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My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.

I feel that my father's greatest legacy was the people he inspired to get involved in public service and their communities, to join the Peace Corps, to go into space. And really that generation transformed this country in civil rights, social justice, the economy and everything.

My grandmother's generation and generations before always saw beyond the horizons of their own lives and their own circumstances. They believed that opportunity created today would lead to prosperity tomorrow.

My parents always asked me what I thought, listened to my opinions, articulated their diagnoses of our challenges at home and abroad, and shared their ideas for how to build a more equal and prosperous country. I always felt part of their call to serve and part of my father's journey.

My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.

The trimmings of wealth are not as important to me and my generation as they were to my parents' generation.

My grandfather raised me believing in the power of youth to change the world.

My parents leaving a third world country to a first world country and building from nothing - that's really inspiring to me and it's influenced me in a positive way.

I wanted to make some of the really important things of my generation and some of the biggest.