WEBVTT

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So when I was a little girl,

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a book sat on the coffee table
in our living room,

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just steps from our front door.

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And the living room is a first impression.

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Ours had white carpet

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and a curio of my mother's
most treasured collectibles.

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That room represented the sacrifices
of generations gone by

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who, by poverty or by policy,

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couldn't afford a curio of collectibles

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let alone a middle class house
to put them in.

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That room had to stay perfect.

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But I would risk messing up
that perfect room every day

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just to see that book.

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On the cover sat a woman
named Septima Clark.

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She sat in perfect profile
with her face raised to the sky.

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She had perfect salt-and-pepper cornrows

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platted down the sides of her head,

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and pride and wisdom
just emanated from her dark skin.

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Septima Clark was an activist
and an educator,

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a woman after whom I'd eventually
model my own career.

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But more than all the words
she ever spoke,

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that single portrait of Septima Clark,

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it defined confidence for me

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before I ever even knew the word.

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It may sound simple,

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but confidence is something
that we underestimate the importance of.

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We treat it like a nice-to-have
instead of a must-have.

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We place value on knowledge and resources

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above what we deem to be
the soft skill of confidence.

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But by most measures,
we have more knowledge

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and more resources now
than at any other point in history,

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and still injustice abounds
and challenges persist.

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If knowledge and resources
were all that we needed,

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we wouldn't still be here.

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And I believe that confidence
is one of the main things

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missing from the equation.

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I'm completely obsessed with confidence.

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It's been the most important
journey of my life,

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a journey that,
to be honest, I'm still on.

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Confidence is the necessary spark
before everything that follows.

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Confidence is the difference
between being inspired

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and actually getting started,

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between trying and doing until it's done.

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Confidence helps us keep going
even when we failed.

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The name of the book on that coffee table
was "I Dream A World,"

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and today I dream a world
where revolutionary confidence

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helps bring about our
most ambitious dreams into reality.

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That's exactly the kind of world
that I wanted to create in my classroom

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when I was a teacher,

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like a Willy Wonka world
of pure imagination,

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but make it scholarly.

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All of my students were black or brown.

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All of them were growing up
in a low-income circumstance.

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Some of them were immigrants,
some of them were disabled,

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but all of them were the very last people

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this world invites to be confident.

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That's why it was so important
that my classroom be a place

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where my students could build
the muscle of confidence,

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where they could learn to face each day
with the confidence you need

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to redesign the world
in the image of your own dreams.

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After all, what are academic skills
without the confidence to use those skills

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to go out and change the world.

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Now is when I should tell you about
two of my students, Jamal and Regina.

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Now, I've changed their names,
but their stories remain the same.

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Jamal was brilliant, but unfocused.

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He would squirm in his chair
during independent work,

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and he would never stay still
for more than three or four minutes.

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Students like Jamal
can perplex brand new teachers

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because they're not quite sure
how to support young people like him.

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I took a direct approach.

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I negotiated with Jamal.

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If he could give me focused work,

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then he could do it
from anywhere in the classroom,

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from our classroom rug,
from behind my desk,

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from inside his classroom locker,
which turned out to be his favorite place.

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Jamal's least favorite
subject was writing,

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and he never wanted to read
what he had written out loud in class,

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but we were still making progress.

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One day, I decided to host
a mock 2008 presidential election

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in my classroom.

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My third graders had to research
and write a stump speech

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for their chosen candidate:

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Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
or John McCain.

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The heavy favorites were obvious,

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but one student chose John McCain.

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It was Jamal.

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Jamal finally decided to read something
that he had written out loud in class,

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and sure enough, Jamal stunned
all of us with his brilliance.

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Just like Jamal's dad,
John McCain was a veteran,

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and just like Jamal's dad protected him,

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Jamal believed that John McCain
would protect the entire country.

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And he wasn't my candidate of choice,
but it didn't matter,

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because the entire class
erupted into applause,

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a standing ovation
for our brave friend Jamal

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who finally showed up
as his most confident self

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for the first time that year.

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And then there was Regina.

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Regina was equally
as brilliant, but active.

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She'd inevitably finish her work early,

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and then she'd get on about the business
of distracting other students.

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(Laughter)

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Walking, talking,

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passing those notes
that teachers hate but kids love.

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You look like you passed a lot of them.

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(Laughter)

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Despite my high ideals for our classroom,

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I would too often default
to my baser instincts,

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and I would choose
compliance over confidence.

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Regina was a glitch in my intended system.

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A good teacher can correct misbehavior

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but still remain a student's champion.

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But on one day in particular,

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I just plain old chose control.

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I snapped,

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and my approach
didn't communicate to Regina

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that she was being a distraction.

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My approach communicated to Regina
that she herself was a distraction.

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I watched the light go out from her eyes,

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and that light sparked joy
in our classroom.

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I had just extinguished it.

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The entire class became irritable,

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and we didn't recover
for the rest of the day.

