Hitendra, thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate that. I think I came into this world being outside the box. My parents are an interracial couple and in the years in which they dared to fall in love, which was the 1960s, it was literally illegal for them to be married in many places. Yet, they decided to forge ahead with love and marriage and creating a child. This child that I was, arrived in a world knowing that I didn't fit the classification scheme that humans had put together. Biracial, multiracial was such an unusual thing in 1967, when I was born. I think my tiny self knew there was something wrong with these boxes because they excluded me. I think it has given me, over the course of these 54 years, a lot of compassion for humans who find themselves outside the box, trying to contend with which box, trying to craft a self that feels authentic and right when our society is so hell bent on telling us who we ought to be or who we are.

Oh my goodness! What a beautiful observation. First, the United States does higher education well. It is one of the things we offer. The world is a panoply of opportunities in higher education. We are not a country where there are simply 2, 3, 10 or 20 places you can feel good about attending. We are a place with thousands of options, all of which are very different from one another. So, the United States does do higher education well. That's a gift we offer the world and people come from all over from the world here, in order to participate and obtain that opportunity. We've gotten really enamored of higher education as a brand. So, the notion that some are so much better than the others that we need to attach them to us so that we are more worthy as a human, like a college is the equivalent of a fancy designer set of clothing or the right soda to drink or the right car. It is like I'm a better person because I'm driving this vehicle. Well, no. You're not. Is that vehicle really, by all objective measures, better than all the others? No. It has some great features and facets, but it's missing some things.

Case in point, the schools you've just mentioned, MIT, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, places you and I have been affiliated with, tend not to offer the highest quality undergraduate education because they're world class universities. The imperative at a world class university or what makes a university world class is that the faculty are consistently, constantly undergoing research. They are developing scholarship based on the new knowledge they create, which is important and necessary for the advancement of our civilization, understanding, problem solving and solution generation. But, it's hard to also make time to teach and mentor the undergraduates on a campus where the production of research and scholarship is the primary imperative. And so, it is rarely the case that one is an undergraduate in those places and consistently class over class, semester over semester has access to great teaching and quality time spent in a mentoring relationship with these amazing faculty. You're more likely to find that at the less well-known schools.

This is just one example of how the allure of certain brand name experiences really obfuscates what matters when you're an undergraduate. To be mentored, to be cared about and thoughtfully listened to and engage with, is the kind of experience that a big Gallup poll survey shows is what leads to success in life. If you were mentored in college, regardless of how fancy the brand name of the college was, you are likely to report later in life that you personally feel that you are a success. Wow! That just throws the whole college ranking thing out of whack.

To your point about are they nicer? I think lately and by that, I mean in the last 20, 30 years since I've been paying attention at least, this drive toward having the brand named college experience means that childhood is this utilitarian time of life in furtherance of meeting some very rigid academic admissions standards. I think that does take a toll on a young person. I think it makes them grade grubbers. I think it makes them attention seekers, I think it makes them perfectionists. I think it disassociates them from their own spirit and soul, which might be yearning to study this, that or the other which society or parents whomever doesn't feel is worthwhile or justified or won't get them into the right place. So, you have these highly accomplished young people, many of whom are quite unfamiliar with their own self. Why am I here? What am I good at? What would I do if nobody was judging me? And so therefore, maybe some of them aren't the kindest people.

Absolutely. I would hope that that would be the measure. I think each school that we've referenced, and plenty others would say, "No, that's embedded in our mission. We are trying to make better human beings. We are trying to take humans who have a lot of promise and potential and help them level up so that they can be better humans and better serve the world." But this is where I think the ideals, whether expressed in Latin or English or some other language in a school's motto or credo, don't necessarily align with the actual output. For example, when we see that so many undergraduates seem to think that the only acceptable pursuits in life are the business world, medicine, law, engineering or entrepreneurship, we have to ask ourselves, when did we become places that steered kids, particularly to Wall Street? Why is that what the best and brightest seem to feel is really the ultimate goal? Why aren't they pursuing the helping professions? Why aren't they trying to improve the quality of life for those who have less?

