Trust in academic institutions, corporations, brands and governments are at an all time low according to Dr. Esther Wojcicki, the brainchild behind the “Moonshots in Education” academic framework. The Woj Way has been tested and Woj explains that raising three of the nations most successful women was a function of giving them freedom through the lense of trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness (TRICK).

The Golden State Warriors and Dr. Woj are bringing moonshots in schools, one of the moonshots they have impacted are immigrant students and minority moonshot thinkers in schools in Oakland and the Peninsula like Design Tech High School at Oracle. Dr. Woj and the Rhode Island School of Design are committed to impacting and inspiring more design schools globally.

In a rare appearance at the Stanford University Alumni Center, Woj took questions from Stanford faculty, education thought leaders, undergraduate and high school students on what it would take to design for trust in our schools. When we look at the world today from Google to Tesla, Woj is central.

Woj talks about TRICK as a necessary ingredient for students and communities to live a happy and examined life. Joining legacies such as Mohammed Ali and Mother Theresa, Woj was inducted into the happiness wall of fame at Stanford this year with her daughter, Anne Wojcicki, the CEO and founder of 23andMe.

The popular book Moonshots in Education, blended learning approach is being used by award winning schools and teachers all over the world to design moonshot classrooms which are based on Dr. Woj’s Trust Framework. For example, Woj inspired students to raise their own funding to realize their initial moonshots at Design Tech at Oracle. In less than 4 months, dtech students received a donation from Salesforce towards the first VR computer as well as the HTC vive virtual headset.

Dr. Woj is Kind. She celebrates student success and always ensures that they are fed. Moonshots is about “Kindness” and giving students the freedom and structure to accomplish anything they need. Dr. Woj goes into detail on what this could entail in her upcoming book, “How to raise successful people.”

“From Palo Alto to São Paulo, the lack of trust affects the social fabric, peace, human rights, justice and the economy. Before people can engage with each other in civil, productive or economic ways they must feel that it is safe to trust in the system.” Dr. Woj responded to Engineering and Design professor, Dr. Jeung, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Robotics Education program between Stanford and the MiT media lab. Dr. Woj believes moonshot teachers have the greatest responsibility and society must honor each child’s moonshot. She explains about Malala and her moonshot and what it looks like from a parents perspective.

Dr. Woj believes students must be given a voice and it is a civic responsibility. If a teacher needs to talk to the governor to make a student moonshot be realized, moonshot teachers have that design ability and design sense. The governors office has called Dr. Woj several times to advise on a statewide Education Moonshot.

“Dr. Woj is refining the blended learning approach and no one works more than Woj in transforming education across the globe”. This was the sentiment heard coming from faculty and research scientists at Stanford and MiT in the most recent xPrize event on Artificial Intelligence that our moonshots team attended.

This year, Dr. Woj was invited to advise one of many schools in Silicon Valley, Design Tech High School at Oracle on their moonshots design lab program.

One of the moonshot graduates,Mr. Jeltsin, chose the impact design route and took a gap year to alleviate the impact of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Jeltsin and moonshot students chose the Moonshot approach and designed impact for Puerto Rico students. “This young man is an immigrant and also the first one to graduate high school in his family. He is the embodiment of moonshot thinking.” Dr. Woj remarked.

Dr. Woj and Durant call this a Moonshot for Puerto Rico. Students and teachers from Puerto Rico came to Design Tech and were trained and developed in the Moonshots in Education framework. Now Jeltsin has started his own non-profit and will take a gap year to go to Puerto Rico and help rebuild schools.

Woj spent time with the both Design Tech and Puerto Rico students in the most recent Moonshots Design Lab taught at Oracle, moonshot teachers and administrators in Puerto Rico have faced unimaginable challenges due to natural disasters. With more than 300 schools closed after Hurricane Maria, there has been a significant student drain as most families are moving to the mainland to ensure that their children have schools to go to. Puerto Rico needs a moonshot.

Dr. Woj is often seen restless about the state of Puerto Rico and seeks a solution that empowers the entire nation. Woj seeks a solution to empower dtech student Jeltsin as he embarks on making an impact through design thinking moonshots in Puerto Rico. Technology access is key.

In the dtech Moonshots Thinking Design Lab, Puerto Rico students and teachers discovered that Google and YouTube had the greatest impact in education today. YouTube is the largest education site in the world with more than a billion hits per day (not including entertainment). Google allows us all to search information and learn about anything we want to learn. Educators need to know that no one has to sit and listen to a boring lecture now. We can all learn online. Woj thinks that technology might mitigate the large numbers of schools closing in Puerto Rico.

Forbes discovered that Moonshots is about promoting independence and critical thinking, encouraging kids to dig into topics that truly inspire them, and developing the self-sufficiency to take control of their future, both to be happy and to affect positive change in the world. In freedom@dtech students created their own constitution and process and they met weekly to discuss their moonshots and how those could be realized.

Our moonshots team had the privilege to attend Dr. Wojcicki’s induction into the Stanford happiness hall of fame earlier this year along Anne Wojcicki, the founder of 23andMe. TRUST is fundamental in raising the most successful students in any classroom and we have refined an defined that classroom. In our collaboration with 23andMe, the moonshot is 100% human and no company is masterful in Trust Design than 23andMe.

Woj is often guiding and training global and national leaders, head of states, institutions, districts, teachers and parents and it is clear that she has shaped Silicon Valley itself through the moonshot trick attributes.

Policy-makers, governments and world leaders are now considering moonshots as the most comprehensive framework in that it works across any perceived or known difference boundaries including, but not limited to language or the design identity of academic institutions.

Design Tech at Oracle was fortunate when Woj agreed to advise their moonshot design labs and teachers. Woj’s counsel, mentorship, training and development to teachers on Design Thinking moonshots had extraordinary outcomes. The Design as Discovery course first piloted at dtech became a Stanford course taught by Freedom and Woj.

Students in that particular course accomplished extraordinary results and so did the instructors. Woj is clear that teachers MUST model extreme personalization at dtech and students do well when given freedom and tools to success. Not only that, but teachers ought to ensure they knew that student opinions and creativity are valued.

Moonshots in Education have moonshot attributes, Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration and Kindness (TRICK). We prototyped this idea at Stanford with Stanford professor of philosophy, Dr. Kenneth Taylor when we taught the course: Normativity and the architecture of human being.

Dr. Woj takes time to guide and coach dtech moonshot faculty. She always shares that C in TRICK suggests that Collaboration is necessary in realizing moonshots. This concept is part of the Moonshots Design Research team on the Self-Driving classroom moonshot at 42.us.org and France.

Woj provides high powered, hands-on mentorship to dtech and in less than 4 months, students had authored books, built computer hardware, presented moonshots at Oracle Open World, taught and designed their own courses, created their own cryptocurrency and built a prototype of their own learning management system which became the official learning management system for the year. The results from this training were unimaginable.