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Speaker 1: Welcome to On the Job. This season, we're focusing on

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Speaker 1: how people and businesses are getting back to work. Let's

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Speaker 1: call it a great transformation, a change in the way

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Speaker 1: workers are thinking. Employers need people to work more than ever,

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Speaker 1: putting laborers in a sort of position of power. We'll

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Speaker 1: be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves

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Speaker 1: as they find their life's work. On the last season

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Speaker 1: of On the Job, we spoke with Benny Boas, who

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Speaker 1: founded a coding company that provided coding boot camps for

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Speaker 1: anyone who wanted to become a software engineer. Well, today

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk to Magabo, an educator and a

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Speaker 1: graduate of that boot camp who's had a love for

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Speaker 1: math and numbers for as long as he can remember.

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Speaker 1: His goal is to build tools that spread education because

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Speaker 1: from personal experience, he knows how dangerous it is when

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Speaker 1: people don't have access to it. Well, good morning, mister Mugabo.

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Speaker 1: How much sleep did you get last night? And you

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Speaker 1: know much a lot more than than I. I've got

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Speaker 1: it in the last few months. My six and a

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Speaker 1: half month old son is still learning how to sleep

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Speaker 1: through the night, and so it's been an up and

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Speaker 1: down the last few months. Tierry Mugabo Lingimana goes by Mugabo.

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Speaker 1: He lives in Burlington, Vermont, and since Mugabo has a

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Speaker 1: six month old son, he now has a job to

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Speaker 1: suit his lifestyle and miss of to engineer for dismos

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Speaker 1: As just over a month ago. Desmos is a software

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Speaker 1: company that builds tools for students and teachers to use

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Speaker 1: in their curriculums. Their big thing is making their online

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Speaker 1: graphing calculators and geometry tools fun to interact with because

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Speaker 1: another arching philosophy at Desmos, which I feel like He's

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Speaker 1: a company founded by people who love math and who

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Speaker 1: are trying to create the tools and the learning opportunities

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Speaker 1: to help help students not only learn math, but love

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Speaker 1: learning math. Mugabo is one of those people who loves math.

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Speaker 1: He sees it as a way to understand how things

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Speaker 1: in everyday life interact, the rules to how things work.

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Speaker 1: And he believes that once you understand math, you can

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Speaker 1: use it to create new ways that things interact with

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Speaker 1: each other. Then from that can emerge new fields of mathematics,

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Speaker 1: you know, and so it can be a game, It

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Speaker 1: can be like legos, you know, where there are some

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Speaker 1: ways that they can connect and the ways that they

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Speaker 1: can't connect. And once you understand how they connect or

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Speaker 1: don't connect, you can build amazing things and take them

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Speaker 1: apart and build different amazing things, you know, and so

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Speaker 1: there is a magic to it. So Desmos and the

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Speaker 1: software that Mugabo is helping to develop is trying to

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Speaker 1: answer that problem, how do we make math enjoyable, which

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Speaker 1: is a big one to take on in our society

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Speaker 1: that has, for many reasons, become very math phobic. Math

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Speaker 1: phobic math generally gets a bad rap for being too

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Speaker 1: boring or too difficult, we're not actually useful. At DESMOS,

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Speaker 1: they make super accessible tools online and also have a

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Speaker 1: resource database for teachers anywhere to use that has math

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Speaker 1: activities on it that allows not only teachers to adapt activities,

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Speaker 1: but students to interact with activities and inflow teachers to

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Speaker 1: facilitate those activities in a classroom. And so all of

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Speaker 1: that is running on software on intennetic technologies, and as

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Speaker 1: a software engineer, Mugaba works from home behind the scenes,

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Speaker 1: taking in feedback from teachers and students, working with the

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Speaker 1: team on how they can improve the coding on the

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Speaker 1: tools they have and building new ones that make math

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Speaker 1: more enjoyable and understandable. One of the things that has

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Speaker 1: made me feel really good about joining this organization has

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Speaker 1: been the outpouring of love from math teachers and from

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Speaker 1: students talking about how learning math this way has been transformational,

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Speaker 1: has been more joyful. You know, and you don't hear

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Speaker 1: people is those where it's for learning mathematics often. So

