F: I really believe that education was the most important factor in my life story. My parents taught me early that without a good education, I could end up living in the same public housing that I was living in as a child. My father never finished high school. Nobody in my family had ever been to college. This was an important message. I didn't like living where I lived when I was a kid. And my teachers would challenge me time and again. My high school chemistry teacher, Stanley Parker, was the one who basically convinced me to go to Dartmouth -- that I could get in. He got me a National Science Foundation fellowship my junior year in high school. It was my teachers who kept saying, "Don't let your background, your family situation, define your world." I believe it deeply -- that's the transformative power of education.
