I believe in the power of diversity, but it doesn't serve anyone any good if you aren't be truly authentic to your beliefs and ideas. I strongly believe that leveraging personal intersectionality is crucial to developing functional policy that accomodates the people it's supposed to serve. Bringing truest and fullest version of yourself to the table is the most courageous thing to, but also the most crucial.

Our knowledge in our field is only shaped by the experiences and information we've had the opportunity to access, so when something comes to challenge our understanding of the world, why do we seem to reject it? We have two ears and one mouth for reason. 

Just by sitting down and asking questions to understand the things that I may not immediately agree is how I've come to critically think about the world around me.

Empathy, not sympathy, is a hard thing to nail down. Not only must we feel compassion towards others (especially those we may disagree with) but we must also make an effort to comprehend the underlying feelings and experiences that produce others' beliefs. I acknowledge it's an impossible undertaking-- attempting to share others' perspectives without their lived experiences, we must give our best effort to learn.