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Andrew Yang Speaks at Kenzie Academy
Kenzie Academy learners love getting to chat with movers and shakers from a variety of industries at our AMA (Ask Me Anything) events. So you can imagine their delight at one of our most recent AMAs with Andrew Yang. You may know him for his work with Venture for America or from his recent run for president.
On the campaign trail, Andrew popularized the idea of universal basic income (UBI) for many. He inspired a plethora of Americans, who dubbed themselves the “Yang Gang,” to dream bigger about the future of our nation and the future of work. Andrew currently sits on Kenzie’s Advisory Board and is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political commentator for CNN.
Andrew shared some of the wisdom he’s gained over the course of his life — starting his career and dealing with student debt to his time overseeing Venture for America and running for president. He also shared his insights into what he sees for the future of our country and the future of work. Andrew hinted he may run for office again and laid out how he plans to stay involved with politics in 2020.
During his AMA, Andrew took time to explain why he supports the mission of Kenzie. Here’s what he had to say about Kenzie:
“[I’m] so grateful to Chok for co-founding Kenzie Academy because I do think this is exactly what people need, the country needs, and the economy needs. We need to give people the ability to make career transitions more effectively, particularly when it comes to gaining new skills for the tech industry, in particular.”
Andrew also gave some words of encouragement for those who may feel lost on their career journeys:
“I know very acutely that I’ve had a lot of good mentorships and good luck in my career and that there is a real period of figuring it out. If you feel like you’re a little bit adrift or trying to figure out what the paths are, just know that that’s the norm for everyone. That’s the norm for everyone at different points in their careers.”
After Andrew briefly recounted some of his story for us, Kenzie learners asked him questions about the political landscape, the COVID-19 pandemic, the tech industry, and how he thinks policies can better support the black community.
This interview is worth the watch so be sure to queue up the video above or read the full interview transcript down below. Interested in checking out more AMAs from Kenzie Academy? Head over to our YouTube page to hear from more movers and shakers in the tech industry.
Ready to jumpstart your career as a UX Designer or Coder? Learn more about our 12-month Software Engineering and UX design programs, or check out our free beginner’s coding program Kenzie Free.
Full Video Transcript
– Chok, we’re all here, I think we’re ready.
– Where is Andrew, I don’t see him? Oh there he is, hey Andrew.
– Chok, how are you, man? Good to see you. You look great. You look like you got younger.
– It must be the great hair that didn’t exist when you saw me last time.
– Good camera angle. I’m staring sorta at the camera.
– Well, I hope you, Evelyn and the kids are all staying safe in the lockdown.
– Yeah, yeah, things are good, relatively speaking. The kids are happy and healthy, Evelyn and I are still married. And now she can’t escape me.
– Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. I know you are extremely busy. You have no idea how excited everyone is here at Kenzie to finally get to meet you in person over Zoom. So, today we have all 800 registered attendees including Kenzie students, staff, prospective students and also friends of the community from all over the country. So, I don’t know what to say, Andrew. You’re kind of a popular dude around here.
– No, appreciate everyone being here and the work that Kenzie Academy does. I don’t know if you all know, but Chok and I are friends from years ago and he supported me before anyone else did and I’ve been trying to help Kenzie Academy anyway I can because I’m very passionate about the work they’re doing. It’s exactly what we need more of. So, I’m excited to be here.
– [Chok] Awesome, thanks. So, I’ve got a little quick intro about Kenzie, especially to some of the prospective students that are joining and then, we’d love to hand over and have you kind of address everyone. So, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Chok, the Founder and CEO of Kenzie and your moderator in our Yang talk today. So for those of you new to Kenzie, we are a tech academy that is working to rescue thousands of Americans, by bring automation and this new COVID crisis into the future of work through our online and live training. And today, I think, Andrew, a quick update on our students. We have students all around the country, not just in Indiana now and we also have cohorts of our Amazon local centers. So, thank you for those who are being on the front lines delivering our packages and during their free time attending Kenzie to retrain themselves. And we also have our sister cohort from Brazil, as well. And over 70% of our students are typically, before they join Kenzie made less than $30,000 a year and our graduates are graduating into tech jobs and typically make about $50,000 to $80,000 a year working for companies like Ford Mobility, Angie’s List, DMI sales force and a few other companies. And about 57% of our students are people of color. About 40% are female or self identified as other gender. So, in terms of diversity, Kenzie hopefully represents the future of the tech industry. And Andrew, every month we host kind of a Kenzie EMA with established leaders in tech, politics and non-profits, people that have been very successful in their field and the goal is to expose our students to new thinking and kind of different points of view, in addition to their tech training. A lot of them in network with all these leaders, so that our Kenzie alumni grow up to be better leaders in their companies and communities. So, speaking about growing up, when I was building Kenzie I decided to build a board of advisors, people that I aspire to be when I grow up and Andrew, who was someone who’s created a lot of jobs in the Midwest through his Venture for America organization was someone I highly look up to. And my daughter, Elana, was also a big fan and was really inspired after reading Andrew’s book on Smart People Should Build Things. So, if you guys have not read that book, that is a very good book to get. Andrew, we’re very lucky to have you as an advisor, really fort
unate you believe in our mission and help us a lot during our early days of Kenzie. When I first met Andrew he had just stepped down from Venture for America and he told me he was working on a new project. So, as a curious engineer I asked Andrew, what is the project? And he told me that he’s been fighting the war with robots for quite some time through his leaky tub analogy that many of you heard before. But, no matter how hard he tried to fill water in the tub water was leaking out much faster pace at the bottom. So, the only way to really solve that was to truly disrupt the system. So, Andrew absolutely right in terms of the problem that’s impacting America for the last few years, but also going forward. But sadly, many leaders were still fighting the same issues and talking about the same issues as they did 30 years ago and not too many people really had the courage to confront the core problem head on that led to so much anger and loss of hope, especially in the Nebraska state. So, that was what motivated me and my co-founders to start Kenzie, but we choose to start a school. Andrew chose to run for president instead. So of course, initially when Andrew told me about the project, I was a little skeptical, but don’t get me wrong, I had no doubts about Andrew’s ability. He’s extremely charismatic person, but what I felt that convincing the country by actually telling them the truth that sounds almost Terminator futuristic, felt like Mission Impossible. But, Andrew, knowing Andrew, went on to start a movement and regardless of your personal politics, it’s amazing to see how much one single person could accomplish to change the narrative of an entire nation. Today, if you look at the news, if you talk to people, it is widely acknowledged that automation is one of the root causes of so much disruption in American jobs, and during this crisis, my profession has termed this as the automation forcing event, we pretty much see how everything is happening in a fast forward basis. And never have I thought that so quickly the government would implement some form of the universal basic income. So, Andrew, excited for you to be here. It’s my pleasure now to hand it over to you to tell us about your view of what the future holds for America.
