2019
GERUN RILEY
President, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
THE ELI AND EDYTHE BROAD FOUNDATION
Since Eli and Edye Broad dedicated themselves to philanthropy full time in 1999, a generation of children has started school, learned to read and count, met new friends, and found inspiration in favorite teachers. Hopefully, the students went on to walk across a graduation stage and continue on a fulfilling path to becoming the workers and leaders of their time.
Kids grow up fast, and the world they are growing into is changing before our eyes. This demands a nimble, thoughtful, evolved response, and, for the Foundation, it means reevaluating how we approach our work and how we think about impact. It also means dedicating ourselves to proceeding with humility and a collaborative spirit.
One thing hasn’t changed: our commitment to seeking out new ideas that can make a difference in our world. The stories you have read here are about the ideas that worked, thanks to the commitment of innumerable people who have devoted themselves to changing lives. Together with our grantees and partners, we’ve pondered how to diversify the sciences, reimagined the role of museums and community theaters, mapped new paths for students to reach the careers of the future, and grappled with complex social and cultural issues. But there have been many more ideas that didn’t make it, and even more that we haven’t been exposed to yet.
Right now, the next generation of children is growing up and exploring the world around them, much like the hero in my daughters’ latest favorite picture book, Kobi Yamada’s What Do You Do With an Idea? The story follows a child who has an idea. At first the child struggles with its strangeness and fragility, even trying to abandon it, questioning its worth. But soon, the child reveals, “I decided to protect it, to care for it. I fed it good food. I worked with it, I played with it. But most of all, I gave it my attention.” Soon, the idea “spread its wings, took flight and burst into the sky.” The idea changed the world.
As adults we know all ideas don’t have such glorious ends. Sometimes it’s for the right reasons: a better idea sprouts from the first, informed by new perspectives and learning. Sometimes it’s for the wrong reasons: a lack of resources, or simple bad luck. But we also know that this new generation of kids—who will go on to pioneer life-changing scientific discoveries, achieve medical breakthroughs, become brilliant teachers, and create transformative art—is trying to figure out the answer to the question: What do you do with an idea? Indeed, their ideas are sprouting all around us. That should fill us all with a tremendous sense of promise and hope.