not going to community college. You're going to push yourself and go right into university." Things that I wouldn't think were things that I was capable of. My first boss in my first job in college, a student coordinator, Jolene, who helped me through changing from pre-med to being in higher education. My mentors in the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, who helped me choose to go abroad and have courage.
But, so much of it is them seeing a version of you that you don't always see. And like what you said earlier, Anson, about, eventually, if they're telling you a version of yourself that you can't see and you learn to thaw and trust that, then you can really step into a place where you can actually make really good change and powerful contributions where you are.
Eliza Ennis:
They also had this local funding. And she was seeing all of her colleagues around her in other states not have that local support, and continually run into barriers where they weren't able to deliver the things that their community needed, because they didn't have the local support, even if they had some of this international support. And she had a very positive experience where her state had really started investing in health. And I think that having that comparison for her though of, "I'm seeing all my colleagues fail, not because they're not trying as hard as me, but because they don't have the institutions around them to enable this." And also because they don't have the connection between the local and the international that she was able to get in her state. And she had lived through the transformation in her state where they initially weren't as connected and weren't having a local government that was as enthusiastic about healthcare. So recognizing that there are these positive stories that we can look to, but the positive stories require institutions and people to align and they don't happen everywhere.
Max Du:
Did that change your view and approach on your subject?
Eliza Ennis:
Yeah, I think, for me, the question that I have always run into with global health is this balance between the local and the global, and particularly thinking about how do we center community leadership and people like this amazing woman who was distributing far more contraceptives, but also, supplies for safe labor and all of those things across her community, than had been happening before. And also, how do we connect that leadership with the giant pots of money that exist in the world? I think, one of the cynical things, and most people in global health I think will say this, is that, there's a few people, and organizations, and governments, including the U.S. government that are the major funders for global health. And, we need that money, in a lot of ways, in global health. But also, because they have those pots of money, they often get to decide the direction of the health agenda, rather than it being community led.
And so, thinking about ways in which we can identify community leaders and give them charge of those pots of money and make it a sustainable and well-functioning connection between those actors, and ideally eventually, make it all community sustainable so we don't have to rely on these big pots of money. But I'm also really excited about ways in which we, across the world, can share stories and can share ideas about what works and what doesn't. And a lot of that does happen through these international actors. And so, how do we have conversations that are maybe facilitated by the World Health Organization or the UN, but are led by communities?
And I think there's been more and more pushing for this in the global health context and community, in general, but I think, hopefully, that will continue to be a trend, and as truly horrific as it is right now to see millions of dollars being pulled out of global health on the U.S. side. I mean, it's leading to thousands of people not getting meals that they thought they were going to get the next day and all of the vaccine trials that are falling apart and things like that. But, maybe there's some piece that will enable communities to push more for their agendas, rather than having the U.S. and other international actors push those agendas onto people. But it's also not something that can change overnight. And so, the destruction of international aid right now is, I think, really leading to real consequences. So that's unfortunate.
Anson Zhou:
It's a very timely discussion that we're having right now, because I think on one hand, the dollars, like you mentioned, are so critical to keeping communities healthy, being able to access resources. But at the same time, no one knows the users better than the users themselves. But the solution is not to just pull the money out of it, right?
Eliza Ennis:
No, I mean, I think that's a super fair point of you can't pull it out immediately. But I also think that global health community has often thought that this money will keep going forever. And, a lot of foundations have expiration dates. They're supposed to spend all their money by a certain amount of time. And, governments, as we've seen.
Max Du:
My name is Max Du. I am part of the 2024 cohort and a PhD student in computer science working on intelligent robotics. Last but not least, Knight-Hennessy Scholars are visionary. They use their imagination and wisdom to chart new possibilities and paths. In these final two clips, we speak with Quyên, a PhD candidate in art history, and Kushy, a dual degree student in business and education. They talk about ways they have and are aspiring to create new visions for themselves and for others.
Are there moments outside of poetry that make you feel particularly at home?
Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng:
When I slow down, it's very related to what Ashley just said, when I'm not pulled away from myself so violently by the fast pace of things, and I was watching before we started this conversation, it was quite beautiful looking at you two, preparing for the conversation, because you and Max were trying to change the battery of this recorder. You were trying to set up all the right technical environment for us to start this conversation. But I think the way that you did was so calm, both of you, and you were still listening to one another as you spoke. And I think that's also one way of being at home with oneself, which is to somehow just be attentive to everything within and around us all the time.
Again, it's really hard to make it a practice from moment to moment, which is I think what true Buddhists do. I'm not a true Buddhist, so I forget all the time. So I do get stressed out by little things during the day. But, I think the moment that I remember to slow all the way down and to really listen to my own inner voice and other people's voices, I think that's a beautiful way of going home.
Max Du:
Has that happened recently?
Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng:
I think it's happening now, as the three of us are talking in this room. It's quite rare and it's quite beautiful when it happens at Stanford where, again, we have so many resources and so many brilliant minds, and yet, everyone is rushed, and hasty, and stressed out all the time, which is, I think, a deep shame. So every time I think just two or three people, it doesn't need to be a crowd, sit down together, and have a chat in a slow rhythmic manner, even if you just sit in silence together, I think it's a very beautiful space to be. And even if we do it by ourselves, I think it could be cool too. There's so much within one body already, so you can just gather with yourself in your room. That could also be a way of going home.
Max Du:
It goes to the idea of letting go again. As we were trying to replace the batteries and the batteries didn't work, it was like, breathe in, breathe out, and move on, and find more batteries. You don't have to be anxious about it. The world's not ending.
Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng:
Yeah.
Max Du:
It's just your idea of slowing down and finding beauty in everything that is around us.
Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng:
Yeah, I try to, although it's hard. Again, there's something about Stanford, which is this epicenter of the technological world of advancement that we're living in that makes presence very, very hard.
Ashley Yeh:
Do you feel like in other places, like in Vietnam, Hanoi, the pace was different? Is that where you're taking a lot of this philosophy from as well?
Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng:
These days, yeah, I think I'm finding more slowness and more calm when I'm in Vietnam. But it's funny, because if you live in Vietnam, especially in the city, which I do... I was born in Hanoi, but now I live in Saigon, so in the south of Vietnam. And both Hanoi and Saigon are increasingly busier and busier every day. They're the centers of Vietnam, so people go there for jobs and opportunities. So traffic's terrible, it's really dusty, it's heavily polluted. But because I have my own space, my own studio in Vietnam, and I'm not having to go to classes all the time, or teaching, all the responsibilities that we have at Stanford. And so, I do live almost like a free spirit. I feel like that's a part of it. My calendar in Vietnam is very, very empty.
Ashley Yeh:
You mentioned that you ended up preferring nonprofit work, and I know you worked in Africa. So I was wondering what led you to Africa? What led you to the nonprofit work there, as opposed to Salesforce, I guess?
Khushi Malde:
Two very different environments. Very, very different environments. So the way I got into building the nonprofit was, firstly, I was not feeling fulfilled at Salesforce, so I felt the need of doing something else. And, as I was just reflecting... I guess all of us were in reflection more during the pandemic. So as I was in that phase, I was like, "Okay, what do I want to do in life? What do I want to build? What do I want to create?" And, that's when I realized that I just loved mentoring.
And, this was when I realized that big gap that I faced, while just moving to the U.S. So that's when I started thinking about how can I bridge this gap of opportunities that I faced, the lack of opportunities that I faced in Kenya, versus what's available here. And I was very tapped into the entrepreneurship ecosystem, had done a lot of entrepreneurship boot camps. At the same time, had TA'd and mentored for several courses at Berkeley. So I knew that the mentorship part and the teaching part was something that I was excited by. So I just came up with an idea. Whereas, "What I can start with is I have a lot of friends who are entrepreneurs building things here, lots of professors who are in the space. I could just create a workshop series and show people back home that this is possible."
Did a little Facebook message. I think I was nervous to start on my own, so I was like, "Oh, getting support would be nice." Did a little Facebook message on the Berkeley chat and met my co-founder for the nonprofit, Megan. And, we started that together. We started it off as a workshop series, where we had eight workshops where I basically got a lot of my friends and mentors to lead 45-minute workshops with students in Kenya. That was an easy market for me to tap into, because I did schooling there, so I just had to reach out to my high school and other high schools that I knew around. And we saw that the first workshop was attended by 250 students. That increased to 500 students. And we were like, "Oh, this is cool. We are able to reach a lot of students." And, I was like, "There is something here that we could expand upon."
And then, that led to a lot of iteration. We started with private schools, realized that we're not really bridging the gap by going to private schools. Let's go to public schools. Then we also ran a full entrepreneurship bootcamp with students from the slums in Kenya. And in the process, just realized that how important the whole aspect of seeing someone from your community do something is important, versus just seeing an entrepreneur in America do something. So pivoted the program a lot. The nonprofit still exists. We do run entrepreneurship bootcamps for high school and college level students, or students coming from very low-income backgrounds in sub-Saharan Africa. So we've expanded to Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, so it's expanded as well. But, what we do now is instead of the mentors being the mentors I had at Berkeley, they're actually people who came from the same environment as the students, so that the students able to relate.
Willie Thompson:
All right, it's Willie again. That's it for now. Thanks for listening and be on the lookout for our final two episodes of season two. Peace.
Sydney Hunt:
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Imagine A World, where we hear from inspiring members of the KHS community who are making significant contributions in their respective fields, challenging the status quo, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible as they imagine the world they want to see.
Willie Thompson:
This podcast is sponsored by Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, a multidisciplinary, multicultural graduate fellowship program providing scholars with financial support to pursue graduate studies at Stanford, while helping equip them to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world. Follow us on social media at Knight-Hennessy. And, visit our website at kh.stanford.edu to learn more about the program and our community.
