When the Political Science Department first reached out to me about receiving this
distinction and delivering this address today, my initial reaction was one of gratitude. It was
incredibly humbling to be invited back to the University of Washington – a place that I love so much – for such a special recognition.
My second reaction was one of surprise. Aren’t I too young for this, and to be giving this
speech? When did I graduate? As it turns out, I am (apparently) much older than I thought I was.
You wouldn’t know if you looked at my close mentors, Professors Aseem Prakash and John
Mercer, who, apparently, do not age. But, I graduated from the University of Washington 15
years ago, and arrived here on campus almost 20 years ago as a freshman. So I suppose, my first
words of wisdom for you today are that time flies.
Preparing for this speech was a really interesting experience. I’ve spent the past several
weeks reflecting – reflecting on my experience at UW – who I was then, who I have since
become. I kept asking myself: What is it that I wish someone had told me when I graduated from
college? What did I really need to hear at that time? What I realized, what I kept coming back to
– was that it is all about purpose. Purpose, big problems, and sacrifice. Real sacrifice. More on
all of this in a few minutes.
When I graduated from the University of Washington, in many ways, I was very lucky. I
left UW priding myself on being this person who had a really confident, strong sense of self. I
really thought I knew who I was. And to some extent, I did. I had poured myself fully into the
founding of the Dream Project, a program on campus dedicated to creating opportunity for
low-income and first-generation students like myself to pursue higher education. A program that
I’m so proud is still thriving today on campus and beyond – serving thousands of students
throughout King County and _. Maybe some of you even participated in the Dream
Project. The Dream Project gave me my sense of purpose here. It’s what motivated me everyday.
It’s where I was lucky enough to forge deep and meaningful relationships that impacted me
profoundly: with friends like my Dream Project co-founders, with mentors, like the amazing
Professor Stan Chernicoff, and so many others. All relationships that I still cherish today.
When I graduated, it was really hard for me to leave the Dream Project. But I knew it was
the right time for the program to have a new executive director, and I knew personally I had to.
So much of my identity, my sense of self, my purpose was wrapped up in this all-consuming
work.
Annual Live The Dream Project Scholarship Event
| Alula Asfaw (podium), Matt Harris, Jenee Twitchell, Danny Tremblay, and Grant Twitchell
Yet when I sat where you sat today, I found myself dragging my heels about the future.
Why? What exactly was holding me back in this transition after college? It was then, as I thought
about what came next, that I had my first important reflection: purpose, in and of itself, isn’t
enough. We all talk about finding your purpose. But what I learned was: Purpose also needs to be
anchored to a problem. What do I mean by that? At UW, I was passionate about
education/injustice. But I was also lucky enough through the Dream Project to find and be
consumed by a big problem to solve. That is what fueled me. A big question. How could we
increase access to higher education for students who, like me, didn’t have parents to help them
navigate the college application process? And in doing so, how could we educate/motivate
college students, perhaps of very different backgrounds, to ________________?
So what was it that I was afraid of now? I didn’t want to go out into the world without that next
big problem. I now desperately needed to find my next big problem to solve.
In those years after UW, I was lucky enough to have some amazing opportunities –
working in the Obama Administration at the U.S. Department of Education, developing
education policy in Haiti at the U.S. Agency for International Development. All experiences
aligned with my purpose to __________. And sure enough, thanks in large part to
my bosses and professional mentors, who empowered me to take on important projects, I was
able to be challenged everyday to address big challenges in _ and K-12 education (examples). The work was fast-paced, exciting, and __. But if I were really, truly honest
with myself at that time, I would tell you that although I was happy and loved my jobs, I still
wasn’t entirely fulfilled.
What was missing? What exactly was different? Yes, it was searching for this next big
question, but it was also something more. There was something pulling at me. This weight, this
burden, this feeling that I couldn’t shake. I just couldn’t put words to it yet.