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I think about the day often,

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and I have literally prayed
that I did not do irreparable harm,

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because as a woman who used to be
a little girl just like Regina,

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I know that I could have started
the process of killing her confidence

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forever.

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A lack of confidence
pulls us down from the bottom

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and weighs us down from the top,

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crushing us between a flurry
of can'ts, won'ts and impossibles.

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Without confidence, we get stuck,

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and when we get stuck,
we can't even get started.

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Instead of getting mired
in what can get in our way,

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confidence invites us
to perform with certainty.

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We all operate a little differently
when we're sure we can win

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versus if we just hope we will.

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Now, this can be a helpful check.

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If you don't have enough confidence,

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it could be because you need
to readjust your goal.

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If you have too much confidence,

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it could be because
you're not rooted in something real.

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Not everyone lacks confidence.

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We make it easier in this society
for some people to gain confidence

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because they fit our preferred
archetype of leadership.

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We reward confidence in some people

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and we punish confidence in others,

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and all the while far too many people

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are walking around
every single day without it.

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For some of us,

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confidence is a revolutionary choice,

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and it would be our greatest shame

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to see our best ideas go unrealized

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and our brightest dreams go unreached

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all because we lacked
the engine of confidence.

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That's not a risk I'm willing to take.

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So how do we crack the code on confidence?

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In my estimation,
it takes at least three things:

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permission, community and curiosity.

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Permission births confidence,

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community nurtures it

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and curiosity affirms it.

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In education, we've got a saying,

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that you can't be what you can't see.

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When I was a little girl,
I couldn't show confidence

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until someone showed me.

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My family used to do everything together,

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including the mundane things,
like buying a new car,

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and every time we did this,

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I'd watch my parents
put on the exact same performance.

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We'd enter the dealership,

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and my dad would sit

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while my mom shopped.

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When my mom found a car that she liked,

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they'd go in and meet with the dealer,

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and inevitably, every time
the dealer would turn his attention

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and his body to my dad,

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assuming that he
controlled the purse strings

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and therefore this negotiation.

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"Rev. Packnett," they'd say,
"how do we get you into this car today?"

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My dad would inevitably
respond the same way.

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He'd slowly and silently
gesture toward my mother

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and then put his hands
right back in his lap.

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It might have been the complete shock

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of negotiating finances
with a black woman in the '80s,

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but whatever it was,

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I'd watch my mother
work these car dealers over

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until they were basically
giving the car away for free.

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(Laughter)

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She would never crack a smile.

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She would never be afraid to walk away.

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I know my mom just thought
she was getting a good deal on a minivan,

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but what she was actually doing

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was giving me permission
to defy expectations

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and to show up confidently in my skill
no matter who doubts me.

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Confidence needs permission to exist

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and community is the safest place
to try confidence on.

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I traveled to Kenya this year
to learn about women's empowerment

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among Maasai women.

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There I met a group of young women

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called Team Lioness,

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among Kenya's first all-female
community ranger groups.

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These eight brave young women
were making history

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in just their teenage years,

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and I asked Purity, the most verbose
young ranger among them,

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"Do you ever get scared?"

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I swear to you, I want to tattoo
her response all over my entire body.

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She said, "Of course I do,

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but I call on my sisters.

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They remind me that we
will be better than these men

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and that we will not fail."

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Purity's confidence to chase down
lions and catch poachers,

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it didn't come from her athletic ability
or even just her faith.

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Her confidence was
propped up by sisterhood,

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by community.

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What she was basically saying
was that if I am ever in doubt,

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I need you to be there

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to restore my hope

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and to rebuild my certainty.

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In community, I can find my confidence

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and your curiosity can affirm it.

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Early in my career,
I led a large-scale event

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that did not go exactly as planned.

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I'm lying to you. It was terrible.

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And when I debriefed the event
with my manager,

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I just knew that she
was going to run down the list

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of every mistake I had ever made,

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probably from birth.

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But instead, she opened with a question:

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What was your intention?

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I was surprised but relieved.

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She knew that I was already
beating myself up,

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and that question invited me
to learn from my own mistakes

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instead of damage
my already fragile confidence.

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Curiosity invites people
to be in charge of their own learning.

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That exchange, it helped me
approach my next project

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with the expectation of success.

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Permission, community, curiosity:

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all of these are the things that we
will need to breed the confidence

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that we'll absolutely need
to solve our greatest challenges

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and to build the world we dream,

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a world where inequity is ended
and where justice is real,

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a world where we can be free
on the outside and free on the inside

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because we know that none of us are free
until all of us are free.

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A world that isn't
intimidated by confidence

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when it shows up as a woman

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or in black skin

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or in anything other than
our preferred archetypes of leadership.

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A world that knows
that that kind of confidence

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is exactly the key we need
to unlock the future that we want.

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I have enough confidence
to believe that that world

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will indeed come to pass,

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and that we are the ones to make it so.

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Thank you so much.

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(Applause)