"Human-centered design. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account. When you let people participate in the design process, you find that they often have ingenious ideas about what would really help them. And it’s not a onetime thing; it’s an iterative process.”
- - Melinda Gates, 2013
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.”
- - Bill Gates, 1996
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
- Mark Twain
“Nanodegrees were not created to compete with universities, but rather to democratise access to higher learning through a model oriented towards results, realistic about employment market requirements, and in touch with the complex situation in which many students find themselves”
- Sebastian Thrun, Stanford University professor, former head of Google Glass and the Waymo self-driving car, founded the Udacity online courses platform
An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful hub that it is.
-- Vivek Wadhwa, American technology entrepreneur and academic.
"Never blame anyone in your life. Good people give you happiness. Bad people give you experience. Worst people give you a lesson. And best people give you memories."
-- Zig Ziglar, American Author, Salesman.
I was born in Toronto to a young couple who were still learning about who they were and how to navigate the world. At the time, their idea of what family meant was highly influenced by a centralized media narrative that was artfully designed around the perfect nuclear family. At the opposing side of this idealistic narrative was the reality of their real life experience in an unstable and dysfunctional family environment. Their parents, my grandparents, were ill prepared for navigating the world that was unfolding in the 1960s. Both my parents grew up in poverty and never had the opportunities to form strong relationships with their parents, peers and siblings. Needless to say, this volatile family experience made them vulnerable to the world.