Welcome everyone. I am Joy Huang, one of the view from top student leaders. On behalf of our team, thank you for joining us today. We hope that you find this conversation important and relevant. Thank you Joy.
So welcome everyone to view from the top today. I have the pleasure of introducing Priscilla Chan, the co founder and the co CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg initiative. Priscilla and her husband Mark founded CZI in 2015 to leverage technology, community driven solutions and collaboration to help solve some of the world's toughest challenges. She is a physician, an educator and a philanthropist who approaches philanthropy and indeed everything with rigor data and curiosity. And really looking forward to learning more from Priscilla and hearing about what's on her mind and the things she is thinking about today in her conversation with Rex Woodbury MBA 2021.
今天非常欢迎大家来参加我们的活动。我很荣幸地向大家介绍Priscilla Chan,她是Chan Zuckerberg企业的联合创始人和共同首席执行官。Priscilla和她的丈夫Mark于2015年创立了CZI,旨在利用技术、社区驱动的解决方案和合作来帮助解决世界上一些最棘手的挑战。她是一名医生、教育家和慈善家,致力于以数据和好奇心去思考慈善和所有事情。我非常期待从Priscilla那里学到更多,并听听她与Rex Woodbury MBA 2021的对话中有哪些想法和想法。
So thank you again for joining us and really looking forward to the discussion.
非常感谢您加入我们,期待今天的讨论。
Priscilla, thank you so much for being here. It's good to be here here. Here, virtually, well, it's been an emotional week with the show of entrial with ongoing police shootings with gun violence, but I want to say I've personally been so inspired by the work that you're doing at the Chan Zuckerberg initiative on education and racial equity and criminal justice reform. I'm thrilled to be having this conversation and I know that my classmates are thrilled to be here listening to you today. Yeah, thanks for making up doing the work and putting this together. And I have to say in this past week, I was just a huge mixed bag of emotions like relief for the verdict in the murder of George Floyd and what like in just like sadness that it had to happen that it happened this way. And, but also hope always help that we're going to do better.
Yeah, I mean, I want to talk specifically in a little bit about some of the initiatives that you're working on, which I think touch on all of those aspects or values that you just mentioned, but I do want to start with your family because you have a very incredible family story. You're the daughter of Chinese Vietnamese refugees, your grandparents were business people in Vietnam who worked at Canning Pineapple and making paper and running a restaurant. And I was wondering if you could share with us the story of how your family left Vietnam and came to America.
So this happened before my time, my grandparents were business partners, my, my dad's parents, it had six kids and my mom's parents had my mom's dad actually had two wives and a really interesting part of my family history that's that I just want to name is my mom's mom was a second wife and she was she was an indentured servant who was brought into the family to have more kids. And so my, between the mix of those two really large and eclectic families, my grandparents were business partners and when the war was getting to be a pretty dark place, they decided to smuggle their children out. And the they were going to become to send their kids and boats and in the United States, they were known as boat people, but the way they meet their journey as boat people was incredibly, it's just real. There were stories of boats sinking and people dying on the boats and so my grandparents decided that they didn't want a single boat to sink with all their children. So what they did and you know the unceded next step is that they would lose all their children.
What they did is they paired up their children into twos or throes so that they would have company on the journey, but if any boat went down, they they would only lose one to two children. And that's how my grandparents said goodbye to their kids on these little boats in the middle of the night sending them off into the South China Sea and hopes that they'll see each other again. And I hold on obviously I wasn't there, but I hold on to that image and sort of a moment of like how big a decision parents, people make for their families for their livelihoods and the immense amount of optimism and faith that you have to have in order to make that decision. I like to believe that that's somehow genetic and I've inherited it. But that's sort of what I always come back to like we there has to be better and we will get there.
And then long story short my boats everyone made it and it took about a decade for everyone to get back together. But and then my parents, you know, stayed together for longer than the boat ride and here I am.
It's an incredible story. And you've said that, you know, I love to hear if you're open to speaking about those early kind of years and I think it was suburban, you know, Massachusetts kind of outside of the Boston area, you know, your families building a home there and.
And I said that you were bullied when you were younger and kind of put your head down and and worked really hard and then you know got into Harvard and. If you're open I'd love to hear about you know how that early experience of being bullied or growing up in that environment shaped you and then that transition moment I imagine it was quite a shock going from that family life to to the world of Harvard when you were 18.
Yeah, so we were sponsored at the time at refugees were sponsored by all different groups in the Catholic church played a really big role in we were sponsored by the Catholic church my family was. And so we ended up in an Irish Catholic town outside of Boston and we were the first to arrive and which otherwise was just like straight up good will hunting with like you know bent off like in that Damon as my neighbors so I did not fit in believe her or not. And it was it I am there's so many reasons why I didn't fit in but I remember I remember thinking that.
