We before we break.

I'm gonna take the carrots.

They need a little bit longer time to cook.

And put them in.

Uh here we go.

And a little baile.

Pop the top on.

And we're gonna let that sit.

One good thing about family favorites is when you're getting ready, they invite the entire family.

You want a dish that not just stretches.

In the last few moments, I want to show you something.

We're gonna do some rice.

We're gonna start it off here and get it done.

You're gonna turn it on high.

Stirring the rice.

One cup of rice, two cups of water.

Bring it to a boil.

Soon as the water starts to boil, we'll pop the we're gonna keep the lid on.

The water starts to boil, turn it off, let it sit.

Perfect rice every time.

One cup of rice, two cups of water.

It's a one-to-two ratio.

One to two ratio, and we're gonna bring them on back.

Take them on out.

Take them on out.

Oh yeah.

See how all that's married up?

One big happy family.

That's why I call it a family favorite.

Oh yeah.

We are having something fun in here today.

Listen, let's listen.

At this point, remember I told you when the rice is doing this right here, when it's bubbling, when it's doing all this great stuff in the pot.

You give it a quick stir.

Turn it off, leave the lid.

That's it.

Turn it on lead the lid.

It's gonna once it gets done, it's gonna soak up all the water all by its lonesome, and when it gets finished, it's gonna be absolutely perfect rice.

You won't have to worry about it.

So we leave that alone.

Now, in this, you see the beautiful steam and everything in this beef stew that we've started, and I say started because beef stew, this is gonna take a little bit longer than 30 minutes.

So we're just showing you the whole process to get to all the greatness on the end.

Now, what I'm gonna do right now, I'm gonna add in my tomatoes that are chopped up.

Oh yeah.

Drain the water off these potatoes.

Once we get all the water drained off the potatoes, bring them over here, get them started.

Right like that.

Oh yeah.

Then always stir, get everything in there.

See how all that's married up?

One big happy family.

That's why I call it a family favorite.

All these different beautiful, beautiful things.

The sweet potato, the the regular potatoes, the bay leaves, everything is doing something to make this absolutely incredible.

Okay, everything is doing its job.

Even the flour that we put on the beef earlier is gonna have a thickening effect.

It's going to thicken it up.

Everything is gonna do, but you know what?

What we do, I'm gonna do this just for the sake so you know that you have to do this.

We have to put a little ooh, a little wee, and a whole lot of wow, some salt, black pepper, and garlic.

Now, once we get that in the pot, that's my initial seasoning.

Okay, that's my initial seasoning.

All that's left right now is just to let it.

We're gonna bring it back up.

Once we do that, then we'll bring it down to a simmer and we just let it simmer until it's done.

Okay, and the jewel of it is we just serve it over some beautiful white rice.

And if you follow me over here, we'll show you what everything's supposed to look like when it's done for you.

Now the taste bud I'm going with today.

Okay, will it be taste bud number one?

Taste bud number two.

Will he be taste button number three?

Will it be taste butt number four?

The taste bud of choice today is taste butt number one.

Yay!

All right, yeah, you have won the right to taste some food today.

We're gonna go ahead and open up the beef stew here.

See how everything comes together.

Oh goodness.

I'm gonna give him a little rice on his plate.

Is that all right?

Taste button number one.

You sure?

Okay.

Or the buttermilk biscuits.

I know that's just an overkill.

It really isn't overkill.

But I'm gonna tell you.

And we're gonna throw a little Caribbean flare.

Our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters says you need a little plantain in your life.

You see what I'm saying?

Everybody else stop playing something for him.

You've been watching the grill sergeants, and we've had an absolutely wonderful time.

See you next time on the grill, sorry.

Each year, worldwide, over a quarter of a million pedestrians are killed in traffic.

Millions of pedestrians are maimed or injured.

Join us for the next half hour as we look for solutions on perils for pedestrians.

On this episode, we visit Rotterdam.

