IABA - Ali Partovi - CEO, Neo. Co-founder, Code.org

Hi, you guys. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you.

I have to say, it's really an honor to share a stage that so many much smarter people than myself have been on already, whether it's the The Honorable Saba Sheibani, Nahal Ervani-Sani, and Ashley Tabador. And last night, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who, for those who were here, taught us an important lesson about language and the word ganas. I remember thinking when he was talking, if there was one Farsi word that I would want to teach people, what would it be? You know, like to like capture what's great about Persian culture. And I thought of my kids, and what I ended up with was Tadiq. So I'm not sure if that's going to be actually very useful, but I want to talk about three things. And first, education and lifting up others. Something that is not only important to me, but I'm sure important to everyone in this room. Second, about our identity as Iranian Americans. And third, about being scared. So about education, it's been something that's been from as early as I can remember part of my life. When I grew up in Iran, I didn't see my father very much because he was always working on this Danish ga that he was helping start. And basically most of our young life, my mom and twin brother and I were somewhat alone because our father was working late or, you know, coming home very late from work. And at the time I didn't really appreciate actually the importance of it. I just knew about the Danishka. It was called Danishka Aryomer at the time. And he was essentially one of its co-founders. and hired most of its initial faculty. Only much, much later in life, in the last few years, have I started learning that this university, which was renamed Sharif, is actually— has become a substantial institution that our whole country can be proud of because it's one of the top institutions in the Middle East. And, you know, but for me, from the very early age, having an academic father made me care about education.

Thank you.