I don't know what's out there but they're asking me more and if I work really hard I will get there and then and I remember the day I made that decision. I was being bullied in middle school middle school is awful thank God we're all not in middle school. It really is it really is. And I was eating lunch in the bathroom in a public school bathroom because I didn't want to go out to the playground the block top after after lunch and I was just like this can't be the rest of my life right like there's got to be more.
I remember as a sixth grader I was like I'm going to buckle down I don't know what's out there and are really hard and I'm going to get there. So I spent a lot of time chasing that dream. And then I got into Harvard which was a little bit confusing because. If my parents didn't go to college my parents didn't really speak English and like Harvard was like an idea but it was it was unclear how attainable or unattainable it was you know it was like. We didn't have access to anything so maybe this was just like normal inaccessible not like sort of out of this world inaccessible so like I didn't know how to parse the idea of going there or.
At least didn't get nervous enough in time. I got there and I was like. Holy cow. I was like people like first of all like as an outsider going to Harvard everyone dresses the same everyone's wearing the same clothes everyone's talking about the same places and I've never been there and I definitely don't I don't even know where to get clothes that look like that. And I was also no longer a big fish and a little confident I was incredibly feeling like a failure feeling like a fraud.
The turning point was realizing that I wasn't the only one I joined the service house at Harvard where I was a part of the Phillips Brooks House and there were other people who had stories like mine and there were people and they were giving back and I wanted to do that too and that's been my mission ever since. But the most important thing that I learned in that moment that I try to hold on to always is that if you hide your powerless if you hide in that bathroom if you hide behind sort of who you know who you think you should be your powerless but if you name what's hard if you name while you're different if you name your story that gives you power and so I always try to be a front about who I am and sort of name my name is. I sort of name my experience name what I'm feeling because when you when you when you're not hiding you can be your best self.
I'm not sure if it was when you were at Harvard or later when you were volunteer or educator or doctor but you talked about a moment when you realize that the problems were bigger bigger than you bigger than you thought the structure in the system was broken and I think you know I'm sure that resonates with a lot of our classmates when you step back and kind of realize that you have to be part of the solution or you have to get involved. And I'm curious can you talk about when that moment hit for you and how how formative that was in realizing that you actually needed to start a sort of step one you build the new system or at least have a part in that.
Yeah, it's a terrifying moment and one where I will add in the spirit of naming things is I failed. I was taking care of an eight-year-old little boy in my practice at San Francisco General Hospital, and I've been taking care of him for like two or three years, and I was like there's like what's like it was confusing because his mom kept telling me he had seen. He had seizures, and I was like I don't think he has seizures like I looked everything up he doesn't have seizures, and I kind of like and then I was like maybe there's something developmentally going wrong and like with the school and I've been trying to get in touch with the school, but the school hours somehow didn't match up with my clinic hours, and we couldn't get like the only way to get information between like the school and me was like a piece of paper that we were.
Having mom bring back and forth. Like we're kind of stuck like this for a few years, and then I realized he was eight that there had been a giant miscommunication that mom had been telling the school that he had a seizure disorder, and he had missed he was eight so third grade by third grade he had missed 180 days of school which is one school year because he the school and excused all this before his medical issue which was presumed to be a seizure disorder, and they were doing they were trying to do it was best for the kid, and meanwhile, I was like no no seizure disorder he should be in school, and after we sort of like had an emergency series of meetings, we realized that he had been witnessed to very severe domestic violence at home and he was acting out in a way that looked like seizures but weren't, and so in that series of miscommunications, he had missed exactly what he needed a safe environment that understood his needs holistically instead he and missed a full year of school, and he as an eight-year-old didn't know his letters couldn't read struggled with numbers and when we tested him he was of normal intelligence like big-time fail, and the teacher and principal thought that they were doing exactly the right thing and for this kid.
I thought I was advocating for the kid as someone who like always asked about school how things were going and so we had a collision of people who were trying their best and that the way we structure the way we care for our most vulnerable is completely broken and we just completely missed the mark and then I was like panic because I'm like well I got to tell someone like someone needs to know that there's a big problem and I'm sure many of you like are very good at, you know, identifying problems and like going to sort of going to the authorities the only problem is eventually you'll find that there is no authority and that no you're the grown-up in the room you're the only one who cares enough about this problem to do something about it and so I spent a good six months I was like if I do enough research I'll find a way that this problem has been solved or if I do enough this I'll find the solution and I realized that it just it didn't exist and and when you confront that moment you have to think like what am I going to do about it now and so that's sort of what led me down the road of eventually starting the primary school where we I started a school in a fit of insanity at the same time of having a child and starting CZI it's doing great now but they really work on sort of changing the way the system works knitting together, health care especially those in our safety nets and the school environment.
