Better Humans By Unleashing Creativity | Ester Wojcicki | World Renowned Educationist Explains Why

Neil Koenig, Senior TV Series Producer and ideaXme interviewer in conversation with Esther Wojcicki, Chief Education Advisor at Knack and Chief Academic Advisor at Pressto.ai and author of How to Raise Successful People.

Ester Wojcicki, Educationist. Credit: Annie Barnett.
Ester Wojcicki, Educationist. Credit: Annie Barnett, Menlo Park, CA.

Neil Koenig comments:

What’s the most difficult job in the world? President, astronaut, neurosurgeon? No – according to the educator, journalist and author Esther Wojcicki, “it’s being a parent”. As she explains, “most young people don’t realise it, but when you become a parent you’re signing up for a lifetime of worry…you’re going to want to help your child forever”. But, she adds, the rewards of parenthood far outweigh any downsides: “there’s nothing more exciting than having a great family”. In this interview with me for ideaXme, Esther Wojcicki talks about her career in education; why she believes a more “hands-off” approach is better for kids than being a so-called “helicopter” parent; and some of her many other ventures, such as her work with the Creative Commons project. She also discusses her best-selling book “How to Raise Successful People”, in which she sets out how parents can not only help their children to achieve their full potential, but can also have a great time in the process.

The ideaXme interview with Esther Wojcicki

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:00:00] Welcome to ideaXme. I’m Neil Koenig. For some parents, one key to success in later life for their children is for them to win a place at a college or university, perhaps like one of these in London. But whatever path their offspring eventually end up taking, many parents find it hard to decide on the best way to bring their children up in the first place. Is a relaxed approach better? Or should one aim to be a so-called helicopter parent, controlling every aspect of your children’s lives?

Esther Wojcicki, Educationist. Credit: Jo Sittenfeld.
Esther Wojcicki, Educationist. Credit: Jo Sittenfeld.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:00:36] Someone who has thought long and hard about these questions is the author, journalist and educator Esther Wojcicki. Having first met her at the St. Gallen Symposium 2023, I caught up with Esther at her home in California, and I began by asking her to tell us more about herself and her background.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:00:58] Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I’m very happy to talk about myself. So, I was a teacher for about 40 years, perhaps a little more, at a school called Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, California. It’s ranked as one of the top schools in the state of California. And in 1984, I arrived as a journalism English Math teacher. And in journalism, I saw an opportunity to change the way they were teaching and the way that they were publishing, which was a small tabloid newspaper at the time. And over the years, in the 1980s, I brought in computers, which was rather shocking because nobody brought in computers in the 1980s. And my students all thought it was really exciting. So, I was like, they wanted to come. And then I changed the philosophy of the program so that I put the students in charge. And, you know, with teenagers, there’s nothing more exciting for a teenager than to be in charge. That’s one of the main goals, independence. And so, it started with 20 students and then in, about 1989, it had grown to about 100 students in the same program, and at that point I started another publication, a magazine called Verde.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:02:40] This magazine that was not sanctioned by the school district, but I decided to do it anyway. It turns out that it won first place in the United States for publications after its first year, and after that award, the school district decided it was a really good idea to hire another teacher to help. And so, they did. And so along came this wonderful man named Paul Kandel. And he’s still there today. And over the next 15 years, the program grew, continued to grow. And every two years or so I started another publication. So, there’s like a sports magazine and an arts and entertainment magazine, and there was a history magazine. Whatever the kids wanted to do, I was like, sure, let’s do it. And so today, 2024, there’s about 800 students in this program. There are about roughly four other journalism teachers. And the city of Palo Alto. Thank you, City of Palo Alto. They built a wonderful 24,000 square foot building for the program on the Palo Alto High School campus. It’s beautiful. And so that’s where the program is housed at the moment. So that’s probably my biggest contribution to my city.

Esther Wojcicki Surrounded by photographs of her 3 daughters.
Pictured, Ester Wojcicki Educationist. By photographer Annie Barnett, Menlo Park, CA.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:04:09] But you studied journalism and then you went into teaching. Did you know what you wanted to do when you were choosing what to study?