When I moved to America, my twin brother and I were about— we were in 7th grade and we had this very interesting dichotomy where we lived in very modest housing. We didn't have our own house. We lived in our grandmother's condo and our grandparents had one bedroom. My great-grandmother had the other bedroom and my mom, dad, Hadi and I shared a bedroom. We shared one bed basically for the 4 of us. Actually, technically it was 2 twin beds pushed together for the 4 of us. And I remember early in life thinking that twin bed was because Hadi and I were twins. But it was a very difficult, typical immigrant experience I think. of having to make do with whatever you had. But the dichotomy for us is that we also attended one of the best and most expensive private schools in New York. And no one said anything about this to us, but we were very aware that our parents could have been using that money to make their own life more comfortable. And my mom worked as a receptionist by day, and she worked as a department store saleslady by night. And so it was very clear to me without anyone ever saying anything that they were really going through hardship in order to give Hadi and me an education. And so this left a very strong impression on me and also on several of my cousins who came through— came to America at the same exact time and had very similar lifestyles, and many of whom have become successful in tech as well. Fast forward, after having studied computer science myself, my brother and I both started companies and were successful. We started an organization that's all about education called Code.org, and the mission of that is to bring computer science to the curriculum of every, every K through 12 school. And it's, it's a field that most people in this room might not have studied simply because it just wasn't available when you guys were in school, but it's a field that is actually quite relevant, not just for coding but for any career. In fact, I would say that computer science has tremendous parallels to law, and part of why I was excited to speak here is because I love lawyers, because computer science and law are so similar, and I think we actually think very similarly. And so, you know, my brother and I did our part to try to give something back for the next generation. And I would say in the same spirit of championing education, my whole career I would say has been built up on— I would say I'm here because of the accomplishments of others essentially. whether it's the investments that my parents put into me or, you know, frankly, a lot of the things that I'm known for are really more my brother Hadi's accomplishments. And what I'm doing today at NEO is also actually tied to education and it's about lifting up others. And I would say it's one of the best ways to lift yourself up is to lift up others. Thank you. NEO is about finding the top, top-performing undergraduates in computer science and bringing them together and mentoring them and cultivating their careers. And so it allows me to cultivate an environment that I'm very comfortable in, which is being surrounded by people smarter than myself. So I, you know, try to find the smartest students not just at Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, but schools that take some effort to find, but, you know, the smartest students from Williams College or UT Austin and bring them together in a supportive community. And so as a result, you have this really wonderful group that's focused on education. And for me, it's very comfortable because I'm— as I said, I'm very comfortable not being the smartest person in the room. And I think that ties back to my own upbringing. Having grown up with an academic family and with a brother as accomplished and smart as I have, I like to joke that I wasn't even the smartest person in the womb. So anyway, this I was thinking about what to say when I come here to speak to you guys, and this idea of lifting yourself up by lifting up others, I think also can very much apply to the Iranian community. And, you know, I often think about my identity as an Iranian, and I don't know how much this is shared, but I think oftentimes as Iranian Americans, we almost have 2 separate lives. We have our life with family where we're surrounded by, you know, fellow Iranians and have cultures and customs that we're very comfortable, and then we have our, maybe our professional life where we are trying as much as possible to assimilate and And there's this pressure, you know, to assimilate means to not stand out and almost means to kind of pretend that you're not different and, you know, be like everybody else. And I don't know about you guys, but for me, that's basically been how I've lived most of my life is like these 2 separate identities. And I feel like in the last few years, that's become something that's harder and harder. It's less sustainable because the rhetoric in this country and, you know, more recently the laws and policies are actually pretty actively against, you know, our national heritage. And it's kind of an odd thing, and I wonder if part of that is because those of us who are professionally successful have assimilated so well that our colleagues aren't aware of our national heritage, and it makes it a lot easier for them to turn a blind eye when injustice is being done, because they don't realize that the target of that injustice might be someone they trust or know or care about. And so this is something— I don't know if I have a solution, but I would generally say that I think a lot of us in this room ought to think about Like just tuning how much we identify ourselves to our non-Iranian American colleagues so that they're aware that, you know, that policies that are against Iranians do affect us. You know, but having said that, I also think that Iranians by nature are extremely proud people, sometimes too proud. But I think that playing the victim is really not a normal, like a comfortable zone for me, and I imagine not for people in this room. And most Iranians I know tend to be extremely proud of our national heritage and not inclined to, you know, complain about being a victim. And so in that— from that perspective, I think the best way for us to advance our cultural interests is to focus on lifting up others because there are other communities that actually need help far more than we do, whether it's African Americans, Latinx Americans, Jewish Americans, the LGBTQ community, even women categorically. I know obviously those all overlap, but we can help the cause of Iranians by standing up for other people who need help as well. I think that's actually the best way to make ourselves look the strongest. So I wanted to— I've tried to do this in my own small way outside of my work, and I did want to mention something about that on the topic of being scared. Anytime you do something that's truly great, it usually starts out with feeling scared at first. Every company I've ever started, was terrifying because, you know, what if it fails? And if you're successful, it's almost more terrifying because people expect you to be successful and, you know, failure becomes scarier. Same thing starting Code.org was quite scary. You know, the original launch of Code.org was just a viral video that we hoped millions of people would see, but we secretly were afraid that what if no one watches it? And it's just a lot of time and money and effort spent on something that went nowhere. It's only in hindsight that it looks like it was really successful and easy. But when you're starting it, it's scary. And there's things I've done that I would say the same thing. I'll just list a few of them and just talk about how scary it was. When I started this— A thing called the Nowruz Challenge, where it was just encouraging people to post videos of themselves teaching a non-Iranian friend how to say Nowruz Pirouz on Facebook. Starting this meant making a video of myself with my roommate Alan and posting it and then asking others to do it. And if no one else had done it, I would look like such an idiot. So it was, you know, kind of a scary thing to do. But I had this hope that if I do it, somebody else might do it, and if they do it, it will spread. So I did it anyway. And it did work out. Something like, I think, 20,000 videos were posted over a few-week period. Similarly, 2 or 3 years back, when the US Congress passed HR 158, I felt really unhappy about that. There were a lot of Iranian groups trying to build up, you know, kind of protests. I went through the effort of contacting all of the American CEOs that I knew and asking them to sign a letter protesting HR 158. And this was pretty scary because some of these were Republican, you know, staunch Republican donors and who I had business relationships with or even people who I wanted to have business relationships with and here I am asking them to sign a kind of political letter about a topic. So these are not easy things to do. I was worried about whether it would impact my business relationships with them, and it did cause me to write the letter in a way that was very nonpartisan, at least at the time. Apparently today, I think, the goalposts have shifted, but— You know, similarly, just this past year, I, the only big political donation I made this past year was for the campaign to recall Judge Persky. I know that there may be people in the room who weren't supportive of that campaign, but for me, this judge who had ruled in the Brock Turner case and 5 or 6 other very questionable rulings, had a real negative impact on the women that I work with and women that I know in the tech community. And so not only did I donate for that, but I also called up business leaders who were colleagues of mine, investors of mine, and asked them to donate to it. Doing this was pretty scary because it was definitely causing people to, you know, think about a topic which they weren't necessarily thinking about, and to, you know, asking them to give for it, you know, not only risks rejection but also risks my business relationship with them. So I wanted to list some of these things to like make sure you realize that anyone who is leading usually is overcoming fear to do that, and I respect when other people around me do the same. So for example, my cousin Dara, CEO of Uber, When the Saudi killing of that journalist came out a few weeks ago, Dara was the very first American business leader to pull out of the Davos in the Desert conference. And this took enormous courage because the Saudis own something like 12% of his company and they sit on his board, yet he was willing to do something that was an open defiance of their interests. And I had the opportunity to ask him in front of a group of people recently, if you had a choice today, would you take money from the Saudis? And he said no. And while he can't easily undo having them on his board, simply having the courage to say statements like that is huge, not only for what it does for Uber, but for giving other people the courage to follow in that way. So, anyway, these are all, I would say, relatively small, tiny bits of courage. There are people much more brave than myself. For example, the woman that I was sitting with at dinner last night, Gisu Niar, she works with a nonprofit called IHRDC. It's essentially using litigation to try to prosecute human rights abuses. By officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is a very complicated legal concept, but apparently when officials from Iran venture out to Europe, she's finding opportunities to try to get them arrested and tried in international courts. And it's a— you have to realize that when someone is doing that, the risk they're also taking on their own personal future because it makes them perhaps a little less welcome to go back to Iran themselves. So anyway, I'm just sharing these stories so that you think about, are you taking enough risk in your life? One more example of my own is after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I was proud to know that I hadn't taken any money from Saudis myself. But then I realized, oh shit, my investors include some funds. They might have taken Saudi money. And then I was like, should I ask them? Because this would be really weird to— these are people I depend on. But I went and asked all of my investors, and fortunately they all said they had not taken money. And I then took it upon myself to start asking other CEOs and asking them to ask other people. This is definitely an uncomfortable place to be, but if, you know, if you don't do it, no one else will. And we heard about other people on stage doing things that I would say are pretty brave as well, like the Honorable Saba Shaibani talking about diversity, or I was really impressed with the Honorable Ashley Tabaddour talking about advocating for the independence of the immigration courts. Thank you.