It all came to a head in law school. Throughout law school, I watched my friends – even
many of them who cared deeply about public service – channeling their sense of purpose into the
pursuit of competitive, high prestige opportunities: judicial clerkships, corporate jobs, positions
at big, high-paying New York City law firms. But I just couldn’t do it. Not in a righteous way. I
literally couldn’t do it. I felt like I didn’t even really have a choice. My whole adult life, my
identity was defined by this self-narrative I’d told myself. This “against all odds” success story
of a first-generation immigrant, who overcame incredible hardships throughout my childhood to
set off on an improbable path to where I am today. I thought about my younger self. I thought about all of us, my mom and six kids, living in a two-bedroom apartment in Federal Way. I thought about my parents – going six years without seeing my mom and 11 years without seeing my dad.
I thought about my older brother, who took me in when my mom had to go back to Ethiopia. Who worked as a luggage handler at Alaska Airlines, taking literally every shift he could, sleeping on the break room couch. So he could save up the money to take care of me and send the rest back to help support my parents. I thought about my other older brother, who in his early 30s, with a wife and a baby, was then saddled with having to take care of my younger brother and me through high school.
I even thought about the family in Seattle, years before, who out of pure benevolence, offered to sponsor my sisters to come to the U.S. – and very literally changed the trajectory of my family’s life.
I thought about all these countless actions of my parents and siblings and neighbors,
teachers, mentors. And if all that comes out of that extraordinary struggle is that I’m wealthy,
have economic security, a prestigious job? I knew, selfishly, that I wouldn’t be able to live with
myself. I had to do something that mattered, and make a difference. I had to show to myself that
I was willing to be unafraid to take a risk. Anything short of that felt like a betrayal – of those
who had believed in me when I was young, of those who had given me opportunities along the
way, and most of all, of myself.
I finally had clarity. I was finally able to name that thing that had been weighing on me
for all these years. It was this idea of sacrifice. This was my second important reflection. Yes,
purpose needs to be anchored to a big problem to solve. But there’s something more. Solving a
big problem requires sacrifice. I had to prove to myself that I was willing to sacrifice, like those
who had sacrificed for me. Now let’s fast forward. It’s 2016. I’ve just graduated from Yale Law School and founded an organization called Bonds of Union. In Bonds of Union, I’d finally found that anchoring I’d been trying to find all this time (embodied/represented for me personally). That synergy of purpose, big problems, and sacrifice.
It was an organization dedicated to developing and implementing innovative initiatives to
address persistent social and economic challenges in the U.S. facing low-income communities.
The vision for Bonds of Union was simple. How do we solve big problems? (Those really
challenging problems in .) More specifically, how could we create the R&D infrastructure to solve problems in different sectors – education, health, _, – that the private
sector or other institutions didn’t have the incentive to invest in to try to solve. Maybe because
We offered a new and innovative model – one that was rooted in sacrifice. The vision was
to build cross-sector teams to come together for a 3-5 year period around a narrow, well-defined
problem. The team designs, implements, and refines a solution, and in doing so, develops a
breakthrough innovation. Core to this model is the idea that you have to be proximate to the
problem you’re trying to solve. (What do I mean?) To solve a big problem, the team has to be on
the ground to understand it; to understand the needs of the community. And to design an
innovative solution, you have to be on the ground to implement it – test it and refine it.
So here I was. I had moved to Cincinnati to carry out our first pilot project.
An education-focused initiative designed to dramatically improve academic and social-emotional
outcomes for the lowest-performers in high-need elementary schools. (The work was hard.)
From the start, I struggled to generate the resources and funding to support myself and our small
team. Implementing this solution in our first pilot school – an urban, public school in a
high-poverty neighborhood – brought with it all sorts of day-to-day challenges. And not to
mention, there was then the added burden of making the sacrifice worth it for these exceptional
people who I’d compelled to uproot their lives and join me in carrying out this vision. I was
living out this long-held dream exactly as I’d hoped – being meaningfully embedded in the
community, testing a real solution, on the ground. I had stepped off the more predictable,
prestigious career path – by choice – but here I was now, for the first time, really feeling the
weight of that decision, and not just for myself. Everything was hard, and at times,
overwhelming. Which brings me to my third and final important reflection: real sacrifice isn’t easy. But it’s so, so important. (10:30) For me, sacrifice meant many things: First, it meant stepping away from a traditional, safe, more lucrative career path.