– Thank you, Chok. What’s funny is when he said he was skeptical when I told him I was going to run for president, he had a good poker face. He didn’t express that to me at the time. He was like, yes, let’s do it. I’m onboard and supportive. So, grateful to Chok for co-founding Kenzie Academy because I do think this is exactly what both people need, the country needs, the economy needs. We need to give people the ability to make career transitions more effectively, particularly when it comes to gaining new skills for the tech industry, in particular. So, I’m again very, very grateful to be here. I’m gonna talk a little bit about myself and I’ll talk about myself first and then the economy and then I’ll take some questions. So, the thing I try to do for people who are in the development phase of their careers professionally, is to try and de-mystify how the heck I got to be the person who’s speaking to you as opposed to the other way around. Let’s put it that way. And, there’s really no, no magic to it, where I can very vividly remember being in your shoes, a student, trying to figure out what the next steps were for me professionally. And for me it was a bit of a mess, honestly. I graduated from college and I went to law school, which I don’t recommend. And I was an unhappy lawyer for five whole months. And you know what doesn’t happen when you decide to quit being a lawyer, they don’t give you a refund for the law school tuition or the loads. So, I was walking around with six figures in school loans for years. I used to call it my mistress because I felt like I was supporting a family in another town. I was like, I hope they’re enjoying themselves in Town Sallie Mae ’cause I was sending over $1000 a month to school loan payments for a degree that I was no longer using because I had set out on my own to try and do something like Chok has done, which is start a business. And then I found starting a business was incredibly difficult. I started a company that flopped and then I joined another company that ran out of money. And then, I joined another company that didn’t really accomplish its goals. And I pretty much have summarized my 20s, more or less. I was trying to make myself a contributor to a winning team and it wasn’t really happening for me and in my case I got very lucky where someone came to me and said, hey, I’m starting a tutoring company. Do you wanna be a tutor and help me out? And I said yes, in part because I was, frankly at a bit of a career loss and I thought well, at a minimum I’ll have this to fall back on and moonlight and make some extra money. And then that tutoring opportunity ended up morphing into over time or evolving into my becoming CEO of the company, after five, six years of being an instructor. And so, I became CEO of that company and then that company then grew and became quite successful. So, that’s just to let you all know that there isn’t a straight line path, that it’s not like, oh, if I do this, this, this, then everything will work out and that people like Chok or myself. I’m sure Chok has his share of war stories to tell you and that if you were to rewind the tape to any point in his formative stages, he would be very similar to you all in terms of trying to figure out next steps. I was at the very same point in my 20s and I got very lucky that really, the head of that education company wanted to leave to start a charter school for under privileged kids. If he didn’t have that altruistic impulse, then he never would’ve needed a CEO of the company. And then, I became CEO of that company and ran it for six years. So, I know very acutely that I’ve had a lot of good mentorship and good luck in my career and that there is a real period of figuring it out. And so, if you feel like you’re a little bit adrift or trying to figure out what the paths are, just know that that’s just the norm for everyone. That’s the norm for everyone at different points in their careers. So, what happened in my case was I became head of that company, ran it for a number of years and then the company was bought by a bigger company in 2009 and so, I then said well great, I’m gonna work for this big company and enjoy myself. And it turns out I did not enjoy it. It was wild. As soon as I stopped being CEO of that company and became an employee of the big company, personally for me, I struggled. And so, I left and this is where it gets a little bit wild in terms of my career trajectory. I left to start a non-profit that Chok mentioned, Venture for America, and I joke all the time with my wife that there was this bait and switch because when she met me I was a fairly normal executive at this education company and had a normal life and schedule. And then when I started this non-profit with a goal of creating thousands of jobs around the country, all of a sudden I was traveling all the time and constantly trying to raise money for this feel good organization that helped create hundreds, even thousands of jobs in 15 cities around the country. I did that for six years, six and a half years and then Chok and I met around that time because I’d realized that I wasn’t going to be able to create enough jobs to actually put the country on the right path, so most of you probably know this next part. I then decided to run for president. So, I started running for president, technically I filed the paperwork in 2017 and this is a little known fact, but it’s essentially free to file the paperwork to run for president so all of you can do it. So, that means you, Amanda Key Jackson, Dat Key, Steven Carrington, Tristan Reeves, Nicole Roberts, Natalie Hosen. If you go to the FEC you too can run for president. Essentially, and if you look hundreds of people do it every four years. But then, after you file that paperwork, then the hard part begins, which is then you have to try and
raise money and get press and get people to take you seriously. So, that’s when I was introducing Chok to this idea and he was probably right to be skeptical. But, I was running on a set of ideas that are very important for you all and for this conversation, which is that our economy is transforming around us, and as Chok said, the coronavirus is accelerating those changes. The things I was concerned about were that the five most common job types in the United States were all getting automated away. And those five job types are, administrative and clerical work, retail, food service and food preparation, truck driving and transportation and manufacturing. Now, let’s try, I’ll do a little Q&A just for fun. What percentage of American jobs do you think fall into those five categories, which I’ll repeat again? Go ahead and type it in to, is there a chat window? Let’s see, yeah, there’s a Q&A, so go ahead and just type in it’d be a number, it’d be like a percentage. What percentage of American jobs do you think fall into these five categories, administrative and clerical, retail and sales, food service and food prep, truck driving and transportation and manufacturing? Let’s see if I can see answers. I’m scrolling down. Let’s see what I can find. All right, some people writing in some fun stuff. So, Stephen Serio said 90%, which is high. It’s about half. 60%, 80% is what Joshua Gosin said. So, it’s about half. It’s like 49% of jobs fall into those five categories. And the one that I thought catalyzed Trump’s victory, I did anchor you very high, so if you went high that’s a very reasonable thing to do ’cause I made it seem like there was gonna be some dramatic reveal. Ah, 99%, no. So, it’s 50% of the jobs, so 49%. So, the thing I thought catalyzed Trump’s victory in 2016 was that we’d already automated away four million manufacturing jobs that were primarily based