Craig Newmark speaking in our class was such an amazing experience. Craigslist is an American classified advertising company where people can put up classified ads for anything they are looking to sell and other people can go to Craigslist to buy whatever there is to offer. Craigslist started off as an email cc. It then developed into a huge company in 1999 where Mr. Newmark allowed people to keep the money they made off of sales because he felt they could do better off with the money than him. Mr. Newmark went into customer service because he felt unnecessary in the management department. Within customer service he put in 20 years of work because of a sentiment from his days in Sunday School as a young child that carried over into his adulthood: treat people how you want to be treated.
After the 20 years he put in customer service, Craig Newmark went into philanthropy (he founded Craig Newmark Philanthropies) where he worked with underrepresented communities, protecting voting rights and other amazing endeavors because he believes there is always need in the world and he has the money to at least help out a little with this need. He gives people without a voice the money to help them be a force for change. Mr. Newmark also made a very generous donation to the Howard University journalism program because he is very invested in the idea of honest journalism. When asked why journalism specifically because his profession has nothing to do with it, his response was so beautiful. In high school, his US history class taught him “a trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy. People in the press should tell us when things are going wrong”.
Craig Newmark is an amazingly influential, generous and mellow man. His appreciation for his own growth and his ability to realize where his lapses in judgement lay is so commendable and so lovely to listen to. It was an honor and pleasure to be able to listen to him speak in class. I hope to one day work with him or meet him or anything more than what I already did in class. It would honestly be life changing to begin or further my career with him.
There’s no genius behind it. It’s persistence and listening to people.
Craig Newmark
The Nokks 