the the door to your next job and so many other opportunities and we have lots of amazing powerful successful people here and sometimes you really don't notice who is with your community so make sure you know you just go up to them as for their e mail phone number and know go grab a cup of coffee if they're nice they'll buy you a cup of coffee you know so yeah network network specially  young people graduating from college and high school high school here high school or it's not too early who has also represented the city of chicago and mayor daley as speak through worldwide including the dutch green building conference in the netherlands o e c d in montreal the mega city development forum in meantime china and the national  because of the beautiful city that you live in but most importantly because of you this is the first time i think in my career been around a lot of people my part of the world there was a lot of talk about community here earlier i am very honored actually to be speaking as a keynote speaker for this specific event and i thank you for welcoming me specifically i'd like to think councilwoman and my namesake lydia this is an incredible organization here that you have the brief moments that i've had to study and it is an incredible community  organization certainly is needed something that should be nurtured i was quite impressed actually by the graduates today and another round of applause for the i was not only impressed but it was actually my heart warmed because it gives me hope and it gives all of us when you look at such articulate smart young people the way i see it is we the older generation we did screw up here and there and here are some smart young people who are actually charting out our future as well as their future so it's really exciting to see true for an hour i'll keep it short maybe half an hour or so when i thought about coming here and talking to the younger people who are graduating and some of the younger people who are actually in school what i thought about tell my story and telling my story just i don't like key moments throughout my life that were finding moments how i responded to them and how i'm actually moments shaped not only who i am my profession and the career that i chose we all have unique stories to tell and you heard a lot of them today from the young people who came and spoke each just as important as any other claim that her story was and it was great it was fantastic when she spoke here but what i would like it to take away from my story is three important things actually i made it or  for important things which i believe are fundamental to having a successful and fulfilling life these are education number one so when i say education it's both institutional that once we're celebrating here but also education from lessons you learn from life from everyday life so i think it's courage and you heard some of it today the courage to be fearless and take risks in the face of uncertainty in the face of fear and the courage to be who you are and i'll talk about that as well and sometimes the courage to actually say no if you don't believe in one thing or another just don't say no to your parents that that's only thing i know you'll be in trouble the third one is about people people that helped me make that help me who i am in my journey so just family and friends and those are all of us but most importantly complete strangers throughout my life that helped define who i am and then finally community day find me who i am and what i do so i was born and raised in ethiopia and i left when i was sixteen and growing up in ethiopia i was lucky enough to have not only a good family but very good education so all the time when i was growing up my thought was i have no excuse to actually do well so i didn't have any fear that i will be accomplish what i want to accomplish when i grow up so early on i was very interested in for example drawing since i was a kid i used to love to go skate figure people build these churches that all of you know were very influential to me as were the christian orthodox church figures that we see in paintings so i used to draw them as a kid i also loved playing with lego so those ideas drawing and building material were very influential to me i remember i think you know i was in seventh or eighth grade i submitted my final arts class drawing at the building that i see outside of my second four  classroom school so there was a building at that time it was the tallest building eleven stories and i was punished for it because i did it so well that my teacher didn't believe me to get it but since then i've always been interested in studying architecture so nine hundred seventy four there was a major change in ethiopia revolution started momentarily disrupted my dream so what happened was i was in the tenth grade and there was no i was supposed to go to the force mobilization of students to go out in the country and teach people in the countryside but also spread the ideals that government  had in the country so i actually decided not to go and i don't know why in part because it was kind of scary to go there but most importantly i did it because i felt that was one of the most courageous acts as a young person for the first time it was courageous because i had no other plan you couldn't if you didn't go to make sure you would be in prison that was the law you could not complete school or hold any job in government that's what was declared at the time that i just decided that i was going to go but i didn't know where i was going to go no idea what  the idea of getting out of the country through kenya magine at that time very very few people who escaped from ethiopia so i jumped on the idea immediately and we came back we planned for weeks where we're going to go how are we going to go out we didn't we didn't have any road map that we had the map of ethiopia and kenya and decided that we were going to be good four of us it took us about three weeks going through roadblocks and very dangerous times because in fact i had a friend who got in prison and i had a relative who got killed at the time for no reason in prison and so finally we made we made it we made it  offering me to stay at his house with his family he was newly married his wife was pregnant i lived there for two years and this person had no connection to me that generosity actually help would encourage everybody to read it and there was an english book that i read about the israeli people and i was numbered about the idea of communal living and working community and you don't have to pay anything for a house or you have free food so i had this romantic view but i also had this imagination about israel a place in learned about it from the religious perspective but i started having images of a place that i never know what it looked like but i had that mind when i walked into the l r law office and the reason i walked through that office was another refugee friend of mine in nairobi he had some money i say this because you know some of the sometimes you have here and you're stuck with one idea and you stick with it for me what worked for me was to be open when opportunities came up and i said sure i'll stay stayed a couple of weeks get a call from of the best education there and after talking to me they gave me a scholarship and i jumped on it and perhaps that was one of the most important decisions that i made as a young person which also has made huge impact in force again not only who i am what i do at work so that education was fantastic and while i was in school i was told because it was a college prep school if i was interested in studying in college after graduation i need to get very good grades one in the two i need to take a u s history class i did both and i actually had the highest grade in u s history in school they had a lot learned there was some of my best friends to true day five different from five different countries are the closest friends to to this day sweden chile another ethiopian another american the reason that is important to me today is that as a city planner my job is in this economy in this time of challenges global perspectives are critical not only about how you relate to people that understanding how other countries think other people think so that experience and the friendship that i had just three four years ago we were all together in kenya for example that actually built the foundation for me in terms of ideas about being a global perspective there are people think they're very distinctively different but they all had their own perspective but there was a great