in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa. And now the other four sectors were automating progressively, retail and sales being the most dramatic. And the coronavirus crisis, we’ll talk about retail because it’s the most relevant. So, being a retail clerk’s the most common job in the U.S. economy and I was concerned that we were gonna close 50% of malls in the next four years and that was going to displace hundreds of thousands of workers. Now you all know we’ve closed many more than half of the malls during this crisis and now some of them are reopening, but the reality is brick and mortar retail is going to shrink dramatically. You don’t necessarily think of that as automation of jobs because it’s not like you’d go to the mall and there’s a robot selling you stuff. But, if you look into Amazon’s fulfillment centers, it’s wall to wall robots, sounds like some of you might work for Amazon, or wanna work for Amazon, that its wall to wall fulfillment centers and it’s Amazon that’s making that mall shut down or the J.C. Penney or the Macy’s or what have you. So, the coronavirus crisis is unfortunately compressing the timeframe where if I said hey, half the malls are gonna close in the next five years, it’s probably more like five weeks or five months. I’ve been saying that we’re gonna experience 10 years worth of change in 10 weeks because of the coronavirus crisis and many companies right now are investing at higher levels in technologies that will automate jobs away because, and an example I use that we can all understand, at this point if the Domino’s Pizza gets delivered to you in a self-driving car, that’s actually value add for you because you’re like cool. If you’re human, touch this thing and I don’t have to interact with a human. I can just go out and hit the code into the pizza car and it just pops out. So, that’s no longer neutral. That’s actually positive because you’ll feel like, oh good, fewer humans means lower rate of infection. So, that’s happening in industries around the country right now and what we need to do is have this dramatic nationwide rebuilding effort that includes training and rescaling people for jobs that are gonna be here for years to come. That’s one reason why I love what Kenzie’s doing so much. So, I’ll talk a little bit about some of the other trends in the economy because I think that’s something that it’s really important. So, the jobs you all are training to do everyone needs someone who can help build, manage and in some cases, maintain these technologies. What’s happening increasingly is that you’re having companies lighten their footprints in terms of office space and head count, but the need the right people with the kind of skills that they can use remotely. And so, there’s going to be a massive need for people with technical skills as it has been for the last number of years, but that need is going to only grow in the days ahead. And for people who don’t have the kind of skills that they can project digitally or remotely, it’s gonna get harder and harder because the folks who require being in person with you, let’s call them personal trainers, yoga teachers, stylists, nail salon, it’s gonna get harder and harder and it breaks my heart, honestly, because, it’s no one’s fault, you know. And this is one of the reasons why I ran for president. For whatever reason we’ve been misled or just duped into thinking that if we all just keep on heading on the same path, then the market will figure it all out for us and from my work at Venture for America I knew that just wasn’t true. And so, we’re going to have to do things differently. Hey Chok, maybe you can answer this too. I get the sense, have you guys got any public support or is it purely, is it purely just enterprise? It wouldn’t surprise me if it was just enterprise. But, have you got any government support?
– [Chok] Very little at this stage. So, a technical institution definitely has all the support they need, so it’s definitely an unfair battleground.
– Yeah so, and this is something that happened to me with Venture for America, where we did end up getting a grant from the state of Ohio, but in the first five years we got minimal government support. The politicians would show up to events and make a speech. But, there was very little in the way of resources for us from the public level. And that’s the operational reality for a lot of great things, for many of the most effective things. One of my goals is to try and have the two interface. To me the government has to get involved in more of these solutions, even if getting involved means just cutting a check. Just trying to make things easier for folks to be able to identify better pathways. But, it doesn’t surprise me at all, Chok, because I had the same experience and a lot of the best work, it gets done just when a group of awesome people come together as is the case with Kenzie, and say hey, the world needs this, we can build it and if we do great work then we’ll end up being able to sustain ourselves and grow. So, congrats to you and again it doesn’t surprise me that you’ve done it essentially independently and on your own.
– [Chok] I know you did say that when you win the presidency you allocate billions of dollars to help solve this training issue.
– Yeah, I did say that and I mean, ’cause we need to do that and we may even do that if I, obviously I’m not gonna be president this time. But, I think there’s a good chance I’ll be working with the administration. I just talked to Joe Biden last week. I’ve been in touch with various people in the administration and yeah, Chok, I’m still gonna try and make good on that even if it’s not me because what you’re doing here is exactly what we should be doing more of all over the country. And if you do decide to sign up with Kenzie, you should know that the team genuinely just wants to make you better and stronger. Just trust me when I say that the folks at Kenzie have the right motivations because I remember talking to Chok when he was starting this thing and there were other things that he could have been doing. But, he wanted to do this because he sensed that the country needed it. And so, you should know that this organization is like the opposite of one of those organizations where they’re like, just seeing people as people to fill seats or trying to make a buck. That’s not really the motivation of the Kenzie team. They are genuinely just trying to make people stronger and solve problems for everyone, for individuals, for the economy. Yeah, and I’ve run an education company so I know the difference. It’s a very big difference. So, that’s my story and a little bit about what I see coming down the pike. I would love to take questions from people. I always enjoy taking questions. I even kinda miss it since when I was running for president and it would happen to me very, very often.
– [Chok] You’re always welcome back at Kenzie, Andrew. I still have plenty of questions for you. But since I know a lotta people are starting to ask questions on the chat as well. We do have limited time, so what we did was we have a couple of students that had some questions that they submitted in advance.
– Works for me. That’s good preparation.
– Yeah, so let’s start with Scott Reese, if you wanna unmute your mic and tell Andrew where you are and your question.
– [Questioner] Hey, yeah, so I’m Scott Reese. I’m from Indianapolis. I am a software engineer alumni from Kenzie, so I’m working at DMI, but, so straight to the question since we have limited time. There appears to be corruption in our politics and before any visionary ideas get through reform has to happen. How do you factor in the political landscape and any prospective strategy you may have in mind for achieving something like UBI?