Walk 21 holds their 20th annual conference.

The Pedestrians Association has their 90th birthday.

We look at the connection between walking and transit.

Finally, we talk with the deputy mayor for mobility from Gent.

Stay tuned.

You said it before, but we might have some new viewers.

What is Walk 21?

Okay, so Walk 21 is now a foundation, has been for a couple of years.

We are here to try and help everybody walk, uh, to choose walking as the most natural thing to do in our cities and in our daily lives.

And what are you doing here in Rotterdam?

Well, we've been uh doing conferences now, uh, an annual conference for 20 years, and this is our 20th event.

Uh, so it's been a bit of a milestone for us to connect with old friends, but also now uh come here into Holland, uh, see what's happening in Rotterdam and meet up with some new people and try and inspire a bit more action uh back in Europe for the uh first time in four years.

What attracted you to Rotterdam?

Well, it's an interesting place because you know, we met up with uh one or two people initially who said, look, we've been doing an awful lot of work to try and uh get people into our city and get them to stay.

It was all about dwell time.

So uh they had a ten-year program of inviting people, creating these sort of public spaces where people would come and sit basically.

And uh it's an impressive program, you know, they've spent a lot of money uh making it look really, really nice right in the middle of town.

Uh and they said, but you know, that we realize that the streets that connect these places uh aren't necessarily active enough.

And and I think connecting communities into these spaces has really been at the heart of their uh their enthusiasm, I guess, to connect with the walking agenda.

Now, does that mean they're gonna have to redesign and rebuild some of those streets?

Uh I think you know that when you look around the streets here as an example, you see, I mean, there's not a post in this city that hasn't got a bike attached to it.

Uh, but also there are trees, you know, there is wide uh sidewalks, footpaths, uh, you know, the traffic's slow, it's designed in a comfortable balanced way.

And so I'm sure there are still streets that still need that treatment, but um I think after ten years, you know, what they have proven is that you can change things with a consistent policy uh in a relatively short period of time.

Now, what it's like on the sort of outskirts of Rotterdam, you know, they know that sorting out the middle was really the easy bit.

You know, we now need to make it relevant uh and give this sort of uh quality to all the different neighborhoods.

So that that's their challenge, and how you interpret that is going to be, you know, it's gonna be uh to take a bit more time.

What goes on at one of your conferences?

Uh well, we've got 600 people here.

Uh, they're from 50 different countries.

So we've got people here from uh India, Bangladesh, uh Vietnam, uh, lots of places in Africa, Latin America, as well as all over Northern Europe, uh, America's, you know, and uh Australia and New Zealand.

Basically, what we do is we come together, and whether you're an engineer or planner, health expert, you know, there's people here, economists even, you know, from all sorts of different backgrounds, but that multidisciplinary sort of weaving that we try and curate with a quite a complicated program, but you know, we had over 200 presentations uh over the last three or four days, and basically that allows people to sort of expand their understanding about how walking can connect and what it is, uh how it can be used as a solution really to many of the everyday issues that we're all facing, things like congestion, you know, obesity, uh, climate change, you know, these are things where we are relevant.

Um we just try and put the science together and explain how we can help.

Did people ever get out of the conference center?

Yeah, I uh I normally try and do 10,000 steps.

We all know that that's the plan.

I think this year I I got down to as little as something like one and a half thousand.

I recognise that you know there's been a bit too much sitting, but actually at the same time, every session had some walkshops, you know, where we take people out, uh, and I think there's been over sort of 30, maybe even 40 walkshops.

And so I know people have got out and they have gone and sort of seen what it's like, what they're all up to here.

And it's not just sort of giving people the pat on the back.

There are some good things, you know, a lot of good things that they've done here, but they also need some help.

They know that.

And so it's a chance for that international community to come and yes, validate, but also assist, you know.

Some of sometimes it just gets a bit too difficult.