Second, it meant potentially disappointing family or others, who for so many years, had
been invested in my success. I can look out here today and see my four older siblings and parents
in the audience. They would be the first to tell you that my decision to pursue this path wasn’t
always easy for them either. I would tell them that this was the best way I knew how to honor the
sacrifices they made for me. And lastly, most significantly, on account of those two things, sacrifice meant that I was forced to have really difficult conversations with myself – to really confront uncomfortable questions about my sense of identity.
Those first years in Cincinnati – it was this interesting moment for me personally. I’m in
the Midwest, where I have no professional relationships, no mentors, no one who knew I’d
founded the Dream Project, or worked at the Department of Education, or had gone to Yale Law
School. No one who knew the struggles it took – and hardships I endured – to get to this point in
my journey. Who was I now? Who was I without this constructed identity, this narrative of
success? The first thing I had to do – I had to remind myself: At the end of the day, what really
matters, when everything else is stripped away – your accomplishments, your ambitions, your
challenges, your sense of self that you’ve developed based on how other people view you and
what they expect of you – what’s left is who you are. You are not your degrees. You are not your
GPA or test scores – good or bad. You are not that feeling of trying to make your parents or
family proud. You are not the exciting job you’ve got lined up. You are what you value.
I think a lot about my daughters – my 5 year old (who is here today) and my 2 year old.
And my soon-to-be-born twin daughters, who will be born literally any day. (If you see me check
my phone and run off stage, you’ll know why.) But I think about them.
Years from now, and over time, they won’t be proud of me for my accomplishments, or
titles, or even the good I did. They’ll be proud of the person I was. Ultimately that’s what
matters. The person I was, and am, and continue to try to become. All of this is what amounts to
having a purposeful, balanced, fulfilling life. So what are the big takeaways here for you? Find your big problem to solve. When youdo, when you find it, get on the ground and get your hands dirty. Embed yourself in the community, because that’s how you really, truly understand a problem. Don’t be afraid to seek out that job that wasn’t at the campus job fair. Want to go into business? Go and try to create opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs in underserved areas. Want to go into state or federal policy? Go out and try to deeply understand the experiences of those people you’re trying to
serve. Not just from policy briefs and news articles, but meaningful, human interactions. See the
issues yourself. Want to go into medicine or law? Finance? Academia? The list goes on.
Do it early. Do it now. This is when you should take risks. Moms and dads – cover for
ears for a second. Guys, those jobs – the ones with the higher paying salaries, more prestige –
those jobs will still be there waiting for you. I promise you – you’ll be so much better equipped
to take on those more traditional policy jobs, finance positions, med school, whatever path
you’re on and going to do next – with the clarity and purpose you’ll gain from these experiences.
Some of you may feel that same obligation already to do something big, something that
matters, that requires sacrifice, maybe because of your own improbable journey like mine to this
seat here today. For others of you, and perhaps even more powerfully, you have an opportunity to
do this by choice. Out of pure choice, out of principle, you are going to decide to dedicate
yourself to a life of unwavering purpose. Whatever your why that gets you there. Whatever
compels you, I hope you take that opportunity.
There is no doubt that, at times, what you’re doing is going to feel hard. You may wonder
if the sacrifice was worth it. But have confidence that you’ll come out with a stronger, clearer
sense of who you are and what you value. The satisfaction, you’ll learn, isn’t in the doing or the
outcomes. It’s what it does to you as a person. You are destined to do even greater things than
you have accomplished. You’ll be more ready than you could have ever imagined to go out into
the world and do big things. Because remember, one day, you too, after realizing – wow, I’m older than I think I am. You’ll be reflecting on your time at UW – the person you were, and who you have become. And there will be no greater satisfaction than being able to confidently know who you are, who you really are – what you value, and what you’re about. So, find your purpose, your big questions, and how you will sacrifice to do great things. Go out and do it now. Because remember, time flies.
