S2E2: Getting the Lesson: Jeff Livingston on the Powerful Pathway of Education

I understand that in the same way that I stand on the shoulders of people who made life possible for me.

Yeah.

I have a responsibility to make sure that the path that I have traveled is one that others can travel to.

Paige Nolan 0:23

Yeah.

Jeff Livingston 0:23

I think that education, a good education leading to college and a well paying career is the one proven, scalable, repeatable pathway out of poverty I have seen.

Yeah.

Jeff Livingston 0:40

And if I can help more people on that path, then I will have justified some of the extra space I take up on the earth.

Hi, I'm Paige Nolan. Welcome to I'll Meet yout There. A place where heart centered conversations are everything. Living what matters is the truest thing and sharing the journey is the best. Hi everyone and welcome back. My guest today and I have a core value in common and it's the reason we met when we did 27 years ago. We both believe that education is a powerful pathway to freedom. My guest, Jeff Livingston, would say education is the most powerful pathway to freedom and you're going to hear Jeff's reasons and ideas about that in this episode. I met Jeff as a recent college graduate. I was fresh out of Vanderbilt University and miserable in an entry level job at a staffing and recruiting company. Even though my job was in human resources and I knew it was ultimately helping people, I felt far away from the positive impact I could have on another person's life. I was 23 years old and I overheard a woman in a bar in San Francisco where I was living at the time talking about her job helping high schoolers get into college. And I turned to her and said, I'd like to do that kind of work. And that moment led me to working for Achieva, a company that Jeff started with his two best friends, dedicated to college guidance, counseling and test prep for high school students. That first year at Achieva, still to this day, is one of my favorite professional experiences. I loved supporting the students, helping them make decisions about their future. I loved working on the college essays, helping young people to discover their voices. And I really loved working with Jeff. Jeff was a great boss for a lot of reasons, but the one reason that motivated me to get him on the podcast is that I learned so much from him. And I think you can too. We start our conversation with Jeff's grandmother in South Carolina, and you'll hear the question she asks Jeff every day after school. I promise you'll be moved by this woman's commitment and love for her children. We talk about Jeff leaving small town South Carolina for big city Boston and his journey as a Harvard student. And then we talk about education in today's world. I have two high school senior daughters and a son who is in ninth grade. So I'm particularly interested in Jeff's perspective on the value of a college education. It's a very relevant topic in our family right now. In fact, you'll hear me reference college applications. As we recorded this episode in late November when I was helping my daughters with their essays, I've had to ask myself, why does college matter? What skills can our kids gain from college that are worth the investment? And Jeff's answers made a lot of sense to me and gave me some really good ideas for how I could speak to my own children about the power of education in their lives. After Achieva, Jeff had a long career at McGraw Hill Education that included roles in sales, marketing, education policy, and management. And then in 2015, Jeff formed a company called Ed Solutions, which serves as a vehicle for focusing education, innovation, investment, and philanthropy on underserved students, which is always where Jeff's heart resides. His work at Ed Solutions has put him on the forefront of AI and how AI can enhance and improve our classrooms. At the end of our conversation, you're going to hear Jeff describe the world he imagines for our students and for all of us. And I hope you'll listen, because the world that Jeff imagines is beautiful. Enjoy this conversation with Jeff Livingston. Well, I want to start by telling you that I think the universe has conspired for the timing of this, because this weekend, no lie, I am knee deep in the UC application with my two daughters, Ryan and Mimi. Yep. Seniors. And I have been literally channeling your voice like that, that. That very grounded. Like, paige, remember, there's over 4, 000 universities in the United States. Like, they're gonna be fine. They're gonna be fine. So, yes, you have made a big impact on me with your perspective. Yes. So that's where I want to start, is your connection to education. And, you know, I think we got to go to South Carolina first because we have to hear about the grandmother and we have to hear about the upbringing.

Happy to do that. Happy to do that. Everything for me does start in South Carolina.

Yeah.

I am from one of those black South Carolina families that has been there as longer than anybody can remember. There is at least one bill of sale in my family that is dated 1732.

Paige Nolan 5:47

Wow.

For one of my ancestors, I was a South Carolinian before South Carolina was a state.

I love it.

And after South Carolina was a colony, I am very much A South Carolinian. And of course, mine is the kind of family that while we measure our time in South Carolina in centuries, our citizenship in South Carolina is measured in decades. Just apparently, as the first person in my family to cast a vote was alive during my lifetime.

Paige Nolan 6:26

Wow.

So being a South Carolinian means all the things that being a South Carolinian means. And so mine is the kind of family that believes in education because for so long, it was denied us.

Yeah.

My father was the first in his family to go to college, may well have been the first in his family to graduate high school. I'm not sure about that.

Yeah.

But all of that was as a result of his mother, my grandmother, Adra Livingston Edge, who is the reason that education has been at the center of my life and my career for these 50 years.

Yeah.

Every conversation I had with my grandmother that I can remember started with, baby, did you get your lesson today?

Oh, gosh, I love that so much. Baby, did you get your lesson today?

Did you get your lesson right?

So beautiful.