– Congratulations, Scott. Thanks for the thoughtful question. First, the back end of that. First, I’m optimistic that universal basic income is going to be front and center and passed, maybe even this year. A survey just came out that said that 76% of Americans are in favor of direct cash relief to us during this crisis for the duration and we’re going to be struggling with job creation for years to come. This is going to be common sense. And so, I’m optimistic that cash relief to people will happen. You’re right that our political system is very corrupt. And so, there is a little bit of what happens first? Do you somehow get a different type of leader in office or do you fix the system. And I suggest that we have to try and shoot for both of them. So, even though I’m known for universal basic income and free money, which I’m obviously very happy to be known for, but there’s a very large portion of my platform around democracy reform, around a hundred democracy dollars for every American so that we can fund candidates who represent us. Ranked-choice voting, we should have had that like a million years ago. That actually would have changed outcomes. The tough truth is that we have a duopoly right now and it’s not serving us well at all. And I went through the democratic process and there were problems with the process. I mean, you can look back even at the last race and say it’s like, if you were a Bernie supporter in 2016, which I was, too, clearly the DNC kneecapped Bernie. I mean, that’s like objective history and truth at this point. And so, there are problems. There are real problems. And to me it’s a little bit of, you gotta try and go down both roads. I am 100% for democracy reform that I think would elevate different types of candidates. But, I actually also think that different kind of candidates can run successfully even now and like it or not, you can actually thank Donald Trump for that because he was a different kinda candidate. And my campaign had relative success I think demonstrates it too, that things are changing. And the institutions just aren’t as powerful as they were. They just don’t have as much control as they did. But, thank you for the question, Scott. It was very on point.
– [Chok] Thank you Andrew. The next question comes from Jay Thurman. Jay, unmute yourself.
– [Questioner] Hi Mr. Yang. Thank you so much for meeting with us again. My name is Jay. I’m originally from Memphis, Tennessee and so, my question was, what is an actionable set of smart goals that you believe can be implemented to decrease the incidents of healthcare related disparities? For example, like maternal mortality at childbirth, COVID-19 pain management, et cetera, but specifically amongst the black community?
– Thank you for the question, Jay. It’s unconscionable what we are seeing around the country in terms of the racial disparities and you can see the fatality rate among blacks is much, much, I think it was six times higher in one thing I saw. Latinos, it’s not that different. And so, what I say to people is that this virus is preying on our pre-existing conditions and massive racial disparities it’s a pre-existing condition in the United States of America. When you talk about smart goals, when you’re talking about issues that big and pervasive I think we should have universal healthcare. I mean, that would be a start. But, when you talk about maternal health and the fact that you’re much more likely to die if you’re a pregnant black woman and going into the hospital in childbirth and complications than if you’re a white woman. I think there are at least two things you can identify immediately. Number one is that for whatever reason, our healthcare system and our healthcare professionals do not respond to black people and black women identifying symptoms in the same way. They just hear it and they’re like yeah, it’s no bit deal, when it is a big deal in many cases and people die as a result of them just not listening. So, that’s something that you can try and train for and say look, FYI, one way you might be able to train for it is you try and have higher representation in your healthcare professions. It’s like if you had a black female doctor and a black woman comes in and talks about various discomfort or complications, they probably listen to them better, differently. The second thing around the maternal health to me is there are just higher stress levels associated with being black in this country. And then, because of that the complications when they come in are higher. Stress is bad for pregnancy, it’s bad for pregnant women. Now, this is a very far reaching question. It’s like, how can you make it less stressful to be black in the United States of America when you have people killed for running while black? You know what I mean? Talk about stressful. I can’t go for a jog without thinking some people are gonna hunt me down and shoot me. I mean, that’s catastrophic. So, that’s a very, very tough challenge. We all know that I think the first step of this challenge is give people a certain amount of money, which is something that Martin Luther King championed. He was actually fighting for it very hard when he was assassinated. Does giving everyone money somehow erase racial inequities or the stress that I’m describing? No. Does it make it marginally better? Yes. And, is it something we can actually do very straightforwardly and politically? Yes. In a way that it’s harder. So, what you do to me, is you solve the problems in order. The easiest thing to solve is well, shoot, if you have 70% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and the levels are much, much higher where you have black families at 10% the average net worth of a white family and their net worth going to zero by 2050. Well, you change that and then you start trying to address other racial inequities in everything from the healthcare system to criminal justice. But, you have to tackle first things first.
– [Chok] Thank you, Andrew. Yeah, definitely watching the news really breaks my heart seeing that and my daughters ask me why. How do I explain it to kids? Next question is from a student, Drew Sexton. Drew, unmute your microphone.
– [Questioner] Hi Mr. Yang. Thank you so much for taking some time out from your very busy schedule to speak with us. We very much appreciate it. My question is kind of built on Jay’s point that she made. How do you see the role of technology, and specifically software engineers, in improving the lives of historically under represented and under served communities? And also, what other infrastructure would need to be in place in order for those benefits to be fully realized?
– Thank you for the question, Drew, and thank you for the support. I love the math hat. That makes me feel good. So, talked about it at the opening where number one is if you have diverse people in software fields, that’s a huge step up, because we all know these jobs pay better and lead to different types of career opportunities. So, if you can, so Drew, if you are a software engineer and then there is someone who’s trying to break into the field or applying for a job or needs a hand and they’re from an under represented community, then if you can do something for them directly, that’s very, very helpful and powerful. Number two is trying to solve problems that effect different kinds of people and the brutal truth is that if you just saw market based problems they are less likely to touch black communities, communities of color, communities who are struggling. So, one of the organizations that I’ve been working with recently, Propel, they made an app for food stamp recipients to be able to access funds in different ways and more effectively. And then, during this crisis we wound up needing them and using them because we’re trying to get people money in effected areas quickly. And thank goodness they existed and they had done this because, and they were not doing it for commercial reasons strictly. I mean, they’re a for profit company, but the leaders were like hey, we should try and do something to solve different kinds of problems. So, if you’re a software engineer and you can try to broaden the kinds of problems you’re working on, that’s enormous, and you should know that the problems you’re gonna be naturally driven towards are not those kinds of problems because the market will continuously be like, hey, solve this financial services problem for, not poor people, but for stuff like a rich company that wants to operate slightly more efficiently. So, it takes some keeping your head up and trying to identify the right kinds of things to work on. But, I’m sure you can do it, Drew, because as long as you’re driven in that direction you’ll be able to find those opportunities.
– [Chok] Andrew, the next question comes from Ashley McKenzie. Ashley, where are you at?
– I’m just kidding.
– [Questioner] Effective, but that’s how I chose the school. Thanks for meeting with us. My name is Ashley. My question for you is, given the current climate, would you consider running again in the future? And how do you see America leaning more on technology moving forward? Your law, or your background in law and education, I think this would be a good question for you, because I’m home schooling my kids right now and I just feel like, whew, I think that this is probably gonna be a major next step for schools and that a lot of schools are probably really implement programs like this, where we’re home schooling a lot more and really leaning on technology. What do you think about that?