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Speaker 1: your job is to make the magic happen, yeah, more

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Speaker 1: or less, more or less yeah, which is pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: So you love math, I do, yes, I've I grew

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Speaker 1: up in a household that loved math. My dad is

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Speaker 1: an engineering my mummy is in finance and accounting, and

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Speaker 1: so numbers was something that we were at least thought

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Speaker 1: that we had to get, you know, that it wasn't

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Speaker 1: an option to not get it. Mugaba was born in Kegali,

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Speaker 1: the capital of Rwanda, little country in Central Africa. We

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Speaker 1: left one day one h seven because of the because

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Speaker 1: of the genocide in nineteen ninety four. Between April and

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Speaker 1: July of nineteen ninety four, the truly horrific Rwandan genocide

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Speaker 1: took place. Tensions between the two main ethnic groups, the

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Speaker 1: majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi, had been raging four decades,

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Speaker 1: and on April sixth, nineteen ninety four, a plane carrying

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Speaker 1: rwanda as president was shot down and Tutti extremists were blamed.

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Speaker 1: That night, the country erupted and a mass organized killing

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Speaker 1: of the minority Tutsi began. Magabo's mother was Tutsi. How

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Speaker 1: how how did I understand that as a seven year old?

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Speaker 1: I don't I don't know. And we knew that it

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Speaker 1: wasn't it wasn't safe, you know, you know, and I guess,

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Speaker 1: I guess that's that's all that we needed to know.

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Speaker 1: It's it's not safe out there, and we need to leave.

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Speaker 1: Magabo and his family got out of the country and

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Speaker 1: fled to Congo. They were among two million others that

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Speaker 1: fled Rwanda, and in a few months after Magabo left,

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Speaker 1: over eight hundred thousand Tutsi were killed there. He says

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Speaker 1: that his parents got him out early enough so that

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Speaker 1: he didn't witness the atrocities. That's a lot of young

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Speaker 1: people younger than I, um, we're supposed to Yeah, so yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm thankful for that. His family spent three years in Congo.

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Speaker 1: They had interrupted schooling because of conflicts and moving around

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Speaker 1: then they went to Tanzania and spent three years there

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Speaker 1: before coming to the US. So you came to the

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Speaker 1: US when you were thirteen. I was thirteen. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: first thirteen years of my life. Yeah. They landed in Buffalo,

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Speaker 1: where he and his five siblings started to get into

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Speaker 1: a regular schooling rhythm. Ogabo's trajectory toward math and science

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Speaker 1: really started to take hold right around high school. I

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Speaker 1: think I always I always wanted to be like my dad.

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Speaker 1: I wanted to my dad's a civil engineer. I wanted

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Speaker 1: to do civil engineering. He took some software engineering classes

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Speaker 1: in high school and loved it, so by the time

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Speaker 1: he got into college at Stanford, he knew he was

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Speaker 1: going to major in some kind of engineering. He ended

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Speaker 1: up doing electrical and had a few more classes in

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Speaker 1: software engineering that really hooked him, so that that that

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Speaker 1: was the piece that took me towards software engineering and

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Speaker 1: know I got exposure. Yeah, I liked it. And there

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Speaker 1: were a lot more jobs, a lot more soltal engineering

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Speaker 1: jobs and electrical engineering jobs. And after graduating, he got

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Speaker 1: a job, but was coming home every night to burn

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Speaker 1: the midnight oil with this AI class that Stanford made

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Speaker 1: available online for anyone to take and I was blown

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Speaker 1: away by like how well technology could deliver a learning experience.

