170. Rukhsar is Becoming Her Own Dream

Nobel Navigators is a global learning community founded by a way cool education revolutionary named Andrew Sachs. By revolutionary I mean the type of person who wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Andrew didn't set out to redesign this thing we call school. He more or less decided to ignore tradition and build something completely different. Nobel Navigators has a bold mission: helping young people around the world develop the technical skills, human skills, and leadership they need to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Young people from more than 180 countries come together online to learn, and teach. Thousands of young learners focus on design thinking, collaboration, coding, artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship, public speaking, and servant leadership, all while working on real projects and relevant subject areas. Nobel Navigators isn't trying to improve the traditional model of school. It has thrown out the traditional, obsolete model used in so many countries and is instead asking a much bigger question: What if we build a global learning community centered in purpose, empathy, and action?

Today's guest joins us from Afghanistan. Protecting her privacy was essential during my prep, and is essential today. We'll simply call her Rukhsar. There are no photographs of her in our promotional materials, only an artist's rendering. A few years ago, the Taliban barred her and all Afghan women from continuing a formal education, meaning the future Rukhsar had imagined was suddenly taken away. But that is only the beginning of her story. Through Nobel Navigators, Rukhsar discovered not only a way to keep learning, but a way to lead, to teach, and to serve. Today she organizes workshops for Afghan women, builds learning communities, mentors others, embraces AI as a tool for human flourishing, and has become a passionate advocate for empathy, servant leadership, and educational opportunity. Listening to her, it's impossible not to recognize that education is about far more than classrooms, diplomas, and test scores.

Neuroscientists tell us that our brains remain remarkably plastic throughout our lives, continually rewiring themselves in response to new ideas, new experiences, and new relationships. I suspect the same is true of our hearts. Today's conversation invited me to reconsider what learning is, what leadership is, what it means to become educated, and even what it means to be future ready. My hope is that as you listen to Rukhsar's remarkable story you won't simply learn something new. My hope is that, together, we'll discover the quiet joy of reconsidering what we thought we already knew. If you have comments, insights or questions, email me at [email protected]. As always, my boundless gratitude to our talented audio engineer and editor, Evan Kurohara, and our creative consultant, Mel Ching.