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:04:17] So, I went to University of California at Berkeley, and I got a bachelor’s degree in English and political science and a master’s degree in journalism. And I wanted to be a journalist. And this was in the 1970s, end of the 60s, 1970s. And for those of you that might not know and weren’t alive at that time, women were not in journalism, so I couldn’t get a job doing anything in journalism besides just being in the back working on ads or something. And I wanted to be a reporter. As a matter of fact, women were banned from the San Francisco Press Club, where I tried to go, and it was all over the country. Women just weren’t in journalism. It was a man’s profession. And so, I tried, and I wrote for some publications, but they only assigned me stories that were relevant to women. That would go in what was called the women’s section of the paper. And I wanted to write real stories, news, politics, opinion, whatever. So, I decided instead, that since I can’t be the kind of journalist I want to be, I’ll teach journalism. I’ll help all those kids do it. And, you know, so I was very motivated to teach journalism, and I was very motivated to empower young people to have a voice. And that worked. You know, it attracted very large numbers of kids. And so that that was my original goal. And then in the 1970’s, I had three children in a row within a five-year period. And so, I took time off to stay with my children. But I still did a lot of community activity. I was always very involved as a volunteer or back then, you know, there was no web, so I couldn’t write for any web.

First Teacher to Use Google in the Classroom

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:06:25] But that was, um, a fun time in my life because I stayed with my children until they went to school. I stayed home, and then after that I went back to and was teaching. And then I also got involved in a variety of projects that were really interesting to me. One of them was Google, that started in 1999 in my daughter Susan’s garage, and I was very excited about Google, and I was probably the first teacher, if not in the US, but in the world, to use Google in the classroom. As a matter of fact, I remember when I first had the kids using Google, they were like, what is this? You know, this is this is really weird. But they it was crazy. They loved it. And then they told all their friends about it. And that was an exciting thing for me. And then I got involved in the Google education. Of course, being a teacher, that was something I was interested in. And then also I got involved in what I think was, something that was born out of the web, which was Creative Commons. Creative Commons is in about 130 countries around the world. It’s the infrastructure, the legal infrastructure behind the Open Web. So, my idea was, you know, all these people are creating all this great content and perhaps they would like to share it with other people, and we can build on each other’s work. And so, Larry Lessig from Harvard was the guy that started it. And so, I joined that group, and then eventually I became chairman of the board and worked with Creative Commons, and I still work with them. It’s a fantastic group. It’s creativecommons.org.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:08:22] This is this system of people agreeing various terms so they can share stuff, right, and prevent exploitation and that kind of thing and dissemination of knowledge.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:08:33] That’s right. They have six basic licenses where you can license for free your work, and that allows other people to build on it or use it or whatever, to make the world better for everyone. Because my theory and I agreed with the theory of Creative Commons, is that, you know, all this knowledge, it belongs to humanity. It doesn’t belong to just one person. And we can all profit from this incredible creative genius of human beings, provided that it’s not locked up behind any kind of barriers. So that got me very excited. And so, I’m still excited about this, and we’ll have to see where it’s going in the AI world.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:09:20] Now just going back to your experiences with teaching and children and so on, I’m reminded of this possibly apocryphal quotation from President Clinton that the hardest job in the world is not being president, it’s being a parent. Is there’s any truth in that?

How to Raise Successful People

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:09:41] Yes, the hardest job in the world is being a parent. As a parent, most young people don’t realise it, but you’re signing up for a lifetime of worry. You’re going to worry about that child forever, and you’re going to want to help that child forever. And so, it’s going to take some of your creative powers to work with that child. So, in that vein, I wrote a book, and my book is called How to Raise Successful People. I think in London they changed the title. It’s in 31 languages. It’s all over the world. In that book, I talk about parenting and how parenting is the most important thing that we do for the planet and for everyone. And the most important years are 0 to 5. How you take care of your child in those years sets a pattern. And if they’re traumatised very early, then they have to overcome this trauma. So, what you want to do is do your best to help them have a good childhood. And then from five on, most of them go to school. And I’ve been trying to modify the school system because when kids go to school, they are very creative at the age of five, six, seven. And by the time they’re in high school or at the end of their schooling career, they’re not creative at all. It’s really terrible. And Sir Ken Robinson, who is an amazing public speaker and did the probably the best Ted talk, talks about how the schooling system kills creativity.