It used to be that the people who survey incoming freshman year over year for probably 5 decades, produce all this data on what it is that students say a college degree is for? And in the 70s they said, "To improve my character, to help me make the world a better place." But now they're saying, "It's about personal success, getting ahead, getting the right job," which just saddens me.

It does. I live in Silicon Valley and the students here are told what they have to do academically, the grades they need to get, the scores they need to get on the test, and try to take those tests over and over again to get to this high level of achievement. But I don't know if there is a single class offered in the public-school district that my kids went to, that is on the development of character. What matters more than character? I don't think people even know what character is? I see character as the way in which we show up with other humans. Why does that matter? Because human beings are primates. We're a social species. We are interdependent. We need one another to get our own needs met. We also want to reciprocate and help others get their needs met. That's how we've evolved to this place and how we show up in terms of our behavior, actions, reactions, ways of being with other humans is the measure of our worth.

I do think it is what people will say about us when we leave the room. It is what people will say about us in our eulogy when we've died. How did others feel around us? Did they feel safe? Did they feel seen, supported, heard, respected? Did they feel they were treated with dignity and kindness? That's the kind of character we all need to be giving off. And of course, Hitendra, you know, if the world's population was able to revolve around this truth, if we could all for one day or for one week or the month of April, commit that our character, how we behave toward one another, was going to be what we cared about and sought to grow around more than anything, you know that our world would begin to transform into a healthier, more full, more fair, more just place of ease.

I just need to pause and say thank you for inviting me to be in this conversation with you, because I am finding it so nourishing simply to listen to your beautiful questions. I'm filled with gratitude right now and I want to share that. I'm sharing it authentically. I'm also noticing it's important to share this for listeners to know that in the moments when we are just filled with gratitude, we shouldn't fail to notice. We should pause and acknowledge. That is part of being deeply human with one another.

I found myself, as you articulated that frame of what it might be like for each of us as we die. You said, will it be a smile that we give ourselves or a bit of regret, a bit of pain? As you were articulating that, my head was going to, will it be a familiar feeling? Will we feel on our deathbed? I know myself; I have been in tune and in touch with the self in my effort to grow it and heal it and help it become ever more able to be present alongside other humans in a manner that is loving and kind. Will we recognize the self, or will we in fact, in that moment of great clarity that may come upon death have regrets?

I think what I'm trying to say is, yes, I find these two things. You labeled the relationship with others, the relationship with the self to be incredibly reciprocal, to be hand-in-glove and yin yang. I know this because I have worked on and continue to work on and will always work on where I want to grow. Not to be more important or have more money or have a different title? But within my being, where are my rough edges? Where are the ways in which I am unpleasant? Where are the times I am impatient? What is that about? I want to work on those things both to calm and quiet myself so that I can feel greater ease within this body, mind and spirit thing that I inhabit. But also knowing that when I am in that place of ease. When I'm not combating some insecurity within me that's making me afraid or angry. Then I can show up with other humans and be more of what they need. I can listen better. I can be more helpful. Problem solving comes more easily. I can activate the things in me that I want to offer others because I am not encumbered, burdened by my own self.

