Look for the Glimmers, a Special Encore Presentation

In this Blue Sky conversation, host Bill Burke sits down with Melissa Connelly, CEO of One Goal, a national organization working to ensure every young person can pursue education beyond high school. Melissa's path to this work started long before her career in education. Raised by a single mother on the south and southwest sides of Chicago, she missed more than 60 days of school in eighth grade and landed in her high school's truancy program, a labeling experience that nearly derailed her future… More

"I'm the Product of Optimism" — Race, Democracy, and the Courage to Believe in America

Ted Johnson's life reads like several careers stitched into one: raised in a mostly white Raleigh suburb while attending a Black church several times a week, a Hampton University graduate, a 20-year Navy officer who became a White House Fellow under President Obama and later a speech writer for two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff… More

Lee Woodruff on Her Family’s Extraordinary Story of Optimism and Resilience in the Face of Tragedy

Lee Woodruff's life reads like fiction — a college meet-not-quite-cute with her future husband Bob, a front-row seat to the Tiananmen Square crackdown that redirected Bob's entire career, his meteoric rise to co-anchor of ABC's World News Tonight, and then, just weeks into that dream job, a roadside bomb in Iraq that nearly killed him… More

Former Microsoft Executive John Wood on Bringing a Growth Mindset to Helping Children and Young Women in the World’s Poorest Countries

In the late 1990’s, John Wood was living a great life. As a senior executive at Microsoft, his job took him to exotic places and he was experiencing an ideal post-MBA experience. His life would forever change on a getaway vacation in Nepal, when he had an experience that led him to quit his job and become a social entrepreneur… More