031: Tiffany & Sophie
In this episode, we’re joined by Sophie Beren, Founder and CEO of The Conversationalist, to discuss navigating the difficult but necessary conversations to break out of our echo chambers.
We discussed:
Who is in your echo chamber?
Why we should break out of our echo chamber
What The Conversationalist is
Becoming better listeners and asking better questions
The nuances of having hard conversations
Who is drawn to The Conversationalist
What breaks your heart?
Sophie’s vision for a more unified world
Show notes:
About Sophie Beren
Sophie Beren is a unifier from Wichita, Kansas. She is the Founder and CEO of The Conversationalist, the go-to destination to amplify Gen Z voices. The Conversationalist community and content platform empowers young people everywhere to have conversations that matter. Sophie was recently named "25 Under 25" by Social Entrepreneur's Magazine and “21 Womxn Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2021.” Her social impact journey began at The University of Pennsylvania where she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Communications and her Master’s Degree in Nonprofit Leadership. Sophie is dedicated to breaking open echo chambers and unifying the world, one conversation at a time.
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Transcript
Tiffany Yu: Hi everyone. And you're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. If you're new to this podcast, Tiffany & Yu is a podcast about things that matter. And more specifically, I'm chatting with friends who are using their voices and platforms to cultivate creativity, compassion, and change. Today I have with me Sophie Beren, who is the founder and CEO of The Conversationalist, which is the go-to destination to amplify Gen Z voices. Hi Sophie.
Sophie Beren: Hi, Tiffany. Thank you so much for having me.
Tiffany Yu: I love having you on. I always start by sharing how I know my guest, because everyone who does come on the podcast, I've met before. So Sophia and I met through Clubhouse and maybe it had to be three months ago. We co-hosted a room together about the Olympics of being busy. What did you think of that room?
Sophie Beren: I loved it. I felt like it was one of the more real, authentic spaces I've been in on Clubhouse. So I'm so grateful we hosted it together. What did you think?
Tiffany Yu: I liked it. I thought it was a really good opportunity for me to reflect on who I'm trying to be busy for. Is it myself, or is it an external pressure? And I think those are the best conversations on Clubhouse. This is the second time we are getting to hang out over video this week because earlier this week I had the honor of being on Sophie's podcast. And one of the things I just really love about her podcasts is she started our conversation by asking me who's in my echo chamber. And so I want to reflect that question back over to you and ask Sophie who is in your echo chamber.
Sophie Beren: Such a good question. And I ask people this day in and day out on mine, and I've never really had the chance to speak about it out loud. So Tiffany, thank you for asking. My echo chamber is interesting. So I was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas. I'm currently in my childhood bedroom, which is very full circle. And growing up here in the Midwest was a very unique experience for me because I was the only Jewish student in my school from K through 12. I spent my entire life growing up being the quote-unquote, other of my grade. And I think the echo chamber that I was in felt monolithic. I grew up in a very homogenous town. When you think of Kansas, you think a red state, even though now Wichita has a Democratic governor. I really grew up in a more conservative echo chamber. And I would say a majority of the people around me were white Christian individuals. And so this was wonderful for me growing up because in a way I learned about so many other cultures and experiences and religions outside of my own, but there was a part of me that always yearned for more people who are like me. And by that, I mean, people who would understand what it was like being a young Jewish woman in the Midwest. And I just didn't really have a lot of people to relate to. And I experienced a lot of things that were challenging that I think I'm really reflecting on nowadays being a bit older. And I think I wish that I had had more people within that echo chamber that looked like me and thought like me and allowed me to kind of explore what it meant to be a Jew. So that's how I would describe my echo chamber. It's been interesting and it was really the motivation that really allowed me to want to leave the Midwest and break open that bubble, which eventually led to what I'm doing today, but that's probably how I would describe my echo chamber.
Tiffany Yu: So it sounds like the echo chamber you're describing is the one that you grew up in. And I think what's so interesting about the way you described it is that you were othered within your own echo chamber. And so I'm curious now, many years later, is that still how you would describe what your echo chamber looks like?