– Well, congrats to you for taking care of your kids, Ashley, ’cause we have two kids at home, too, and it’s so much. Happy Mother’s Day. And, you’re doing at least two jobs if you’ve got kids at home.
– [Questioner] Thank you.
– I feel like you can say two things about the home school, online schooling. One, we need to do more of it and make it better. But two, I think that they’re gonna be many people who also see that there are limitations to it. So, both of those things I believe are true. I see my four year old and seven year old learning every day and I’m very grateful that their teachers are trying to teach them online and there are things we could do to make it better. I’ll tell you for my family what’s happening is that my seven year old’s on the autism spectrum and he just gets up and walks away from the screen. If you’re the teacher, what can you do about that? Not a whole heck of a lot. You’re just looking at empty space, Christopher, Christopher, can you come back? Christopher is skipping around. And so, my wife, Evelyn, or I have to be monitoring him. And so, in a way you have two people who are necessary because it’s, because of the delivery mechanism. Now, that said, do I think that more education’s going to be delivered online than ever, particularly for adults? Yeah, clearly. Clearly, there are many of these schools that are going to go out of business because they don’t have the right value proposition and it’s based on you being physically in a particular environment. So, what you’re saying is true, that we’re gonna need much more in terms of online delivery of education and particularly, support for parents. Somehow we have to set parents up in an environment where their kids can learn and the parent can work and right now those two things are very hard to come by. I know, I mean, it’s going on in my house right now. It’s very, very hard to work and have kids in your house right now. So, we need to try and solve that problem in a much bigger way. Using my family as a test case, I probably should be thinking about it. But, if the seven year old just gets up and runs around, what’s the tech solution for that? We’ll have to think about that. Maybe someone here could help figure that out.
– [Chok] Can’t you make those robots, Andrew, in San Jose, that actually, it’s on iPad so it follows the people?
– Yeah, maybe. I guess my kid definitely needs it. But, you know who I think really needs it, too, are parents. The day just goes by because your kids are just a buzz saw that they need both activity and attention and then, you’re like, where the heck did the day go? I feel you. We’re in the same boat, so we need to try and solve that problem in a very meaningful way because it’s gonna be faced by many, many families, not just you, Ashley, that’s for sure, or me.
– [Questioner] Thank you.
– [Chok] Next question comes from Natalie Hassan. Natalie, if you can unmute and introduce where you’re based, what program you’re in, and ask your question.
– [Questioner] Hi, thank you for being here today, Andrew, first, and my name is Natalie. I’m from western New York. I’m a software engineering major here at Kenzie. My question has to do with the process of opening up the country again. I just want to know your thoughts about it. I’ve heard you touch on this before, but just the reopening of the country and its impact on the economy, on public health. Would you implement anything different? And any advice for us going through this process under the current plan.
– Thank you, Natalie. I think that we’re in a very tough situation right now because the vaccine is months and months away and you have to try and re-open, at least parts of your economy during this timeframe. So, the missing piece for us right now is testing. It’s like, when you’re like, hey, all clear, go back, you’re like based on what information? The main information that we’re getting right now is people showing up at hospitals sick. And there is a very strong relationship be
tween that number and the number of infections in the population. But, you know what’s an even better judge of the infection rates in the population is actually testing people in the population. So, we’re in a tough spot right now because people are making decisions based upon incomplete information at best. And then, you have states and leaders saying, okay, we’re gonna re-open certain parts of the economy up, and then you have individual actors, whether it’s companies or families and individuals saying, okay, my state has now officially re-opened its businesses. Does that mean I should go out to the bar right now or to the restaurant? And you’re like, not really sure. I don’t really think so. Maybe I’ll wait a little while. So, for us, as individuals, we have to make our own determinations based upon our own risk levels, our own risk tolerance levels, the importance of whatever it is that we’re doing, whether it be for work or recreation. For government leaders the big missing piece is tests. If I was a governor looking at this I’d be like, okay, what data am I making this decision based on? And they’re making it based upon hospital admissions and not testing at large. So, that’s the part that pains me the most as an American. It’s like really, why the heck do we not have testing? Why are we so behind the curve on things that other countries have been able to deliver on? Some of these other countries are much smaller than we are, but that’s still not a great excuse. We’re bigger, but in theory at least, we have much more in the way of resources to help solve these problems. It’s just in this case, I really do put a lot of this as a failure of leadership. It pains me greatly. It’s not even that I wish that I were president, in 2021 I wish I had been president while this crisis was building because I genuinely think we would have gotten in front of it sooner. And I will say that a big missing piece for us all, Natalie, is just more testing and better info.
– [Chok] Andrew, the next question is from Mike Elnokea. He’s a student of Kenzie that went to visit Jordan and was trapped for the COVID crisis and came to Kenzie from Jordan. So, Mike, over to you.
– [Questioner] Yes, thank you very much, Chok, and thank you Mr. Yang for your time. I am currently a fourth quarter student in the software engineering track at Kenzie Academy and the question I have for you today, Mr. Yang, is that you’ve spoken a lot in the past about how automation was likely to effect blue collared work, specifically truck drivers, manufacturers, service workers and other jobs throughout the economy, but as someone retraining into software development, I wanted to hear your take on how automation could impact my future career within the same timeframe as the ones at blue collared work. And what could we do to stave off the impact until a policy like the Freedom Debit Act is enacted?
– Thank you, Mike. So, are you in Jordan now? Is that right?
– [Questioner] Yes, that’s correct, Mr. Yang.
– Wow. What time is it over there?
– [Questioner] It is 8:46 p.m.
– That’s not so bad. It’s not like middle of the night action. I do talk much more about the blue collar impact because I thought it’d be easier to understand and there were more jobs involved. But, you’re 100% right that it’s gonna come to white collar jobs and software engineering jobs, too. Now, if you’re a coder, to me even if you end up automating away coding work in one setting, there’ll be another setting that they still need you in. So, you are among the less vulnerable for sure. If you are a good coder, there’ll always be someone who needs you to do work during the next number of years. When you talk about trying to stave it off, I’ll tell you guys a joke I told on the trail. It happens to be true. I said that technology and artificial intelligence are getting stronger and faster all the time and for the most part, we human beings are not. And that when you become an adult you feel grateful if you didn’t get dumber on a given day. If you can still find your keys, you’re like, all right. It’s still happening. Oh my God, it’s still working around here. That always got a laugh. But, if you’re looking at staving it off the best thing you can really do is invest in yourself, just to try and make yourself valuable in different ways. And certainly, your technical skills is number one. But, there are other things, too. Investing in relationships is positive, investing in your own intellectual breadth I would say. So, there are different ways to try and make yourself automation proof. In terms of us collectively slowing the rate of automation, as you can tell, I’m not optimistic that there are realistic things you could do with the exception of certain regulatory things in certain industries, but those would not apply to a software engineer. It would be more like hey, we’re gonna mandate having a truck driver in the cab even though the truck can drive itself. That’s the kind of regulatory move that might be realistic and necessary. I’m not ruling that one out. The best thing you can do really, Mike, is invest in yourself. I would suggest traveling to Jordan, I’m sure you didn’t expect to be there that long, but that sounds like a pretty good way to broaden one’s horizons.