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Speaker 1: And I think that was kind of the first late

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Speaker 1: pop moment of realizing that this two can come to

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Speaker 1: get any very powerful ways. So he got a glimpse

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Speaker 1: at how his skills could help teach people in the future,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of his motivations came from everything he

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Speaker 1: had experienced in his past, this belief that if one

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Speaker 1: of the things that made the wander very turbulent and

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Speaker 1: very susceptible to what happened was that you had a

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Speaker 1: massive kind of youth demographic that did not have prospects,

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Speaker 1: and that makes them very susceptible to some Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: leads to a lot of political instability, you know. And

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Speaker 1: you and I always thought that if more people had

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Speaker 1: had opportunities, if we had the good system of education

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Speaker 1: where people graduated with with with opportunities to take on

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Speaker 1: you know, to pursue their their lives, you know. And um,

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Speaker 1: so a lot of your motivation for for getting into

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Speaker 1: teaching was to it's it's too to think about how

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Speaker 1: I can be part of, you know, contribute to creating

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Speaker 1: a world where what happened in the rue that doesn't happen,

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Speaker 1: And I thought I was going to be through through

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Speaker 1: through education. There's a lot of pressure to put on yourself. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well yes, and anyone know when you're young, it's okay

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Speaker 1: to kind of dream big and think. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: I hadn't thought of I hadn't thought of it as

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Speaker 1: the pressure. But you know, I mean, I think the

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Speaker 1: language that I've that I picked up at some point

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Speaker 1: is survivors remorse. You know, the people if you make

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Speaker 1: it out of a tragedy like it aside, you walk

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Speaker 1: away feeling like, Okay, I survived where many many didn't.

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Speaker 1: How does that then ship my purpose? How does that

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Speaker 1: then ship how I live my life? And to try

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Speaker 1: and also answer the very real questions of why, like

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Speaker 1: why me. We'll be right back with Mugabo story after

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Speaker 1: the break. A strong work ethic takes pride in a

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Speaker 1: job well done, sweats over the details. This is the

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Speaker 1: kind of person you need. Express employment professionals can help.

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Speaker 1: Finding the best people requires more than sorting through applications.

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Speaker 1: You need to conduct a thorough surge. Express understands what

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Speaker 1: it takes to hire the right person. It takes real people,

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Speaker 1: real interviews, discovering the talents you need. We find good

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Speaker 1: people matching their skills with the right jobs. At Express,

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Speaker 1: we find people for jobs and companies of all sizes

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Speaker 1: and industries, from the production floor to the front office.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes finding the best new employee really is about who

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Speaker 1: you know Express Nose jobs. Get to know Express, go

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Speaker 1: to expresspros dot com to find a location near you.

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Speaker 1: Back to Magabo, he'd become a software engineer, and now

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Speaker 1: he saw the huge potential his skills had to be

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Speaker 1: a tool for education, because again he believed that if

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Speaker 1: there were better education in Rwanda, the country maybe wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have been so vulnerable to dangerous rhetoric, and maybe the

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Speaker 1: genocide wouldn't have happened. It's nice to have a powerful drive,

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Speaker 1: a powerful motivating sands or purpose, you know. So he'd

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Speaker 1: been exposed to this online class from Stanford and he

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Speaker 1: was blown away by how well built the software for

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Speaker 1: the class was. So this Jovi is actually getting into teaching.

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Speaker 1: It put education on the map for me as something

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Speaker 1: that I wanted to do. I wasn't sure in how

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Speaker 1: in what capacity, because I was hated towards engineering, and

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Speaker 1: I think that was kind of the first late moment

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Speaker 1: of realizing that this two can come to get any

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Speaker 1: very powerful ways. It was two thousand and nine. By

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Speaker 1: the time Mugabo graduated college. The recession had just so

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Speaker 1: it was hard to find a job in teaching or

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Speaker 1: find a job at all at the time. He stuck

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Speaker 1: with engineering and worked as a software consultant for the IRS.

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Speaker 1: He was taking more online courses, he got his NBA.

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Speaker 1: He even started working at an education technology company. I

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Speaker 1: think it was the years in social engineering that kind

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Speaker 1: of made me appreciate the human element that yes, technology

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Speaker 1: can facilitate the great learning experiences. And it worked for me.

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Speaker 1: But when we're talking about where kids are in the

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Speaker 1: company classrooms, having a piece of technology is not It's

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Speaker 1: nowhere near enough. So when I had the opportunity to

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Speaker 1: go into the classroom, I did because I wanted to

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Speaker 1: spend some time on the other side of not creating

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Speaker 1: the tools, by using the tools in the classroom, and

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Speaker 1: that was a whole learning experience. That was a whole

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Speaker 1: learning experience. Mugabo got a job in the Winooski School

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Speaker 1: district of Vermont. He was teaching middle and high school

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Speaker 1: kids ages eleven to nineteen. Utah Engineering and science, and

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Speaker 1: by all accounts, the students loved them. I leaned on exploring.