foundation for me couple months and maybe try to put together an organization and help ethiopian refugees and i raised my hand in the back and i said you guys are all here were you waiting for two months come back and do the same thing and the refugees don't have another day or another week to wait for because they're all suffering and somebody said who are you and i told them i was a refugee in kenya would you please come here and address the group about your experience in kenya and i did so they took to actually stay there an extra couple of hours and figure out how to start an organization that experience was one of the foundations for me in terms of this idea of service community and giving back through that process and i was able to actually understand what if wonderful  five people getting together actually creating that organization today the ethiopian community association of chicago is one of the most wonderful organizations that was born out of the process so that was another sort of foundation for me from that experience the third in chicago where i finally got to go to the university of illinois to study architecture chicago is one of the areas that actually even when i was in ethiopia i knew it was a city known for its architecture i read about frank lloyd wright and the city's history in architecture so there was a major milestone for me finally i made it went to school graduated from there and worked for a few years then after a few years ago mentioned earlier after a few years of working in this wonderful our architecture office if you're a designer anything you design gets built the person i worked for hire very rich clients and it was wonderful but then within two or three years i just felt maybe this is not know and this is all that i wanted to do to fulfill my desire in terms of what i want to do and i was questioning whether i want to continue doing architecture and one of the reasons were there were a lot of waste as we were designing the clients can pay for it so there was something called that i felt about the work however i had no plan what i was going to do next but it was just an i together i wasn't very good in writing english she told me to put my words together and we did and i called everybody in line to write me a recommendation letter on a sunday i got it francisco architecture office i went to the career office and i said hey i saw this is what you think and she said no no the application deadline has passed this is a firm that recruits from san francisco and i said is it she said yeah it's too late but what do you have to lose why don't you just own them a letter and i did a week or two later i got a call to be interviewed at mit and a month later i got the job offer and then we moved to san francisco again another opportunity that came up not by design but it was there and i reacted to it ended up in san francisco worked for two years in this large architecture firm designing buildings  hotels apartments and then the last part of my job there was designing the juvenile detention center in marin california that was another moment where i went is this what i want to do because it just ethically it didn't sit well with me and they kind of me wasn't that great but i still went out and started contacting people you know why networking is an important thing you heard earlier in some of the speakers as well so i started talking to a number of people and getting myself in the door to the interview the door that opened for me up to you how to convince the other the other in terms of what you want and how you get what you need to get into the job i didn't go there because i wanted to make more money actually wanted there to less money but when you do the first stated policy about being socially and environmentally responsible for architecture and i took a cut from another offer to work in an office because it kind of spoke to me in terms of the values that i held and get exposed into this environmental and social importance of the work that i do so that spent time there for quite a while and that was kind of the springboard  for the city of san francisco through recognize my work when i was in san francisco to contact me and asked me if i wanted to work with the city and had urban planning and i was getting again another shift i was very comfortable in the office  working i didn't know what i was getting into a public sector i asked kathy simon i told her what was going on and she said if you don't like it come right back you know not many do that heard and balder and and now in seattle it was just about him but a year ago actually i was contacted my wife and i were in spain and i got a c a friend said hey the city the mayor of seattle has created this department and it got your name written all over it would you be interested in your name and i said what it is what i about and he explained it to me and when he explained the vision that the mayor has for the department and this is a person i worked with in san francisco so he knew my background and what i've done all for the department's position i was very happy in boulder were living happily there i love my work the people i work with there and and the challenges i was dealing with i just said sure and i looked at jill and i said this is going on do you think he said yeah but he said it's a long shot it's you know it won't happen for six months but your name so when i went through one after the other interview a lot of the here and the other components actually what got me interested is that idea this issue of equity and through the process of a new though i knew seattle before i have come here many times i'm never engage with as many ethiopians and staff because i have since going through this process and got me credibly excited finally what i love and the passion that i have and you know it's like back to the future of the community that i grew up in and a culture that i grew up in i could be around and i could be doing something here that could have an impact and fulfillment for my own for my own professional career closing i want to reiterate again the four areas that i thought were important in my story education again was a fundamental foundation each step of the way and i get your certificate and just sit around just opens so many doors so long debate talked about you know thinking about after he went through this process and opening a cafe you could be opening any number of things the you say you are the sum total of everything you've ever been heard smelled been told for god it's all there everything influences each of us and because  try to make sure that my experience is positive and cool so it is really important to take advantage of every day experience that you have second about courage terms of taking risks and not being afraid  he passed away that he gave that kind of resonance for me he said because your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life don't let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice and most importantly the courage to follow your heart and intuition and cause that's very important to me in my experience  heard many have their own stories as well in the third the people there will always be people who will be there for you even those you don't know so be open to it don't put  know open up your heart to let people in and some of them are strangers the obvious ones earlier are families but the strangers actually help you in your way in that way underweight as well but in turn what i would say to younger people that you also need to be kind to others pay so it has for me just being kind to others it doesn't take much not much energy for being nice and kind to others especially people you don't understand or you don't know their background and culture sort of religion or whatever that may be so i mean it has paid off because i have always tried to do that and i'm going to repeat another  she said i've learned people will forget what you said people will forget what you did that people will never forget how you made them feel so that's really important to me in terms of how you treat i said you know the community that raised me the foundation that i have as an ethiopian actually made me courageous and i never had i may have adopted myself and in fact i used you know some of global economy changing climate issues and many challenges that we face as we move forward so i would say to the young people again embrace your uniqueness individual n culture and i very very delighted to actually hear and see the dreams of some of the young people that spoke here gives me a lot more hope  you know