Even just the construction of how she set it. Paige, there's a lesson for you out there. It's your responsibility to go and acquire it and bring it back. That's the way she talked about this. There is something good in the world that I'm sending you out there to look for, to cultivate and bring back. That's what she said. Did you get your lesson today? And one of the lessons that she taught me. I don't know that she intended to teach me, because I may have told you this before, Paige, but your audience should hear it as well.

Please.

I was a senior in high school. In the spring of my senior year, I had already been accepted to Harvard and decided I was going there. And I was reflecting on the enormous impact my grandmother had had on my life. So I sat down at 18 years old to write a letter to my grandmother, codifying the impact she personally had had on my life. And my dad, her son, comes in to my room as I'm writing. He says, what are you doing? I said, I'm writing Grandma a letter. And he said, who? And I said, grandma, your mother, you know? And he said, you know, mama can't read. I'm like, what are you talking about? She can't read? Yeah, Mama stopped going to school at third grade. She can't read. Like, her house is full of books. All the first books I ever read were in her house. Yeah, she didn't read. And then suddenly, it's dawning on me a whole lifetime of being the way this magnificent woman coped with her illiteracy.

Yeah.

Can you read the Sunday school lesson for me tomorrow in church? I can't find my glasses.

Yeah.

Or driving down the road to her. You know, we're going to Conway. I bet you can't tell me when the sign says Conway. Do you know how to do that? Yes, Grandma, I know how to do that.

Yeah.

Jeff Livingston 9:39

I absolutely can do that. That her house was full of books for me.

Yeah.

She couldn't read them, but she knew they were important, and so she bought books and filled her house with them for me and her other grandchildren and the other kids in the neighborhood.

Yeah.

So my earliest memories are sitting in my grandmother's house reading while other people are also reading, because she created this library in her house. My summers at her house near Myrtle beach instead of Columbia, where I was growing up in South Carolina. And. And, you know, I'm sure at this point I've memorized the 1968 Encyclopedia Britannica that was in the house that I read over and over and over.

Did anybody keep that set of encyclopedias? I miss that set.

I will have to find where that set is.

This is a sign. Yeah.

I met my uncle. He still lives in the house. So.

Good.

It's still there. But, you know, here I was, 18 years of talking every time I spoke to her about my education, and she could not read.

Yeah.

And it's that faith in something. She knew she was denied that faith that I could acquire it. I could get it. Did you get your lesson, Jeff? That's what created this life for me. I was asked to do the eulogy at her funeral.

How old were you, Jeff? When she passed, how old were you?

I was in my 40s when she passed. And the title of my eulogy was, we got the lesson, Grandma. Because I wasn't the only one in that church who had had that relationship with her. I wasn't the only one in that church who had learned to read in the house of a woman who could not read herself. And so understanding how important education is to those who've been denied it has been driving my career forever. I. You know, I don't have the right not to value education.

Yeah.

If only on her behalf, if not mine. So that's what South Carolina brings into this conversation. I know you've got your Louisiana roots.

I do. But you. I think your passion for education and knowing that part about you and just that perspective of how much it matters, you know, how. How those early messages matter, and also how much it matters for Future generations. And I'm very inspired by your commitment to the future in every way. And we'll get to AI and that kind of stuff that you're working on now, but like your perspective, your openness to how you can set it up better and make a pathway for these kids of all backgrounds, of all different types of intelligences, of all race, of all ethnicity. That perspective, you definitely gave me that in a different way.

Well, thank you so much, Paige. You know, you and I are both Southerners, and so people of our vintage who grew up in the south read probably more Faulkner than was used to.

Yeah. And I'm always like, shouldn't I love it more? Like, so many people talk about it. Why am I not getting some of it?

Kind of. I do kind of like Faulkner, but I particularly like a quote that I use of his all the time. That in the south, the past is not only not forgotten, it's not even past.

Yes. That is so true. Yes. It's right there.

You live in Southern California now. I live in New York.

Yeah.

We both know that there are places, physical pieces of dirt on this earth, where you belong and. Where I belong.

Yes.

That we are tied to that. We saw it.

Yeah.

We buried my grandmother four rows over from her grandmother.

So awesome.

The funeral took place in a church that was built immediately after emancipation in a grove where my insistence, enslaved ancestors used to hold their religious services. I know. I'm from this place. Right. You see it, you live it. History is now in the South. And I think that's something that you and I, we know we have this connectedness that lots of people who are our neighbors today don't get. Literally, because we're Americans, they don't have a connection to anywhere where their family has been.

Yeah.

For generations and generations. And I just do, right.

Yes. Yes.

Walk through graveyard.

Yeah.

Because that was the fastest route to the summer education program at church when I was with my grandmother the summer. Right. A graveyard that I'm related to everybody in my graveyard.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's nothing like five, five year old walking through a graveyard on the way to an educational program, you know, help you think about a metaphor for your life.

Well, it keeps you. It definitely gives you perspective, which you have. And I think that's a big part of leadership, is having perspective. Will you tell us what your family thought of you going to Harvard? And if you, like, if Harvard resonated with you, what. What did you think of Boston? You get there and you're in this academic mecca. What was that?