It you know, the the even the obvious things right under your nose just might need a little bit of a push from an international expert.

So, where are you going next year?

Well, the great news is we're going back to Asia.

Uh, we're in Hong Kong a couple of years ago, but we're now going to Seoul, uh the capital of South Korea.

Uh the mayor there, you know, he's been chairman of C40 Cities, he's uh really involved at ICLA, a number of sort of global organizations who are really trying to make sustainable cities.

Uh, but his particular commitment is is uh is about walking.

Uh he says to me that uh he doesn't make any significant decision until he's been for a walk first, and I thought that was a a really good starting point.

But more than that, he's really uh keen on making sure his his community of 10 million people in that city are not just engaged and involved, but actually, you know, really part of listening to their ideas, and uh they can actually come up with whatever they want to do in their in their streets.

It's uh it's a really interesting sort of partnership they've got going on in with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, and uh and and what really drives in more than anything is this what he calls joy.

He says they're a city of dreams, and uh and ultimately, you know, how do you deliver, how do you give people joy?

He thinks that's about giving people nature, connecting them back to the mountains, the streams, uh, you know, the rivers that are all around uh the city itself, which make it really quite special, but uh it's getting them back on their feet.

So we're going to be there helping them literally put um well, I guess get them to understand what is underneath their souls as well as in their souls, and uh so let's go to Seoul.

We're in Rotterdam talking with Terence Bendixon.

You received an award uh yesterday at the Walk 21 conference.

What was the award for?

Very simple.

Uh the Pedestrians Association, which is the British body for campaigning for walking, is 90 years old this year, and we got a birthday present in the form of a piece of sculpture of a walking man.

How did the organization get started way back when?

Well, uh it started obviously in 1929 by a journalist and a peer of the realm.

That means somebody who sits in the House of Lords in Britain in our strange way.

And between them, the journalist being a journalist and the peer being able to influence legislation, started the association, and by the 1930s, it was very effective.

What sort of changes were you able to get made?

Well, in the 1920s, it was a free-for-all on the roads for Britain.

You could buy a car, jump into it, and off you went.

There were no limitations at all.

By the end of the 1930s, we had a 30 mile-an-hour speed limit in towns.

We had pedestrian crossings with those globes that we still have in Britain beside our zebra crossings, and we had driving licenses and driving tests for drivers.

So it was a revolution.

How the issues changed over the decades?

Well, I got active in the 1970s in 1970 itself when I wrote a piece as a journalist saying walking was so much more important than any other form of transport in cities.

That wasn't a very fashionable view, but I become convinced by it.

Well, that was still the motor age, and it was it was a horrible time for walk.

Since then, things have undoubtedly got better and better.

And in in my country in London, when Ken Livingston, the mayor of London, introduced a congestion charge for the middle of the city, you have to pay to drive your car into the middle.

That signaled the end of the glorious days of driving, and I think it it signalled it to everybody throughout the country.

Would a pedestrian in London notice the difference?

Would they notice that things are improving?

Oh yes.

Oh yes.

Wider pavements in the shopping streets, timing at traffic signals, where you used to get time just to race across in front of the cars.

Now you can walk across not in not everywhere by any means, but in a number of cases, you could now walk across it in a civilised way.

And then most of all, in the city of London, in Wall Street, as it were, the whole of that district is gradually being turned into a place where you can come out of your office, sit down in a cafe, stroll about, enjoy the trees, in you know a very high density, very high wealth part of London.

And a number of years ago, the pedestrians association changed its historic name.

What's it called now?

We're now called living streets.

We changed that in 1999.

And it symbolized a significant shift in thinking.

We were focused on say safety, getting people across the road without being killed.

Now, of course we're still concerned with that, but we're concerned just as much with healthy living, walking for health, streets that are good to live in, to walk in, to stop in a cafe in, so living streets.

It's 20 years now.

Has the redefined mission uh been working for you?

Well, um, we didn't just change the name, we changed the money.

