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The teacher who inspired me most was Miss Stubson from my high school in Sardis, about 50 miles out of Vancouver in Canada. She was phenomenal, because she raised everyone鈥檚 aspirations.

She used to drive in from Vancouver, from the 鈥榖ig city鈥�, to teach in this school no one had heard of. She鈥檇 say: 鈥淵ou can do a lot in the world 鈥� go for it!鈥�

At 13 or 14, she opened my horizons. And she was pushy about it. She started up a debating society, which the school had never had, and then entered us for the regional championships, then the provincial, then the national. She said: 鈥淵ou need to do more than just school work. Debating is going to develop you. And anyhow, I鈥檝e already entered you 鈥� you鈥檙e going!鈥�

I think that education is the fundamental driver of everything. When I look at any issue we have, if you look the root cause and try to actually deal with it, it always comes down to education.

If you look at healthcare, a more educated public will play a very big role. If you look at youth unemployment, it鈥檚 about education for employment. How do we educate with the right skills? If you look at religious tolerance, education is key. If you look at the resource scarcity we are going to have on the planet because of the two billion-plus people moving into the middle class, it鈥檚 going to require a lot of innovation, in food, energy usage and water usage 鈥� that will ultimately come from education.

If people are educated they will have a better life. And it is getting more vital, as technology changes at such incredible speed. If you don鈥檛 have the basics, you are out of the system.

The returns from education in pretty much every dimension are huge. Yet we don鈥檛 seem to invest enough. And that is what I love about what Gordon and Sarah Brown are trying to do. We are doing things from a broad business point of view in healthcare 鈥� why aren鈥檛 we doing the same in education? Getting some scale effort behind education, getting access to parts of the world that are going to be really important for the future, that is key.