I mean what's so interesting to me about your sort of two lives or multiple lives here of of being a doctor and you know some of this is coming from my own my brothers a doctor and I think he and I talk a lot about depth of impact versus breadth of impact and you've spoken about what you said you call it the trolley problem of you know would you rather help a hundred people deeply or you know help everyone a little bit and you know this elitist I'm sure into talking about CZI but I'm curious in your career as you evolve through different chapters how have you thought about balancing depth of impact and breadth of impact.
I've gone through all different versions of this and I think a couple things here one is in order to make the difference with the rest of the family. Let's see which one are you calling depth and breadth is your brother taking care of a single patient depth in your breath like I would say I would say maybe this resonates with some business school classmates I would say my brother subscribes to the philosophy if he helps one patient very deeply in his career. He's fulfilled whereas I think you know somewhere along the road and this is probably true of many just because students you know we think much more about breadth you know let's scale this business let's grow this system let's and I'm always telling my brother I'm saying Carson, you know think big you know fix the structural issues of healthcare and maybe it's a different sort of personal fulfillment. of where you get from but I think I think of medicine as depth of impact and maybe business or fixing the structure as breadth.
Okay good um that's I have the same definition um but I will argue that you actually not every person needs to do both people naturally gravitate to one or another but to really make change you need to understand both um and um because in order to actually change the you know we'll we'll take the change the system see you need to actually understand what the problems are and you know what your brother really understood what Carson really really understands is what are the barriers that made it hard for you know this patient to get to access care or what made it hard for them to remember to take their meds every day like as a good doctor he knows that and he has an intuition for it and it's oftentimes surprising um the bus schedule used to determine and whether or not the you know art was running on time you know my patients would get to clinic and whether or not my clinic would write smoothly so it wasn't going to be sort of change management process in the way we check patients in it's like Bart is screwing over my clinic schedule.
And so it's in I you have to understand and have a clear vision of what the actual issues are the real barriers that affect the lives of the people we want to impact in order to impact with Brett. So at CZI we hold that as a for value and we call it staying close to the work we have to be proximate to understand how to make systemic change um and that's what we we intentionally hire people with both and I can tell you that there are disagreements and I'm sure we can name many and sort of just like language and orientation barriers around when you bring such different people of all different backgrounds all different orientations around the work to solve a problem together but that's when you actually understand with clarity what you're trying to do and like then you can scale something meaningful something good in the world.
But I do know I plan on going back to fellowship when I'm done with my my run at CZI so I'm someone who loves loves being with kids and families I still I I mentor kids little kids over zoom and at the school I love that I need that to nourish my soul but I have to say the systemic work is what gives me hope. And that's why a lot of you know to use your brother again as an example you like it's amazing being on the front lines and that's incredibly gratifying but if you run into the same problem for the hundred or thousand time you can was hope and so it's the work and changing the systems that gives me hope in that work.
Well it's good to know that you can have you can do both you can have different chapters and reinvent yourself and different chapters of life and career but I do want to talk about the systemic stuff and and and CZI specifically the chance I could bring initiative I've heard you say that you know I think you started it the same year that you had your daughter max and I've heard you say being a new parent and starting a philanthropic organization or similar so I'm curious what you mean by that.
很高兴知道你能同时做到两件事情——你可以在不同的人生和职业篇章中重塑自己,但我想谈谈系统性的问题和 CZI(Chan Zuckerberg Initiative)在其中所扮演的角色。我听过你说过你在拥有女儿 Max 的年份开始了这个慈善组织,我也听过你说成为一个新的父母并开始一项慈善事业是相似的。所以我很好奇你具体是什么意思。
Oh man keep you up at night. It's lots of slip this night for different reasons it's either the baby or building an organization and I think the core of it though is what I mean is when you guys all go out there and contribute to organizations of all different phases and stages it's I'll use a pediatrician term is like is it developmentally appropriate.
And you talk to people all organizations have sort of goofy things about them and things that they're working through and but some problems are developmentally appropriate for the stage of the organization and some aren't and when you when you're you know up at night wondering like is Matt's okay like is she she smiling in your Googling like for the parents in the room like you're Googling like smiling at five weeks okay like there's a similar version of what happens when you build an organization like is it okay that like we you know there from moments at CZI where we had our internet cut off because we forgot to pay the internet bill and that was okay at like week eight but it is not okay at year five and so I think just understanding sort of the cadence and evolution and growth of an organization and giving yourself some slack when you're like it's okay this is like this is a problem that many organizations have will get to it and like solving the right ones at the right moment in time for the organization.
