Today on Ready: Leaders to Know, I sit down with C Scott Cooper, Experienced nonprofit and philanthropic leader, and a Professor at Metro State University. Scott grew up in Michigan in a family of educators, who taught him early that service to others is both a responsibility and a privilege. Reading with his mother, a children’s librarian, helped spark a lifelong moral compass rooted in stories about courage, justice, and responsibility. Those values carried him far beyond home. As a student abroad in Poland in 1989, he witnessed the fall of authoritarian regimes and even chipped a piece from the Berlin Wall, an experience that cemented his belief in people powered change. That belief eventually led him into public service, progressive organizing, and teaching others a central lesson he still wrestles with today: how to choose the right fight, at the right time.