On May 18, 2019, Teach For All's CEO and Co-founder Wendy Kopp addressed the University of California, Berkeley’s class of 2019 at their commencement ceremony. She took the opportunity to share her most salient lesson from the last 30 years about the kind of leadership needed to reach our aspirations for children. Wendy described her evolution from thinking that “individual leadership was everything” to learning from classrooms and communities around the world that in order to tackle the systemic injustices facing children today we need collective leadership.  “Collective leadership asks diverse groups to maximize their differences rather than be immobilized by them," she said. "It encourages us to come together to speak, listen, reflect, understand the whole picture, develop shared vision for the future, and generate new solutions. Collective leadership recognizes that our power is so much stronger than my power.” In closing, she called upon the class of 2019 to “Lead us forward differently.” 

Watch the video of commencement speech above, or read the full transcript.