- Hi, everyone.
Welcome to our Homeroom Live Stream,
really excited about the
conversation we're gonna have
in a few minutes with Eduardo Cetlin
from the Amgen Foundation.
I encourage any of y'all
who have questions,
start putting them in the
message board on YouTube
and on Facebook.
If you have questions
about science education,
the work of corporate philanthropy,
the biotech industry, careers in science
or careers in philanthropy.
But before we get to that,
I will make a few of my
standard announcements.
First of all, a reminder that Khan Academy
is a not-for-profit organization.
We can only exist through donations
from folks like yourself.
So if you're in a position to do so,
please think about going
to khanacademy.org/donate.
And donations of all size, make
a very, very big difference.
I also wanna give a special shout out
to several organizations
that have stepped up,
especially as we entered
into the COVID period,
we were already running
at a deficit pre COVID,
and then you could
imagine our server costs
are two to three X of normal.
We we're trying to accelerate
a whole series of content
and programmatic efforts to
support parents, teachers,
and students through the crisis.
Special thanks to Google.org
AT&T, fastly, Bank of
America and Novartis,
and also a very special
thanks to the Amgen Foundation
that has been working with
us for many years now.
We're gonna talk a
little bit more in depth
about it with Eduardo,
helping us bring great science content
to millions of students around the world.
And obviously that was
very relevant pre-COVID,
and it's even more relevant
as you can imagine,
as folks are even more dependent
on this type of content.
Before we get to that conversation,
I'm also gonna bring in my colleague, Dan,
who has a few announcements.
- Thanks Sal.
So we are, want to announce
a couple of webinars
that we have this week.
The first one is today and
it's targeted for teachers,
Jeremy Schifelling who's our teacher guru
is going to be walking through a demo
of the classroom experience
from a student perspective
for teachers, in order
to build an understanding
of the student experiences,
by going through several processes,
including how to register,
what assignments look like
when they receive them,
and how to try out the
course mastery goal.
And that is scheduled for today
at 4:00 PM Pacific Time,
7:00 PM, Eastern Time.
And the second webinar's tomorrow,
and that one's targeted for
parents of young learners,
ages two through seven,
and that one's tied up how
to keep your child learning
and happy at home.
And that one is gonna
be led by Renee Scott,
who's the Director for Early Education
for Education Partners at Stanford
and Caroline Hu Flexer
is the CEO and Co-Founder
of Khan Academy Kids.
And they'll be sharing some,
they'll be discussing some
easy ways to boost learning
throughout the day at
home for young learners.
And that one is tomorrow
at 4:00 PM Pacific Time
and 7:00 PM Eastern,
and both webinars will be
recorded and available online.
We'll post those a little
bit afterwards as all
of our webinars are.
Back to you Sal.
- Great, thanks, thanks so much, Dan.
Well with that, and I
encourage folks to check
that out, we're gonna be
having even more webinars
and programs to support folks
through this very difficult
back to school period.
But I'm excited to introduce
our guest at Eduardo Cetlin,
head of the Amgen Foundation.
And I'd also like to
consider him as something
of a friend.
Eduardo, thanks for joining us.
- Hi, Sal, hi everyone.
It is a privilege and an
honor to be with you today.
Thanks for having me.
- No, no, our honor.
So maybe a good place to start.
I'm sure a lot of folks
have heard of Amgen,
but we have a lot of
young people who may be,
okay, they do something in
biotech or something in pharma.
What do they do?
And what does the foundation do?
So maybe that's a good place to start.
- Sure, so the Amgen Foundation
is the philanthropic arm
of Amgen.
We are in medical biotechnology firm.
We are, we just turned 40 this year.
About 40 miles Northwest of Los Angeles.
And we are a large independent
metabolic technology company,
with a very powerful but simple mission,
which is to serve patients.
The core reason our company exists
is to make the most of
scientific discovery
of scientific developments
to help patients
fighting very serious illnesses.
Through the Amgen Foundation,
We have the mission of
inspiring the next generation
of innovators, the next
generation of scientists,
as well as investing
in scientific literacy.
As you think about what is the
key input to what Amgen does
as a company, it is human talent.
We are firm believers
in the power of each one
to really bring their
very best in the capacity
to have an impact in the
philanthropic investments.
We make our focus in that space.