Like, so what's, what's really interesting? Let me tell you the story of why Harvard.

Yeah.

You've known me long enough to know that I'm a special kind of nerd.

And I love this. I was hoping you were going to say this about yourself. A self proclaimed nerd.

I am. I am. In the summer between the seventh and eighth grade at my grandmother's house, I read two biographies. One of W.E.B. du Bois and one of John F. Kennedy. Earlier that year, I had read a Franklin Roosevelt biography as well. And what are those three people have in common? They were educated at Harvard.

Okay.

So I decided then that my measure of whether I had done high school right was going to be whether or not I got into Harvard College.

Yeah.

And so I started studying. Then seventh grade.

Yeah.

What it takes to get into Harvard. I ordered the application every year starting that summer.

Wow.

And South Carolina is a small place.

Yeah.

So I spoke to every one of the South Carolinians who got into Harvard that I could find between the seventh grade and then modeled myself on that. So much so that I had noticed that until my year of applying in 1988, for most of the years before that, only one African American from South Carolina had gotten in.

Yeah.

So I was like, I get to be the one African American. So I knew who my competition was.

Yeah.

I knew that Julie was at R and E. I knew that John was at Lexington. I knew who the competition was. Was who had the grades, the test scores, and the awareness of college to be my competition for that.

Yes.

And I was paying close attention to them. They all still laugh at me now. So when John Sneed told me he was going to Yale early and his girlfriend later let us. And she was going to Princeton, I'm like, check, check.

All right.

In our year was the first year that Harvard admitted three African Americans from the same year. Me and Dina and John, I love it. From Lexington, were there. And they were like, we weren't thinking about this. We were just applying. I was like, look, I was serious. I had a plan.

Yeah.

I knew my SAT scores were higher than John's.

I knew it was strategic.

Student body president. I was on the senior class president. It was a crazy kind of thing. But the move from South Carolina to Harvard was the biggest cultural adjustment I had ever seen.

Yeah.

My freshman year at Harvard, a friend of mine, Jennifer, who was the one African American admitted two years ahead of me, took me to lunch in Harvard Square. She showed me a photograph of the Bunker Hill National Monument and made me promise never to get any closer to it than that photograph.

Yeah.

Because it was in a neighborhood that was notorious for violence during the busing times of Boston. And, you know, I couldn't think of anywhere in South Carolina where I should be reasonably afraid for my physical safety.

Yeah.

Because I am black. But there were places in Boston that people said I shouldn't go at noon in a tank.

Yeah.

And that was a weird thing. And then a couple of weeks later was when that guy killed his pregnant wife in Boston. And said black guy did it.

Okay.

And I was a freshman at Harvard.

Yeah.

That was happening. And I got a call from the Harvard police suggesting that I should stay on campus.

Wow.

For the next few weeks. And the unstated reason was that they could protect me on campus, but they weren't sure they could protect me if I went wandering around Boston.

Yeah.

And you know, again, like the police saying, don't go over there because the Boston police might charge you with murder. It's just. It's just a very, very, very different.

So different. Yeah.

Kind of a world. And then I'm in this environment where my next door neighbor in the dorm, when her mother came to visit, they changed the flag on University hall because she was Pakistani ambassador to the United States. Right. This is who you see at these places. So it was a profound cultural adjustment. Being from South Carolina means snow is a half day event every other year. February. And it's like a quarter of an inch of ice.

Yeah.

So when it started snowing in Boston, in Harvard Yard, I didn't know how to walk in this stuff.

Yeah.

I also didn't know how to dress for this stuff. So I did two dumb things. One is I bought fur lined boots.

Yeah.

And wore them without socks. So you and I come from places where we know what it smells like when an animal has died. And then I realized that there was a bedding pool. I'm in Harvard Yard. There was a bedding pool. People went to their windows to watch me walk to my first class and bet on how far I would get before I fell down the.

Yeah.

I didn't know how to do this, but this is how my cultural and physical adjustment to Harvard.

This is. Jeff, you should know, in Los Angeles, that's what it's like. People driving in the rain. It's like, you know, and being from New Orleans, the rain is part of the deal. Although now that I've been here so long, I've grown out of it. But when I first got to la, it was like, oh, my gosh, it's drizzling. Are you.

That's right.

Leaving early or are you even leaving or. You know, driving in the rain is a big deal if you're from New Orleans. I can relate.

Drive in the rain.

You better stay home all summer.

But I had that cultural adjustment, but then I settled into it.

Yeah.

And it was. It was a huge intellectual experience.

Yes.

It was a huge adjustment of my worldview for me because, again, I came from a place where my goal in life was to go to college, go to law school, and someday earn $75,000 a year and live in a house worth $150,000. That was my goal.

Yes. Then you'll be happy and I'll be.

Happy and my family would be safe and secure. And then I get to a place surrounded by people who are of an age when you're in college, when you start coming into the trust funds that were set up.

Yes. Yes. And you understand what that looks like.

Yeah, I'm just like. That's a very different. Yeah, they have a very different experience. Their notions of what impact they can have on the earth are very different from. And you know what? I'm here, too.