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Speaker 1: I leaned on following the interests and the kind of

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Speaker 1: the whims of the students world were the questions coming from,

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Speaker 1: and kind of you know, And I always leaned on fun.

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Speaker 1: I mean, all learness learned differently, you know. And and

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Speaker 1: there was a whole lot there that I needed to

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Speaker 1: learn and then I needed to figure out. He was

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Speaker 1: a very interactive, experienced teacher, always experimenting using technology and legos,

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Speaker 1: and he tried to run a classrooms very democratically, like

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Speaker 1: an open forum where people expressed themselves freely, and you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes with disagreements. Kids felt very free and very free

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Speaker 1: to to check me and and to freely express themselves

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Speaker 1: in ways that you know, like if I'm angry and

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Speaker 1: I'm raising my voice, I'm not being rude, you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm just angry and I'm raising my voice, and you know,

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Speaker 1: and that's like it's okay. Mugabo played a very important

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Speaker 1: role at his school. For context, Vermont is like ninety

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Speaker 1: eight percent white, very white, but a lot of the

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Speaker 1: immigrants and refugees who have come to Vermont has settled

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Speaker 1: up in Winowski and nearby Burlington. And you know, my class,

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Speaker 1: my school was like a majority black and brown kids.

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Speaker 1: That is very exceptional for Vermont, very right. Yeah, Now,

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Speaker 1: the teaching staff and the administration was still like almost

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Speaker 1: entirely white. He was actually the only black teacher in

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Speaker 1: the middle school in high school, and he felt a

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Speaker 1: responsibility to advocate for more diverse multicultural space because while

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Speaker 1: they had students from all over the world, they were

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Speaker 1: still learning in a structurally white American environment. And I

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Speaker 1: found that the impact that that had on my young

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Speaker 1: kids was the message that the ways of being were

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Speaker 1: not okay, that they were the ways of being were

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Speaker 1: not This was not the place to express yourself as

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Speaker 1: you are. You need to learn a new way of being.

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Speaker 1: And that for for young malleable minds, that has a

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Speaker 1: way of kind of teaching them to reject who they

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Speaker 1: are and then to try and figure out who they're

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Speaker 1: supposed to be. But he says it was always an

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Speaker 1: uphill battle. The school preached its messages of being a

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Speaker 1: multicultural space, but wasn't really ever acting on it. Mugabo

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Speaker 1: spent a lot of time advocating for his students to

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Speaker 1: make those changes. For a better system for more diverse faculty,

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Speaker 1: but he says time and time again he wasn't really

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Speaker 1: supported by the school. Um ultimately I left, you know,

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Speaker 1: I was kind of burning out that I didn't own

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Speaker 1: community organizing was just not visible, and I was becoming

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Speaker 1: a dad, and so so I left. I left so,

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Speaker 1: you know, to to be able to be able to

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Speaker 1: orso fulfill my responsibility as a husband, as and as

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Speaker 1: a dad. Mugabo left the school last year in twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty one. He had a baby on the way and

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Speaker 1: he says being an educator and an activist within the

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Speaker 1: school he worked in was taking so much of himself.

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Speaker 1: I realized that, UM, a lot of the change I

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Speaker 1: needs to happen. Can you know the community needs to spearhead,

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Speaker 1: that the parents need to be organized enough to realize

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Speaker 1: what's happening to their kids. You know what they are

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Speaker 1: and aren't getting m and then demanded. He wrote an

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Speaker 1: open letter to the school, giving specific examples of how

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Speaker 1: the faculty and community can actually be more diverse. In it,

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Speaker 1: he said, I have done my part to make good

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Speaker 1: trouble at Winwski. I've spoken the truth even when it

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Speaker 1: was hard. These are very actionable steps. Which of these

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Speaker 1: will you take lead on to make sure it is implemented.