Ester Wojcicki, Educationist.
Pictured, Ester Wojcicki, Educationist. By photographer Annie Barnett, Menlo Park, CA.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:11:34] And I’ve seen it happen over and over again because we’re teaching to the test and you’re successful when you memorise really well, and you perform on the test. So, I have this little acronym in my book for all parents. And also, I have a new app on the Google Play Store and on the Apple Store to help parents. It’s called the ParentingTrick. What to do when your kid is misbehaving and Trick stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. This is what I say belongs in all parenting. You have to learn to trust your child to do some things for themselves. You teach them and then you trust them. And when you trust them, they develop self-confidence. They trust themselves. So, you know, of course we all teach kids how to walk. And then after that, you know, we hope they walk on their own. But there’s a lot of other skills that we teach kids or should be teaching kids and allowing them to do these things independently and then respect. If you want your child to have self-respect, you need to respect them. They have to like themselves. And I’m trying to get this across, like I say, across 31 countries around the world, 31 languages. Then the I stands for independence. And I don’t know if you remember, I just said the most important thing that I did to attract all those students to my program was to put them in charge.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:13:18] Independence. That’s what kids like. Teenage years. That’s where the number one conflicts come. You know, parents want to tell the kids what to do, and kids, are like, I want to do it this way. And the parents are like, no, you do it that way. And so, the conflict happens all the time. But if you give kids independence, you collaborate with them. That’s the C in trick, instead of dictating and then kindness, always treat your kids with kindness so that they know you have their back, that you will support them no matter what. And Maya Angelou, who’s a really famous American author, said that people will forget what you said. They’ll forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. Feelings just last forever, you know, and you can think about your own elementary school experience. And you know you will get one vision, one feeling of how it was for you. And so, I say, we need to take really good care of our children as parents. And parenting is hard. You’re on call 24/7. It’s all the time. And so yes, but it’s fun. And if you have a good time with your kids, it’s an opportunity for you to relive your childhood.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:14:47] There’s been something of an industry, almost, of advice for how to raise children. I remember my own mother talking about Doctor Spock’s books in the 60s, and she wasn’t a big fan, I don’t think. What do you see as the legacy of this, this industry? I mean, it’s still with us, isn’t it? To a certain extent.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:15:08] So I am busy trying to counter what I see out there in terms of advice for parents, because there is too much what is called helicopter parenting. And what that does is the more you do for your child, the less they do for themselves and the less capable they feel. They can’t do it. They’re like, oh, Mom and Dad have to help me. And so, I am trying to have a movement against this, basically, so we can help parents realise that their kids are pretty smart and pretty capable. I mean, it’s kind of funny. I remember as a teacher, you know, I always had parent conferences with the parents. That’s required, at least in California. And they would come in and then I would talk about their child and say what they were doing in class and so forth. And I’d have some parents who would say, do you remember my name? It was that my child you were describing, or is that some other kid? They couldn’t believe that their child behaved that way in class. And it was really usually very positive. I was saying positive things, and their view of their child was they don’t do their homework, they don’t listen to instructions. And I was like, well, I just want you to know, in my class they do all that. So, you can stop worrying.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:16:39] So helicopter parenting, I mean, where did it come from?

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:16:43] Amy Chua, she wrote this book, The Tiger Mom. If you read the book, it’s actually a very interesting book. She talks about how she totally controlled her children’s lives. She had two daughters. And how that resulted in really brilliant children. And I think it was an influential book. A lot of people bought it and read it and thought, well, you know, it should be a good method. But I actually did a debate with her in Mexico, and it was kind of a very interesting debate where she said she actually hated being a mother. It was just so stressful. And I said I loved being a mother. It was giving me the opportunity to have a good time. And anyway, there was an audience of about 7000 who then voted with their hands, and I’m happy to say I won. Yeah.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:17:46] I think a lot of parents feel pressure. They feel pressure for themselves to how they’re behaving towards their children, and they want their children to succeed. And I mean, I’ve been coming to Silicon Valley for probably 30 years now, and it’s one of the places where there’s a lot of innovation and a lot of energy. But there also the pressure seems perhaps more intense here than almost anywhere else. So, what’s it like being a parent here?