– [Questioner] Yeah, thank you very much, Mr. Yang.
– [Chok] Thank you, Andrew. I’m gonna actually ask one of the questions that was asked on the Q&A. From Latoya, so Latoya’s asking, with the future of brick and mortar businesses looking so bleak, is it worthwhile to develop tech solutions that would help the small mom and pop companies? For example, minority family owned businesses that provide local services.
– Thank you for the question, Latoya. Yeah, it is for sure. There’s always an appetite for local entrepreneurship that meets a community need in a way that others do not and those businesses need help. So, even though I agree with you, it’s a bleak future for many brick and mortar businesses, there’s no reason not to try and invest in helping some of those businesses, particularly if they’re of a community, will provide a need for the community that others would not. I believe that there will be still opportunities at that level, but they need help.
– [Chok] Thank you, Andrew. It’s all these rapid fire questions. coming your way. Next one is from Shawn Tucker. Shawn, unmute yourself where you’re at and go ahead and ask.
– [Questioner] Hi, Mr. Yang. Thank you for spending time with us today. My name is Shawn. I am a UX student from Charlotte, North Carolina and I’d like to know more about UBI. How would you have implemented the program? Where would the money come from? And also, would the cost of living go up if every American had a basic level of income?
– Thanks for the question, Shawn. My plan was to have it be pegged to inflation for your last thing. So, if it started out at 1000 and then core inflation was 2%, then you get 1020 the next year. In terms of where you get the money to pay for it, you get the money from the same place you got the $4 trillion we gave to the Wall Street banks in 2008, or the $1.5 trillion we got to give to the big companies in a tax cut two years ago, or the $2.8 trillion and counting we just got this COVID relief money for. One of the things that I saw was that we’ve somehow been brainwashed into thinking we don’t have the money to do things and we 100% have the money. We’re the richest economy in the history of the world, $21 trillion a year before this crisis, now it’s gonna be lower. But still, $21 trillion a year we could afford a dividend of $1000 a month or higher if we managed to harness the gains of the economy to work for us and the examples I used on the trail. You have Amazon paying zero in taxes. I mean, how the heck does that make sense? Netflix, zero. Starbucks, zero. If you have some of your biggest, most successful companies paying zero in taxes and it seems awfully hard to pay for things. So, back to the first question we got. It’s like, is there corruption in the system? Yeah, there’s corruption in the system. But, we have the money and if we put the money into our hands then it would not disappear. It would create a virtuous circle where it flows into various businesses that then employ more people. We do need to try and make it so we’re all participating in the gains, and for those of you that are studying at Kenzie or have these software engineering jobs and are alums, I know you’ll feel better about your work if you feel like the value’s getting distributed in different ways. Where it’s not like oh, I win, you all lose. We can make it so that we all are able to participate in progress. So, Shawn, those are some of the answers to your questions. But yeah, it’d be pegged to inflation. So even if prices went up, we’d just get a bit more. The reality is that right now we’re in danger of a deflationary period because of this crisis. Inflation is so not a worry right now. The house is on fire we just need to spray water and put the fire out and not worry about whether we’re using too much water. Let’s put it that way. It’s a very big fire.
– [Chok] Thank you, Andrew. The next question is from Pedro de Volilla. Pedro.
– [Questioner] My name’s Pedro. I’m from Newburg, New York and I was wondering if you think we can implement a UBI program like the Give Directly people did in Africa? What do you think of the effective altruism of it?
– Thank you, Pedro. I’m friends with the Give Directly people and they’ve now expanded to the U.S. So, we’re now currently give directly right here in the United States. They’ve distributed millions of dollars already to people around the country. So, you’ll be happy to know, Pedro, that Give Directly has spread to the United States of America and that’s how we’re actually getting money to thousands of people right now. I’m part of this philanthropic effort to do that. I love the effect of altruism movement. I like to think of myself as a proponent of it. So, yeah, but you should know, Give Directly is here now. Michael Fay, the CEO and I text somewhat regularly because right now we’re trying to get people money. So, I can talk a little bit about some of the money giving efforts. So, we’ve distributed $1.4 million from Humanity Forward. We’re distributing another $600,000 in a town called Hudson that I think is not that far from you, Pedro, over five years and I’m part of something called Project 100 that is giving $100 million away to 100,000 American families in the next 100 days and that is through Give Directly. So Pedro, you should know that’s something people are working on.
– [Chok] Andrew, next question is from Daniel Patton. Daniel, where are you?
– [Questioner] Hello Chok. Hello, Mr. Yang, how are you today?
– Hello, how are you?
– Excuse the lawn mower man behind me here. I’m curious how you think that cryptocurrency could help people. That was my question.
– I think that cryptocurrency, in many ways is illustrating what the future can and will look like. You can, the blockchain has many, many potentially awesome applications. So, I see cryptocurrencies as much like other technologies where got a bit over hyped, a bit ahead of themselves. There might be some real boom and bust cycles, but then, the underlying technology ends up becoming very important over time. One thing I think we are under investing in right now is innovation in currency. You have, obviously you have our cash dollars and then now you have these digital payments and I think that we’re only scratching the surface of what can be possible with different types of currencies. If you can imagine, let’s say that we have this pandemic and there are tens of millions of jobs lost and we’re looking to rejuvenate small businesses because 30% of small businesses are going to close forever. I wish that was a hypothetical, but everything I just said is true and happening right now. So, how about we have a currency that just is good in small businesses in a particular community? And then you say hey, guess what? Everyone now has 500 Yang Bucks we’ll call them and they’re only good in small businesses in this state. And then, you’re like all right, what am I gonna spend money on? So, there are things that we can do that will be outgrowths of cryptocurrency that I think we should be doing much, much more of in the days to come, and I think the blockchain is a very, very powerful technology that we should be able to make use of in much bigger and more dramatic ways. The problem with the blockchain right now really is that it’s almost too good and that if you used it, if you used it to its fullest potential you’d end up displacing many legal, accounting, financial services, institutions and other institutions. And those institutions obviously, have no interest in disrupting themselves to that degree.