Yeah. Irshad Manji, who's the child of refugees from Uganda, when Idi Amin came and said, "If you're not native Ugandan, you don't belong here." They fled to Canada. She's Muslim and she's queer. She had to fight that civil war within her. She also was raised in a home with a very physically abusive father and there was a lot of fear at home. She really had to reckon with a lot of things because she was being taught to respect her elders including her father, and yet her father was violent. How was she supposed to squeeze that? She was being taught to love and respect the teachings of Islam. And yet, she was told that to be a Muslim meant you couldn't be queer. And yet she knew she was. So, she spent much of her young adulthood reckoning with these seemingly irreconcilable differences and became this person who's written this beautiful book, which I'll show, 'Don't label me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times.' She is somebody who has so masterfully reckoned with the dualities within her or the paradoxes that she is someone who is able to show up in practice in her work and teach us how to communicate, cooperate, find common ground from places that originate as being quite differentiated and different. She's able to work with people around these topics around which we can't seem to agree and figure out, "Well, are there ways in which we can find our way toward each other and be less polarized?" I think her work is so essential in this moment and I'm honored that she agreed to let me tell a little bit of her origin story in this new book, 'Your Turn: How to Be an Adult,' in which I'm trying to help other young humans reconcile what they know to be true about themselves with the messages the world is telling them about what matters and what doesn't. So, I really found Irshad's origin story, as you said, to be really quite inspiring.

Oh, my goodness! First, I am just moved by that story and thank you for sharing it. What a compelling story to illustrate your point that maybe the universe is sort of seeing the long arc and setting up these moments for us if we can just tune in to them. I want to put a pin in that and come back to that. And I will.

I want to say the other reaction I'm having is, some people will turn that into everything that happens for a reason. When they say that, I feel that it's such a slap in the face for those who are born very poor, born lacking food, shelter, safety, decent parenting and all the ways in which children can arrive in the world lacking so much. And I hate to think that the universe is okay with that. I hate to think that in the grand design, to the extent there is one, it's accepted that there's going to be a 10% failure rate or 25% failure rate or whatever. I'm not okay with that. If there is a grand design, if it's science, if it's the universe, if it's God, if it's spirit, if it's energy or what have you? I hope that those designers are very much committed to the thriving of all of us. I need that to be the case.

For example, when the latest or one of the most recent Ebola outbreaks happened on the continent of Africa. An American doctor was there treating folks, I can't remember which country it was, but he caught Ebola. He was airlifted out to an American hospital that gave him this experimental treatment. He barely survived but did. Then he had this press conference and he thanked God for saving him. I just thought, what is wrong with you? Are you saying God chose not to save all those Africans? Are you calling God the American medical system that devised this manner of health care for you? How arrogant. I appreciate that he wanted to offer gratitude somewhere but let us never offer gratitude in a way that says, I was chosen over the rest of these poor souls.

I think what the variable you're offering for me, at least, is as I try to square these things. I very much have had these experiences, nothing as moving and dramatic as that story out of Uganda. But those moments where I'm like, yeah, this feels like such an improbable connection that it must be that there is something noticing that these two nodes should intersect. I've had those experiences and they bring me wonder and awe. I think the language you used was to tune into them. I think we have to be humans who are on the lookout for or just infused with awareness of the fact that those kinds of connections are possible all the time and we must be open to them and we must not fail to notice them and acknowledge gratitude for them when they do.

Thank you for that compliment or that noticing of what I might bring. You have evoked the memory of my beloved father who passed away 26 years ago, long ago, half a lifetime for me to go. Daddy died. But Daddy, my African-American father, born in 1918, would quote Rabindranath Tagore.

I do not have the volume of Rabindranath Tagore and because you have mentioned him and because you're evoking for me this memory of my beloved father who admired him, I need to go find a volume and I'll ask if there is a particular collection that you would recommend. I am new to him.

I love that. Thank you. You're so kind. Did they call him Kid Tagore?

I thought I have heard people referring to him in that nickname. I'll find out. Thank you so much. I'd love to read your daughter's essay. That would be amazing.

Well, you're in chapter 4. It's called Be Good. It comes after chapter 3, which is Combating Perfectionism. I'm trying to help readers appreciate the metrics by which they should measure their efforts and the quality of their life. So I'm saying, forgo perfectionism and the need to be a certain thing and trust that if you work hard at developing your character, which is why the chapter is called Be Good, that you will get to the places you seek to get. And so, I had to figure out who am I going to draw upon as evidence? Who out there has lived such a life of grace and virtue such that I can choose from all the options?