Um Ben Plowden and I, who were the the architects of this change, uh, we went to a grant-giving trust and we got 65,000 pounds.

That enabled us to employ a full-time director and staff, and we ceased from being a cozy, well-meaning, amateur-ish little lot into being a professional organization.

And now we have a staff of 20 in London, we have offices in Edinburgh and Cardiff and Newcastle.

We're a totally different kind of outfit.

What challenges do you see when you get out to the other parts of the United Kingdom, you know, beyond the London city limits?

Yeah.

Um a very important question.

There are many, many good signs.

You can go to Newcastle and walk down Northumberland Avenue, and it's both a beautiful street and completely pedestrianized.

You can go to Oxford and you can see the middle of that, completely pedestrianised.

But the car is still king in provincial England in a way that it's not in London.

In London, the number of people owning cars from the number of people using cars is going down.

You don't see that decline elsewhere, and therefore walking is not so much on the up.

What sort of research have you done on pedestrians?

I uh did a lot of research on walking trips related to public transport journeys, and uh we also investigated how um pedestrians experience environments.

That's an old question, but we link it up to psychology, sociology, and even physics physicists that have knowledge on human beings basically that is very helpful to understand walking and how we relate to our environments.

That so it's these two major topics that's I've been into, yeah.

How could those two topics relate to each other?

Yeah, that is interesting indeed.

Well, um public transport, of course, when you talk about public transport, you talk about infrastructure, you talk about trams, buses, trains, and all this heavy and expensive stuff, and it's highly professionalized, of course, because it's cost a lot of money.

But um the thing is, from our experience, everybody knows that we have to walk to stops.

All these public transport services provide transport from one stop to the other, but nobody has business at public transport stops, obviously.

So we have to either walk, we take a cycle or something else, and when we investigate that we see that over 90% in cities actually walk to public transport stops, we use buses and hold public transport services by using our feeds.

And when we go further and question how much of the total travel time are we actually pedestrians when we use buses, trumps and so on, then we see that it's close to half of the time of the total travel travel time.

We are pedestrians.

So you might ask already, why do we call that actually public transport if there is so much walking involved?

And when we then go further and ask people what do you remember from this public transport journey that you've done yesterday or two days ago, the memories that come up, most of them relate to the time when there were pedestrians.

About 70% of the memories are shaped from the time we spent walking to and from stops.

We spent waiting at stops, we spent changing between different emotes and so on.

So the the impression of a public transport journey is actually dominated by the time we spend walking, and that is quite interesting.

That tells us how important it is to make it attractive for pedestrians if we want to support public transport.

It's probably even easier to make it to support public transport by measures for walking rather than investing in expensive infrastructure.

If you see that 30% of the memories, that is related to the infrastructure.

What have you discovered about the nature of the environment that makes walking you know more pleasant or less pleasant?

Uh whether you're going to the store or the transit stop, wherever you're going.

Yeah.

Well, we we had a psychological approach to that.

And so we looked after how do we experience time and what kind of emotions arise from urban environments, or do they arise?

So that's an interesting question.

And we we did lots of observations, we did interviews, and when we combine that data, we can actually quantify how urban environments influence our emotions when we walk.

And that is kind of a new thing.

What we find is not so different from what we know.

Like interacting with cars is stressing, of course.

Like uh walking in parks is relaxing, and walking in pedestrian zones is kind of exciting and so on.

So we see that the new thing is that we can actually measure and quantify these effects, and that is often important when we start discussing the politics, when we start about discussing about money, investments in urban environments.

Of course, we also need to have facts and numbers on that.

So that's kind of the new approach in that.

But we what we did also is um we simply measured how long do people need to cross a certain uh uh traffic road, for example, or how much lengthened detours footwalks to stops and so on.

And when we put all these measures together, we see actually that it's quite it has a substantial effect.

So we see that around 70 70% is what we can improve.

