The complexity of challenges that those young people face means you have to do it in partnership. You have to work with like-minded organizations and individuals who can really help you to address the multiple barriers that those young people face.
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Tech. I'm your host Karolina Milanzi. As you know, in this space, we often explore how technology, purpose, and leadership come together to really shape a more equitable future. Today, we bring together two exceptional human beings and brands. On one side, I'm going to have Jizen Arthur, who is the CEO of Mission 44. If you're not familiar with Mission 44, first of all, you should. But here, I tell you what they do. They're a foundation founded by Sir Louis Hamilton and they are focused on advancing social mobility, representation, and real opportunity for underserved youth. My other guest is somebody that you are all very well familiar with, Don Mcguire, who is the CMO at Qualcomm, a company that has been focused not just on technology leadership, but also social impact leadership, really matching the commitment to creating more pathways into STEM through innovation and the creation of the jobs for the future. Today's conversation is really not though about marketing. It's really about partnership. When major tech brand players decide to pull their resources, their influence and their platform for an impact that is bigger than their brand. So without further ado, let me welcome Don and Jason to the conversation.
Hey, good to see you both. Thank you for finding the time. We come together at the end of a 2025 F1 season. So before Lewis goes and doesn't talk to anybody till the next season, I thought we talk about something that is dear to me and I know to Don as well. But I want to start with Jason. Thank you for being here. You and I have touched base over LinkedIn and followed each other for quite some time and obviously I'm familiar with Mission 44, but I want to start with how a partnership comes together. Obviously from a mission perspective, you said from the very beginning that you needed partners to help you with their platform to get to a bigger reach. And I'm curious how you pick Qualcomm or you let Qualcomm pick you. I don't know which way the conversation started, but how do you go about finding that right partnership to make sure that your mission has the biggest impact?
Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the podcast and it's great to be here with you and with Don. If I go right to the core of what we as a charity are about, we're about transforming the lives of young people from underserved communities who often don't get the support that they need within education to thrive, but also to access great careers in STEM. And so Lewis founded Mission 44 in 2021 so that we could support those young people by finding great organizations and leaders around them and investing in those organizations and leaders to provide that support for those young people. But also recognizing the power of storytelling, of advocacy more broadly to create the systemic change needed so that those young people could really access those great careers. You know, Mission 44, we've been growing rapidly since we launched and we're now operating in the UK and the US and Brazil. We're reaching 500,000 young people through our investments. But the reality is that the complexity of challenges that those young people face means you have to do it in partnership. You have to work with like-minded organizations and individuals who can really help you to address the multiple barriers that those young people face. And so we were delighted to connect Don and I and to learn more about what Qualcomm are doing. And it was very quick in my conversations with Don to see that as a corporate, Qualcomm Snapdragon are absolutely committed to using their networks, using their platform, using their storytelling capacity to create change and that's exactly what we want as a nonprofit. We want partners who share the same values and share the same ambitions as we do. So, I think we met at a race in Miami and got to know each other and we've been growing the partnership ever since.
That's great. And Don, from your side, obviously I know that you're very committed to closing the digital divide. You and I have spoken about this topic in particular, but more generally, Qualcomm has always wanted to be a brand that has a soul, as you often say, not just about innovation for the purpose of innovation. Where does the partnership with Mission 44 come in for you? What are the points of connection that you made?