Yeah.

Maybe that means I'm supposed to be thinking bigger, too. But it was. It was a fascinating experience.

So you're on the road to law school. I mean, I met you pretty young. I thought of us as so different because I felt like your leadership and your just sense of the world. You were so much more. Had so much more global awareness. I was coming to California. You know, I went from New Orleans to Nashville and then all the way to San Francisco. I was like, what's happening? And you had, like, a global sense. So we're not that far apart in age. So you were pretty young when you're starting a startup, you know, education company. So tell us about how that started in your mind.

I never had the slightest indication or inkling that I would professionally be involved in education.

Yeah.

Until. Well, after I had started my professional life, I went to work on Wall street, as one did if one was graduating from an Ivy League college and determined never to be poor again.

Yes.

And so I went to Wall street, to Merrill lynch in financial derivatives.

Yeah.

It turned out that I had a skill that was valuable. I could translate calculus into English. And lots of people were better at calculus than I was. But not many other people could explain to a chief financial officer who called himself Bubba or Rhett, what exactly he was buying. And that turned out to be a valuable tool. And so I progressed very Quickly, at barrel, I went from being an analyst to an associate to being a vice president before I was 25 years old.

Yeah.

And one day the head of equities came to me and said, we need a derivative specialist in Atlanta. Jeff, I was living in New York City at the time, and we know you have Southern roots. We'd like you to consider moving to Atlanta, to our institutional office in Atlanta. And of course I said, I will consider it carefully. And in my head I'm like, there is nothing in my apartment in Brooklyn that I need. I should go to LaGuardia right now before they change their mind. And so I did move to Atlanta and continued my career serving large institutional investment banking clients in the South. So I reached the point where I had a decision to make, Paige. I either was going to accept that I had peaked in my career and this was a nice peak. Right. I'm making New York City money in Atlanta. You know, this is a nice peak. If ever you get the chance to be a single, very well paid African American man who goes to church without anybody forcing him to in Atlanta, I highly recommend that it's a.

So good. It's so good.

So I could, I could peak there. I could move back to New York to keep going. I could go to business school and get an mba or I could go and start a business with two of my best friends.

Yeah.

I chose that final door and moved to East Palo Alto where my partner and his sister were living and started a college prep company that was based on the work I had done at Harvard helping others get into and the work that I had done helping my business partner apply to law school. And that's how I got into education.

What do you care the most about in education? What keeps you there? Because you've been there ever since. I mean, it's been years, decades now.

Yeah, I understand that. In the same way that I stand on the shoulders of people who made life possible for me, I have a responsibility to make sure that the path that I have traveled is one that others can travel to. I think that education, a good education leading to college and a well paying career is the one proven, scalable, repeatable pathway out of poverty I have seen.

Yeah.

And if I can help more people on that path, then I will have justified some of the extra space I take up on the earth.

Yeah.

Right. And so that's what I wake up every morning doing is thinking about kids like me who need someone like me to make sure that that path stays open for them.

Yes.

That's Why I never intend to leave.

Yeah.

That's why I do what I do.

How do you think we're doing with that? Like, where do we get it right? And where do you feel like those pathways could be wider and more accessible?

So here's where we are. While I still believe that there is no better, more proven way to move a family from poverty to a life of choices, we still don't do that for very many people. It's still far, far, far too rare. I'm not willing to give up this pathway until we find a better one.

Yeah.

Jeff Livingston 29:28 -

But it's too rare. It's too hard. The fact remains that someone like me, who has spent his professional life in education. I could go to a maternity ward and tell you who's going to go to college.

Yeah.

And be right most of the time. I could tell you based on whether there's a father nervously waiting or not.

Yeah.

Whether there has been enough prenatal care.

Yeah.

How old the mother is, all those things. And I, you know, unfortunately, can predict it. And then I could go to an elementary school, to kindergarten, and I could see it, too.

Yeah.

There are some kids who come home from the hospital wrapped in an LSU blanket.

Go Tigers.

Those kids are going to college.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. And almost nobody else is, sadly.

Yeah.

So I don't think we do as good a job at it. At one point in my life, since you and I worked together, I was senior vice president of college and career readiness at McGraw Hill Education.

Okay.

And I was responsible for. For all the things that your daughters are going through around college right now for McGraw Hill education, among other things. And one of the things we did was we commissioned some surveys and we surveyed students who were going to be first generation college students and asked them a lot of questions about their lives, including, why do you want to go to college? We also surveyed high school teachers and college professors and high school guidance counselors about why students should want to go to college.

Yeah.

Turns out the students who are going to be first generation had 10,000 different ways of saying, so my family won't be poor anymore.

Yes.

That's why they wanted to go to college.

That's the motivation. Yeah.

Jeff Livingston 31:44 -

Anymore. Now, their teachers had lots of other reasons for why they should be, but almost none of them said, so this kid won't be poor anymore. Professors could talk about the life of the mind and contributions to society, but not, so my family won't be poor anymore.

Yeah.

And so I discovered at that point just how disconnected the why of the student and the why of those of us who are adults are around college.

