My Mission

Building the progress movement to shape a techno-humanist future

At the Roots of Progress Institute, we believe that ideas are ultimately what shapes the future. The modern world started when people began to believe that you can improve the world around you, that the wisdom of the ancients isn’t always right, and that making progress is good and possible, within reach of those who try.

Our mission is to establish a new philosophy of and culture of progress for the 21st century and beyond. My role is to develop and manage the actual programs we run to make it happen—including this program, Progress in Medicine. We are excited about helping young people better understand the progress we’ve made in fields like medicine, so they can be inspired to become builders for an even better tomorrow. I’m excited to help teens meet inspiring heroes in the field of medicine/biotech/health, so they can see the wide range of careers that help humans live long, healthy lives. It will be wonderful if, in a decade, Progress in Medicine graduates shine in all kinds of roles—from being successful surgeons to running functional medicine concierge practices, from developing drugs against cancer or to prevent aging to building robots that make personalized medicine affordable to all.

My Path

From seeing empty shelves in East Germany to being inspired by builders in California

I grew up in West Germany, during the Cold War. As a child and teenager, I’d regularly visit my second cousins in Jena in socialist East Germany. I was struck by the relative poverty there, with ketchup being a luxury good they stood in line for for hours, and good-quality paint being something we had to smuggle in over the border, as it couldn’t be found on the empty store shelves in the East. I remember feeling relief every time we returned to the free West, after crossing the walled border where dogs sniffed our car to make sure we didn’t smuggle out anyone from the so-called Worker’s Paradise.

As a junior in High School, I came to the US as an exchange student. I spent a year in Tulsa, OK, surrounded by teens whose ambition and can-do attitude delighted me. At age 16, I decided I wanted to live in the US. I spent well over a decade straddling both countries, going back-and-forth on countless visas, before I became a proud US citizen in my early 30s.

Ever since first coming to the US, I’ve seen this country as the one place in the world were ambitious builders can create a better tomorrow. I worked with different companies that built new things—an airplane company that made a new type of plane with a whole-plane parachute, a group of Montessori schools that brought better education to hundreds of kids, and Mystery Science, the most popular video-based elementary science curriculum used in over 50% of US elementary schools.

Now I am involved at a more meta level—working to establish a new philosophy and culture of progress, so builders can do what they do best: use technology and innovation to built an ever better tomorrow where humans can flourish.