When my daughter asked me to come to her new school to give a talk, her friend’s eyes nearly popped out.
“You WANT your mom to come speak to our grade?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes, she has really good stories and they’re interesting,” my awesome daughter replied. “She comes every year.”
My heart swam with joy. My tweenager wants me to come to her school.
Her excitement was suddenly hit with a wave of uncertainty.
“But Mom, the talk has to fit in with Health Week and you’re not a nutritionist, dietitian or athlete,” my kid noted.
Nope, I’m not.
I assured her all would work out. Gave her a hug. And then I began to think.
Health Week is the theme. I tell stories of innovation. Now, I just needed to connect the dots.
In my talks, I always ask what the word “innovation” means to my audience.
It is about doing things in a new way, making a difference, it can be reinventing a product or service or fixing what is or isn’t broke. Innovation is about ideas, serendipity, challenges and belief it can be done.
I know that Israel is not a sports mecca. It is a sports-tech hub. It is also a food-tech powerhouse. And a health-tech center.
Eureka!
I set up a call with the teacher in charge of the Health Week talks and I offered a talk on health, food and sports innovations.
As a journalist, I have interviewed numerous entrepreneurs working in sport-tech, health-tech and food-tech. I’ve collected their stories and will now repackage them to share lessons that can be learned.
I will focus on Israeli technologies – when I speak to pupils, especially, it is important for me that they take pride in their country and know they, too, can achieve the impossible if they want to. I’ll also include examples of where we can find blue-and-white tech on the global health stage.
“We’ve never had a talk like this,” the teacher said, in giving me the go-ahead.
“I hope not,” I answered. After all, I made it up for daughter.
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