Maya Soetoro-Ng

My mother would have enjoyed the idea that her name was being used to build bridges. She cared a great deal and was very thoughtful and passionate about education and young women.

I like that there are young people being given opportunities to explore and learn and grow and become themselves with a path that is associated with my mother. She would have liked that very much.

I think a lot about our globalized world, our global interconnectedness, and it really saddens me when I see people 'othering,' when I see people who are willing to live narrowly.

Mom was an academic, so the riches that she had to bestow were of the mind.

Being told that I looked like I belonged everywhere and to everyone helped me feel my fledgling pride in my own multiracialism.