When girls are educated and free to pursue their passions, they contribute more to a thriving society. When women have a voice, they raise it to demand a life that is greater than what they've been told they have a right to expect. And these demands change the future for everyone.

Any social or cultural change has to be made openly and with people agreeing. You don't get there by just pushing an outsider's point of view.

The biggest killers of children around the world are two things: diarrhea and pneumonia. When you think about it, in the United States, kids don't die of diarrhea anymore, but it's a huge problem in the developing world.

Even in decision-making, we work in self-help groups. That is women coming together in small groups of 10 to sometimes 15 women, where they start to get education about their rights, about clean water and sanitation, about how to have a healthy birth. You can bring in all kinds of education to them that way.

You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can't get her to come and get them then they won't work.

When we better understand the realities of these women's lives, we are able to design and deliver solutions that are more useful to them.

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.