And you stepped away from medicine to run to be cozy yo of CZI and I think one journalist wrote about you she's a doctor that is become a crusader and curious what is a trait from your medicine days that you carry with you that's been surprisingly helpful and running CZI and what's what sort of something you've had to learn that new.
Let's see I love being a student so I don't know if that's a crusader but I will trade seats and just so good knowledge at any moment but I think the same thing that brought me to education to medicine and not to CZI is that these are people's lives we're touching. And there's you know you can track metrics you can think about sort of sort of dollars and impact and all different ways that you can quantify but at the end of the day we're touching people's lives and people's lives are complex.
And they we need to see the whole picture and we can't forget that and when I think about this the patient that I told just told you about or many of I have many catalog of faces that sort of like it's get me going better than coffee every morning. I can't stop because I have to do better and there's no there's no choice to give up I can fail and I fail all the time but I can't stop because it's not an intellectual idea that I'm pursuing I'm trying to actually touch and change people's lives at the end of my time. So I'm putting is not really an option.
Let's see things that I learned new. Oh I could like honestly at one point I was like I should go to business school I don't know anything about I'm like what is HR because remember I think there's some a few mbs in the room like HR nobody's ever cared about me nobody's ever told me like that like they like you know I've been yelled at in the middle like they're people that are supposed to take care of me that's cool so learning about HR learning about operation management, damn charts are a thing like and make things runs smoothly I think I'm just saying words that I've heard that now other people help me do. But you know being a smart about the way you prioritize my projects and get people convinced people that you have a mission worth pursuing.
I think we're seeing this bleeding I mean social impact business at Stanford you know our social innovation is important to a lot of students and it's a big focus of their curriculum. So I think we're seeing this from a perspective of the attacks on Asian Americans and how it personally resonated with you and your grandparents story I'm curious if you could speak about you know what that emotional time for you but also from a business perspective what are ways that leaders can can get involved and can take issues and actions on those different problems.
I have to be honest I had to take a step back and do some learning and reflection when this all happened because in sort of my experience growing up in a one of the only Asian American families in our community and then going to Harvard where you know being really involved in social justice and often in our country that's about black and Latinx and the historically underserved.
I that's been my calling and I relate because I'm like I get it I'm an immigrant I've been an outsider like I identify with the issues that you face and I've never until recently never really taken a moment to reflect on my my own racial identity because I sort of just always assumed one that it was an anomaly. And to and this is probably the result of being raised by refugees just put your head down it's going to be fine like just take what you can get and like keep going and you'll be fine.
And the interesting impact is it made it easier for me to advocate for others than it was to advocate for myself and this is not a new phenomenon it's well studied and well documented that also like for instance women can advocate very well for other women and struggle with advocating for themselves.
And the so dissimilar function there's a five part PBS series that's excellent on called Asian Americans I highly recommend it and starting to really think about like how to to make sure that we're not always forgetting the Asian American the API community when we talk about people of color because they are people of color.
That have very complex relationships with race and other in their own race other minorities in our country and and we need to examine it collectively and I have to say I've spoken to many Asian American leaders in the wake of the shootings. And they it's a very similar story they're like oh yeah I got a wake up to this and so I would say for others in the business community is understanding like like do some learning and also think about how.
Just because a group doesn't speak up doesn't mean that there aren't needs because this is a group that's historically in our country for one reason or another not trained to speak up for many reasons. So I have one more question for you for we hear from two students and I want to go back to your grandparents and parents coming to America on the boat from Saigon and you know you've spoken about them you've spoken about your own kids what's one important lesson you know if you had to pick one lesson that your parents grandparents that you've taken from them that you want to teach your own kids what would that be.
So the optimism that I hope it's in me I want them to feel that optimism to and not a polyanna type of optimism but a faith that people will continue like things will if we work hard and we continue the fight. Things will improve and to always believe that there has to be better gratitude and this one's going to be I you know I grew up as a child of people who were politically persecuted refugees on boats just like just grateful for every day.
And the last one is sometimes for many reasons not seen as a very popular sentiment but I love our country and you know it's popular to you know sometimes like one side of the political spectrum gets to love our country or you know there's so many things broken that you know how can you love the United States of America. Yeah it's this this country is founded on strong ideals are not perfect but it is our responsibility to build a better country and if you don't love it and you don't nourish it and cannot live up to its potential. Gosh I didn't realize I was so patriotic until just now. That's great thank you well I I do have actually one more I know I said that was last one one more question people first we're going to hear from two of our students and I want to make sure we have time for them I think first up is Jessica so we'll hear from Jessica now.
