Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia recently returned to his roots at Brookwood High School, where he graduated in 2000, to give back to the school he credits, in part, to where he is today.
“It was a place that was very formative to me early in my life both from studying in the Art Department and also running Cross Country,” he tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.
Gebbia says he learned some hard lessons running under some of the same coaches who are still coaching at the school today.
After taking art classes every semester at Brookwood, he ended up at the Rhode Island School of Design, or RISD, where he met another co-founder of Airbnb, Brian Chesky.
“They would push me. They’d get me to find more willpower in myself than I knew I had,” he says.
“Little did I realize at the time, that was actually great training to become an entrepreneur because you have to imagine something that doesn’t exist. And the act of design is looking at the world around you and figuring out how you can improve it,” says Gebbia.
He hopes to improve the lives of students at Brookwood by donating an endowment of $700,000 to the school. Of that, $500,000 will go towards the Visual and Creative Arts Program and the other $200,000 will be used to overlay the school’s track this summer and provide running shoes for Cross Country students over the next five years.
Brookwood principal Bo Ford calls Gebbia a true example of a student paying it forward.
“To have someone like Mr. Gebbia come back and give back in a very deliberate way is very, very special,” he says.
Brookwood is not the only beneficiary of Gebbia. He is also offering a full scholarship to a student at RISD. Last December, he gave $25 million to two charities that help the homeless in San Francisco, home of Airbnb.
“It’s been really fun to just think about the different moments (or) the different chapters in my life, whether it was the formative years at Brookwood and track and the Art Department; whether it was RISD and the design education that I got; or whether it was San Francisco, which is the birth place of our company. It’s humbling and it’s a real privilege to look back and pay it forward,” he says.
And it’s something he says anyone can do.
“We all have people in our lives who’ve helped us in some way, shape, or form. And it doesn’t have to be a monetary gift, it can just be a ‘thank you’ note, just a text message, or an email. And the holiday season is a great time to just think about and reflect on the people in life who’ve helped us get where we are and to just say, ‘Thanks’.”