Well, thanks Carolina for having myself and Jason on to tell this amazing story. It is probably one of the most natural, like-minded partnerships that I could think of when I first met Jason in Miami. And by the way, this is just another testament to the power of sport to bring people together, right? And F1 has a lot of amazing aspects to it. But to be able to meet people and network and then find out what sort of amazing ideas have birthed from the fact that Sir Lewis is this amazing athlete, this amazing person and he's using the power of that to accomplish greater things beyond just being one of the most amazing drivers that have ever lived. And so it's just a testament to the power of sport first. Secondly, when Jason and I first met and I understood really the mission of Mission 44, it was a no-brainer. It literally was instantaneous. We sort of smiled at each other and I said, "Look, this is a no-brainer." As we look at how we can bring a soul or at least express the fact that as a brand Snapdragon has a soul, Qualcomm as a company has been very soulful in what we've done over the years. 40th anniversary this year of the company to promote STEM and promote the fact that we want young people to have access to opportunities so that we can help develop the workforce of the future. As you may or may not realize, people who are excited to work in the technology field to advance innovation, to bring the world to that next phase of what we can all look forward to, to break down barriers, to close divides, we don't have enough people like that in the world. And it really starts with access at an early age to technology, to leadership, to education, to tools so that we can get these young people excited. And when you're dealing with outside forces that either are telling you you can't do something or are showing you that you shouldn't do something, you have to fight against that. And that's what Mission 44 does. By opening up people's eyes both on the partnership side as well as these kids' eyes to the possibilities of what they can do if they have that equal access, if the playing field has been leveled for them, is pretty amazing. So it was really a no-brainer for us to start our journey with Mission 44. We're just getting started. There's so much we're going to do together. It's really exciting. But it is about that great equalizing factor. We have a long history with our Thinkabit Labs and bringing these tools to underserved communities and to youth at the elementary school level, at the middle school level all the way through to really spur that spark so that we can actually create the workforce of the future that's going to help the world move forward. And so adding Mission 44 to this was really natural and I think it just creates an amplification platform to help more people.
I couldn't agree more with everything you said and specifically the intersection of sport and technology not just from a marketing perspective. When I think about young people, for a lot of people sport is where they try to gravitate, especially in underserved communities, they see that as their way to a better life, better economy and all of that. And I think that often times they don't think beyond being the athlete. They don't think about being the engineer behind the car or anything that has to do with the TV around there. And I think that this partnership brings a lot of power as well in seeing the opportunity that there is in STEM for the jobs of the future. Jason, I'm curious, I think it was June that you and Lewis went to have a chat with the UK prime minister and the minister of education and you discussed what the government could do more of. One of the commitments that they made was to bring more data through the voices of young people to have more transparency in what needs to be done and the needs that need to be met. I believe that the first set of data was recently shared and I'm curious from your perspective, what were the things that you found different than what you expected and the points that instead were actually proven as far as the belief that you had in those needs to be met?
Well, I think the first thing to say is it was a somewhat surreal but really powerful moment to be walking into 10 Downing Street with Lewis and a group of young people and our partners. And the whole purpose of that event and the campaign that we launched this time last year was to say that if you want young people to access these jobs of the future and to be able to thrive, then our education systems have to be even more thoughtful and better equipped to tailor the types of learning and the types of support that they give to young people who may have lots of different vulnerabilities, but who with support and empowerment can really succeed and achieve. Now the only way in which you can provide that support is if we have a better understanding about those needs and that's not just in terms of attendance or their academic grades but also their perceptions of education. What do they like about school? What are they struggling with? To what extent do they feel as though they belong? And so that was one of the areas where we managed to secure a commitment from the prime minister and the government and we've been working with them ever since, boosting that data but also most importantly how do we ensure that policy makers are doing something in response to it. Now there was some really interesting insights that came out of it. A quarter of young people ultimately saying that they felt little to no motivation when they go to school and over half saying that in terms of access to a trusted adult, a teacher or a leader that they felt actually cared in them, they didn't believe that they had that. So some worrying things that we saw from that data. Now what we're doing is working with the Department of Education within the UK to say how do we support schools to do something meaningfully to respond to those statistics? And there's going to be some legislation coming out in the new year which will include some of the commitments that the prime minister made as part of our campaign and we'll continue to build from there.
In your opinion, what are the core stepping stones to create more access to STEM that industry partners like Qualcomm can really help you with?