support.

Advocating for change like this is scary. And the message I want to leave you all with is ask yourself whether you are— if you're not a little bit scared, maybe you're not pushing yourself enough. See if you can push yourself outside your comfort zone to do something that scares you, because that's when things really change. And that's, I would say, the essence of leadership. So that's all I wanted to say today. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ali. We have Q&A.

My name is Payam Zamani. I am a local orthodontist, not an attorney, but a husband of one of the attorneys here. I understand you're a very successful businessman, which we all applaud, but honestly, just hearing you speak right now, I want to applaud your bravery in putting your money where your mouth is and all the aspects that you just explained. So thank you for that.

Thank you.

One question. Out of interest, you mentioned that you contacted a few CEOs, both Republican and Democrat, asking them if they would support you. What was, or what were some of the surprise responses that you got from these individuals?

I mentioned a few. You're talking about HR 158? Because that was 2 years ago. Let's see, surprise. So this was, you know, H.R. 158 was a weird time because it was during the campaign. I mean, it was passed in 2015, and the awareness of what had happened was really in 2016. So this was before Donald Trump was elected, yet it was already clear that Trumpism was kind of taking the grip of the Republican Party. So I was afraid of whether the Republican CEOs that I knew would support this because a lot of Republicans were themselves anti-Trump but debating whether they should, you know, join the bandwagon of Trump. And I was also worried because some of the business leaders I knew are Jewish, and there's this funny alignment where if you're supportive of— if you're Jewish, you support Israel, ergo it's like this enemy of my enemy is my I don't— the logic ends up being to like do anything to hurt Iran, basically. And so I was surprised though that a number of people who I had these worries about did sign the letter, and some of them agreed to be quoted in the Wall Street Journal about it, which, you know, was an act of courage on their part. So that was a pleasant surprise. I was also pleasantly surprised by how many non-Iranian allies not only applauded it, but then tried to help get more people to sign it. And, you know, part of the thing is that certainly in my industry, in tech, the Iranian people are everywhere. You know, it's— I think if you talk about 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, in the tech industry it's like 1 degree of Iranian. It's— you can't go to any company and not have at least one Iranian investor or, you know, board member or computer programmer or something. And so I think— I mean, certainly most of my life I've sort of avoided talking about my ethnicity, and so it hasn't been a topic in the workplace. But I realized that when I did, it was— It was a good thing. quite comfortable, and people were more than happy to be supportive because, you know, generally I think Americans are usually proud of combating injustice, and, you know, this HR 158 was a really unjust law. Thank you.