– [Chok] Thanks, Andrew. We have three other questions on the list. I just wanna check on a time perspective, Andrew. Do you have a hard stop or can you go on?
– I think I’m okay, Chok. No one’s yelling at me, should be fine.
– [Chok] Your assistant will give us a hard time after this, but great. I’ll give everyone a chance to ask their questions here. The next question is from Andrew Ratcliff, Andrew.
– [Questioner] Hi, Andrew. My name’s Andrew. I’m from Indianapolis and my question is, what moment in your career did you realize that running for president was the right thing to do?
– The moment my wife said sure. No, I’m kidding. I mean, maybe I’m not kidding there. So, I ran this non-profit for six and a half years and running a non-profit, great experience, but it became clear to me that my organization was not going to be able to operate at a scale to solve the problem that I had imagined solving. And also that my incentives were not to admit that, as the head of that non-profit because if you’re the head of a non-profit your incentives are to say, one, we’re doing awesome stuff, check it out, which we were, so there was no problem with that. And two, if you give me anything I’m like super grateful for it. So, if you write a check for $10,000 to Venture for America, I’m like yeah, thank you for the ten grand. You can’t turn around and say hey, guess what? I actually need a billion dollars. You know what I mean? Even though, I kinda did, even if you had it. So, one of the interesting things, Andrew, is I interfaced with folks who are operating at the highest levels of philanthropy and they were not operating on the level necessary to solve the problem that I imagined. If you’re a billionaire does that mean you’re gonna give a billion dollars to charity? 99.9% of the cases, no. If you’re a billionaire that means you’re operating in checks of like a million bucks maybe, $10 million. You’re not gonna give all your money away. So, just the scale that I needed to operate at was just so much bigger than the non-profit was going to enable. And so, I said okay, if I’m intellectually honest with myself, how do you solve this problem? There is no way to solve this problem except to get a hold of the U.S. government and then re-write the rules of the economy. And that is an impossibility unless you become president. And so, I said, okay, what are the rules to become president? 35 years or older, check. U.S. citizen, check. And those are the only rules. And so, I was like, okay, I guess I can run for president, so let’s do that. So, it was just like the intellectually honest approach to solving the problem, and I figured that out when Trump won, where I said 2016 Trump wins and I’m like oh my gosh. This just happened. This is terrible. I’m sorry if anyone’s a Trump supporter. But, I was like, this is a disaster. So then I said well, I actually think that the work I’ve been doing is tied to why Trump won. It’s because our economy is pushing millions of manufacturing workers to the sideline and they keep doing that. So, it was in early 2017, Andrew, but it was much, much more an outgrowth of the fact that I had been working in this environment for years and realized I was never gonna be able to solve the problems unless I thought a lot bigger. And my wife said yes. So, those things together.
– [Chok] Start by writing a book before you launch a presidential campaign. That helps.
– Yeah, I will say, this is probably something that’s probably obnoxious to say. It’s like, when someone runs for president it’s like, oh, this guy’s gonna write a book. I genuinely think that if you’re gonna run for president you ought to have written a book because you need to have some kind of actual reason for running and a vision. And so, if you don’t have that then there’s something missing, in my opinion. So, I did write a book. I think I have a copy. Yeah, there it is. Actually, I’m gonna show this ’cause this book’s sort of relevant. So, I wrote a book about the automation of jobs and the economy called, “The War On Normal People” before I started running. And one thing I was proud of is the book doesn’t mention I’m running for president. It’s a book of facts.
– [Chok] Thank you, Andrew. Next question is from Jackson. Jackson you need to unmute yourself.
– [Questioner] Sure, Chok. Hi, Andrew Yang. It’s an honor and a privilege to talk with you today. My name’s Jack Dedki. I’m in the third quarter as a software engineering major up at Kenzie. I’m from Indianapolis. My question is, what do you think the future of America might look like due to the rapid advancements and improvements in technology? And, what policies do you think America’s government might theoretically try to put out in response to the changes?
– Well thanks, Jackson. This is really what my book was about. My book was written before the pandemic. So, with the pandemic we have a whole new set of problems that are much bigger and more urgent and they’re all tied together. So, technology is going to speed up and push more and more Americans to the side, but more and more Americans just got ejected from the workforce. The number that crushed me was that right now only 51.3% of Americans are employed. So, you see this unemployment rate and you’re like, oh, 15%, that’s terrible, oh, it can get up to 20% and the great depression, blah, blah, blah. That stuff understates it. When you look at the actual employed to population ratio it’s 51.3%, the lowest in recorded American history. So, that’s problem number one. It’s like, oh my gosh, we’ve got tens of millions of Americans who are either out of the workforce or just hanging on. And so, what do you do to try and change that? And then, you need to do everything you can. Put money into their hands so that they can both take care of themselves and their families, but also participate in the local economy, shore up non-profits, state governments, hospitals, schools, small businesses, so they don’t shed more jobs and maybe even hire a few people. And then, the government should be rebuilding the country in ways big and small that end up spurring job growth in any way possible. So, that would be infrastructure, hiring healthcare workers, hiring 5G installers, also supporting local organizations who wanna hire for anything under the sun, a massive mental health initiative that would require a lot of new jobs if you did it right. There are all of these things we should do, Jackson, because we’re facing great depression level job displacement and job loss right now. And a study just came out that said 42% of the 33 million jobs we’ve lost will never come back. So, if they’re right about that, I think they’re, I’m sure they’re right, let’s call it half. So, if you lose 17 million jobs for good that’s an epic catastrophe. That’s in excess of anything we’ve seen. And that’s where we are right now. The desperation is just beginning. It’s terrible. We need to invest trillions of dollars trying to jumpstart us out of this catastrophe. It’s like there’s an economist who said, this economy is not gonna be a rocket ship, it’s gonna be like a truck stuck in the mud and that’s right. What we have to do is we have to try and get boards under the wheels so that the truck can start to move out of the ditch. So, like it or not, the government is going to be the main plank, source of the planks to help the truck get out of the ditch and we should spare no expense, very, very big moves.