This book strives to be quite pluralistic. I really do bring in stories of people who are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, atheist and Jewish. I bring in people who are working class and wealthy and in between and highly educated, straight and queer and all the racial backgrounds and so on and so forth. I'm trying to bring a diversity of viewpoints to meet every reader and not appear to have written this book for a small slice of humans. I chose Martin Luther King because he felt to me to be such an important person to remind us of in today's moment, when his words are often parsed to mean something he did not mean. There's such a movement on the right to say Martin Luther King was about the content of our character. Race doesn't matter. No, Martin Luther King knew race did matter and that we were not valued for the content of our character because of the racial hierarchy and classification system and caste system.

In some ways, I'm trying to bring King back into this moment and remind us of what he said. But I also quote my mother from Yorkshire, England, who tells this lovely tale, reciting a story her own mother told her of how a stranger who is met by someone standing outside a city comes upon a stranger. He's trying to basically assess who the stranger is and he's assessing the stranger's character really without the stranger knowing it. So, I quote my mother in here as a wise elder, and she's right there on the page alongside Martin Luther King, which is my way of saying, we're all equal. Some of us are more famous. But the wisdom lies in each one of us as humble human beings.

I also quote a professor at Yale, Emma Seppala, who's involved in the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research here at Stanford, where she was trying to help her undergraduates better to find success. Again, get out of this perfectionism and focus on what really mattered. She said to me, "I asked my undergraduates a question the other day, what are the characteristics of the most wonderful people you have met?" The wonderful ones she underscored, and her students said, "Loving, caring and kind." She said, "So is that not what success is? You all want to be a wonderful person who touches someone's life?" Those were the three voices of wisdom I brought to the undergraduates knowing within themselves. Loving, caring and kindness is what matters. My mother's wisdom from coalmining country in Yorkshire, England and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

That's right. I think that's where my work as a Dean, working with undergraduates at a place like Stanford really comes to the fore. I have met a heartbreaking number of highly intelligent, highly accomplished young people who felt that the well-worn paths of life were the right paths for them. They had been told there are five possible careers or professions, or maybe three. And so here they were, full of possibility, yet, feeling as if they simply needed to march in line with into this well-worn groove.

I knew that there was comfort in these well-worn grooves because there are people up ahead of you who are 1, 2, 5, 20 and 50 years ahead of you doing this work. It's not lonely work. There are certainly other people doing it. But if this isn't what you yourself, if this isn't stuff, you're good at and can get better at so that it's work that puts you in flow right where you're challenged and drawn to learn more and work harder and keep going. If it's not going to put you in that flow, why are you going to spend a huge fraction of your life doing it in pursuit of what if not strengthening your own capacities because you're good at it and you love it, so you're motivated to go and you bring that tool, that is yourself in service of this society that we've got.

I was sad and I had also made that mistake in my own life. I had gone to law school to help humans. I wanted to be a public interest lawyer. I wanted to be a public defender. I wanted to be somebody who could use her rhetoric to convince a jury or a judge that this person deserves X, Y and Z. I wanted to be a voice for the voiceless or the downtrodden or the mistreated. And yet, I went off to law school and was so insecure as a young, brown skinned woman of color, black and biracial, who was really in a period of self-loathing at that point around my ethnicity and ancestry because of all the messages that I had experienced in childhood and young adulthood. I was by that point, at the age of 25, trying to perform to please mainstream white society. Even though I had gone to law school to be a public interest lawyer, I knew that they, whom I felt were judging me and whom I needed to please and uppies, they seemed to value the corporate path, that well-worn, safe, lucrative path. So, I took that path to be seen in their eyes as more worthy and found myself so lonely. Not because there weren't people around me, but because I was at such a distance from my own self. Meaning, my values were to use a law degree to serve those in need. But here I was serving only myself in acquiring the applause and the approval and a salary for having chosen this path.

Having learned that lesson and left that behind and pivoted toward a career where I could help young people make better choices in furtherance of their own values and voice, I was determined to deploy and take the lessons I had learned to be of use to others in this regard as a Dean.

