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CNBC
4 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
How to reverse alarming education decline in U.S. and around the world: Teach for All founder Wendy Kopp
Wendy Kopp grew up as a member of "the me generation," during a period of time when she says young, highly educated Americans were "convinced that we all wanted to go to work on Wall Street." But that ideology didn't resonate with Kopp, who graduated from Princeton University in 1989. When firms were trying to recruit graduates who could commit two years to work at their firm, Kopp asked herself, "Why aren't we being as aggressively recruited to commit just two years to teach in our country?" She became heavily invested in answering that question. "It's a big, complex, systemic challenge, and we know that no one thing will solve this problem, that ultimately it will take many things, which means it will take a lot of leadership, at every level of the system, the whole ecosystem around kids," Kopp told CNBC's Julia Boorstin in a recent interview for the CNBC Changemakers Spotlight series. Kopp was named to the 2025 CNBC Changemakers list. "We need what we've come to call collective leadership, meaning enough people who are on a mission to make the system work for kids, who are all working together, exercising leadership in their individual positions, as teachers, as school leaders, as school system leaders in government, as social innovators, as advocates, but who are also stepping up from their individual pursuits and working together." Kopp began making that mission a reality decades ago as founder of Teach for America, but the mission has grown. "There was a particular year when we met 13 people from 13 different countries who were determined that something similar needed to happen in their countries," said Kopp. Teach For All, the newer organization where Kopp is also founder and CEO, oversees a network of 15,000 teachers reaching 1.3 million students around the world, from the U.S. to India, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan. She shared with CNBC her ideas on leadership and what needs to change in the way we educate children, including the role of AI. And she made clear there is still a lot of work left to be done. "We are really in the midst of this very depressing, huge educational decline," Kopp said. "Educational outcomes on average in the developed countries, the OECD countries, have been declining since before Covid, and for something like 30 years-plus, they've been declining in low to middle income countries." Education is not failing students for lack of trying, according to Kopp. "A lot of people are throwing a lot at the issue," she said, but added that a key lesson she has earned is that focusing on the technical practices of education, the curriculum, the technology, and getting the buildings open, is important but not sufficient. "We need to figure out how to foster the sense of purpose throughout a system so that all those things are done with intention, and that's really where we've been lacking," she said. Kopp says AI is a good example of how this lesson can go heeded, or if not heeded, lead to disappointing outcomes. Despite widespread fears about AI, the most important positive from her perspective is that AI has given every teacher a personal assistant. "That's game-changing," she said. "These are some of the most overworked professionals, and now they can do many, many things much more easily. So that is already a revolution," she added. But she stressed that it is only the technology "in the hands of an extraordinary teacher" that is an "incredible accelerant of good things for kids." However, technology in a school "where there's no sense of purpose and where you don't have engaging teachers, becomes the world's biggest distraction." "We need to be really careful about assuming that the technology will solve the problem, because everything we've seen tells us that if we want to have change in education [and] we want to have positive things happening for kids, we need to first think about the people in the puzzle and cultivate what we've come to call collective leadership, cultivate the teachers and the school leaders and the whole system to be on a mission to ensure that all kids learn and to get kids on that same mission." It is only in that context, Kopp says, that technology can be revolutionary. In her early days at Teach for America, Kopp would send handwritten letters to investors and organizations, an era when email did not exist. From 10 letters, she might get one or two positive responses and one meeting with the goal of funding Teach For America. "I just kept telling myself, as long as I get two yesses, or even one yes ... Because then one person connects you to the next person," she said. Kopp said right now there is plenty of evidence of current young generations' commitment to justice, and environmental sustainability, and platforms like social media make the world's challenges more visible than ever. She said the "most valuable asset" these generations have is their time and energy to take on the world's biggest challenges and to be part of collective movements to actually solve them. And she says key to this "boots on the ground" mission will be selling the idea just as she did to the doubters. Back when she was getting Teach for America founded, people in schools and school systems were supportive of the need, but also told her, "this will never work. You will never get college students to do this." That