Outstanding people engage more fully

Andrea Pasinetti, 31, founder and CEO of Teach for China

I came to China in 2007 to learn Chinese at Tsinghua University (after studying at Princeton University). A year later, a Princetion a alumni who is Chinese invited me to visit Shuangjiang, a beautiful but poverty-stricken county in Yunnan province, where he had funded a primary school. He told me that it was the best way to get a comprehensive image of China.

When I arrived at the school, or rather a "teaching site" at the top of a mountain, the headmaster told me that very few of his students made it to senior high school, but not because they didn't want to or were not capable.