Ted Audio Collective.

Part of why I enjoy hosting this podcast is that I love getting to hear people's stories.

You never know how someone got from point A to point B,

and there might be a lot to learn from those journeys.

Today's talk is a perfect example of this. It begins with a little

pink house in Wrens, Georgia, but it ends with all of us paying it forward. I'm a dupeck and Ola.

This is Ted Business from the Ted Audio Collective.

The woman guiding us along this journey is Valerie Montgomery Rice, the president and CEO of the Morehouse School of Medicine.

So many lessons in leadership for her began in that little pink house she grew up in where courage and

resilience were modeled for her by her mother and grandmother. Then after the

talk I'll ask you about your own story and how it helps you understand the person you are today.

But first, a quick break.

And now, Valerie Montgomery Rice takes the Ted stage.

Let me tell you how a little pink house prepared me for my first workplace termination and

set me on a path or resilience, grit and fearlessness.

About two and a half hours south of Atlanta is a little town of Wrens, Georgia, about 2,000 people. My grandmother lived in Wrens, Georgia, in a

pink house, nested off a dirt road, right off of East 88 Highway.

It had a massive yard, the kind of yard that was made

for little five-year-old girls who liked to make mud pies or run

chicken races with their cousins to see who could run the fastest. The chickens

are the cousins. That was summer at Grandmother's House and if I think about

it I can remember and feel that Georgia sign on my face. I can remember when I was just tall enough to jump

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