So we people walk longer when we when we have good walking environments and and they walk 70% longer distances.

That's quite substantial, and that would mean theoretically at least, when we have this what we call catchment area around the stops, they increase.

And when in good walking environments, when people walk 70% longer, we the catchment area gets three times as large.

So the urban area from war from where public transport is accessible is much much larger without any investments in public transport itself.

But it's you you get you're getting more clients to public transport, you're getting more people to use public transport by doing it good for pedestrians in urban environments, and so it's a big business case for public transport.

And I'm uh with a lot of others surprised why public transport companies are not pushing that forwards since years already.

They it's they do the opposite, they make it small, they call it the first and last mile.

That's completely nonsense when you really see or look at the data.

The public transport company runs the buses, runs the trams.

It's the department of public works, it deals with the sidewalks, it's the planning department that determines what the storefronts are.

How do you get them all to work together when it's somebody else's job?

Yeah, I mean that's the big challenge, and and uh since long, and that is one barrier to that, of course.

But we have good experience when we tell these people what is the effect, how what you can actually achieve with it when you combine strategies.

And we have good examples that where things happen very quick in Copenhagen.

The city council said, well, okay, that's a good idea.

We could just invest in pedestrians, and we have a huge effect on public transport.

And of course, we need good infrastructure and we need to invest that.

But what they do now is they went to the local public transport operator in Copenhagen, and they they um they organized a working group where free sit people from both sides sit together, and we are kind of planning um pilot projects, we did uh analysis on how large is the potential at certain areas in certain urban areas or along certain public transport lines.

So they start working together and then step by step they they themselves understand where do we have big potentials.

And the other interesting thing is Copenhagen has a walking strategy since 2013, if I remember right.

And but this the people from the city council were saying, well, we have that strategy, but it's complex.

You you you it's it's dealing with lots of small things, and then you stand in front of your whole city and you don't know where to start.

That's that's and and now it makes it much easier for them.

They say, Yes, we start at the public transport stops.

You have focus areas that makes it much easier to implement and to start somewhere where it where this has more meaning not only for walking but also for public transport, but both.

You you support basically two things with uh the walking strategy, and that's probably helps to reduce car use, hopefully.

What do you go next with your research?

What's uh what's the next stage?

What is the next stage?

Yeah, um well, we are looking always after funds.

It looks like that we got funds for three more PhDs now.

Um it's not quite finished, but we uh we came very far.

Um an interesting bit is to look at what can we do with technology?

Can we link walking and public transport through through technology?

We have real-time uh data on public in public transport system that's standard today.

So can we have real-time data on walking, perhaps on your phone?

So this these are technologies that are not there.

We have apps with maps, but this is kind of really basic, I think, in terms of pedestrians.

So can we actually do something in technology wise for pedestrians that kind of really helps even more just than just having a map?

That is one thing that we um is in the pipeline.

And we also I mean we we have to um discuss all these new technology things that that will affect public transport, like these autonomous driving car discussion, and that that will make a big change for public transport.

But what public transport operators tell us, they of course tell us all these nice stories, nice or not, about new technology and what comes and what's possible.

But they still again tend to forget that walking is part of it, and it will also in the future.

We it's we see when we model um possibilities with autonomous cars that this won't work.

It will not reduce driving.

And even with car sharing, sitting two or three people in a car, that makes it more complex because you have to deliver somebody at home and some places and at to a certain other place, and that takes too long basically when you're sitting with three, four, five people in the car.

So there must if we include walking in such um models, um we can see that's getting much more effective basically.

So when we want to be on that train, basically, that is kind of coming with technology development, we need to kind of push walking into that and and with all the positive effects that that has.

So this is something that we certainly um going to uh study in the future.

Um but we also continue um working together with um psychologists with physicists, with um sociologists, so that's what we we're doing at our university right now.

