I distinctly remember a dinner conversation with my family around the time I was eight or so when my father asked me what I’d like to do when I became a “grown-up.” I thought for a moment and then, very seriously, said, “I want to be the person who comes up with lots of ideas and then makes them happen.” Thinking about it now, I could have more simply stated it, “I want to be an entrepreneur.”

It took me until college to say out loud again what I had known since childhood and even longer to believe that I could actually do it.

I like to think that the jewelry business I started a year out of college and now, four years later am re-imagining, really began with my father’s question. When I answered that question with what might have seemed like a far fetched answer, he never uttered a word of discouragement–and that made all the difference.

It was that kind of encouragement, continued throughout my adolescence, that allowed me to lead with ambition and follow through with confidence. I was never given the blind support that might have set me up for a disappointment, but rather the motivation and the chance to rise to an occasion.

When I began working with the students at 32nd Street School in Los Angeles, I started off by asking them two questions. One question about their past and one question about their future.

In the video below, please find a selection of students from 32nd Street School as they share their ambitions and goals for the future.