WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.480 4.2% of children in America today are orphans. That's about 3.2 million children. 2 00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:14.320 Statistically, orphans have a much harder time succeeding in life. Their chances of even 3 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:20.000 graduating high school are disparagingly low compared to their peers with parents. 4 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:25.760 Their stories are often silenced before they even have the opportunity to begin. But that 5 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:31.840 was not to be my story. You see, I was abandoned by my father just after I was born. 6 00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:39.040 And then by my mother, when I was just a little boy. My name is Nic McKinley. 7 00:00:41.360 --> 00:00:42.160 And I'm an orphan. 8 00:00:46.480 --> 00:00:51.840 Being abandoned by both of my parents meant that the odds were heavily stacked against me. 9 00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:58.080 Then everything changed when a wonderful family said yes to adopting me and raising me as their own. 10 00:00:59.200 --> 00:01:05.520 Thanks to my adopted parents saying that simple word yes, I became a son and I was given the 11 00:01:05.520 --> 00:01:12.000 opportunity to defy the odds. I became an Eagle Scout. I graduated high school and I graduated from 12 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:18.320 Harvard University. I then went on to join the United States military special operations 13 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:25.440 as an Air Force Pararescueman. And then served in the CIA in a specialized kinetic unit. 14 00:01:25.440 --> 00:01:31.680 There is an important common denominator in all of this. No matter how good any of us might look 15 00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:38.240 on paper in the media or on the big screen, the one thing we all have in common is that none of us 16 00:01:38.240 --> 00:01:43.280 got where we are alone. Nothing I have accomplished in life would have been possible without God's 17 00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:49.680 and the support of those who believed in me and said yes to helping me defy the odds. 18 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:54.240 Had my parents not adopted me, odds are I would be in prison or dead. 19 00:01:55.040 --> 00:02:00.480 Had my military special operations and CIA instructors not trained me to the highest standard, 20 00:02:01.120 --> 00:02:07.760 I would not have survived 30 combat deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa and other hostile 21 00:02:07.760 --> 00:02:15.120 locations. My special ops unit had a motto. These things we do that others may live. 22 00:02:16.160 --> 00:02:19.520 When you go through special ops training, you think you know what that means. 23 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:25.840 But the truth is you don't know what that means until you deploy. Things get very real. 24 00:02:27.360 --> 00:02:32.160 The level of trauma of death, the pure evil you see humanity is capable of. 25 00:02:32.880 --> 00:02:40.080 That's when I truly understood the motto. When you witness the lives saved, it makes the injuries, 26 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:44.400 the gruesome trauma and the profound loss I witnessed all worth it. 27 00:02:45.840 --> 00:02:50.560 While uncovering terrorist networks overseas, I often bumped into other networks that were running 28 00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:56.000 guns and drugs. And eventually I faced one that was trafficking in something far more heartbreaking. 29 00:02:56.560 --> 00:03:00.640 Children. Many of these children were in fact orphans. 30 00:03:01.600 --> 00:03:07.520 That is when I knew it was time for me to issue a life-changing yes of my own and pursue a new 31 00:03:07.520 --> 00:03:13.920 mission. So I created Deliver Fund, a charity that works with governments and industry partners 32 00:03:13.920 --> 00:03:19.600 to identify human traffickers. My partners and I have built a world-class team of technologists 33 00:03:19.600 --> 00:03:25.840 and intelligence professionals who are putting predators behind bars. But even though I now use my 34 00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:30.880 experience to fight child trafficking, my professional background sometimes causes interesting 35 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:37.120 requests to come my way. Breaking news where the Taliban is quickly sweeping across Afghanistan 36 00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:43.600 and is now effectively taken control of the capital, Kabul. In 2021, as American forces were pulling 37 00:03:43.600 --> 00:03:49.760 out of Afghanistan, the White House called and asked me to help with the rescue of the Afghan youth 38 00:03:49.760 --> 00:03:55.280 girls' national soccer team. The Taliban was actively hunting these girls and some of their 39 00:03:55.280 --> 00:04:01.920 parents had already been killed in the fighting, turning these girls into orphans. How could I not say 40 00:04:01.920 --> 00:04:10.400 yes? This I would do so that they may live. We knew if these children did not escape, they were 41 00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:16.400 either going to be married off to Taliban soldiers or they would be executed. So my team and I worked 42 00:04:16.400 --> 00:04:23.280 day and night over a period of months from halfway across the world to plan and execute their rescue. 43 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:31.200 And despite the insurmountable odds, we were able to covertly transport over 300 women and children 44 00:04:31.200 --> 00:04:36.640 from various locations in Afghanistan to Lisbon, Portugal, where they have been able to start 45 00:04:36.640 --> 00:04:42.800 new lives with political asylum and can keep playing soccer under the protection of the Portuguese 46 00:04:42.800 --> 00:04:52.480 government. It was a miracle set in motion by one simple word. Yes, I've experienced countless 47 00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:59.440 miracles since that first yes uttered by my parents. Enough to know that while a single yes can 48 00:04:59.440 --> 00:05:09.440 change a life, our collective yes can change the world.