I love that. First, yes. Let us ensure, let us become a community, a society where those who pursue those paths have embedded in their why the social impact. Let us not be simply about our own personal gain or filling our own pockets and that of our family and descendants. But, let us use these important professions to wreak profound, radical, transformative good at a societal level. Let's use these big levers and pull them to benefit society rather than a handful of already privileged people. But I also want to say that I don't want to come across as saying these well-worn paths are always problematic, always bad places to go. I'm not knocking these professions at all. What I'm saying to individuals in my work, as I did as a Dean was ask yourself, "Is this what I think I'm good at and is this what I think I love?" And if the answer is yes, then go in that direction. If you want to be a venture capitalist and you can describe why you love it and why you're good at it and why you're drawn to it, more power to you. My message is simply, don't go there because you feel you should and don't really have the option to do anything else. Don't go there because everybody in your eyes are doing that because you will feel terribly disassociated from your own self. So, there's a right reason to do it.

As I tell people, when young people say, "Oh, I noticed you went to law school, what's your advice?" I say, "If you're considering law school, articulate to yourself why? Why is it that you want that degree? What is it you intend to do with it? And continually remind yourself of that along the way so that you don't get jostled out of your own reason for doing it in the first place." Which is what happened to me. There are very valid reasons to pursue these paths. My point is simply, is this the right path for you?

I think I tend to frame it differently. I live in Silicon Valley, which means my world is full of people who are incredibly wealthy. There is a lot of wealth concentrated here and I know some of those people. And some subset of them are so miserable, they have achieved all the money. There is not much more money one could have. And yet, their marriages are terrible. Their interpersonal relationships are not good, they're unhappy. That for me is proof that it isn't about having all the money. You said good money, good life. I would interrupt those. Good money does not equal a good life. Research shows that humans need in this nation currently about $75,000 a year for more money. More money increases happiness up to $75,000 a year. But beyond that, more money doesn't increase your happiness. It seems to be that we need to get to a place where we can pay our rent, we can pay for food, basic quality of life. More money doesn't make us happier. So that is an important lesson. It begs the question; how much money do you think you need? There are valuable concerns. I want to be able to pay for my retirement. I want to be sure I'm okay if I have a health crisis. I want to put my kids to college. I want to give back to my parents. There are very valid ways in which we want to spend our money, but the accumulation of money to get to be like Jeff Bezos, who says I don't even know what to do with my money. That's a failure and particularly when there's so much need around.

I try to subvert the narrative of money equals the good life and say, you need some money in order to just make it. But beyond that, it's the quality of our interpersonal relationships. Is my work giving me a sense of purpose? Is what I do mattering somewhere and to me? That's success. Then, it comes down to ego, right? The sort of social status we want to be able to show up at the golf course or the SoulCycle or the coffee klatch and brag about this and that. Come on. The more we mature as beings, the more we know, I don't need to prove myself to anyone. But I realize that's a function of age and stage, that wisdom comes through time. I would love your thoughts on how we can infuse these age acquired wisdoms in the young? How do we help a 16-year-old understand that the purpose of life is to serve and that such reward will be reaped to self by knowing I am of service to others? How can we reframe the narratives kids are getting? So, they come out of high school, out into the world wanting these things, rather than discovering that wisdom later in life, perhaps only after having made choices they regret.

Three things come to mind. One, I've been to Botswana, and so I can visualize this beautiful country, as you say it. Two, there are so many parents who'll be like, "Yeah, but now they need to do their AP exam so they can get into the right college and go be an investment banker." A lot of us parents think that's fine for sort of like a summertime experience, but it's not going to be what my kid does because, I think success is this. The third thing I want to say is, my daughter is an artist. She's 20. She's in college and I raised her in the shadow of Stanford where I worked. She went to Stanford's nursery school, where they told me when she was 4 that they were so taken by her artwork that whatever paintings, watercolors she was doing were really at another level.