We're building alliances with these um with these uh professionals to kind of work together to to combine research to develop new methods that we better can understand what is actually going on, how can we advance knowledge on walking that is also we that that provides data but that also explains us more so that we have data and the explanations on uh problems as how do we relate to urban environments when we walk and so on?

We're talking with Philip What you uh from Ghent.

What's your role in the government there?

I'm the deputy mayor from mobility and uh we try to do um efforts to have more sustainable mobility in Ghent to have more walking, cycling, public transport.

And I can say we have done quite a lot of things.

We had a circulation plan implemented in 2017, and the the results were there.

Um we have an increase of uh 60% of cyclists, 10% of uh users of public transport.

So we want the same results for uh pedestrians.

What brought you to the Walk 21 conference here in Rotterdam?

Oh everything that uh that can inspire uh our policy is good.

So uh that's uh why I'm coming to Rotterdam.

What uh what's it gonna do for the quality of life of your citizens if if you are able to make the city more walkable?

Well it's crucial that uh people can walk, people can cycle, people can use public transport if you want to have a city with a huge uh uh quality of life.

And that's that's the first thing.

Um my first aim uh is to have uh a great quality of life in the city.

People should like to live in the in our city, people should like to visit our city because it's it's a pleasant city.

It's uh it's a city where it's good to walk around to to cycle to to be there.

So if you want to do that, we should have uh we we should make uh clear choices.

And one of those choices is that in your traffic system and in your mobility uh system, you have to take those modes that are good for people.

So walking is good for people, walking is good for the city.

What sort of changes will you be thinking about making that that would make it more walkable?

We have already our circulation plan, and by that circulation plan we had uh we got rid uh rid of the true traffic.

Uh and also we had the pedestrian zone that uh is uh quite quite big.

But uh we will in the in the next years, in the next months uh really we will make uh a pedestrian plan, a plan for how to walk, um how to increase walking in in in Ghent, and with with the good infrastructure with the experiments and and so on, we we will try to um to let people walk in Ghent.

A few minutes ago you signed uh international walking charter.

Uh why is signing the charter important?

Because uh we are on uh walk 21, but what is important is walk the talk.

Uh we have already said that uh that uh that uh uh livable city is important, that sustainable mobility is important, that walking is important, so I can start sign the charter because it's an engagement that we will do efforts.

And uh I think politicians should um say what they are doing, but also do what they are saying.

So if I sign the charter, it means that people can uh in some years can say you have signed the charter, so where are the results?

So I'm not afraid of that.

They have to do it, so we will uh make that uh that there are results.

Visit us on the internet at www.pedestrians.org.

Hi, I'm Hampton Mayor Jimmy Gray, and I want to talk for a moment about men's health.

Specifically about the importance of regular screening for prostate cancer.

Men.

There's a simple blood test that checks for prostate-specific antigen.

They call it a PSA test.

So I guess you could say that this is your PSA to get your PSA.

This test could save your life.

Early detection greatly increases your chance of successful treatment.

Don't wait for the symptoms to appear.

Also went to uh Francis Asbury Elementary School and Jones Junior High School.

I'm the founder and general manager of YLS Incorporate.

It's a full-service landscape uh uh installation contracting company.

And uh we've been in business, uh started the company in 1987.

Uh and I actually started it right after college.

Uh went to Christopher Newport, uh, graduated from there in 1986.

And uh and and we've grown to where we are today.

Essentially, Hampton City School Systems really uh prepare me for college and and created a solid foundation for life in general.

Um I had a lot of I have a lot of fine memories of uh Kikatan.

I was a I was a tennis player there, and and uh one of the uh people that was very instrumental in uh in my in my success, I believe, is uh Coach Mark Vandefoort.

And uh he really uh pushed all the players to the to their limits and and uh really um instilled a lot of good qualities uh into us.

And uh and it's funny, I ran into uh him in at a job site about three years ago uh after 30-some years, and uh, and we actually do work for him today, so we've sort of reunite reunited.

