CEO Letter – May 2026

The Next Chapter: Honoring Our Legacy, Empowering Our Future

“We have mistaken privilege for potential for so long that we have forgotten how to see the brilliance of those who are simply trying to survive.”

I want to speak to you about a woman whose name will never grace a headline.

She has no digital footprint, no stage to stand on, and no formal accolades to her name. Yet, every Tuesday and Thursday, long before the sun dares to rise, she laces up worn shoes and walks forty minutes through the mud of her village. She goes to a small community center to teach adults to read, men and women who were told by broken systems that the written word was a luxury they didn’t deserve.

She is the reason I am here.

Not just her, but the version of her that breathes in every corner of this earth: the young leaders in Bujumbura launching entrepreneurship clubs in crumbling classrooms; or Novaira Khan in Karachi, using film to force her neighbors to see the climate crisis in their own backyards. These are the people holding the fabric of humanity together with their bare hands while the rest of the world is distracted by those who get the credit.

Carrying the Flame

As I step into the role of CEO of World Merit, I am acutely aware of the monumental shoes I am stepping into, and the sacred legacy I am being trusted to carry forward.

World Merit was not born of coincidence; it was forged by the shared brilliance, visionary grit, and selfless dedication of Chris Arnold and Ron Boehm. Together, as our co-founders, they breathed life into an audacious dream. Chris and Ron looked at a fractured world and saw a canvas for unity, channeling their collective passion into a movement that refused to accept the status quo.

Under their stewardship, World Merit didn’t just grow; it became a lifeline. They didn’t just build an organization; they built a global conscience.

We owe our strength to their tireless, unwavering belief that young people are not just the architects of the future, they are the architects of the present. They gave a generation its voice, its platform, and its purpose.

As Ron transitions into his next great chapter, Board President of World Merit and, a well-deserved semi-retirement to a life on the open seas, and as we continue to honor the foundational spark that Chris ignited, we carry forward their North Star with a sense of profound responsibility. Chris and Ron built the vessel; it is now our privilege, and our duty, to sail it toward horizons they always knew we could reach.

The Roots of My “Why”

I haven’t always carried a title. I have failed more times than I can count. I haven’t always had a microphone or a platform. For most of my life, I carried something else entirely: a quiet, burning frustration that sat like a stone in my chest. It is the very same ache I know many of you are carrying today.

I grew up enveloped by the endless, whispering cornfields of the American Midwest, just far enough outside of Chicago to feel entirely invisible. In that rural pocket of the world, “access” wasn’t a reality, it was a luxury meant for someone else, somewhere else. I can still feel the cold, sharp sting of showing up to sports games in mismatched gear, swallowing the burning shame of looking at our opponents. Our school couldn’t afford the simple dignity of a uniform. We had the heart, but we lacked the polished wrapper that told the world we belonged in the room. I had to stand by and watch as the things that kept us alive, our arts, our classes, our athletics,were quietly bled dry and cut away, simply because our zip code couldn’t afford them.

My youth was a series of heartbreaks, watching the things I loved disappear into the dust. I remember the literal, physical sickness, the utter disgust, of standing on a beach after the tourists left, watching the sunset over plastic garbage strewn across pristine sand. I remember the hollow, suffocating ache of diving in the Florida Keys and watching the vibrant, living coral reefs turn into ghostly, bleached bone. I remember the day they leveled a local sanctuary, crushing the trees and paving over the earth for the sake of “development,” leaving nothing but the smell of hot asphalt where life used to be.

Back then, I didn’t have a map. I had all this fierce energy and absolutely nowhere to channel it. I was just a girl in a forgotten town.

So, I ran. I climbed. I entered the corporate world and spent years speaking with people all over the globe, begging for resources, begging for a chance to help. But the corporations and the institutions (universities) I poured my soul into didn’t care about the people behind the numbers. They wouldn’t give me the space to honor the human beings who were reaching out to us for help. After years of grinding, after generating over $750 million in sales and partnerships for others, I looked at my hands and realized none of it mattered. It was just numbers on a screen. Money to private equity firms. Increased stock prices for shareholders. Bonuses to CEO’s that never made it to the employees. The world was still bleeding.

I decided to stop feeding the machine. I chose to redirect every ounce of my energy into something that actually leaves a scar on the darkness and helps to change the world. An actual impact.

When I looked at World Merit, when I saw the beautiful, selfless, relentless, breathtaking work every single one of you did to hold humanity together during the darkest days of COVID, my heart stopped. I knew exactly who you were. You were the ones fighting for the people,oceans and the forgotten places. I jumped at the chance to interview, because I knew I had finally found my home. I had finally found the map to make an impact.

The Anatomy of Merit

That gap is where World Merit lives.

I know what it feels like to have the potential but none of the privilege. I know the specific grief of seeing a problem you feel powerless to fix. For too long, the word “Merit” has been hijacked by elite institutions and dressed in the cold fabric of credentials. At World Merit, we are reclaiming it.

True merit is not what you have achieved; it is what you refused to stop caring about even when caring was hard.

Real merit is the stubborn persistence of the heart, the courage to stay soft in a world that demands you be sturdy as concrete. It is the refusal to surrender your empathy when indifference would have been so much easier.

Our Commitment: A Ladder, Not a Rejection Letter

I did not accept this leadership role because I have all the answers. I accepted it because I have spent the last decade speaking to people across the Global South who hungered for an education they were denied. I accepted it because I have seen, for decades, that opportunity is not evenly distributed; it is often handed to the well-connected while the truly deserving are left in the shadows.

I accepted this role because I believe in the radical question World Merit is asking: What happens when the people doing the most important work on Earth are finally given the help and recognition they deserve?

I believe the solutions we’ve been looking for are already here. They are being lived right now by people who don’t need another rejection letter; they need a ladder. They need a hand. They need a map of what is possible.

I know there are nights you wonder if you are screaming into a void. I know you have felt invisible. Please hear me: You are not a footnote in someone else’s agenda. You are the main story.

We are going to spend every day of this organization’s life making sure the world knows that what you do is not “small.” We are the home for the people who are ready to be heard and to make a change.

Thank you for refusing to stop caring. We are going to design a future, together, that will change the world for generations to come.

With gratitude and resolve,

Breanna Leuze – CEO, World Merit