My identity is linked to my grandmother who's pure Filipino as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify.

I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.'

My grandmother always taught me 'If you don't have a home family and church you don't have anything.'

It's in the history books the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

My grandmother had six kids - one died as an infant - and she was dirt-poor and all her kids got an education. And my mom grew up poor. And they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness. I wanted to have that like an amulet. Not like armor but like a magic feather. Like Dumbo's magic feather.

The word 'good' has many meanings. For example if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards I should call him a good shot but not necessarily a good man.

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now and we don't know where the hell she is.

My view is that good community management is like having good municipal government: You should be able to have dissenting opinions and so on freedom of speech but your grandmother should also be able to walk down the street at night without having to worry about getting mugged.

You don't have to look far to taste some of the best food the world has to offer. I'd pit my grandmother against a 3-star Michelin chef any day.

My grandmother was the greatest cook in the world. She could just go in there the whole kitchen would look like a tornado hit it and then she'd come out with the best food. Then she'd sit at the table and she wouldn't eat!