only made Kopp double down on her mission. "That was the feedback, I thought, 'Okay, well, I know we'll get the college students.' I had real confidence in pursuing it." But Kopp also stressed that conviction isn't at its best alone. "We've got to walk the right line between confidence and humility," she said. "We need to act on our convictions, on our values, on our big ideas, but also be open to learning and build the relationships and ask for feedback. I think it's getting that intersection right." As her educational mission has scaled across the globe, Kopp has seen how young graduates from engineers to political science majors can quickly develop a track record of leadership after enlisting for just two years. "Those two years are so important for their students and so important for the leadership trajectories of those teachers. They're completely transformative. They lead to a lifetime of leadership," she said. Dating back to the founding of Teach for America, the organizations have brought in 120,000 people who committed just two years "but have never left the work," Kopp said. "75% of them never leave the work after their two-year commitment to teach. They may leave the classroom, but they become those leaders who are working throughout the system, who have the networks and relationships to work with each other and with many others in the system to affect the changes that we need to see," she said. That has stayed true as the organization's mission expanded globally, and to countries where Kopp worried it would be hard for people to stay long-term. "Yet we saw the same results everywhere, even the same data points. You could be in Chile or Peru or Austria or India, and no matter what, you commit two years, and 75% of you will never leave," she said. If at first young educators came into the mission thinking of it as a "kind of a technical problem and solution," and they would emerge as civic leaders in other segments of society, Kopp says they came out "really understanding the complexity, the systemic nature, the adaptive nature of the solution." "What we saw through that research is they really become the leaders we need, who have such a sense of possibility, such a deep understanding of the issues and their solutions, and we also saw that their career trajectories and priorities completely shift," she said. Kopp says "once you get obsessed with an idea, you can't let it go." "And that's why we need young people tackling big challenges," Kopp said. "They'll ask big questions and dive in without being held back by all the experience." Kopp has traveled the globe as a result of her work, and as a result, she has logged plenty of hours failing to solve a problem unrelated to education: jet lag. But she finally figured it out. "I used to have such severe jet lag when I would go from East to West, back home, and I heard from someone the trick is you don't eat on the plane, and when you land, you go on a run before you eat anything. And for many, many years, I didn't do it. I finally just resorted to it, and I've not had jet lag since." "I travel so much, and it really has solved my problem."
CNBC
18-06-2025
- Health
- CNBC
CEO of Sean Parker's breakthrough cancer drug institute on leading new race for cure
Karen Knudsen did not grow up in a scientifically centered home. She grew up in a military family. But at an early age, as a "naturally curious" kid, she came to love the experience of discovery and gravitated toward math and science. That led Knudsen to assume she would one day become a medical doctor. But her career went in another scientific direction, starting with a stint as a summer research intern working in the lab at the National Cancer Institute during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. "There was so much interest in trying to understand retrovirus like HIV, and so I went to a lab that was actually using retrovirus as a way to study cancer," she recalled in a recent interview with CNBC's Julia Boorstin for the CNBC Changemakers Spotlight series (Knudsen was named to the inaugural CNBC Changemakers list in 2024). "It got me very interested in that direct line. How does what I'm doing right now in the laboratory have an opportunity to impact a life, and I got hooked, and I never looked back," she said. Knudsen's experience as an oncology researcher at large health care systems, and seeing many mergers taking place around her, led to the realization that it might help to know more about the business of health care. She chose to pursue an MBA. "I'm not sure I'll forget the look on my husband when I came home one day and said, 'I'm going to get my MBA'," Knudsen recalled. "That was probably one of the more unexpected decisions." Ultimately, it led to Knudsen becoming the first female CEO of the more-than-century-old American Cancer Society, though she says it's even more important that she was the first CEO for the organization to come from oncology research. Under Knudsen's leadership, ACS's revenue increased by over 30%. Recently, Knudsen assumed the CEO post at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy — created by Sean Parker, Facebook's first president and the tech entrepreneur behind breakthrough ideas like Napster — where a new philanthropy-meets-venture-capital business model that aligns with Knudsen's lifelong interest in discovery is being built. The mission hasn't changed: "In the U.S., we have 2.1 million Americans that are going to get a new cancer diagnosis this year, and unfortunately, 600,000 plus people who will die from one