Everyone agrees that the failure of our high schools is tragic. It's bad business, and it's bad policy. But we act as if it can't be helped. It can be helped. We designed these high schools; we can redesign them.

With economic opportunity, sometimes it's making sure that if they're not in a place where they can have good jobs, that when they have economic opportunity, they have digital tools to use.

We have to be careful in how we use this light shined on us.

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

Women are the centre of the family. It's the woman who decides what's eaten in the house, when to have the kids vaccinated; everything that has to do with the children's health revolves around her.

We look in our own backyard and say, 'How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?'

Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That's the place that governments often don't want to, or can't, work.