My roommate grew up sheltered and, dare I say, privileged, in a beautiful town outside of Minneapolis.  We attended a similarly sheltered private school on the east coast.  Our friends were accepting jobs with Morgan Stanley and Anderson Consulting.  She accepted the role with Teach for America and started teaching in Compton, CA, near Los Angeles.  She taught at an elementary school that was padlocked shut at 4:00 each afternoon for safety reasons; better get out of there and safely home before then.  She has a lifetime of stories from those two years of teaching.

And Wendy Kopp’s story goes on.  TFA’s been around for almost 20 years now.  It’s grown and expanded and become the center of many discussions about reforming education in our country.  And Ms. Kopp’s grown with it.  

But for all of the things I admire about Wendy Kopp, I think what I most admire is this:  She didn’t file her thesis in a drawer.  She didn’t have this great idea, write about it, develop it, and then turn it into cocktail party fodder, bantering back and forth with cute men in khakis and loafers, about how she had some really great ideas about reforming education.  Instead, she raised capital and she put herself out there.  She tried it.  And she made it work.

I love her for that.

I love that she took her Ivy League education and did something powerful and meaningful with it.  I love that she had an idea about how to change the world and she didn’t listen to the naysayers that said it could never happen.  What a wonderful message for our kids:  Work hard.  Think about others.  Develop your idea.  Pursue it.  Stick with it.  Figure out how to do it better.  

Thanks, Wendy.