– [Chok] Thank you, Andrew. Second to last question for the day is from Chris Conger, who is a Kenzie instructor, Chris, over to you.
– [Questioner] Hey Andrew. I’m a senior instructor here at Kenzie and the head of the coaching program, currently residing out of Charlotte, North Carolina. My question for you is, how do you envision us tackling the impending threat of monopolies? Companies like Disney and Qualcomm are growing at incredible rates these large holding companies designed to scale and distribute control and having a larger ability to manipulate the culture of us as a society, how can we prepare for this upcoming world where Google Ads has complete control over the online advertising industry?
– This is such a great question, Chris. Consolidation in our biggest industries has been a massive problem. The fact that you used Disney is funny because I’m a parent and it does seem like Disney owns all the good content. But, that’s like a marginal concern, believe it or not, relative to the FANG group of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google. That crew, actually, I’ll even put Netflix out of that category ’cause who cares. It’s really the other ones. Facebook, Amazon, Google, they have quasi monopolies now in their spaces and Apple. The problem is, there are so many problems with it, but one problem is that if you’re a startup today in one of those spaces, you don’t even pretend you’re gonna somehow beat those companies. You just say, hey, I’m gonna become big enough where they buy me for enough money where we’re all rich. And then, whatever they do with my offering, who knows, who cares? Those companies buy things for the talent and then they just kill the offering. They sometimes buy things just to sweep a competitive threat away. So, these companies are unfathomably big, powerful and wealthy. The question is, what do you do about it? Now, some politicians would say, oh, we need to break them up. I think that in some cases we should have them divest parts of their businesses, but generally speaking, break them up is not a winning solution for some of these spaces. Can you imagine if I said hey, guess what? We all can’t use Facebook anymore. So, 30% of us are gonna use Facebook and then 30% of us are gonna use some other government version. And then, 40% of us are gonna use this other competitor that we came up with. It’s like, you’d be like, are you out of your minds? The entire purpose of this thing is so I could get to anybody. So, some of these things just don’t make any sense. If you were to say oh, I’m gonna break it up. But, you need really strict rules around acquisitions. You need really strict rules around their
practices when it comes to influencing, let’s call it, our democracy and our mental health, which many of these organizations do effect in very significant ways. And so, to me the break them up thing is a little bit primitive. You have to identify what the specific problems you’re concerned about are and then you have to dig deep and then regulate them in a way that actually serves the public interest. So, it’s a really, really important problem. It’s very much underestimated how much consolidation has already occurred and the effect it’s having. I made light of the Disney thing, but it is true that there’s almost this mono culture of content in a particular way coming for certain types of programming. I feel like just the word, content, has sort of diminished art. It’s like, oh, you produced some content, that’s great. May eat up 10 minutes of my life and then I will move on. It’s like oh, the numbers said this art sucked. You know what I mean? It’s like some of this stuff, it was the stuff of humanity and now it’s just getting reduced to instead of numbers. So yeah, Chris, I’m concerned. We need to get into the guts and start regulating in a much more significant way, without just saying we’re gonna break you up ’cause in some cases, some cases we should have them break off certain parts of themselves.
– [Chok] My daughters will be happy to leave Facebook and go to TikTok. Different generation.
– Sure TikTok, for whom, for people who find Instagram too intellectual.
– [Chok] There are a lot of questions coming from Slack from the Q&A, but to be respectful of Andrew’s time I’m gonna go to the last question and it’s from Manuel Valasco. Manuel, are you around?
– [Questioner] Yes sir. I finally made it here. So yeah, my question was, in the political was there another political party that may have interested you in joining?
– Thanks, Manuel. It’s like if found myself aligned with Libertarians on some fronts. I ruled out running in a third party immediately though, because I think that anyone running just increases the odds of Trump winning. So, I never looked at it in any real way. But, I found myself, despite the fact that right now we’re the opposite of Libertarian environment, where it’s like clear the government’s gonna be the center of the universe. Obviously, I think putting money into people’s hands is good for people and makes people stronger and also gives us freedom to do what we want and freedom not to starve. The freedom not to starve. So, I find myself aligned with the Green party, too, on many things, like on climate change and other things, so it’s funny. I did find myself sympathetic to different, different independent parties, but the mechanics of American elections make that very, very unfeasible and that’s something that I would say we should change. It’s one reason why I’m so passionate about democracy reform and ranked-choice voting because if you have this duopoly people feel like they don’t have a choice and then the parties feel like, well, I don’t need to worry about it, ’cause what are you gonna do, work for the other people? And so, you wind up with a much less dynamic democracy, much lower voice for individuals. And so, if you can change the system, this is one of those things where the mechanics of the system actually profoundly influence our government and our democracy in the result. You think of ranked-choice voting, whatever. If you had ranked-choice voting, Trump probably doesn’t win. You have many more independent candidates. The whole thing changes. So, I’m really, really passionate about the process, in part, because of this question, Manuel. Now, let me say, I’m supporting Joe, the rest of it, I’m down. But, I would love to have a more dynamic system that reflects the will of the people to a much higher degree than we currently have.
– [Chok] With that, Andrew, thank you so much for your time, it’s really appreciated. Everyone give Andrew a warm Kenzie Zoom thank you applause. Thank you for all the work you’ve done for the country and to carve out time to talk to our students. Sometimes we ask our speakers to nominate other people they would like to come guest lecture. You seem to know everyone who is famous now in the country and we appreciate your addition.
– I’ll try and get you someone fun, Chok, sure. ‘Cause I enjoyed the heck out of this and I can tell them hey, it’s a very, very enjoyable experience, great questions, great student body, great instructors. And to answer your question I did not answer before, Ashley, I do intend to run for office again. So, you should see me again in some race or another.
– [Questioner] Nice, I’m rooting for it, thank you.
– No problem, thank you. Congrats on the work you’re doing Ashley with your kids and otherwise. And thank you all. This was a lot of fun and really grateful to Kenzie for the work you’re doing every day. So, keep it up, let’s make people stronger and more equipped for the future.
– [Chok] Thank you, Andrew. Say hi to Evelyn, take care.
– I will. Say hi to the family, too, Chok. Bye everyone. Stay safe out there.
– [Questioner] Bye, Andrew, thank you.
– [Questioner] See you, Andrew, take care.
– Bye everyone.
– [Questioner] Thank you.
– [Questioner] Thanks, Andrew.
– Bye Amanda, bye everyone.