I mean this in all seriousness, they were telling me they pulled me aside and said, we don't want to just pack up this artwork and stick it in her bag. We want to draw your attention to the fact that, "Look, we've been teaching 3 to 5 year olds for decades and we know what it is to have an artist's capability. Your daughter has it." And I was like, "Yeah, that's just art and that's not going to get her into Stanford." That was my mentality toward my own child when she was coming up. And it was because at the same time, I was a Dean sitting in office hours meeting with students who wanted to ask me, "What should I do with my life? What should I do for my career, for my major, for my graduates?" And I never gave them answers. Of course, I don't have the answers to someone else's big life questions, but I would ask them questions to open themselves to themselves. What are you good at? What do you love? What do you know of yourself so far? And I realize with such empathy for other people's kids in my office, I was failing to see my own kid and I came home from a really clarifying office hours one Friday and realized my daughter is an artist and if I don't get right with myself about what I think I need her to be or what I think success is or what's important, I will fail to see her and that may damage her and one day she will be having to unpack. Why didn't my parents accept me for who I was? And so, having traveled that journey, painfully, in my own family, to be an expert and yet so inexpert at loving my children for who they actually are, to be frank, I have worked on that. I have grown to be the mom who can say, "My daughter Avery is an artist and she is a 20-year-old junior at university, and she's decided to major in her own mash up, majoring in cultural anthropology and dance." She is a dancer. She is a choreographer. She is getting paid internships in the arts. And I'm no longer that parent who's going, "Yeah, but you know, how are you going to afford a life?" I'm saying, "I'm proud of you. I'm impressed. I'm happy for you." I know it's on her to figure out the question of where can I afford to live? She's going to figure that out as people who pursue the arts do. It's not my job to say, "No, you can't. Don't do that." I'm finally that mom who is seeing my daughter for who she is, and she is blowing my mind.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thanks for pointing that out and noticing. If anyone listening is interested, they can go to my website and in this book the commitment to inclusion is linked as a PDF.

This is my own subversive way to upend American publishing, or at least self-help nonfiction publishing. Too often, authors make the mistake of writing a non-fiction self-help book or business practices book, any book aiming to give advice to humans. Too often, authors draw their examples from a very narrow swath of the human community. Often straight, white, educated, middle class people. Well, I'm black and biracial. I'm also identified as queer and bisexual. I am very privileged. I'm highly educated. I'm privileged in a lot of ways. But I am tired of reading books that only give me examples from one narrow swath of life. I'm tired of reading a book that's about how boys grow up, and that talks about boys and guns and violence and doesn't acknowledge that some boys are raised in communities where guns are prevalent, whether it's a hunting community or an urban community. It was clearly written about suburban boys. And I said to the author, you need to be inclusive of all boys here. He was like, "Well, I'm really writing for everybody." I said, "No, you're not actually, you're only writing for this narrow swath here in the suburbs." So, I have been that reader who felt alienated by the narrative and I do not want to be a writer who alienates.

my goal with this book, which is about a phase of life we all enter if we survive childhood and we're in until we die. That's what adulting is. I wanted to offer advice to all, and I had to go to some lengths to include voices beyond mine, because I'm only a data set of one. I wanted to try to bring in a panoply of humans who've lived all different life experiences and have different identities so that readers were more likely to feel seen on the page, but also to demonstrate, look how different we are, and yet, look at what we all have in common. That's another sort of subversive message of this book in this Black Lives Matter imperative moment. We're all the same. We all want to be treated with dignity and kindness. We all yearn, we all hunger, we all want love. We all want to make something of our lives. We're different and yet we're the same. In telling these different and bringing these different narratives on the page, can I help you see how much you, as a person who's straight, white, a male, have in common with this queer person over here or if you're a Christian, look how much you have in common with this Muslim lady who fled Uganda. I'm trying to knit us together, bringing the differences in to show and yet look how similar we are.

