I feel like I'm a relentless, pragmatic, determined optimist.

As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce.

We often don't realize what our action & our inaction do to people we think we will never see & never know.

Each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it's in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written.

Poverty is not only about income levels, but for lack of freedom that comes from physical insecurity

Freedom is what beauty feels like when it can most express itself.

I finally understood: In order to contribute to Africa, I would have to know myself better and be clearer about my goals. I would have to be ready to take Africa on its own terms, not mine, and to learn my limits and present myself not as a do-gooder with a big heart, but as someone with something to give and gain by being there. Compassion wasn't enough