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Speaker 1: I think that's aubtoplutely more sustainable that we have more engaged,

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Speaker 1: more parents who understand what's happening, will understand a system,

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Speaker 1: understand how to advocate for themselves, and working in collaboration

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Speaker 1: with whoever is willing to work with them to make

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Speaker 1: sure that their kids get what they need. Did you

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Speaker 1: feel bad leaving at all? Yeah? Yeah, it remains hard.

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Speaker 1: I mean every time I see my students, I feel

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Speaker 1: like I part of the reason why I made my

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Speaker 1: resignation letters public was too you know, was an understanding

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Speaker 1: that I had and responsibility to the community to kind

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Speaker 1: of explain what's happened and why I felt that I

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Speaker 1: couldn't stay In the letter, He also says that he

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Speaker 1: plans to get back to community organizing when he can.

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Speaker 1: He told me he probably won't feel totally better about

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Speaker 1: the situation until he finds the time to do that.

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Speaker 1: But it's nice that I'm able to be there for

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Speaker 1: my for my son and my wife. I mean I

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Speaker 1: would not have been able to do that, and so

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Speaker 1: so there is that and accounts accounts for a lot.

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Speaker 1: So He's still working through a lot, but now he

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Speaker 1: has the autonomy and the time to do it. Teaching

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Speaker 1: and trying to change the way people learned in the

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Speaker 1: school was draining him. Now that he's building educational software

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Speaker 1: with DESMOS, he can be there for his family and

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Speaker 1: still be a part of spreading knowledge as he always intended.

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Speaker 1: Seeing what they've done here gives me a lot of hope.

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Speaker 1: We're not trying to do everything. We don't have to.

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Speaker 1: We understand that our play is to create this powerful

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Speaker 1: kind of a little tool that's gonna be one of

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Speaker 1: many tools that eight people educating all of the world

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Speaker 1: I'm going to use. And if we make it easy

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Speaker 1: enough and intuitive enough and fun enough and enjoyable enough,

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Speaker 1: you know, then this teachers are going to do magic

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Speaker 1: with it, and they do. Mugabo saw a lack of

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Speaker 1: cultural understanding in his school, and he fought tooth and

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Speaker 1: nail to change it because he knows firsthand how dangerous

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Speaker 1: that lack of understanding can be. I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of people who are driven by some kind of higher

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Speaker 1: purpose like that can forget to take care of themselves

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Speaker 1: in the process. To think that we need to be

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Speaker 1: the solution instead of being a part of it. To me,

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Speaker 1: it's really inspiring what Mugabo has done all of it.

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Speaker 1: But one of the most admirable things I think is

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Speaker 1: that he knew when to step away, and he knew

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Speaker 1: he couldn't do it alone. Yeah, he had real purpose

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Speaker 1: to fight for, but he also had a family, and

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Speaker 1: he also had his well being, and he realized that

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Speaker 1: he couldn't adequately take care of anyone if he didn't

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Speaker 1: take care of himself first. Today he found a job

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Speaker 1: that lets him do that and still allows him to

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Speaker 1: be a part of making that magic happen. He knows

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Speaker 1: he can't do everything and understands that he is just

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Speaker 1: a powerful little force, one of many that are all

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Speaker 1: needed to help people learn. As the world changes and

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Speaker 1: all of our lives become more complicated, I think we

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Speaker 1: can all take some pointers from Ugabo, because there's going

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Speaker 1: to be a lot more jobs like that, jobs where

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Speaker 1: we can take better care of ourselves and still do

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Speaker 1: the work that matters to us. I don't know this

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Speaker 1: compulsion that you have to be an educator. I'm sure

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Speaker 1: you got to really scratch that itch by seeing people

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Speaker 1: face to face every day. Is what you're doing right now,

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Speaker 1: is it still fulfilling that specific need for you? Yes,

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Speaker 1: it still feels like I'm part of a team that's

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Speaker 1: contributing to something that I very deeply care about and

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Speaker 1: that I think is very important. And I can do

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Speaker 1: that with the autonomy of being a software engineer and

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Speaker 1: God willing with the autonomy that's going to allow me

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Speaker 1: to do more things once, you know, we find a

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Speaker 1: rhythm with a family life. Yeah, so it's a good place.

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Speaker 1: It's a good place to be now. For on the job,

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Speaker 1: I'm modest Gray