How El-Sayed says his family shaped his public-service purpose

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 21:49

   in my middle school years, my parents would ship me off to Egypt. And I'd spend my time with my teta, my grandmother, smartest person I ever met, best storyteller you've ever heard. Like really, never got to school. She was illiterate. 9th of 14, grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, had eight babies of her own. Two of them died before their first birthday. My dad was her eldest. He watched his two siblings pass before he turned five. And it was recognizing the accident of history. I mean, my dad was an amazing student. There was a reason no way, no play was a thing because like he literally studied my life into existence. I'll never be able to repay that. And he gets to come to America to do a PhD in engineering and gets to make cars in Michigan, which is the dream for this kid, right? Right. So that's how you ended up in Michigan. He was

2. 22:37

   engineering the cars and exactly. Okay. And he worked for GM. Um, but in some respects, it's also realizing that I'm like, man, you know, when I was a kid, I'd have teachers be like, oh, you're smart and you work hard. I'm like, my grandmother was smart and worked hard. She's got nothing. And it's not about smart and work hard. It's smart and work hard if you're lucky enough to have the opportunity for it. So you, you recognize this. You, you never resented the kind of grind that you had to do because you looked at it as it wasn't an obligation. It was a, a privilege and that you had family members that you were looking at like, no, those people struggled. I'm, I'm living the dream. I'll tell you like on my worst day, I have a nicer life than most of my cousins could ever dream of.

3. 23:17

   Right. You know, like- Are they still, is a lot of your family still there? Almost my whole family's still there, right? I think there's one other family member that immigrated to Canada. But like, you know, I just, so it's one of those things where you're like, wait a second, wait a second. I get this incredible gift and I get a front row seat to the life I should have had, but for the opportunity to be born and raised in America.

4. 23:39

   And so in some respects, like as I matured and I got older, you realize you owe that something. And my grandmother, I remember, I remember, um, I was 13 years old. It was one of the first trips I'd gone on by myself. And you know, when you, when you go back to your family's homeland, they, I had two suitcases, one with my stuff and one with all the gifts. So now I'm like, I'm just like giving out all the gifts to all my cousins. I'm feeling myself. You're the messenger that has to bring all the back and forth. And yeah, but like, but like, I'm not feeling like the man, right? And my, my, my, my grandmother pulls me aside. She's like, have you become sit down? So I'm sitting down with her. She says, points to one of my cousins. That one's smarter than you are.

5. 24:15

   Damn. Right off the bat. Points to the next one. That one taller and better looking. That one is nicer than you. That one. But she told me every one of my cousins. And, but she was making a really important point. Cause I asked her in the end of this, I'm like, I'm like, you know, like she just tore me down to size. And, and I asked her, I was like, well, like, what do I have going for me? She's like, you have the best thing of all. I was like, okay, all right. She's like, you get to go home at the end of the summer to America. The rest of your cousins stay here.

6. 24:38

   Dude. And they're like, it's a reminder. You're like, I have opportunity that my cousins don't have and not everybody has that. And the crazy thing about it is this, my grandmother's understanding of America was like the 1950s movies that were translated on TV in Egypt. She couldn't have imagined. Yes. Like she couldn't have imagined that I could go 15 minutes from where I grew up And there were kids whose opportunity set looked a lot more like my cousins than mine.

7. 24:59

   Oh, that's interesting. And, you know, like I, growing up really, it was one of those things where I'm like, no, no, no, I want whatever I got. I want to be able to use it to make sure that other folks get the opportunity I got. And so it's, it's been the sort of through line of my career. And, you know, it's a reason I went to medical school. It's a reason I decided not to train clinically, went into public health.

8. 25:19

   It's the reason I went into public service.