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:18:13] There is a lot of pressure to succeed. There’s a lot of pressure, to do really well on the test because the target is getting into a good college, and it’s the Ivy League colleges that everybody’s targeting. And I say that it’s caused a lot of emotional stress for kids, a lot of emotional stress for parents. And what is also very interesting is that if you look at the super creative people in the world today, the ones that have done really amazing things. Most of them did not graduate from college. And most of them did not follow the patterns that were laid out for them. So, there is this conflict going on here in Silicon Valley. Actually, it’s all over the world because the parents are like, you definitely have to pass those tests. You definitely have to. And I agree with some of it. So, in other words, we definitely have to learn to read and do math and understand science and so forth. But where in the curriculum worldwide, where do we have a class in being yourself and being creative? Nowhere. So that’s what I’ve been proposing recently, which is 20% of the time in all schools worldwide there should be one day a week when kids are in charge and kids get to work on projects that they personally care about, and I think that will help. This is the century of creativity. Last century was the century of factory workers. We needed people that followed instructions in the factory. We don’t need that today. And we need people to think up creative solutions to problems facing humanity. And they’re not going to get it when they solve old problems with all these old answers not going to work.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:20:21] So, the answer is?

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:20:24] The answer is, I think that it’s important to use my Trick model in parenting. Use the Trick model in schools. Teachers need to give students more opportunity to collaborate, more opportunity to work in groups. And every school should have a creative time. I don’t know how many hours a week they want to call it, but like I said, one day a week or maybe not if you don’t want to do one day a week, how about one afternoon a week. Where you get to explore who you are, what you want to do, because most kids are so busy memorising and doing all the homework and following all the instructions, they don’t even think about what they want to do. So, let’s give them that opportunity to do that. There are three major examples that I have of this effective way of parenting. It’s number one, two and three daughters, Susan, who is the (former) CEO of YouTube, who really structured the way YouTube works in the world today. Janet, who’s a professor of paediatrics and a Fulbright scholar who’s working on the obesity epidemic, and Anne, who’s the founder of 23andMe, the personal genetics company.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:21:46] So you must agree, they are definitely creative people. So, you have to believe in yourself to do this kind of thing. And I have a student, he graduated from high school, maybe five years ago. His passion was shipping. He wanted to see what he could do to make shipping around the world easier for everyone. And so unfortunately did not get into Stanford. He was very depressed about that, but instead I suggested that he start a company. Why don’t you start working on what you want to do now? And so, he did start a company called Nowports. He’s now 23. Nowports is worth, I’ve forgotten, $1.6 billion today. And it was just his passion for changing shipping and making it a better place for everyone, that made a difference. So, his name is Alfonso De los Rios. He’s from Monterrey, Mexico. Needless to say, I’m very proud of him, but he’s not the only one. You know, I have a lot of students that have done really amazing things. Another one is the actor, James Franco. He was in many movies. I’m sure you are aware of some of the things he’s done.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:23:21] He originally was going to go to college, I think, UCLA, and study math, and his parents thought that was terrific. And then he changed his mind and said he wanted to be an actor. Can you imagine how excited his parents were about that? But I supported him, and I said, if this is your passion, if this is what you think you want to do in your life, this is what you should do. And I think if you look at most adults in the world today, a lot of them that are depressed and unhappy and stuck in jobs that they don’t like never had the opportunity to do what they actually really wanted to do. So, let’s see what we can do to help the next generation be happier about what they’ve decided they want to do. And so that’s what I’m working on. I’m my goal is empower those incredible young people all over the world. You never know who’s going to be the next Einstein. You never know. He could have grown up in rural Africa. We don’t know. And unless we stop training them all to follow instructions, we’re never going to know.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:24:39] Now we have a system of education that is built on hundreds of years of experience, and these structures that are hard to change. But the approach you’re describing is something that it sounds a bit like people can take a different approach into their own hands if they if they’ve got the courage.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:25:00] That’s correct. You can take a different approach. That’s why I’m saying I’ve worked in the school system for almost half a century, and I know that you aren’t going to change it. It’s just like the two systems that are almost impossible to change in the world. One is the church and the second is the school system. And so that’s why I don’t want to change the whole system. I just want to modify one day a week where kids learn to do things that they care about, because then when they graduate, maybe they can then make that into a full-time career, just like Alfonso De los Rios. You know, I can say in 2018, he had no idea that he wanted he was going to have a company that is that valuable, involved in shipping. How would he ever know? And it was only because, I would say, of a lucky break that he did not get into Stanford, that he started this company.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:25:56] These ideas you’ve got are exciting and could sound to some parents, quite challenging, quite shocking, quite revolutionary. How did you evolve them? Was this kind of trial and error with your own children? Were you influenced by others or books you read? How did you evolve this system?