So we tend at Mission 44 to focus on three areas, our three A's, of which the most important is access, but I'll come to that in a second. So firstly, we think it's critical that every young person feels as though the world of STEM is a place where if they're interested, they can succeed. And for too many young people, for too many girls, for too many ethnic minority young people, those from a lower income background, they aren't surrounded by people or they're not getting the information to say, look, you can be a fantastic engineer, you can help to shape the technologies of the future. So a lot of our work is focused on how are we creating opportunities to open the eyes of young people and to raise their aspirations. Secondly, their achievement. So if you want those young people to be able to progress academically, they need the support at key milestones to be able to demonstrate that they've got that learning at a technical level, at academic level. And so there's a lot of focus there. And then third is access. Whether it's access to technology, the internet, laptops, consistent access that enables them to develop those skills and to raise those aspirations. And that's definitely part of our relationship with Snapdragon. And then things like, do they have the financial support to be able to study a STEM subject in higher education, or do they have the opportunity to access early career opportunities that are going to enable them to then progress in their careers too. So aspirations, achievement, and ultimately access, we believe are critical if we're going to see incredibly talented young people enter into STEM professions in the way that they're currently not.
Don, if I think about Qualcomm and what Jason just said, I was going through my head all the things that from a technology perspective, you're already enabling. If you're thinking about how you have evolved the power in the phone to be the most cherished device that we all carry not just from an entertainment perspective but access and now AI, and if I think about what you're doing with Snapdragon and PCs, how listening to the needs of the kids and looking at your pathway from a technology perspective, you see correlation and alignments as far as how you can drive change.
Well, I mean to build on what Jason said, there's two levels of integration or enablement we can provide. First is enabling these kids through tools to explore and achieve and enable their path, whether it's better access to tools like state-of-the-art PCs with amazing performance, battery life, and AI, so that they can attend classes, consume content, create content, and really explore the world of collaboration through technology. And that could be through a laptop powered by Snapdragon, a smartphone, a pair of glasses, whether it's augmented reality or virtual reality to create worlds. That's level one. Level two, which I think is even more meaningful, is building and making and creating. With Arduino and the addition of Arduino and Edge Impulse to our family of companies, we are going to be able to bring Mission 44 students and kids that Mission 44 has targeted for their programs the ability to make, to develop, to build things from the most basic maker platforms with our UNOQ all the way through to more complex platforms for this idea of, "I want to not only get a career in STEM, I want to be a builder. I want to be a maker. I want to create that next innovation." Through these platforms where all you have to do is plug it into a PC or a laptop and you can start creating, you can start coding, it's going to be an amazing advancement for these kids to turn them into developers, into creators, especially from a technology perspective, not just from a content perspective. So I think those are the two levels that we're really looking forward to. And again, democratizing the access to this technology for these kids is going to be a game changer for them. And this is such an important time to do that because the power and the commitment from Mission 44 coupled with the power that AI now gives to anybody who wants to be a builder, who wants to create, is amazing as long as you have the access to that technology.
Right. Jason, I'm curious from your perspective, what does a good partnership look like not just in terms of funding but also in terms of accountability and involvement and ultimately long-term commitment?
Well, my job at Mission 44 is always to make sure that we as an organization are growing and obviously financial support is critical to that, but I always push myself and the team to think holistically. So access to networks, access to expertise. We do a huge amount of storytelling, and those partners who can enable us to reach more audiences because I'm always very clear that although I'm very proud of the investments that we make, the grants that we give to nonprofits and communities now in the UK and the US and Brazil, and over time even more, actually the power of what we're going to do is the learning that we generate from those investments and how we tell the story about the impact of that to shape the hearts and minds and perspectives of others. And so when we're developing these partnerships, that's what we're looking for. We're looking for partners who can supplement the skills and expertise that we have and actually help that to grow. They can plug gaps. But also absolutely underpinning all of that has to be a shared set of values. So, you know, I never want to, and Lewis is exactly the same, want to see Mission 44 focus on headlines alone or getting nice press coverage or PR. It's always got to be about impact and being able to demonstrate ultimately that lives are being changed by the work that we're doing. And so that's why we're so excited to be working with Snapdragon because that's never been in question in any of the conversations that I've had with Don and the team. It's always been about how can this partnership bring our mutual assets together to transform lives. And as soon as you've got that shared ambition, then you're in a good place.
