“This picture has my grandmother, who, obviously I admire a lot. And then my dad, and my mom. And there's me at the right on the right side of the picture. And my brother—I'm guessing I was maybe 15 and my brother was 13 at that timeframe. And this is in India.

“She got to be a widow, when my dad was just a year old, year and a half, maybe. And she had three other older kids. And in those days, in India, women didn't work outside. So when she got to be a widow, her options were to be someone's concubine, or whatever you want to call that, or go to a religious order and give up her kids to someone else to look after. But she found herself a job as a teacher, and basically made sure all her kids, all four of them, got to college. One of them was a judge, my dad was a doctor, and so on. And their kids all are in the US.

“I think of her all the time, just because of the resiliency of that she demonstrated. If she hadn't done what she did, we wouldn't be here. To me, that's just an incredible story. And, of course, that's kind of the reason I'm in education as well, because education saved her, you know, being a teacher, and how she gave back to her kids and the community around her. And I thought, you know, it just inherently just seemed like the right profession. Clearly it has had that influence. So I think that would be my story of resiliency. I wouldn't be here without her.”