AMNA NAWAZ: Well, hope is tough to hang on to when faced with some of the world's most pressing problems, but it's also a tool to help solve them.

Jim Bildner is the CEO of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, one of the world's largest venture philanthropy organizations.

It finds and funds entrepreneurs tackling big issues, from health care access to clean water initiatives and more.

One of those entrepreneurs is Kiah Williams, co-founder of SIRUM, which redirects unused medications to people in need.

KIAH WILLIAMS, Co-Founder, SIRUM: My life's work is trying to impact the communities like the one I grew up in, which are Black, brown, and low-income communities in this country.

SIRUM started as a student project.

And it was like a ragtag group of students, alumni volunteers.

The original idea was this idea that it's just as easy to donate as to destroy medicine.

We have grown to a platform and a program that broadly distributes medications, and we have done over a quarter-of-a-billion dollars of medicine to over 300,000 people.

AMNA NAWAZ: In his new book, "A Matter of Hope," Jim Bildner more stories of impact and how hope fuels that work.

For the record, Jim Bildner and his wife, Nancy, are supporters of the "News Hour."

I sat down with Jim recently to talk about the book and his work.

Great to see you.

Thank you for being here.

JIM BILDNER, CEO, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation: No, so, so glad to be here.

Thanks for inviting me.

AMNA NAWAZ: So Kiah is just one of the leaders, changemakers, visionaries, as you call them, that you profile in this book.

How did you decide who to choose, who to include in this book?

JIM BILDNER: So, at Draper Richards Kaplan, we have funded nearly 280 leaders like Kiah.

And you're asking me which one of these children, these adults who are making amazing things do I love the most.

I love them all.

JIM BILDNER: And the nine folks that are profiled in that book share this common characteristic, which is all of them have been profoundly impacted by the problems they're addressing.

And unlike too many, they have refused to walk away from it.

And the characteristic that has led them to be able to do these things -- and, by the way, they're not super-resourced, they don't have a ton of money, they don't have incredible networks.

It's this ability to see the world as it exists, but also to imagine a future that's different, and here's the key, to be able to turn that imagination into reality.

AMNA NAWAZ: You capture all of that resilience, this idea to imagine a better world, as you say, under the word hope, which can feel very wishy-washy sometimes.

What did you learn about each of these leaders in terms of where that hope is derived from?

How did they hang on to it in the face of what can be enormous challenges?

JIM BILDNER: Right.

So, in our world, hope is a verb.

It's something you do with, not something that you hope that just occurs.

It's a point of view.

It's this -- again, this ability to know the world you're living in, so you're not just blindly optimistic, but to see in clear ways what can be different, and the resilience of each of these folks, again, proximity to the problem.

Everyone profiled knew that problem cold because it hit them.

It's the ability to believe and see incrementally that, if you stay with this problem and make a difference, over time, you will change it.

We have funded 280 investments.

Nearly two -- nearly three-quarters are impacting 10,000 lives or more, nearly two-thirds 50,000 lives or more.

And the world has not given me a free pass.

And even in the things that I have had happen personally, and I'm not immune to the news, I wake up every day and know we have got incredible leaders who are changing the course and destiny of millions of people.

And, I mean, that's just irreplaceable.

AMNA NAWAZ: You write about a time in your life when hope has really seemed elusive.

You write very vulnerably about losing your own son, Peter, to a drug overdose in 2005.

You write, as you put it, that the construct you built your life around was shattered in that moment.

How did you hang on to hope in that unimaginable loss?

JIM BILDNER: Yes.

And so, like so many, at that moment, when I remember coming in -- I had been working out, and I got came into our house.

And Nancy, my wife, was on the phone, and I could tell just by her look that Peter had died, and it was the sheriff who had been -- had called her and found my son's body.

And the gravitational pull for folks who've gone through this is almost irresistible.

In our case and so many who have gone through this, there's a fear of -- not a fear.

There's just a sense of, how did we fail our son who we loved and cared for?

But I quickly understood that you only have one life to live.

And I could do more in service to Peter.

So I think about him every single day.

And the path I chose, as readers will know, now, about a month later, I penned an article that I then read on "Morning Edition" called "Anyone's Son," because I wanted all those folks who had lost their son or daughter to know they weren't alone.

AMNA NAWAZ: Fifteen years after Peter's passing, your wife, Nancy, was diagnosed with stage four cancer.

She was given six months to live.

That was back in 2021.

You write in your book: "More than 80 chemo cycles, two clinical trials later, Nancy is still with me."

AMNA NAWAZ: How is she doing today?

JIM BILDNER: She's holding her own.

She's an amazing human being, and I would not be the person I am without her, as I hope I made clear in that book.

And, again, contextualizing this for your viewers, I got that call that many people get from -- in Nancy's case from her surgeon, who finally got a look at the cancer and literally called me on my cell phone in our office and said: "I'm sorry to tell you this, Mr.

Bildner, but your wife has cancer everywhere, and if I were you, I'd put her in hospice now."

And, of course, I didn't.

And so what I learned from that experience, and, again, the gravitational pull, what's going to happen to her, what's going to happen to me, was in fact I could be a caregiver.

And the joy of taking care of my wife and what she has given back to me, again, is priceless.

AMNA NAWAZ: Jim, is there something about this moment in time in particular that made you want to write this book, that said this is the message people need right now?

JIM BILDNER: Oh, my gosh, if there ever was a moment in time.

Again, in this prelaunch of the book and writing the book, I have talked to thousands of people, and the underlying feeling I get from them is a sense of hopelessness, a sense of no agency, a sense of an inability to make a difference.

And I just felt like, I have to help them see the counterfactual.

We all can do so much more, and that book is about helping people see that.

AMNA NAWAZ: The book is "A Matter of Hope."

The author is Jim Bildner.

Jim, thank you so much.

It's been such a pleasure.

JIM BILDNER: Thank you.