Sophie Beren: Such a good call. I didn't even think about fast forward to today. So let's dive into that echo chamber. Because of the work I'm doing now, I am so much more aware of what an echo chamber is that I make an active effort every single day to break it open. So I would say my echo chamber today is pretty diverse. I would say now I factor in the social media echo chamber of it all as well. But I would say after going to the University of Pennsylvania, I was exposed to a fairly liberal echo chamber. So now I have both sides. I have all of my college friends and people who I've met now through living on the East Coast, who are majority liberal, giving me that side of things politically. I still have a lot of conservative friends from home, and some family members so I see that side as well. But I would say if I were defining the types of people that I'm constantly interacting with in my current echo chamber, as an adult in the real world, I would probably say that I'm currently interacting with primarily entrepreneurs and people who are trying to challenge the status quo. I think that's who I gravitate towards and a lot of why I gravitated towards you, Tiffany and I look up to the work that you're doing because of how you push other people outside of their preconceived notions to think about the world around us. And so I think that was the desire to be on this journey today of amplifying other people's voices to hopefully create environments where we're all constantly trying to break outside of those echo chambers.
Tiffany Yu: That's so powerful. Thank you for sharing. You said something about how every single day you wake up and you're looking to really challenge and stretch who is in this chamber. If you hold certain privileges and you and I talk a lot about passing privilege because we can't see your religion. And you had talked about not looking Jewish when you were growing up. Was there a turning point? And what do you think the benefits are of actually really challenging your preconceived notions about things?
Sophie Beren: Such a good question and I will afford a lot of the experiences that I've had up until this point in my life, because of privilege, whether it be passing privilege or growing up in the environment I grew up in. And I'm so grateful for that because that privilege has caused me to want to do something about the privileges that I hold. And there's a quote that I come back to. I wear it on a ring on my finger every single day as a reminder that says, the moment when you realize that the rest of the world doesn't think like you, that's when you grow. And I think if we can understand that by breaking open these echo chambers and surrounding ourselves with people from multiple points of view and backgrounds, we're going to be able to better understand not only the world around us and the future we want to create, but we're also going to feel much more confident in our own beliefs and who we are as an individual through the exploration of others. And I would say that turning point for me really happened the minute I got to college. I followed the yellow brick road from Kansas all the way to the University of Pennsylvania. And I had this realization at the end of freshman year, Classic Sophie wanted to gravitate towards all of the Jewish students on campus because I didn't have that growing up. So before I knew it, I was in the Jewish acapella group. I was involved in Hillel on campus. I was in the Jewish sorority. Everywhere I looked, I was surrounded by Jews. Childhood Sophie was so happy. But I was walking through campus one beautiful day and I had this aha moment where I realized that it wasn't just me who was succumbing to this culture, but every single person on campus was doing the exact same thing with their quote-unquote identity groups. And this moment for me was so powerful because I realized that I had actually been taking for granted the environment that I grew up in, in Wichita. And this is what caused me to want to use my voice and find some agency to do something about this culture. And it led me to found what is The Conversationalist 1.0. I started a club on campus called Table Talk my sophomore year that was completely dedicated towards getting people outside of those groups, finding creative, fun ways to talk, connect, laugh, grow, converse with other young people on campus, outside of the classroom. And so I think that aha moment really showed me that the more we can surround ourselves with people from all walks of life, the better we will be for it because we can't grow unless we're actually exposing ourselves to things outside of our own comfort zones.
Tiffany Yu: It's almost like who wouldn't want to grow, who wouldn't want to learn more. And I think that having that framing is so important. When you and I were chatting about privilege and not having to think about things to me, it's really the ability to opt-out of current events, of things that are happening in our external environment. Talk to me a little bit more about The Conversationalist. What types of conversations are you facilitating there? What does being a member of the conversation list look like?
