Teach For America: Wendy Kopp

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2017

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1989, college senior Wendy Kopp was trying to figure out how to improve American public schools. For her senior thesis, she proposed creating a national teaching corps that would recruit recent college grads to teach in underserved schools. One year later, she launched the nonprofit, Teach for America. Today, TFA has 50,000 alumni, a budget of nearly $300 million, and continues to place thousands of teachers across the country. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how a game of Secret Santa led Chris Waters to create Constructed Adventures, elaborate scavenger hunts for all occasions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:30.0	When I walked into Ross Perot's office, I felt like I was at the end.
0:34.0	Like I had tried everything.
0:36.0	I had tried to access everyone and I knew either he supports this or I just really don't know where else to turn.
0:43.0	So I literally told myself, I won't leave his office.
0:48.0	I'm going to glue myself to the chair in his office and I'm not going to leave until I'm going to go to the office.
0:53.0	I'm going to leave until he commits.
1:02.0	The Promethear is how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:13.0	I'm Guy Ross and on the show today, how Wendy Cobb convinced graduates from some of the top universities to forget Wall Street, forget law school, forget big money,
1:22.0	and instead become a teacher.
1:28.0	So today's show is just a little bit different from other episodes you might have heard.
1:34.0	For starters, you will not discover how Wendy Cobb made her millions.
1:38.0	Because she didn't.
1:40.0	Money was never the point, but Wendy is still a really successful builder.
1:45.0	You could say one of the most successful nonprofit founders in recent times. And in many ways, her story is a textbook case study for how to start a business.
1:54.0	In fact, it's probably why there's an actual case study about her at Harvard Business School.
2:00.0	Because Wendy built Teach for America from an idea in her head to a huge operation with a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
	...

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