And how do we close that gap?

So I think we have to. And what I spend a lot of my time doing is saying if a student wants to spend her life and energy being the first person to move from poverty to a life of choices. Choices like we can go to the hospital if one of us gets sick. Choices like we could lead innocent if we're charged with a crime we didn't commit. Choices. You know, choices like, I'm pursuing this career because I want to, not because I need to. She wants to devote her life to. To making enough money to do that. We should say, yes, that's okay. We should make that perfectly acceptable. And in so doing, we have to say to her that if that is your goal, maybe you shouldn't be an English major.

eah.

Right. I have said, to the horror of lots of people I love, is your family rich enough for you to major in psychology?

Yeah.

Right. And unfortunately, that's the reality of the world that we live in, that economic inequality is a real thing.

Yeah.

And those of us on the comfortable side of that divide have no right to impose our preferences on those who are on the uncomfortable side of that divide, including telling them to major in whatever they want to and pursue college that way. The other thing we do, page, is when we're not careful, we equate college attendance and college graduation.

Yes. Oh, you really taught me this one. Yeah. Yeah.

Those are not the same.

Will you. Will you say that? Yeah. Your point of view on that.

Attending college and graduating from college are not the same thing.

Yeah.

And so when a student is thinking about what academic discipline they want to pursue if their goal is to not be poor anymore, I have to say to them, how valuable do you think half an English degree is?

Yeah.

Versus half an electrical engineering degree.

Yeah.

Because the assumption that you will absolutely graduate is simply incorrect for a great many kids.

Yeah.

And that is a disservice that those of us who have means do to those who don't.

Yeah.

And, you know, because college for poor kids is a race with disaster. And the kind of disaster that would not be a disaster for your children.

Yeah.

Disaster. Like, you know, the carburetor. A mom's car went out and she needs $400 to fix it.

Yeah.

Your kids wouldn't even know that happened.

Yeah.

Whereas a poor kid suddenly does not have their portion of tuition because they had to pay that so their younger siblings could keep eating and mom could keep going to work. That's the kind of disaster that gets you off track if you're poor, but you don't even notice if you come from a family of means. And so saying attendance and graduation are the same thing is doing those kids a disservice. And I most often yell at reporters for doing that.

Yes. Yes. Well, I think that's a big part of. Of this conversation is, like, how we do talk about it.

That's right.

Collectively, you know, that's why I want you here, you know, sharing this conversation with me so my people who are interested can hear your perspective, because it certainly impacted me just being in a personal relationship with you and the work that we did with these kids, helping kids get into college, when you really get in the real work of it and you meet students of different backgrounds with different means, you see the perspective. And then I'm living this right now. I mean, I'm living through getting my two kids into college, and it's really gnarly. You get in these little rabbit holes where it's like, oh, I have to guide them through a different opening scene of their essay. And I know how to work with essays. We're doing great. They've been lovely. They're totally receiving my help. And at the same time, it's like, we're going to be fine. Like, the essay matters. Like you told me, the essay matters a little bit more than you want it to, but not as much as you think it does. And literally, Jeff Livingston, I have had that on a card for the past three months. And my. My listeners who either have people who are in college or who are. Have high schoolers and they're going to be going through this. It's that perspective of, like, the. The bigger picture of all this and something.

Something else I know your daughters are going to take with them to college that I want your listeners also to make sure their students take with them to college. Your daughters understand how privileged and blessed they are.

Yes, they do. Yeah.

And how unusual their circumstances are.

Yeah.

And for your listeners, I want them to say to their students when they go off to college, that I was listening to Paige's podcast, and this giant black man from South Carolina who adores Page, said the following thing. There is a concept called emergency student aid. When I say those words, most of your listeners think, I mean, the last thousand dollars they need to be able to go to college.

Yeah.

Emergency student aid is food banks.

Yeah.

That lots of students who are in college, even in the colleges that your children go to, are food insecure.

Yeah.

And that is a reality. That it's too easy to ignore or not see. But now someone has heard me say this.

Yeah.

And so they're going to ask, does UC Berkeley have a food bank? And the answer is yes, they do.

Yeah. Yeah.

Does Princeton have extra money to buy winter coats or food or to help kids get home at Christmas? Yes, they do.

Yeah.

Because inequality is a real thing. And so long as we live in a country where we don't want the circumstances of your birth to determine all of the outcomes of your life, we have to remember those things.

Yes.

And keep that in mind. Your daughters will know that when they're in college next year. And I hope your listeners also keep that in mind, too.

Yeah.

That for most kids of our socioeconomic status, college is five years of irresponsibility followed by a four year degree.

Yes. Yes.

That's not the experience of all the kids.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

For a lot of kids, it's a slog from the beginning. It's a race against disaster. It is hard every day. They know how much they could get if they pawned their computer.

Right. Right. So what do you think college is? What purpose does it serve? I know, I know what you said earlier, you know, it helps people get out of poverty and that really matters. And that's a clear, you know, people are motivated by that. What about the person who isn't thinking as much about that? What's the, what's the gift of it? Where's the engagement with these kids around college?