- And focusing on that on
the foundation element of it,
where do you all try to focus,
as you try to build a pipeline of folks
who can go into science, who
can contribute to science,
who develop a love for science.
As I just mentioned, we've
been longtime partners
and that partnership
has only been growing,
but what are the types of projects
that you try to invest in
and how do you know if they're working?
- Sure, so when you think
about the philanthropic space,
there are millions of
amazing organizations
doing very good work
throughout the country,
throughout the world.
Folks are really putting
all of their energy towards
improving the human condition.
We took a very focused approach
by inspiring the next
generation of scientists
and next, sorry scientific literacy.
So we started on a journey
where it was really
all about how do we create
unique learning opportunities
for students?
How do we level the playing
field so that every student
has access to that kind of learning
that will really trigger in their mind.
Hey, maybe there's something here for me.
Maybe I could be a scientist or maybe not,
but I know enough about
the scientific method
to navigate the challenges
of the modern world.
We take an approach to be
focused for the longterm
to really be driven by results.
And for a very long time,
we have two main programs,
something called Amgen
Scholars and something
called Amgen Biotech Experience.
Let me touch on the two
to get to this moment
where we're living now and
how our work has evolved,.
Through Amgen Scholars, we invest today,
24 different universities
that host 15 students
each summer for an intense
summer research experience.
The idea is that these students
are having the opportunity
to live the life of a scientist
for an entire summer.
Each of the universities oversees
their own application process.
We'd encourage undergraduate
graduate students
from around the world
to apply to this program
and we provide financial resources
for them to get to one
of these universities.
And they also do annual
symposia that brings
the students together.
Tell you more about how we're
dealing with that in the world
of COVID in a second.
And then the separate
program is something called
the Amgen Biotech Experience,
which started 30 years ago,
right here in the Thousand
Oaks neighborhood,
where we are in Southern California,
where a local empty scientist partnered
with a biology teacher to say,
how can we leverage some of the techniques
that we do in our company to
help students see themselves
in the role of that scientist?
So that program provides the curriculum.
It provides professional grade equipment,
and it provides ongoing support
and training for teachers
to provide these
opportunities for students.
And throughout this two
to three week curriculum,
the students have the
opportunity to transform
a bacterial cell into a protein factory.
We use a red fluorescent protein,
which can be seen with the naked eye.
So it's really applying
some of the same mechanisms
that our company used to make medicines
such as erythropoetin and other
biopharmaceutical companies
use to make medicines like insulin,
putting it in the hands of students
so that they can live
the life of a scientist.
This program, so it took us about 15 years
to get to 50,000 students,
primarily in the United States.
Today, we're reaching 90,000 students
all over the world on an annual basis.
We have 1500 teachers
engaged in the initiative.
And they're the ones who really
create this transformative
moment within their classrooms,
leveraging the curriculum and
creating a unique opportunity
for their students.
For a very long time those
programs were the core
of what we did.
The challenge with those
programs was how do we scale up
and increase our reach?
We're very proud again, to go from 50,000,
over 15 years to 90,000 a year,
but the question of a
significantly large growth,
it would not be possible to do
so with a hands-on platform.
And that's what triggered
our early conversations
with you back in 2015.
- Now and if I were to
read between the lines
of everything, all of the amazing work
that y'all have been doing,
it sounds like there's
a pattern that maybe
a lot of students don't,
even though they might
be interested in science,
I mean, I argue, how can you
not be interested in science?
It's trying to explain the universe
that we're in and pretty much everything
that we have at our disposals
that does, that defines
modern civilization is based on science.
But it sounds like, you
know, a lot of kids,
for whatever reason, they watch movies,
or there're stereotypes that
develop, where they say,
Oh, well, those scientists
look different than me.
Maybe I'm not meant to be a scientist.
And y'all are doing a really
amazing work that kids
actually say, realize that
no, you are going to be,
you can be a scientist.
And actually it's especially
important if you don't look
like some of the people you
might see on the TV screen
that you go into science
because you might be able
to bring a unique perspective
and a unique creativity to it.
And then if I'm hearing
another dimension is,
how do you give access to
really cutting edge work?
Because sometimes the
science that you do in school
can be a little bit more,
let's call it old school
and kids might have trouble
connecting that to the modern frontiers
of what might go on in the labs at Amgen,
which is powerful.