Absolutely. First, I know a lot of faculty have been in that very circumstance with different examples in recent years of students, as students have become more empowered around speaking back to power. You, the faculty member, speaking up about these narratives that can be stereotypical or that can reinforce stereotypes. This is something I hear wherever I go. I acknowledge the discomfort that you felt, and I thought your response to me right now would have been the brilliant response and the response you can bring the next time it happens, which is to say, "Exactly! Yes, of course, I'm not trying to reinforce that stereotype, but imagine, had I flipped and said this, then we would have a different stereotype in play." So, I take your point, but I don't know that there's a resolution for it at this moment. I think it's incumbent upon me as a faculty member to ensure that my stories across the semester are as inclusive as possible of different humans. But in every moment, there are just a few variables and we can't ensure that everyone is included.

Here's what I want to offer. As we rise up in greater awareness of difference, as media gets more diverse, there are more movie options, television options, novels, memoirs, podcasts that we can access to learn about different people and as those of us who've traditionally not been listened to because of our position in life, grow more confident that we have a right to exist on this stage and we are calling things out. I acknowledge that, yes, sometimes it can go to an extreme where, if this isn't the perfectly crafted sentence or this isn't the perfectly diverse panel, then sometimes it can be that we fail to see the forest for the trees. And I cringe when I see that happening.

The last thing I want to say is, you're reminding me that I'm about to head into a very privileged environment. I've been invited by TED, you know that I've done a TED talk and TED has invited me this year back to its conference to be a speaker ambassador, which means to be a seasoned speaker who is helping a brand new speaker with their jitters and questions and whatnot. We had a preparation call for all the speaker ambassadors and a brown skinned man from Brazil said, "You know, I've been an ambassador before, and the person I was meant to support treated me like I was his helper. He kept asking me to go get food." Every time he was like, "Can you get me some food?" He then finished making that statement and the TED people were like, "Hmmm." And I jumped in and said, "Let me underscore that experience. I haven't had it at TED, but I have had the experience of being in a position. I was assistant to the president at Stanford, which does not mean his executive assistant. It was sort of chief of staff. A senior person. A white woman came in for an important event, I was standing there to say hello and she handed me her coat and didn't even make eye contact. And that was my second day on the job. These things don't typically happen to men. They don't happen to white men. I said, "Ted, it's incumbent upon you when you assign the role of ambassador and you invite people to have one of us, be sure that you frame for them who we are." Because they will see us through the lens of their own biases, which are often unexamined. They think, "Oh, there's this brown woman who was here to help me, go get my food." No. I'm not here to get your food. I might bring you a glass of water, if you're thirsty. I'll be happy to serve. But that is different than your treating me as if I'm in a subordinate role.

These are the moments that we are in as we elevate everybody to a place of all lives matter, which, of course, historically they have not. We must look at the ways in which we behave as if all lives are not equal.

Absolutely.

That feels like the obvious final question, and yet I don't have a clear answer. Here's why. I'm in my third career, I was a lawyer. I was a university administrator. Now I'm a writer. I get to speak about my writing. I love that work. I have more books in me. I've written 3, but I'm 54. I'm asking myself with an eye toward 65 and 70, God willing, I make it that far healthy. What is it I want to do next? I'm not sure if I'm going to continue to write books out into the forever or if I want to pivot and maybe take on a more traditional job again. I'm not sure. I'm curious. Right now, I'm in that space of curiosity. I love helping humans. I'm interested in every human story and helping humans thrive and that will always be my why. So, whatever ensues next, it will be in furtherance of that.

Well, I want to thank you and all who made this happen, but also I want to acknowledge your listeners who've spent considerable time with us, your audience, whatever it was about what Hitendra and I discussed today that resonated with you, take that forward. Be curious. Why was it that resonated? Why was it that it connected with you or bothered you? What did it tap or trigger in you? That's an opportunity for further growth and learning for you and I'm excited for you.

To you as well. Thank you.