As Ashesi turns 17, Founder and President Patrick Awuah took the stage at SXSW Edu to share thoughts on how Ashesi has overcome challenges over our history, and the lessons that we learned from it. The talk highlights the necessity of pioneers, the power of constant self-improvement, and the importance of balancing the sciences with the arts and humanities.

“When you’re in a society or in an industry, there’s a generally sort of accepted performance horizon that everyone sees. And often, it takes an individual or an organization to break through that horizon, to punch through it, and then everybody else follows. And so, this is also part of our mission at Ashesi: we try to push up that performance envelope; to break through that horizon and by so doing set a new horizon for everybody else.”

Watch the talk below.