I think the gift of college is the opportunity to live really close to people who are not like you.

Yeah.

Right. I don't happen to think that what happens in the classroom at Harvard or Princeton or UC Berkeley and what happens in the classroom at, you know, LSU or Suwanee is all that different. And I don't think that matters.

Right.

The real thing is who are you sharing a dorm room with, who is sitting next to you in those classrooms and what is it that you can learn about their lives that enhances your life and makes it better? So if, you know, you and I both come from places where it is easy to spend your whole academic life, from kindergarten through medical school, in a room full of people you have known your whole life.

That's right. Yeah.

And I often encourage kids not to do that.

Yeah.

That, you know, your best friend in kindergarten in Metairie is never going to be hard for you to find.

Yeah.

Right. Your mom knows where she is right now.

Yeah. Yeah.

Go meet some different people.

Yeah.

The people whose lives you don't Understand, Because I think it is in those connections that we begin to create the kind of community that makes this American experiment of democracy possible.

Yes. I love that you said that. Yeah, go ahead.

Nobody older than you and me in Louisiana or in South Carolina.

Yeah.

Had 12 years of K12 with people of different races.

Yeah, right. That's true.

The first African American student to be in a classroom with white students in Louisiana is today 70 years old. Paige.

Yeah.

She is alive. She looks 50, but she's 70 years old. She's alive. I was born in the colored wing of a public hospital in December of 1970. We haven't been trying to do this, living together and studying together for very long. So college is the opportunity really, to understand the complexity of our society and to get to put yourself in the shoes of someone else.

Yeah.

And that's what I want for your daughters when they're in college. I want them to meet people who blow their minds. Who in the world is this person? How are they thinking about this? What is going on?

That's kind of what you did for me, Jeff. That's what you did.

But I think that what is what the beautiful thing is about college. Yeah. You don't need college to be the way that you transform your family's economic circumstances.

Well, I love that you said that, because I was talking to Miles the other day about his grades. He's a ninth grader, and we were talking about a subject that he doesn't like that much. And so I was trying to engage him in a conversation about learning how to think and being in a group situation with other students and what he can contribute as opposed to just mastering this curriculum that he may or may not use. And it was in math. So it's like, well, there's going to be calculators and there's going to be, as we move forward, people who are really skilled or robots who do this thing and.

Robots.

Yes, and robots. And we had this great conversation because I was telling him just similar to your idea of the real value of the engagement of his academic life is to be with other students. You know, ask somebody in your class who's better at you at math and talk to that person and work with that person. And it's the relationship of collaborating and the humanity. I mean, I don't know if I use the word humanity with him, but with you, I'm thinking that's what I'm interested in. These kids knowing their emotional intelligence and how to be in relationship and how to move through the world in a way that's authentic is what is going to be so valuable. And I want to say this last thing before you comment, because this. You really helped me with this. I felt like. Because you were one of my first jobs out of college. We met when I was 23. I had one other job before I got to. To you guys to achieve. I felt like your leadership and working so closely with you really helped me understand because you would say to me, paige, be yourself. Like, what the. What I need you to do when you're guiding. When you're selling our programs and converting people. Because it's a sale. You' you're selling a program that costs money. That, to me, that idea of bring who you are to your job. I don't know why I didn't get that message. But when I was coming out of college, I had a very, like, I've got to perform. I've got to achieve. I've got to do what the boss says, and I have to do it better than they expect me to do it. And you came along and said, yeah, these are going to be the skill set. This is what I expect of you. And also be yourself. And I think that that is going to be. I want to hear your thoughts on this. But it feels like that's what is so important right now to students and to moving forward. And so can you talk to us about that and the work in technology?

Let me. Let me do this, Paige. Let me first talk about Miles, and then I'll talk to Miles.

Yeah. Please, please.

My decades in education have taught me a few things for certain.

Yeah.

And one of those is that Miles is going to be okay.

Yeah.

There is no school so bad that it can irreparably destroy the education of a student whose educated mother is actively involved in his education. There is no school.

Yeah. I love that.

That is bad enough to do irreparable harm to Miles because you are his mom, and I think that's important. Now the analog is. I'm still deciding if it's possible for school to be good enough to overcome the lack of parental involvement in a student's education. A couple come really, really close. But Miles has the important thing. Let me talk Miles. So Miles is in the night. Is in the ninth grade.

Yes.

So he's gonna likely be in probably next year or the year after in a trigonometry class.

Yes.

Talking about sine and cosine. And Miles is going to ask a question like, when am I ever going to need this?

Yes.

And some teacher is going to Lie to Miles. He is never going to need that. He is never going to need that.

Yeah.

The education system has not yet caught up to the fact.

Yes.

That nobody needs to know that kind of thing anymore because computers do those things for us. But what he is going to need to know is how to work in a group with people.

Yeah.

How to handle the situation. When you're responsible for a group project, you're doing your part, but the other person isn't.

Yes.

Or you're responsible for a group project and Paige, I mean, the smart girl in class wants to do all of the work and leave you all out how to handle that.

Yeah.