Hi Priscilla thanks for being here today and sharing your wisdom with all of us. My question is around the huge health disparities we've seen especially during this pandemic as a doctor and as a philanthropist how do you think we can solve some of the health inequities in this country.
I think it is important to realize that related to this sort of understand the problem that you're trying to solve is that everyone has different barriers and there's not a one size fits all and there we have to take a community centric approach to addressing health disparities. We we very early on in COVID we ran a study on the prevalence of coronavirus in one census track in the mission.
And what we realized a diand have learned this in from UCSF is that in this one census track zero people of Caucasian descent had coronavirus and I think it was near 20% of individuals with a Latinx background had coronavirus during this period that they were doing the test. First of all that naming the disparity that you named in the two groups had different access and different barriers to actually accessing testing and accessing care and what that group then did was partner with the community they partnered with the Latino task force and said like what is the best way to get tested.
What is the best way to follow up in under and because it was such a deep partnership the testing and treatment and now vaccination of that community is incredibly strong and we sort of spread those learning across the city. But you know the same thing that would have worked for honestly I had a colleague who fell into the census track who would have worked for David doesn't work for someone else who has an entirely set different set of life circumstances.
什么是跟进工作的最佳方式?由于这是一个深度合作,该社区的检测、治疗和现在的疫苗接种非常强大,我们把这些学习经验推广到全市。但你知道,对于一个拥有完全不同生活情况的人来说,与 David 或一个掉入人口普查范围的同事的所作所为一样的事情可能并不奏效。
And so it's not about scaling what work sometimes can work for you or I it's about working deeply with the community to understand like name help us name the solution together. Thank you Jessica next we have a question for Mary Grace.
Hi for Silla my name is Mary Grace Reeves I'm in my fifth year of Stanford stool and the MBA program and looking forward to starting residency this summer and it's such a privilege to hear you speak thank you for being with us.
I'm wondering in founding and leading the Chan Zuckerberg initiative you're tackling the most pressing societal challenges of our time and through that process what have you learned about building a successful team and how has that allowed your team at CZI to navigate diverse initiatives. You know building I think building a good team is sort of it's it's I wouldn't say it's specific to our work at CZI. But it's naming things being clear about what probably you're trying to solve prioritizing it and being really direct with other people when things are working or when they're not working.
I will I will name I followed into the same traps like I don't want to say it like might hurt their feelings I don't want to be mean. And you know I realized along the way like look I am who I am but like they're in they're going to like me or they're not but like I do know that people like to be successful. And the way I make them successful is I tell them I'm as clear as I can with what I want to see and what feedback I have and so. That's that's that's I have to say not specific to our work at CZI but just like say it like it is Mary Grace.
我曾经也陷入过同样的陷阱,但我不想说出来,因为可能会伤害到他们的感情,我不想太刻薄。你知道,我在这条路上意识到了一些事情,我是谁并不会改变,但是他们会喜欢我或者不喜欢我,但是我知道人们喜欢成功。我成功的方法就是告诉他们,我会尽可能清晰地表达我想看到什么以及我的反馈意见。这就是我要说的,没有具体涉及到我们在 CZI 的工作,但是要像 Mary Grace 一样明说。
Thank you. So I have one last question for you which is actually a question that we're asking to all of our speakers this year and it is what are the principles that you rely on when you're facing the toughest moments is the leader. Um in my toughest moments I like those the pictures of the kids that I've served and I've had successes and failures with I keep them in my mind and I remember that I remember those lessons like I have to like how would I solve this problem for him or for her. And like build up from the community like I was just saying saying earlier like try to understand the context that people's lives are in and solve from there.
And that collaboration is key. Um not one person has understands the solution fully and not one person can see, um not one person no one sees the problem and no one sees the whole solution but if we come together with different tools, different skills that's we can solve this together. Um and that's those are the two bits and that if this is also it's a lifetime of work and so you got to break it down into little pieces and like, either only way to eat an elephant is one bite out of time. I've never heard that phrase but that's what I'm going to take away. I didn't invent that. I think that's either Desmond to two I'm a Della.
Well, thank you so much for so I think I speak for everyone when you know we're inspired by your story by what you're doing at Chan Zuckerberg by, you know, the different lives and chapters that you've had and how you live with values and with those principles. Thank you so much for your time. We hope to have you back hopefully in person one time soon, but thank you for joining us virtually.