I joined uh the Virginia Peninsula Rotary Club uh in 2002.

Felt there was time and you know and a good it was a good thing to uh be more involved and to give back to the community.

I was president in 2013, 2014, and I'm currently the foundation chair of our club.

And um, and uh it's it's ironic because we actually have four uh 1982 Kikatang graduates that also are members of our club.

Uh and I'm also on the advisory board for the Salvation Army.

Well, the community's been so good to me.

Uh, it's helped us uh structure our business because growing up in the community uh is really, I mean, you've you build relationships over the course of time, and that really helps out as far as uh being successful and uh and giving back is just the way it's the it's the right thing to do.

So my name is Christopher Matton.

Uh I graduated from Phoebus High School in 1995, and I'm currently a professor in electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University.

So after I graduated from Phoebus High School, I went to the University of Virginia and earned uh bachelor's in electrical engineering.

After graduating from UVA, I went to the University of Cambridge to earn my master's in engineering.

And then I went to MIT where I earned my doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science, and then I started as a faculty here at Cornell University.

So I uh teach and do research in the area of computer architecture.

Uh computer architecture is really about computer system design.

So, for example, we look at what type of computer systems should we be building in five or ten years and how should we build them.

So there were a couple of really uh formative experiences during my time at at Phoebus, which really helped um create a foundation for me to be successful in in science, engineering, and technology.

So one of them was the Center for High Technology, uh, so the robotics program specifically.

I was actually out of district and participating in the Center for High Technology was one of the reasons I was able to go to Phoebus.

And the robotics program was led by Mr.

May when I was there, and it was a fantastic experience.

Students uh were basically in charge of the curriculum.

Mr.

May would pick out the textbook that we use during the year, but then students would take ownership of specific chapters and teach the other students about the material, prepare problems.

It was a very hands-on, project-driven type uh course.

And it really taught me a lot about what engineering actually was.

And so I really enjoyed that experience.

Another good example would be uh the science fair.

So I was part of the science fair for two years.

Um Mrs.

Tucker taught the uh biology program there when I was at Phoebus, and she was a great mentor.

And I did a really interesting project, dealt with paramecium, small bacteria.

We looked at how bacteria responded to various different environmental conditions and what would happen when the paramecium were exposed to different contrasting conditions and how they would respond uh to those conditions at the same time.

And I had an opportunity to go to various science fairs, and it really helped expose me to science, but also research, how to independently come up with uh interesting questions, how to design the experiments to answer those questions, and how to evaluate the results to figure out the next set of questions we should ask.

I think the third kind of formative experience I had while I was at VEBIS was really the New Horizons governor school program where I was able to uh take uh physics, but also uh took advantage of the mentorship program.

And so I spent um many afternoons every week over at NASA Langley uh working with my mentor Jeffrey Teneal, learning a lot about basically big supercomputers.

So they had an IBM SV2, an Intel Paragon.

And as a high school student, I had a chance to run some code on these these computers, which was pretty rare.

And that really taught me a lot about computing.

And you know, so for my experiences in the rocks program, about engineering, science for research, and at the mentorship program, terms of uh uh terms of computing really shaped what I do today ever since, actually.

Now that I've kind of seen what it's like to be a teacher on the other side, now that I'm a professor at a university, I kind of see what it's like to be a teacher.

Um and reflecting back on my time at Phoebus, uh I really would urge current students to take advantage of the teachers, at least when I was there, and I'm sure it's still the case.

The teachers are more than willing to go above and beyond to help students that are excited about learning and want to get engaged.

And I saw that time and again, my name is Margot Lee Shetterly.

I'm a 1987 graduate of Phoebus High School, and I'm also a graduate of Eton Junior High School.

I guess it's middle school now, and Captain John Smith Elementary School.

So I am 100% product of Hampton City Public Schools, and very proudly so.

Um I'm the author of the book, Hidden Figures, so that makes me a writer.