That's going to be something he's going to need the rest of his life.

Yeah.

That's what I call a durable skill. That's what he needs to practice. He needs to understand how to teach himself.

Yeah.

Because I sometimes think about my mother's father, my grandfather, whom I never knew. He died months before I was born. But he made his living as a tobacco farmer in South Carolina. Probably by the time he was 18 years old, he knew 80% of what he ever needed to know to be a technical farmer.

Yeah.

Certainly by the time he was 30, he knew absolutely everything he needed to know. I don't even know what kind of job is going to be available for miles in 10 years.

Yes.

Let alone how he wants. What I'm going to be doing in 10 years. Years.

Yeah.

So what used to be a system where you learned in your youth what you need and then amortize that over a working life that is gone.

Yeah.

Miles needs to be flexible. He needs to be creative. He needs to know how to learn stuff. He needs to know how to unlearn stuff.

Yeah.

There were things you and I were taught in AP Bio that aren't true anymore.

That's right. Yeah.

We need to know how to unlearn stuff. So I think Miles is right. There will be calculators, but there won't be something that teaches him how to frame a problem in such a way that he can break it into pieces and solve it.

Yeah.

You will always have close at hand tools that can solve the pieces, but framing the problem's going to be here.

Yeah.

Understanding how to move through the world that is constantly changing. That's what he needs to know.

Yeah.

College can be that. I always encourage kids again, especially kids for whom not being poor is not the point of college.

Yes.

Take a class that scares the hell out of you.

Yeah.

Right. To. To. To, you know, because you make an F. So what? Just graduate. You'll be fine.

Yeah.

Take it. Understand what it means to do a hard thing.

Yeah.

And understand what it means at the beginning. And learn to know the joy of realizing that you can actually do this hard thing.

Yes.

Right. Understand what reservoirs of talent and energy and creativity you have because you have no choice but to call on them in this class. Do that. Do the hard thing.

Yeah.

And that's where growth comes from. And if you keep to that, if you keep doing the hard thing, you develop a muscle memory. You develop a sense that if I work hard enough, I can do this. Right. And my mom has been telling me this my whole life, but turns out she was right. I can handle this. And that's what I want for kids who are going to college. I want that resilience. I want. I want those qualities that will endure no matter what the technology has in store for us.

Yes.

And because what we did, we were trained in a particular discipline to move forward through our lives in that discipline. That is ancient history.

Yes.

We cannot know what is happening.

What's your take on a passion versus do something you're good at?

So I, you know, here's my take on that. I think that what you're good at and passion are aligned. When kids, miles age 9th grade tell me they're passionate about something, I usually say, okay, you're passionate, but you haven't seen the whole list of possibilities yet. So they're usually passionate about music or gaming or the things that are in their lives. But later on, you realize what you're really good at, and what you're really good at will encourage you to keep going and maybe become one of the world's best. And along the way, you'll be passionate about that thing, too.

Yeah.

Right. Figure out what you're good at, and you. You know it. When you get there, you know, when you get to that point. I figured out that I'm a pretty good storyteller. I'm a pretty good communicator. And so I was a good communicator when I was translating calculus into English.

Yeah.

For. For people. I was a pretty good communicator when I was with you helping students make college choices and helping recent college graduates like you come to realize how wonderful they are all by themselves, that they don't have to pretend to be anybody else. And so my leaning into my being a good communicator has been valuable to me no matter what I do. And so the passions align with those skills. I think that Miles knows what interests him now. And he knows what he's passionate about now, but he doesn't understand the depth of what the word passion means. And he hasn't been exposed to a whole bunch of stuff, which is why, even when we work together all those many years ago, I encourage students never to go to a college that's only good at one thing. Change your mind.

Yeah, right.

You're going to change your mind. I usually say, Paige, that asking a college freshman what they want to be when they grow up is only slightly more informative than asking a kindergartner.

Yeah, that's true. I'm living with that. Yeah.

They don't know.

Yeah.

And they can't know because things are changing, are changing so much. So explore. Figure out what you're good.

Yeah.

And lean into that. That's what I would say to Miles if I were.

If I were talking to him.

You know, own what you care about, but explore.

Before you decide, will you tell us? And because I know our time is coming to a close, I really want to hear from you. What are you hopeful about? About the future. And I know in your work, you. You were at the forefront of how technology is going to hit our school system. Now, we've heard you. We know what you stand for. You're all about authenticity and finding this. You know, what you're good at, meeting your passion and really being, you know, curious about the future and open to how it's going to change. So I know that you stand for that, and I know that you know a lot about that because you're working in that space. What are the good things about this? I mean, I know we could make a long list of what we're worried about. I mean, there's a lot to be worried about in our country. But tell me where your optimism lies.

So I'm excited about the technological revolution and its possibilities for opening up more opportunities for more people. You know, Paige, that I have leaned way in to this generative AI moment.

Oh, yeah.

That some people think that we are too far along the hype cycle. I am hype number one, and I don't think we're nearly hyped enough.

You're day one, as my teenagers would.

