I tell people, “I met the right people, at the right time, at the right place because I forgot my glasses one day." While sitting up front at an event due to forgetting my glasses, I met the government leadership of my hometown of San Leandro, California. They shared with me that our city is transforming ourselves into a city of innovation with the catalyst of a fiber-optic broadband loop installation. I soon realized that we were focused on attraction of startups and talent as our primary strategy of building an innovation ecosystem from scratch. This concerned me that we were focused on attraction of people before focusing on the people from the community to build our ecosystem. Since then, I realized that in order to build a sustainable engine for innovation in our communities, we must build it with those that know it best - the youngest citizens of our communities.