of the 200 diseases we call cancer," she said. While there has been a 34% decline in cancer mortality since 1991, primarily attributed to earlier detection and preventative health practices, Knudsen's new role places her at the forefront of efforts to fund a new generation of breakthrough cancer drugs. Knudsen spoke with CNBC's Boorstin about how she reached this stage of her career, and the lessons she has learned from a lifetime devoted to experimentation. Here are some highlights from the full video interview. As a scientist, Knudsen says, "You get very comfortable with hypothesis generation and testing," and that is in some ways similar to a business executive trying to figure out what is going to come next in their market, and how to remain successful as conditions change. Scientists get comfortable developing a set of success metrics that enable them to know quickly whether it's time to quit on a hypothesis or move ahead. Knudsen says that is part of the "overlapping mindset between being a scientist and being a business person" which has helped her to succeed as she moved from research into executive leadership. "It made the process of developing a set of success metrics and creating a business strategy that tells you when you may be onto something, or not, fairly easy," she said. As a researcher within health systems who saw firsthand how a wave of consolidation could reshape entities and raise the question of how every person, process and practice might need to change, Knudsen says you need to be ready to identify not only what works but also what needs to go away. Coming into the CEO post at ACS was "like coming into a fresh merger that was in need of business transformation," she said. "Finding opportunities and fixing what needs repairing is often the hardest part of leadership," she added. Knudsen took a hard look at a bureaucracy that over more than a century had grown into 12 separate organizations, with 12 CEOs and 12 strategies, and she made significant changes to streamline the operation. It wasn't all about rooting out the inefficiencies, though. "I was on the road 49 weeks of the year for four years in a row, because you really needed to be there to see what was so good in these various areas, and apply that to the rest of the organization," Knudsen said. Her larger point is that a lifetime in research has made her a leader who sees change as a constant. "Because medicine is changing, science is changing, technology will change ... It's okay to transform and to constantly iterate," she said. Sean Parker comes out of the Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" world of success, and Knudsen says she had learned to be "a little more confident at risk-taking" over the years. Working with Parker, who was the first president of Facebook and co-founder of Napster, is the culmination of the risk-taking business side of her mindset. "He's unafraid of thinking differently," Knudsen said, adding that he still embodies the idea that "if we're failing, let's fail fast." More specifically, she said Parker identified that lack of access to capital was a major impediment to progress in the fight against cancer, and that was holding the risk takers back from doing what they do best. "The whole philosophy of the Parker Institute is to, step one, collect the best brains. Give them investment in funding to do the high risk, high gain, cutting-edge research, which could fail but could also dramatically transform cancer therapy," she said. Founded in 2016 by Parker to turn all cancers into "curable diseases," the institute supports clinical testing, startup formation and incubation, and drug commercialization. In all, PICI has supported the work of 1,000 researchers and helped to create a $4 billion venture capital portfolio that includes 17 biotech companies. "I think it's because we've de-risked the science from the very beginning," Knudsen said. "We're not waiting for someone to pitch for us. So I'm feeling very bullish about the ability to crank this wheel," she said. Knudsen has had many mentors throughout her journey. One she cited was Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, who she says was a "fountain of knowledge" to her. But as CEO of the American Cancer Society, she surrounded herself "with CEOs from all walks of life. I had a CEOs council that was hot dial," Knudsen said. "There are some things you just really need to talk to other CEOs about." She also emphasized that women pursuing success should expect to have to fight even harder for female representation the higher they ascend up a professional ladder. Statistically, that is the case whether in the business or academic world. More than 50% of both MD and PhD programs are filled with women, but only 12% become full professors, department chairs or deans. In the business world, 10% of women hold CEO positions in S&P 500 companies; and approximately 12% in VC-backed companies and 13% at health-care firms. The hurdles, whether it is related to gender, the inherent risk of failure in scientific endeavors, or lack of access to capital, are barriers that Knudsen's mission has helped her to overcome. "What I've always wanted to do, whether it's as a scientist, whether it's as a health executive, the CEO of the American Cancer Society or now the Parker Institute, it's to get innovation to people," she said. "We're at this moment in time where there is so much discovery that's happening, the pace of change is truly logarithmic, and yet, too many great ideas don't ever make it off the laboratory floor."