Say, one definitely there. And I'm there because we are still in the part of this revolution where most of us are responding to what the software engineers can. Can imagine. And we're going to get to the point where we imagine what we insist the software engineers do. And these things are really powerful. You and I both come from Places where lots of people have no access to health care.

Yeah.

We are on the cusp of a point where everyone will have in their pocket a qualified nurse to answer their questions.

Yeah.

And we're not talking about Google. We're talking about really qualified and understood. That's going to open up possibilities that you and I grew up in a world where there were problems of data that were just too big to handle. That's not going to exist anymore.

Yeah.

Right. We're going to be able, in the not too distant future to understand exactly what is happening in Miles brain when he is reading a book.

Oh boy, I don't want to read that code.

I mean, and so the, the excitement there.

Yeah. So it's incredible. Yeah.

And, and lots of people are thinking, oh my goodness, what happens if all this goes wrong? I choose to think, what happens if everything goes right?

Yeah.

What if we do this the right way? What's happening today is again, software engineers who live very near the places where you and I first met in Silicon Valley are bringing to life the science fiction they read as adolescents.

So true.

For example, Paige. They think that what all of us want is to engineer out the people of our education and just learn from a computer. That is not what everybody wants. And so the excitement is that very soon we won't need the future to be mediated by their worldview, by their limitations. We'll be able to do it ourselves. We'll each have a computer scientist in our pocket who can build us the thing we can imagine. And what we might imagine is a democracy that's more representative, that spreads opportunity better than we have been able to figure out now that raises the floor of health and nutrition and opportunity in ways we could not think of before. So that's what excites me, that we get to be alive during a moment and in a country that could. If we choose to align a technological revolution with a history of more and more freedom for more and more people.

Yeah.

And create something new in the world that spreads joy, that spreads hope, that spreads opportunity. And that's what I have to live in now. We're talking two weeks after an election that I was not happy about.

Yeah.

But I still believe in that. I still believe we can do that. We've been through dark times before, but we've never been in a better position to handle those times, to survive those times, and to look forward towards a future where, via education, reimagined.

Yeah.

More and more voices get to be a part of the conversation. More and more dreams get to be realized more and more. More creativity gets to be applied to the world we live in. And that. That's what keeps me hopeful, Paige. That I know that while you might have been the first amazing New Orleans woman that I. I grew to know and love, you won't be the last.

Yeah.

There's somebody in Metairie right now who's going to change the world and even change my life in ways that you. You did. And. And that keeps me hopeful. I don't live to see it. Your daughters and Miles will. Will live to see it.

Yeah.

And that's good enough. We come from a place where we don't. We don't define history in lifetimes. Right.

That's the truth.

We know it's much bigger than that.

Yeah. And it's so important to remember that and embrace it and celebrate that we.

Are a point on a line. We come from someplace and we're going someplace. And we just have to play our part in this right now and make it possible for the miles of the world to take us the next step of the way.

There you are, Jeff. That beautiful perspective. Thank you so much for that. Jeff's perspective gives me hope. Jeff and I have had very different life experiences, and yet we also have a lot in common. I think that's all of us. We're different and we're alike. Every single one of us needs connection. Connecting with each other. Teaching our children how to connect through modeling it, and staying connected as a community with others who may or may not be exactly like us. It's the most important thing we can do for our future. And as Jeff says, it makes this American experiment of democracy possible. Jeff and I talked about college being a great opportunity to put yourself in the shoes of someone else. But I've also been applying this lately in my adult life. Just being more aware and present to the people around me. Generous and compassionate in the smallest ways, like helping someone load their groceries into the car. You don't have to be in college to experience a classroom. Life is a school. We're sharing this episode in February of 2025, and already it's been a year of great change and unpredictable events in our country. At the end of the day, I found comfort in asking myself, baby, did you get your lesson today? We're learning so much. It's a wild time to be alive, and it's not always easy. I value education more because I've known Jeff. Not just classroom education, lifelong learning, and as Jeff says, unlearning. And the power we have to understand each other and empower each other to move through a world that is constantly changing. Thank you Jeff. This conversation was so fun for me and brought back all the gratitude I have for you. How you opened my mind, inspired me to be myself, and showed me how to meet young people except exactly where they are and help them see a future of possibility. Your storytelling, your laughter, and your commitment to bringing more opportunity to the kids who need it the most are inspiring. Okay y'all, that's it for today. I will meet you here again soon. Thanks to each of you for being here and for listening. I'm so grateful we get to share life in this way. As always, Florida show notes are available at Paige nolan.com podcast. There you will find a full summary of the episode, timestamps and key takeaways, and any resources mentioned in our conversation. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love if you would leave me a rating and a review. You can do that by visiting pagenolan.com love your reviews, really do help people to discover the show. And if you know someone specifically who would enjoy this episode, I'm so grateful to have you all share. I'll meet you there with your friends. Lastly, if you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to share any feedback with me, Please email to meetmetheragenoland.com I would love to hear from you. Thank you to the team that makes this show possible. Podcast production and Marketing by North Node Podcast Network Music by Boyd McDonald's Donnell Cover photography by Innis Casey okay y'all, that's it for now. I'll meet you there again.