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:26:13] Well, I decided the most important thing I wanted my children to do when they were little girls. I wanted them to learn to be independent thinkers. I had just one goal. That was it. And that goes back to my childhood, actually. So, I grew up in a very traditional childhood, and my mother was just a housewife. My father was the breadwinner and girls did not have careers. Girls got married. And then there was a tragedy that happened when I was ten years old. And that really influenced me. And this tragedy was, I had a third brother who was about 18 months old, who was on the floor in the kitchen just playing with the pots and pans. But then also somehow, he discovered a bottle of aspirin, and they didn’t have one of those child safety caps at that point. And he opened it up and he ate it, a lot of it. And my mother saw that, and she didn’t know what to do being an immigrant. She was an immigrant. So, she was a little afraid to challenge the system or ask questions even. And so, she called the doctor and clearly, he wasn’t listening. He probably got a lot of calls like this. And she told him what happened, and he said, put him to bed and see how he is in a few hours. So, without going into a lot of detail, you know, in a few hours he died. And I saw this as a ten-year-old, and I saw that my mother was absolutely terrified to challenge anyone.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:28:03] She should have called back and said, what? This is not a very good idea. But she didn’t. And so that terrible incident led me to my conclusion that you’re not going to survive unless you think for yourself. You need to be able to question things and stop being afraid of asking people in power or with long titles important questions that you think are important. So that’s what I did myself, and that’s what I wanted to make sure that my daughters did. Don’t listen to people just because they have a long title. If what they’re saying doesn’t make any sense, don’t believe it. I mean, we all need to think for ourselves. So that’s what I was trying to do in my school. Teach these kids how to think, how to believe in yourself, how not to be afraid to ask questions. So, I ended up with this perfect program to do it, which is journalism. Right? So, you need to ask those questions as a journalist, you know, because, I mean, a lot of people try to tell you a lot of stuff, which sounds ridiculous, crazy, and you have to challenge it. And if you don’t, what kind of a journalist are you? So, that’s how it all started. And that was my passion for my daughters. I never wanted them to be in a situation where they didn’t feel comfortable asking difficult questions.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:29:30] Now you’re talking about asking difficult questions. And at the moment, with this rise of social media, that has perhaps been never more important.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:29:40] That’s absolutely true. Social media has a positive side, and that we all get our information quickly and we can interact with each other quickly. But on the negative side, there’s so much fake stuff out there. How do you know if it’s fake? How do you understand? You should be able to ask questions. God, that sounds really crazy. Could that be true? You should say that to yourself instead of just reading things and like, oh yeah. Don’t believe everything you read just because it’s out there on the web. You have to question whether it’s true or not. And with unfortunately with young people, there’s a lot of kids that get depressed because they look at, I don’t know, TikTok or Instagram or Snap or something else, and they see all their friends looking glamorous. Oh, wonderful. And they’re like, God, I’m the only one out here, you know. I don’t look good. My life is bad and all that. And then they get depressed. So, we need to teach kids media literacy. And actually, it’s just passed in the state of California. The state legislature just passed a bill requiring media literacy for kids’ kindergarten through 12th grade. I mean, this should be passed all over the world. Kids need to know just because it’s on the web doesn’t mean it’s true. If you don’t tell them that, then they don’t know. And, you know, at the beginning of the 20th century, we had cars, and the question was like, okay, we all have these cars. Do you know, there was a movement against cars? They’re too dangerous.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:31:27] I mean, if we wouldn’t have had drivers training, we would have had a tragedy on our hands, a big tragedy. So, you got car, but you had to learn how to use it. Well, you have social media. You need to learn how to use it. What are the pitfalls? What are the dangers? What’s going on out there? Now we have these deep fakes. Deep fakes are these movies, pictures, or it could even be a video that looks like it’s really that person. But it’s not. It’s created with just an avatar that looks like that person. And so, it’s happening everywhere, unfortunately. So, you look at a picture and it’s like, is that true or is that not true? It’s hard. We need to do something because if we don’t control the way the media is behaving and all these deep fakes and fake news and everything else, how are we going to know how to navigate our world? We won’t because it’s fake. So that’s why I think just to make this a complete argument, all kids need to have a course. Somewhere, I would start early in what is media literacy. How to take what you read online with a grain of salt, and you need to do it early. It’s just like we have all these courses on don’t take drugs. Well, we should have one on media literacy to help kids understand what the problems are in the media literacy area.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:33:05] If you were to look back on your career and also how the world has changed in that time, do you think that we’re making progress, that the human story is kind of moving forward, that we’re that we’re dealing better with our children now as parents than we did, say, 50 years ago? Or do you think it’s a constant battle, a constant challenge?