And obviously, our work with
you all is how do we scale
that even further?
How do we get even more
kids comfortable and feel
like they deeply understand science?
- Yes, absolutely.
It's a multi-pronged issue.
I think there is the
challenge of the stereotypes
that the question of who
can become a scientist.
But also the sense that you
can't be, what you can't see.
Even the possibilities of
how do we bring that closer
to students to see, hey,
maybe this could be me.
I add to that, the complexity
of the educational system
in a lot of ways.
I was rereading your book recently Sal
in the final chapters to get the analysis
of, if our students,
if you think about the way
the classroom learning
is typically organized
in a pre-COVID world.
And I'll talk about my
little girl who is eight now.
When she went from a
preschool to kindergarten,
she went from an environment
where she could move around.
You could decide on what
she was gonna play with
to an environment on a traditional school
where all the desks were
organized cemetery style.
And she was expected to
be quiet and pay attention
and absorb the content.
And then that was the given.
And I think that when you fast forward
and compound that not
only into the elementary,
middle high school, and sometimes even
at the university level with
electric driven lessons,
you lose a lot of the power
to engage the students.
One of my favorite books
called "Most Likely To Succeed"
they talk about if our educational
system was going to teach
students how to ride a bike,
you would spend a couple
of weeks on the history
of the bicycle.
Then we would talk about
all the different parts
of the bicycle.
If you're going to a very good school,
we'll talk about the physics of balance.
And then at the end of it,
we would give you a test
with a lot of hard questions.
And, it depends if you do
it really well or just okay,
there's this expectation
that you leave the school
and you're able to ride your bike.
Not only far less exhilarating,
but not like the real
practice of the skill.
So we think about programs
like scholars and Amgen Biotech Experience
in allowing the students
to see really what the
scientific process is all about.
We did the research.
We did some research with
high school students,
primarily the United States,
but replicated it across the world,
And students love science,
they really struggle with
the science class in the way
the science is taught.
And, people can, you can go at
this in many different ways,
but we see actually that science teachers
are the biggest ally we have.
They are enormously committed
to providing the best possible
education for their students,
but they need the tools.
They need the assistance
and they need the resources
to create those kinds of
opportunities for those students.
- And we have a question here
related to that from Facebook
Lynn Bradley, a sixth
grade science teacher asks,
she teaches at Title 1 School.
Most kids don't have supplies
for experiments at home.
Curious about ideas
that are cheap and free.
Do we have any ideas?
I have a few.
Eduardo any thoughts were for Lynn?
- DonorsChoose choose is a
terrific platform to socialize
the potential need you have.
And they attract donors
from all over the country
to support local issues
and local efforts.
And then Sal I'm happy
for you to add up more-
- Yeah and I can just give you samples.
We could go through the
entire sixth grade curriculum
and some of the things
I'm not sure exactly
on the sixth grade standards.
But these are the exact,
the kitchen chemistry,
you can do a lot in it.
So I encourage any
teachers to do web searches
for just Kitchen Chemistry.
Obviously you can do acid base work,
do vinegar baking soda.
You can do, I've just made
a whole series of videos
on distillation, which I
think you can create ad-hoc,
distillation setups at home,
where maybe you wanna distill water,
separate pure water from salt water,
or distill a mixture of
whatever is in there.
Whatever's in the kitchen.
I think these things can be
done with the stove, a pot,
and some contraptions may
be made out of plastic
and cardboard that you cut up.
So physics types things.
Kids have springs.
If they have honestly just
a ball and a stopwatch,
go outside say why, how high
is something going based
on how long it's in the air,
measuring air resistance.
So there's a lot that can be done.
I highly recommend up things that,
home science or kitchen
chemistry type projects
to see what's available.
So Eduardo, we've talked
a lot about kids entering
careers in science, but we
have a lot of young people
who watch this.
And one thing I always try to
ask as many guests as possible
because there's no major in
college to do what you do.
I mean, there's not a lot
of majors to do exactly
what a lot of folks do.
But I think people when I was young
and I wouldn't see an Eduardo
Cetlin who runs a Foundation,
I was like, how do you end up there?
What's the background.
So I'd love to focus a little bit to learn
about your personal journey.
How did you end up as the
president of the Amgen Foundation?
