What does it say about us as human beings if we,
If every person on this planet is fed and clothed and God willing has a safe place every night but we don't have arts in our world because arts are what make us human.
Music is what makes us human,
It's what gives us empathy and sympathy and courage to do the work we do.
So the work you're doing every single day and I know I'm preaching to the choir here but the work you're doing every day is so incredibly important and I'm just honored and blessed to be with you all.
The definition of transformational vision is the juxtaposition between criticality which is a recognition of the world's suffering and challenges and pain and hope,
The recognition that we actually can do something about it.
And in that intersection is where real change happens,
Where real transformational change happens and so I'm hoping today and throughout the course of the next couple of days you can really be thinking about that place because I think sometimes we get caught both in despair of this is just so far gone,
So far beyond us but also kind of hokey hope.
The mother of all knowledge is the art of combining and so I think as leaders we really need to think about how are we combining resources in new and innovative ways because I think our mentality a lot of times is we've just got to bring in new people,
We've got to bring in new things and we do so I'm not saying you shouldn't constantly be building out your consortium but we also have to be thinking about how are we going deeper with people who are already engaged in our work.
How are we giving people opportunities to grow and learn because at the end of the day and when we do our workshop piece I'm going to illustrate this a little more explicitly but at the end of the day human beings across the globe have three basic buckets of needs,
We all do.
Every one of us we have lots of differences but we have three basic buckets of needs and those needs are these.
We have needs,
Basic safety and security needs,
We all need food,
Water,
Etc.
We have tribe needs,
We are people who like to belong and tribe is awesome and we need to have tribe and we need to have our community and consortium but we also have growth needs and the challenge that I see in a lot of this work is we're so busy building our tribe without actually actively engaging in how we're growing as a community which by the way includes combining in new ways and giving people the opportunity to really grow and learn in new ways,
It's going to stagnate.
I know for a fact that the people I'm meeting with almost without exception they care about education,
They care about science,
They care about leaders of tomorrow,
They care about innovation and I care about those things too.
So what's the disconnect?
And it just became so evident to me that the disconnect was that I was putting money at the center of the relationship and anytime you put money at the center of any relationship,
Not just potential philanthropist slash donor or organization or cause but between spouses and partners,
Employers,
Employees,
Parents and children,
Friends,
Anytime money gets at the center of any relationship there is going to be inherent in that a power dynamic whoever is looking for the money is ostensibly in the supplicant position and whoever has the money is ostensibly in the power position.
And so I made a decision from that day forward that never again would money go at the center of any of my relationships,
That it was going to be about the work,
That the center of the relationship was going to be about the work and the impact and in that regard money just becomes one more resource to get the work done.
They were raising 10 million dollars for this awesome,
Awesome life changing,
Life saving research project and they asked me to come in and do a board retreat and I walked in and there were like little fact sheets at each of the board members seats and I looked down and I picked up the fact sheet and I held it up to the whole board and it said goal 10 million dollars.
I said that's not your goal.
Your goal is this life changing,
Life saving research.
What it's going to cost is 10 million dollars but we conflate a lot of times the money with the goal and that's what gets us into this place of getting the whole thing kind of mixed up in our minds and not putting it in its rightful way.
We were going to start this organization called the Quincy Jones Music Consortium which has now actually morphed into AMP Up and we were deciding what to call it and we knew we wanted to bring a bunch of organizations together,
Bringing music to kids and I remember sitting there,
I don't think you were at this very early meeting Roger or Curtis,
But I remember sitting there with Quincy and some others saying what should we call this?
We knew for obvious reasons we wanted to use Quincy's name but we called it the Quincy Jones Music Consortium because the word consortium comes from the Latin consort.
It's interesting because for years,
For years I would give speeches and say this is about building consortium and the Latin word consort means to stand together and just about six months ago,
This was so fascinating to me,
A friend of mine who's a classicist at Oxford said you know what actually the Latin word,
The Latin root of consortium is consort which means to throw your fate together.
I thought whoa that is even so much more powerful.
So I'm just going to share a story,
A quick story to end and that's I was doing a lot of traveling to Africa for the HIV work and I think I had done like I don't know a trip a month and I got back,
This was about 10 years ago,
I got back from this unbelievably arduous trip and I don't know,
I felt like we were circumnavigating the globe.
In fact it was so long ago that I remember distinctly that my suitcase didn't have wheels.
It was still one of those like garment bags I had to carry around.
Anyway I got out finally,
Finally after this incredibly long trip I got out to JFK where I lived at the time in New York and I don't know about you but if you've ever,
After getting through immigration and customs the whole thing,
I got outside and my stomach just dropped because the taxi line looked like it was four hours long.
This is like pre-Uber days and I just wanted to weep.
I just felt like I cannot do this work anymore.
This work is just,
It's too hard and after you know and all I'm sitting there thinking as a flashback right to my colleges but I'm sitting there thinking I got to do something else is traveling back and forth to Africa is just too hard and all this work's too hard I'm too exhausted I need a break.
After like what felt like an eternity I got into this taxi.
The taxi pulled up and I opened up the door and there's something immediately different about this taxi.
There were these just beautiful,
Beautiful Persian carpets lining the floor where my feet were supposed to go.
And I could hear this ethereal sitar music coming out of the speakers and the taxi driver,
I remember him so clearly,
He had a long white beard and a sitar and a turban and he had these sparkling blue eyes and I know he had sparkling blue eyes because instead of like most New York City taxi drivers just grunting at me and not turning around he actually turned around and made eye contact with me.
And he said where can I take you?
And I remember my shoulders just dropping and I said you can take me home.
And he said to me still looking at me I will drive you as carefully as I would drive my own daughter.
And in that moment I remember thinking if somebody who has a job as arduous and hard and stressful as being a New York City taxi driver sees his work as a calling,
Sees his work as an opportunity to give people safe passage every day,
Wow,
I could do that too.
And so the invitation I guess that I'll leave you with is of course we have elements of our work that's about the job and the hard and the tedious part,
But there's also this access to our work as a calling.
And when we access our work as a calling we have this ability to remember every day and have the courage to keep every day get up and do it over and over and over.
And I'll just end with one of my favorite quotes and that's a quote by Mother Teresa who said I serve the world not because it's broken but because it's holy.
And she meant holy as in all.