CNBC
05-06-2025
- Health
- CNBC
How twin sister triathletes doubled down on sports success to raise health-startup millions from investors
During their last year of completing work for doctoral degrees in physiology, twin sisters Michal Mor and Merav Mor started to compete in Ironman triathlon races. The demand for peak fitness led them to the realize the importance of understanding personal metabolism, and the lack of data being collected on it through devices accessible to consumers. That's how their health tech startup Lumen's first prototype was created. Initially, the sisters had no plans to turn it into a business. In the earliest days of the hand-held device iteration — which measures metabolic data points in a single breath, in under a minute — the test subjects were close to home. "We used to take it to dinner on Fridays with our family, and we would ask our sister, 'Can you come here for a sec? Just sit and breathe into the device,'" Merav recalled in a recent interview with CNBC's Julia Boorstin for the CNBC Changemakers Spotlight series. Both were named to the 2025 CNBC Changemakers list. The Mor sisters realized they had something much bigger in their hands when they made their father, who has diabetes, try the device, and the results were eye-opening. A big initial success on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo gave the sisters the push they needed to see an even bigger business opportunity, which to date has raised $77 million from investors. It wasn't a lifelong plan for the twins to become triathletes, physiology PhDs, or startup founders, but Lumen has now collected over 65 million breaths to date from more than 350,000 individuals. The Morav sisters have learned a lot about persistence, conflict and leadership along the way. The Mor sisters say being athletes helped them learn persistence in their journey as entrepreneurs, even when things get challenging. "You have to be able to wake up at 4 a.m., even when it's tough, even when it's cold, you have to do it," said Michal. "You're able to enjoy the pain, it's a part of the journey." From relentlessly working on developing a sensor for three years to getting credibility in the scientific world, they say resilience is as important as any factor in reaching success. Before Lumen, there were one million data measurements on metabolic activity. Now there are 75 million, Michal said. Being persistent was a trait the sisters hadn't mastered early in their attempts at success. In fact, when they were rejected from their original dream of attending medical school, they didn't know their next step. Michal says she felt like giving up, but their mother helped to push them to figure out a new path. "She opened our eyes to different things that we also might be passionate about," added Merav. "And she was right. We completely fell in love with research." Eventually, they were accepted to a medical school, "but we said 'nah, nah, it's too little, too late,'" recalled Merav. As close as the twins are, their relationship is not immune to conflict. When they do disagree, they say the key is to make sure the argument remains healthy and the discussion is solution-oriented. Among the habits their mother instilled was the commandment that you never go to sleep with unresolved issues. "It's like a snowball, and if you don't resolve that, it's very hard to fill the gap," said Michal. She also forced the sisters to resist digging in their heels. Even at a young age, when Michal and Merav would fight, their mother pushed them to understand the other's perspective. "'Why do you think she feels like that? Why do you think she reacted like that?'" Michal recalls her mother asking. "She still does that sometimes." Michal says that while both sisters are pursuing the same goal, even described them as being "egoless" in the relationship, they are different in terms of strengths and weaknesses. They described their relationship as being a "Yin and Yang." Both sisters have a background in cardiology from their PhD work, but in the initial stages of building Lumen, Merav focused on the molecular mechanism behind irregular heart rhythm, and Michal focused more on the clinical aspect of irregular heart rhythm. Now, Merav leads their research, and Michal leads product development. Building trust with each other is the foundation on which they build, creating what they say is a comfortable space for challenges including the inevitable disagreements, but still know that they will remain tied to the pursuit of the same goals. And that "psychological safety" as they called it, is an aspect of working relationship they have strived to bring to their company culture and employees. The Mor sisters believe that a company can only be successful if its employees work as a unit towards a common goal. Placing a high priority on work-life balance is critical, they say, especially for a company where more than 50% of Lumen leadership positions are occupied by women, and more than 50% of the total workforce is women. "The fact that we're moms also enables other women in the company," said Merav. As part of their approach to achieve a proper work-life balance, essential meetings don't take place after certain work hours, allowing employees to go back home and have more time to unwind with their families. "Having time with your family, it's something that fills you," said Michal. Their success as sisters, the lessons they learned from their mother, and those initial Lumen device tests at the family dinner table, inform their approach to leadership and Lumen's mission today. "Friends might come and go, things can come and go, but eventually the core family, that is something you should really, really embrace," said Merav. "You're having a bad day? Take a deep breath, you can fix it."