Now that it's it's my first book, and it's now been published, so I'm officially a professional writer.

Hampton City Schools shaped me in um a couple of very important ways.

Um, first of all, I think I got a fundamentally solid education here.

I had good teachers who cared a lot.

Um I had a range of challenging classes.

I always felt that I was able to push up against my limits in the schools and uh in the classes that I was offered here.

So I really appreciate the fundamentally good education that I received here in Hampton.

Um, the other thing that I think was really important, and uh this was really made clear to me during the research of my book, is that I went to an integrated Hampton City schools.

Um, you know, it really wasn't that long after the schools integrated that I started going to school here.

Um I went to school with white kids and black kids.

There were children from Vietnam who had resettled here, kids from the Philippines.

There were lots of military families.

Um it was very economically diverse.

So we had, I went to school with the mayor's daughters, um, and I also went to school with with kids from public housing.

So I think the fact that that great diversity, not just in terms of the background or the race or the the ethnicity of the people, but also in terms of the economic background, um, was a fantastic way to grow up.

It was a really wonderful way to meet people from different backgrounds and to get exposure to different points of view, liberal, conservative, absolutely everything.

When I went to first grade in the first day of first grade at Captain John Smith Elementary School, my teacher was Mrs.

Gwendolyn Chisman.

And Mrs.

Chisman is what the kids called a mean teacher, you know, which in retrospect means that she was an excellent teacher who really cared about the kids.

She made sure we did our homework.

This is first grade.

And I still remember that because she said that to us as if we had walked into like a differential equations class in college, you know, in graduate school or something.

We're six years old, and she said, this is it.

You know, and the level of expectation that she had for us, even though they were just six years old, was so high, and I still remember that.

And in retrospect, um I I appreciate it so much, and I'm sure it had a huge impact on my entire career.

I I went to the commerce school and immediately went to go work on Wall Street.

So I worked as an investment banker for the first half of the 1990s.

Um I decided I wanted a change.

There was this new thing called the internet, just starting up and becoming very popular, and I I thought that was quite intriguing.

So I spent um really from uh the mid-90s through um the early 2000s working in internet media in New York, um, really a fascinating time.

Um I was in New York on 9-11 and um stayed through the beginning of uh 2002, then took some time off to travel and came back to New York.

Um shortly thereafter, I met my husband, who was somebody who had also kind of worked in internet media and he'd worked in publishing.

Um, and the two of us um got married, we moved to Mexico, and we started an English language magazine for expats, uh, which was quite an adventure to say the least.

Um we lived in Mexico for 11 years.

Uh, we ran the magazine for uh three years, then we closed it.

We started another business, um, which was an internet consulting business, um, kind of trying to help tourism businesses in Mexico with translating and internet marketing.

Um, and in 2012, I I came back here to Hampton and started working on what would become a hidden figure.

So for the last four years, uh we lived in Mexico, and you know, I would come back here for big chunks of time for um for research.

And uh two months ago we moved back to the United States full-time, and I now live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The most important thing about this book now coming out, and particularly about the enthusiasm that it's receiving, is it probably means that I'll get a chance to write another book.

So I guess at this point um I can officially call myself a professional writer, um, and I'm embarking on what's probably my third or fourth career at this point.

Um so that that's really exciting.

I I feel like I'm doing the most interesting and the best work that I've ever done, um, and it's building on all of the things that I've done previously.

You know, I think a lot of times when we're young, we think that we have to know exactly what we're gonna do, and we've got this path, and if we don't, you know, achieve X thing by the time we're 25, it's all over.

And um, you know, I just say that um life is long and it's full of surprises and twists, and if you have the idea that you're always trying to do the best, whatever it is that you're doing, even if you fail, even if you come into you know uh encounter a wall, um you know, eventually you're gonna find the thing that that makes you happiest and that you're best at.

I I feel like um that's certainly been the case for me.

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