Inside Google Billionaire Eric Schmidt’s $1 Billion Moon Shot Plan To Fund The World’s Most Promising Teens

“Both of us have had a hand at some point in our lives—somebody believed in us, somebody did something to transform our opportunities,” says Wendy Schmidt. “We realized talent is distributed everywhere in the world, but opportunity absolutely isn’t.”

“There’s a general consensus that great talent appears by age 16, but not by, like, 13 or 14,” Schmidt says. They knew they needed to find smart youngsters who weren’t on anyone’s radar, and lower their barriers to entry. Eric Schmidt—a Berkeley computer science Ph.D. who spent more than a decade at the helm of Google, from 2001-11—initially wanted to seek out math and science geniuses. Wendy insisted on looking for brilliance and potential in any field.

Lydia Ruth Nottingham found out about the program from her Hong Kong boarding school, which is part of the United World Colleges network, another Rise partner. “It seemed almost too good to be true,” says Nottingham, a 17-year-old U.K. native who has been elected five times to the UK Youth Parliament and has been selected for the Harvard Book Prize.

“I was struck by the diversity of passion,” says Eric Schmidt. “Teenagers, if they’re focused, can really do amazing things.”ven those who failed to win the full package of scholarships and mentoring opportunities get to be part of the Rise network. Many of the 50,000 applicants have already taken to group chats to keep in touch, helping each other prepare for their interviews and reading over each other’s college essays.

Schmidt Futures also runs a program to support promising young math, science and tech Ph.D.s, funding their one- to two-year postdoctoral fellowships—so long as they study something other than their area of expertise—and the Schmidts are exploring programs to support star tenured faculty members and college students as well.

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