Stories of Us — Marissa Streit: Why I Dedicate My Life to Saving America | Stories of Us

once i saw all that evil and all the lies i couldn't unsee it i couldn't keep going to sleep every night being part of the problem [Music] my name is marissa streit and this is my story i'm the ceo of prageru i'm a wife i'm a mother and i'm a proud american i was born in los angeles uh california when i was around six years old i moved to israel and i was raised in israel my parents are divorced they were divorced second time and so i have sisters from my mom's side and i have sisters from my father's side and i'm the only child to both my mother raised me as a single mom it was pretty much just my mother and myself for many many years and she was an office manager in multiple different places she worked many many hours because she had to provide for both of us and so things were hard for her i mean i really recognize how hard it is for single moms with so many responsibilities and this constant stress of what do you do how do you provide but also make sure that while you're at work your child is okay i mean i was seven years old and i would walk home from school on my own nobody helicoptered over me i had to do my own homework there was an expectation that we were partners in in in life and she would do her part and i would do my part my mom i don't think knows the word victim honestly mostly because she couldn't ever afford to people from my mother's generation could not afford to think of themselves as victims they just had to do they just had to fix they just had to make life work i was aware of the fact that my mom struggled for money because she had to work so many hours but my mom found a way to shelter me from the experience of feeling like we didn't have what we needed and also we had the perspective that you don't really need that much you really don't need that much mostly what you need is what's up here and that's pretty much what stayed with me i was in israel for a little over 10 years so i lived in israel from ages 6 through 21. i served in the israeli military in a small unit in the intelligence forces my experience in the israeli military was incredibly formative as anybody would imagine first of all as an 18 year old going into the military it's just an opportunity to learn so much 8200 is known as a place that produces many interesting characters that have gone into the tech world and so i had the chance to serve in that unit and it was just incredible growing up in israel going to high school in israel serving in the military i always knew that i would i was going to go back home i always knew that i was going to go back to the united states while i was in college i taught hebrew school and i just loved it i loved working with kids i loved the authenticity i loved the opportunity of of working with growing minds and when i graduated from my master's i became a headmistress of a small private jewish school i remember being on this phone call with with a friend of mine who ran a public school and and she was venting to me about how she needs to place a teacher in an eraser room an eraser room why do you have to put her in an eraser room she's terrible just fire her she literally sh you just told me she shows up to fourth grade class and she kicks her feet up on the table and watches on an ipad and just ignores the kids fire her immediately and my friend said no you can't fire her she's protected by the teacher unions have to put her in the eraser room and i said you can literally fire a bad plumber and you can't fire a bad fourth grade teacher this is lunacy it's crazy aren't the teacher unions supposed to protect the kids and she said no the teacher unions are supposed to protect the teachers and so i heard that and it was just a wake-up moment for me i figured out that i needed to get educated about what's going on because politics it's not just over there in washington a lot of it is over here in your classroom with those fourth grade kids who are suffering and the right people are not advocating for them so for me what i witnessed as an educator once i saw all that evil in all the lies i couldn't unsee it and i think that's what it's like in general once you see the lies and you you actually see the truth it's one of those things where you just can't ignore it anymore and it just kept amassing and amassing and i just wanted to become part of the solution i just can't keep i couldn't keep going to sleep every night being part of the problem so one day i got a phone call from a friend he said well we have this idea there is a man named dennis prager who wants to start something that we think might be pretty big one day and we want you to lead it and i said that i was intrigued and so about a week later dennis prager alan estrin who is the producer of the dennis prager radio show and i met at a little cafe by the radio station and we just hit it off really well allen said that he hired me because i appeared to be fearless and i was maybe one of the only candidates that wasn't intimidated by dennis you know sometimes i think about how random the different skill sets that i have and i i just can't not think that god had a hand in grooming me for for this position prageru started in my kitchen i'm more of a kitchen person not a garage so prageru started in my kitchen and i basically had a laptop and we had a few independent contractors who we worked with closely some of them have become employees over the years and we started making a few random videos here and there and those few random videos became this big digital media enterprise how do i juggle three kids family life right now 80 employees prageru all the work we do i have an amazing team that supports me whether it's my chief of staff or the people in the production team and the marketing team are incredibly helpful and incredibly supportive and of course i have the support at home i have my family that supports me my husband my mom my sisters and uh i just take it one step at a time you know i just find myself taking a deep breath inhale exhale and just keep going just keep going i think everything starts in education because it's the future and so everything we're teaching children right now is what's going to be held in a few years vis-a-vis the culture and politics and the workplace i mean we're planting the seeds the biggest issue i think that we're facing in america is education we have lowered our expectations of children and that to me is a terrible thing it's not necessarily about politics it's really about the quality of education it's what we're teaching them it's the fact that we're not teaching them how to think creatively how to problem solve we're teaching them how to just memorize and regurgitate and never step out of line because if you step out of line there's going to be cancel culture against you and this idea that if you're of a certain color you should be spoken with in a certain way or spoken at in a certain way if we keep pushing that we're going to just raise a generation of of humans that only know how to look for victimization but all of these major issues that our country is facing it's going to be even harder for us to address them if we don't raise our children well i'm gonna say something really bold about my advice for parents and that is everybody has to get involved you can't just rely on somebody else to fix your problems and the school is your problem and then ask yourself what are the gifts that god has given you that you can do to be part of the solution i have my gifts and i'm doing what i can and i don't expect everybody to start a prayer u or to do the same thing we all do what we can do right but everybody can do something and everybody has to do something because we're going to regret it it's going to get to a point where it's too late and then people are going to wake up and it's going to be a lot harder to clean that mess education got us into this mess education is going to have to at least be the first step in getting us out of it [Music] thanks for watching my story to help keep prageru videos free please consider making a tax deductible donation