“Now, as smartphones are coming up, there are all kinds of apps that will start to be developed that will help women.”

We have to be careful in how we use this light shined on us.

Take time to learn about the lives of women around the world-and try to play a small part in their fight to create the future they deserve.

Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.

Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It’s what propels societies forward.

Poverty disproportionately affects women around the world.

We set out what’s going to be our work time versus our foundation time versus family time, and we’ll reassess that… sometimes every week.

Deep human connection is … the purpose and the result of a meaningful life – and it will inspire the most amazing acts of love, generosity, and humanity.

You are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

Everyone agrees that the failure of our high schools is tragic. It’s bad business, and it’s bad policy. But we act as if it can’t be helped. It can be helped. We designed these high schools; we can redesign them.

Women are the centre of the family. It’s the woman who decides what’s eaten in the house, when to have the kids vaccinated; everything that has to do with the children’s health revolves around her.

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups – development, testing, marketing, user education.

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

With economic opportunity, sometimes it’s making sure that if they’re not in a place where they can have good jobs, that when they have economic opportunity, they have digital tools to use.

Around the world we have girls in primary school at about the same rate now as boys, but keeping them in quality secondary schools is where the world is lagging. I’m seeing a lot of countries look at this now.

Government funding that’s coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world. It’s really palpable – it’s making a huge difference saving lives.

What great changes have not been ambitious?

Of course we have to make a profit, but we have to make a profit over the long haul, not just the short term, and that means we must keep investing in research and development.

We’ve had 60 years of intellectual development in Iran. How can we have the same system?

The solutions to the problems of the distraught lower strata of society are problems that can only be solved in the context of an overall political, cultural, economic development.

China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.

[Therefore] holding a trial outside the court. I think that is fairness, that is justice, that is a civil society. Otherwise call it an evil society because everything is hidden.

When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That’s dangerous for human development.

Algeria was therefore only the beginning of something that was in development: this is why I say that it’s the global capitalist system that finally reacted against us.

In my view, the Western model of influencing the development of third world countries is doomed to failure.