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:33:27] I would say that we are better than we were 50 years ago, because 50 years ago they had this philosophy, maybe 60 years or 100 years. The philosophy was spare the rod, spoil the child. So, there was a lot of beating of children. And also 100 years ago, you know, you put kids to work really early. And so, you know, I would say in the 1800s it wasn’t better for kids. The early 1900s, it wasn’t really better either. I think we have the opportunity to make it better for kids, and we should take that opportunity. And you want as a parent, since this is somebody, you’re going to be worrying about for the rest of your life, you want that person to be happy and successful. And if I tell you that the grounding part of their journey is 0 to 5, you should take that into account and follow it. It’s just like if you plant a tree, you want those roots to get established early. So, it’ll be a beautiful tree. You want the same thing for your child. You want it to get established with good habits early.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:34:47] So then your child will grow up to be a happy, successful, helpful person who is part of your family. I mean, there’s nothing more exciting than having, a great family. I’d like that experience to be everywhere. I’d like everybody to have that situation where they get along well with their children, get along well with their family members. I know that might be, hard to imagine because there’s some family members people just don’t want to talk to. It’s best if you can minimise that. I understand that happens, and they’re just you just have to deal with it. But it’s best if you can train your children, teach your children to have good behaviour characteristics. And also, you mentioned Doctor Spock. So, in my era, there was only Doctor Spock. There were no other books out there besides Doctor Spock. He was it. But fortunately, all he talked about was health issues, and he did not talk about anything else. It’s like what to do when they have, you know, a fever or all kinds of other things. He was not into behaviour patterns as much.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:36:04] So we’re in a better place now than 50 years ago. You’re optimistic for the future?

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:36:10] I’m optimistic for the future. You know, I believe that humans are basically good. And I think that if you give them the opportunity to be good and to work together in teams, I think the world will be a better place for all of us. And that’s what we want, a better place for all of us, not just a few of us. So yes, I’m definitely an optimist.

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer and board advisor: [00:36:36] Esther Wojcicki, thank you very much.

Esther Wojcicki, Educator: [00:36:39] Oh you’re welcome. I hope this works. I’d like everybody to be happy.

Esther Wojcicki, Educationist Credit : Annie Barnett.
Esther Wojcicki, Educationist Credit : Annie Barnett.

Interview credit: Neil Koenig, former BBC Producer and now ideaXme board advisor.

If you enjoyed this interview check out our discussion with Curator, Marcello Dantas.

Neil Koenig, Senior TV Producer and Journalist.
Neil Koenig, Senior TV Producer and Journalist.

Neil Koenig: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilkoenig/

X/Twitter @NeilKoenig

ideaXme links:

Connect  with  the founder, Andrea Macdonald.

X/Twitter: @ideaxm

ideaXme’s YouTube channel

ideaXme is a global network – podcast on 12 platforms, 40 countries, mentor programme and creator series. Mission: To Move the human story forward™. Our passion: Rich Connectedness™!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.