The Obama Foundation's Future Series is a program that brings Chicago high schoolers into intimate conversations with accomplished leaders from a wide variety of industries and careers.

It started with a simple idea: Michelle Obama was talking to students at Hyde Park Career Academy when she realized they needed to hear from successful people in person. She wanted to bring those people to the school, which is across the street from the new Obama Center.

"You can't be it if you can't see it," noted Mike Strautmanis, the chief corporate affairs officer for the Obama Foundation. "The idea is to bring people from different walks of life and give students and opportunity to have an intimate conversation with them."

And these people are very accomplished. They have included Chicago Bears president Kevin Warren and rap star Megan Thee Stallion.

Now the events aren't confined to school walls; students get to see real work in places like O'Hare Airport.

Stratumanis knows these types of interactions work, because it worked for him long before the Future Series started.

"I went to law school in part because some lawyers came to my high school," he said. "I didn't know any lawyers, and a couple of them looked like me and I started to think this is something I can do."

Rayshawn Blackman is in the middle of a similar journey. He went to Future Series events throughout his high school career, and it helped him through some tough times.

"From freshman year, I started to experience deaths. And then junior year my mom passed and she left three babies," he said. "I didn't know who to go to, who to talk to. I got a mental blockage where I was depressed."

But the program showed him he had a bright future.

"For me, it's living proof. If I'm in the room with someone of that caliber, I can be a person of that caliber," Blackman said.

Hyde Park principal Dr. Rosette Edinburg has seen the program's effects on many students like Blackman.

"It negates the belief that where you are born determines who you will be," she said.

And now the Future Series is moving beyond Hyde Park Career Academy.

"We need to have students from all over the city have these experiences, and they can do it at the Obama Center," said Strautmanis. "We'll have places for people to come where they can meet people they admire in their careers."