- Sure, sure.
So, you know, I'm, I was
born and raised in Brazil
in a city called Belo Horizonte.
It's up in the mountains.
It's not on the coast.
So people think Brazil,
they think the beaches.
No, that's not where I grew up.
And it was very clear to
me that it was, I went
through my education,
mostly in Belo,
but also had the opportunity to spend
almost two years in Canada.
My dad's a professor and went
to continue his studies there.
It helped me learn the English
that I can speak quite
fluently as my second language.
But I think back to the
pursuit of the college degree,
for me, it was very clear that
that was the path to achieve
my independence.
And I say my dad's family
came to Brazil from Poland,
running away at the time
of the Second World War
that the Jewish ethic
of studying hard
really over-preparing
was very important for me.
Learning as much as I
could at any point in time.
The other side of that, that
gets to the, to this moment
where I'm living now
is, to have preparation,
and one side I had
inspiration on the other.
My mom is from a small town
in a about four hours from Belo.
It's called Manaus
which means big river in the
local indigenous language
there called Tupi
and large family.
You know, she's one of 10 kids.
And my grandmother was such
a strong force in my life
around showing how much it
is critical for us to do
for our neighbors.
How much is important to
engage with our community.
And with my mom, the sense of dreaming,
you know, what's possible.
How do you achieve your dreams?
So my journey in what I'll
tell you about how that evolved
from the college degree is really the mix
of that preparation and inspiration.
Very lucky to have had both.
When I finished college,
I joined General Electric.
I did, what's called there
Finance Management Program.
It's a two year rotational program.
I did a year and a half in Brazil,
and then was very lucky
to be invited to come
to the United States
for six month assignment
in a city called Erie,
Northwest Pennsylvania,
working in finance.
People typically don't, we
don't even think about local,
I was in the locomotive factory,
in the best year GE
made a 1000 locomotives.
Think about that, 20 a week.
That was my introduction
to what corporate America
can really do in the power
to bring progress
across our society.
After being a trainee,
I did a job in systems and finance,
finance people thought I
was, IES Information Systems.
Information Systems people
thought I was financed.
Did a job there, had a
very fancy title called
Efinance Six Sigma Black Belt.
That's probably the coolest
title I've ever had.
And then a colleague told
me about an opportunity
to come to Amgen.
So come across the country,
nice weather in really a
promise of an industry.
This Amgen was a
company's about $7 billion
revenues were about 25 today.
It's a huge opportunity for growth.
And the job was to be
an internal consultant.
I came to that for
about a year and a half,
and then hit a bit of a snag in my life.
In the sense of, I had
just applied to join,
to start an MBA and was accepted to it.
But I didn't feel that
the work I was doing
was meaningful enough.
I felt, listen, it's
just my wife and I here
in the United States.
I need to do something
that I truly believe in.
And very fortuitous timing.
The person who was running
the Amgen Foundation
then was building up a team.
I was extremely lucky
that she gave me a shot
and brought me into her team.
I think about those five years at GE
and at Amgen, they were
absolutely critical
to make me eligible, to be
considered for that role.
But that only got me into the door.
The question then was
performance to succeed
in the new bath.
You know, you talk about
a company like Amgen,
we're about 20, 22,000
staff around the world.
The entire Amgen Foundation
team, we're about five people.
So it's a small team.
So what really ensued
in the many coming years
I've been at Amgen now for
17, is the steepest learning
curve I could ever have imagined.
The focus on all the years
ahead invested in finance,
colleagues had invested
in pedagogical skills.
And how do you make the best possible
science educational reality?
So I'm a very studious person.
I've been learning a lot
and have the privilege
and the honor to work with
amazing people in my team
and across the enterprise
towards this really
mission driven work to help patients
and through the foundation
to help the next
generation of innovators.
So it's a long-winded way to go,
but I think it's a way of saying for me,
the what I do is as important
as the why I do (indistinct).
- Now, that's fascinating.
I actually, we've known each other
for several years now.
I didn't know all of that background.
And it is fascinating
'cause it's definitely,
if I were to sample you at any point,
when you're right out of college,
I don't think you would have predicted
where you would have ended up.
But it sounded like you
had a nice balance between,
the business sense, the
finance side of things,
but also the technical side,
whether it's, information sciences
or the, the science side.
