My mother had an eighth grade education; my father had a third grade education. Through others' generosity and guidance, I had the miraculous opportunity to go to Stanford then Harvard for my PhD. My childhood experience of poverty inspired my studies and now I lead a team that does research as a public good. There are over 40,000 non-profits in the Houston metro working to improve lives, but almost all of them have no research capacity because it's extremely expensive. My team does research that directly informs their efforts for FREE so that everyone can access high quality research regardless of whether they can afford it. Our research informs efforts to meet our community's needs more effectively and efficiently, and it informs efforts to ultimately eliminate needs.