Hardships Building Shanti Bhavan

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Dr. Abraham M. George built a fortune on Wall Street, founding Multinational Computer Models and selling it to Fortune 500 company SunGard Data Systems in 1998. Then he walked away from it all. Armed with a PhD from NYU Stern and decades of finance experience, he returned to India in 1995 and founded Shanti Bhavan—a residential school that takes children from extreme poverty at age four and supports them through college. The model works: 98% graduate college, 97% land jobs at Amazon, Google, and Goldman Sachs, and every single graduate earns more in five years than their parents earn in a lifetime. His parallel work on lead poisoning exposed that 51% of Indian children had toxic blood levels, triggering India's 2000 ban on leaded petrol and protecting hundreds of millions. Featured in Netflix's "Daughters of Destiny," Shanti Bhavan has directly transformed over 15,000 lives—proof that one person's strategic commitment can dismantle generational poverty.

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➡️ Talking Points

00:00 – Intro

01:25 – Did He Get Rich Just to Give It All Away?

06:49 – The Near-Death Moment That Changed His Life

09:28 – When Money Became the Wrong Goal

11:33 – Walking Away From Success to Serve Others

13:22 – Finding Purpose When You Feel Lost

18:57 – Scaling Impact Without Quitting Business

24:25 – Sponsor Break

27:09 – Building a School With No Education Experience

33:24 – A 17-Year Promise to One Child

36:00 – India’s 1,500-Year-Old Caste Crisis

42:35 – How Giving Changed Him

44:58 – The Brutal Reality of Building Shanti Bhavan

48:53 – Can Poverty and the Caste System Be Broken?

51:34 – Sponsor Break

53:27 – Does Shanti Bhavan Actually Work?

56:25 – Why Compassion Isn’t Enough

58:18 – Why He Had to Write Mountains to Cross

1:01:57 – What Makes the Sacrifice Worth It

1:06:15 – The One Lesson He Wants His Kids to Remember

1:07:12 – What He’s Fighting for Now