From your point of view, what do you think
were the traits that
you brought to the table
that you either developed
or maybe were just
kind of a mindset you brought
that allowed you to succeed
in these pretty diverse roles
that you've had over your career?
- Hard work, determination,
being a very studious person
and realizing what being willing to say
I don't know in doing the
study and being very curious
to continue learning more.
Luck, I think luck is the kind of thing
that is underappreciated in our society
that's so worried about meritocracy.
Opportunities came to me
in a time when I could take
advantage of them.
But I'll say that if I had
charted out a path to say,
I wanna become the president
of the Amgen Foundation,
I don't know if the steps I
took would have been the same.
I think the sense of at
each step of my career,
I gave all I had.
I've always been an all in kind of person
to really focus and do the
absolutely best that I could.
And then, so what I would say
is that those first five years
in GE in the beginning at Amgen,
the hard skills,
the focus on finance,
so I worked in accounting,
I worked in financial
planning and analysis.
I've worked in process improvement
within the financial organization.
So at that point I wasn't a path to become
a finance professional.
And that was what I thought was possible.
Then even the image of
maybe there is something
like a philanthropic foundation
that it might be engaged in the future.
It only came much later
about the five years of experience
that I had.
I would also add the sense
of the opportunities
that come to us at different points
in our life
are, sometimes it's
harder to, it's very hard
to realize what of all
the things you're doing,
which ones are they gonna be?
The ones that are gonna
be opening more doors
or the ones that will close doors.
So the more you can apply yourself
in paths that keep as many doors open.
I think the better.
The blend for me
that I think was instrumental
in going into the philanthropic
space was the human side
of things.
You know, you talk about,
hard skills and soft skills.
You talk about the importance,
you know, we are focused
on investing in STEM,
but the humanities have
a huge role to play here.
Of course, the teacher
who asked the question,
that teacher has a lot
of different challenges
in her hand,
she has a curriculum to follow.
She has a lot of expectations
around what her students
will leave the class learning,
but she also has the human side
of talking to those students
who are sixth grade.
That's the same as my oldest daughter.
These kids who, going back to
school in all virtual space
and their, how they feel
about the friendships
that they are not making,
how much they really know
the kid across the screen.
Is that gonna be a real
longterm friend or not?
So I think that as I
think about young students
in paving their paths forward,
I think my best advice is
to nurture both your mind
in your heart.
The, if you, there are great
resources around applying
to college, there are great
resources around financing.
The college experience.
Google has just come up with
some new credentialing courses.
So even though the world
of higher education
is rapidly evolving, my sense is
follow your dreams,
but not in the platitude
of you can do anything
you put your mind to,
because I think that that's
often a very unfair thing
that is said to young students.
We all face constraints,
we all face limitations.
But take advantage of the
resources that are available
to you.
And Sal I think this is a place
where the relationship that
the foundation developed
with Khan Academy is critical.
What drove you to start the Khan Academy.
And, I read your letter
to yourself 10 years ago
when you had no idea how big
this thing was going to get.
And to think about it now,
where you have learners
across the entire world saying
irrespective of my family condition,
if I have access to the internet,
I have access to a world
class education for free.
And I think that, that
holds so much promise.
And for kids today,
that's a resource that's
available that wasn't available
when I was a kid.
So again, those different
doors that become available
and take advantage of free resources.
We've also started something
with Harvard called LabXchange,
which is a partnership
with Khan Academy as well,
where they are creating a lot
of like a virtual laboratory
in ways for teachers to develop
and bring their own curriculum.
Technology is moving,
I think in a not only
in a fast way,
but in a way now that is
empowering the learning.
It's not tech for tech's
sake and that's right.
That's the other part of
what I love about your world,
it's about learning.
I don't care how fancy the technology is
and 3D goggles and all of that.
That's all secondary.
The important thing is
that the student learns.
And I'll close this piece
with comment earlier today.
My youngest daughter,
she is in third grade
and her teacher, Mrs.
Arnoud is really a big fan
of Khan Academy and she's
been doing a lot of it.
So she came in and said, well,
yesterday I leveled down four skills,
but today I've leveled up 12 skills.
That opportunity where she sees,
that she over struggling
in over investing her time,
she can overcome,
and she can learn the
content that the teacher
expects her to.
It's the kind of dynamic
that is brand new.
So now she is able to realize that, yes,
I have a full understanding
of that content.
Thanks to Sal Khan.
- Oh no, I'll always love
hearing stories like that.
Maybe one last question from YouTube,
Flora Star says, what
does Amgen future plan
to support students?
And I'll expand that
question a little bit.
You know, Eduardo, if we're
fast forward, 10 years,
20 years into the future,
what do you hope to be
the legacy of your work
and the Foundation?
- So I stand in the shoulder of giants
who really took a tiny
foundation and said,
hey, maybe it is possible
to level the playing field
for learners around the world
through hands-on learning.
I hope my legacy is that
I'm really able to work
with our amazing board of
directors who challenges
me and my team on a regular basis,
as well as our CEO to say,
have we done enough?
How do we reach everyone
that might be interested in.
How do we create the
opportunities for everyone
to live up to their potential?
I'm very hopeful that
I'm able to look back
and see Khan Academy,
much larger than it already is.
To see the LabXchange platform evolving,
and that students are
able to connect the world
of their classroom with the world of work.
And that we're more effective
at kind of connecting those two.
So that learning happens,
of course, as you're going
through the beginnings of your career.
But even after you're on a full time job,
technology is here to stay
and changes are ever present.
How do you upskill yourself?
If you are a 50 year old individual
who just lost his or her job,
and now you're thinking about,
how do you continue providing
for your family?
There are resources such as Khan Academy
that provide a specific
knowledge around subject.
And how do we invent resources
to equip individuals,
to build upon what they already know,
what they already do, with
what compliments them to do
what is needed from a
work perspective today.
So my sense is we're just beginning.
Our company has huge ambition
as to how we can go
about serving patients.
And that means that citizens
are better informed.
That citizens are better
able to ask questions
when they go to the doctor and say,
clinical trials, if you get to
the end of a standard of care
for a cancer patient,
what happens then?
The only opportunity you have
is there are clinical trials.
70% of Americans are
willing to participate
in a clinical trial.
Yet one less than one
in 20 patients are part
of a cancer clinical trial.
If you look at African
American population,
13% of our, of the U.S population,
5% of trial participants,
Latinos, our Latinx better said.
One or 2% of participants.
So we live Sal in a moment where all,
everything we do for the
foundation and the possibilities
of becoming literate in
navigating the world,
we all live in, connects
directly with the ability
to succeed in this environment.
Learning ongoing, asking good questions
and avoiding, I carry
this magazine with me.
"The War On Science", climate
change does not exist.
Evolution never happened.
The moon landing was fake.
How is it possible
that questions like that
are ask today when we carry
supercomputers in our pockets,
when we can harness
the immune system to fight cancer.
I look forward and say in partnerships,
such as what Amgen Foundation
and all of your other funders
have with you.
So, that we can start
creating a world that is fair
in that every student has
access to the opportunities
that they deserve.
Well, I look forward to
going on an adventure
with you, 'cause I
couldn't agree more that
the world more than ever needs this.
And if we're able to do
what we can do so much
for humanity.
Eduardo, thank you so
much for sharing your time
with us today, but also this partnership
that we've had for many
years and hopefully
will empower many tens
of millions of folks,
families, teachers, and students
over the decades to come.
Thank you.
- Thank you Sal, really
appreciate the opportunity
and look forward to
continuing our journey.
- Well, thanks everyone for joining.
As always a really
interesting conversation
about the importance of
science and the importance
that corporations and
corporate foundations can have
in helping empower folks,
obviously helping us do the work
we do, but well, well beyond that.
I wanna remind everyone
for tomorrow's a Homeroom.
It's going to be at the 12:30.
It's going to be with
Chancellor Robert Jones
of the university of
Illinois Urbana-Champagne.
And that's gonna be really interesting
because they are, I
would say more proactive
about testing and contact
tracing around COVID
than as any university that
I'm aware of and maybe anywhere
in the country right now.
And so it was going to be a
really interesting conversation
about this intersection between keeping
the virus from spreading on a campus,
where kids are there and
trying to get back to schools
as normal, they've actually
developed their own tests.
It's gonna be a really
interesting conversation,
30 minutes later than our normal time.
So I look forward to seeing everyone then.
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