Sophie Beren: The questions that you're posing, Tiffany are the things that keep me up at night. I'm still working through so much of this and I can't wait to dive in more, but The Conversationalist really has become the home or the place for Generation Z to come to, to both process what is happening in the world around us and challenge the issues that we're seeing in our society. So we currently house our community on the Geneva App. It's an audio-video and chat-based communication platform where we have different rooms dedicated to different topics that really represent topics that Generation Z are struggling with and struggling to speak about every single day, everything from mental health to racism, to body image, the environment, pop culture, and the list goes on and on and on. And we've been able to create a space where every single day, our members are posting current events and questions and the things that they're seeing in their own walks of life or in their own echo chambers and opening them up for conversation. So we've been able to create a platform for young people to not only listen and learn and grow but also discover their own voices in the process. And so it's been amazing to see. We're starting to bring some content back into the mix with the podcast. I can't wait to share our episode and it's just been an interesting journey to be able to now give a space to young people out there that I so wish I had growing up. There was a moment that I'd love to share briefly that happened last week, amidst the horrible shooting that happened in Georgia, where two of our members who are from the Asian community wanted to open up a conversation and talk about how they were feeling given the horrific shooting. So these two members opened up a space in our audio room, much like Clubhouse, and they were sharing their experiences. And they were asking for advice about what to do in that moment when they were feeling so isolated and frustrated, and their schools didn't know how to handle the situation and they wanted to do something but didn't know how. And in that moment, there was an open conversation around some ideas about how to take action and how to use their voices for good. And in that moment, I was brought back to a situation that happened to me so many times, growing up in Kansas where I was the odd one out. There would be something going on in the world, maybe an antisemitic hate crime would occur, or my classmates would make an insensitive joke about the Jewish population. And I had nowhere to turn. I had no one to process with, or to really work through those moments with, and it was just this full-circle moment where I felt like I had finally created that place for someone else. And that was such a full-circle moment. I personally believe in intersectionality and I think in order to stand up against injustice, we have to be able to stand up against all forms of injustice. It was a beautiful moment and I'm just so grateful to see these amazing young people taking a stance on what they believe in and that in some way, we've been able to provide a platform for them to gather to have those conversations.
Tiffany Yu: I saw something on Instagram that said in community we heal and by gathering, we become empowered. And so I love that both of these are coming up in the context of this conversation. So let's go ahead and take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll continue chatting with Sophie Beren of The Conversationalist.
And we're back from the break. This is Tiffany & Yu, the podcast. I have with me, Sophie Beren, who is the CEO and Founder of The Conversationalist. Before the break, we were chatting about what her echo chamber looked like and all of the work that she's been doing either through her own inner work and through The Conversationalist to really break out of her echo chamber. So part of the reason why I started this podcast is because I wanted to learn how to be a better listener. It's so easy for us to just talk, talk, talk. And I'm curious if through your platform, that is something and even through your own work, is that something you're working on as well?
Sophie Beren: Completely. And I am still very much a work in progress. I'm learning more and more every day. I learned so much from you on our episode and listening more than we speak is something that I am trying to put into practice. I think an interesting thing to share that we strive for every day at The Conversationalist is first and foremost, to show everyone in the community that we hear them and we see them and we're doing our best to understand them. And the way that this actually works in practice is in all of our different chat rooms, there's the ability to react to certain messages with any emoji of your choosing. And once you're in our app, you would be so pleasantly surprised to see that our most frequently used emoji is the ear emoji. And every time someone posts a question or a thought, or even a controversial opinion, the first thing you see is that ear emoji reaction that our members place on these statements to show that even if we may not agree, or even if we can't respond in that moment, we hear them. And so I think that's a way that we're trying to actively practice listening, but it's definitely a skill that I think we can constantly flex a bit more.
Tiffany Yu: I love the ear reaction emoji. I'd love to see Facebook and some of these other social media platforms incorporate that to say, I don't really want to like it, but I would love to just acknowledge that I saw it. Do you have any strategies for how you have become a better listener? Is starting a podcast like me?
Sophie Beren: Yes. I, again, I am so far from perfect, but I think there's a quote that has helped me frame this that I've been reflecting on over the past couple of months, which is, if only we could listen with the same passion we feel about being heard. And I try to embody this every time I'm in a more challenging conversation or even just an everyday conversation that not every time we hear something or we're talking to someone do we always have to respond. I think there's this misconception that we should debunk that every conversation needs to be a complete two-way street where we're constantly responding or offering advice or feedback. And I think it's important to find ways to try to encourage yourself to listen as opposed to always chiming in. And I think a practice that I've been trying to adopt is the asking of questions. I think the more that we can synthesize what someone is sharing and be present in that moment when they're sharing, as opposed to preparing our next thought, I think it's better in that moment to think about something else that you can ask that individual to learn more about what they're sharing or what they're experiencing. So I think that's one piece that I've been trying to practice. And I would say another tactic that comes to mind is, if you're in a conversation with someone and maybe it's erring on the more difficult side of things. Or if a friend is sharing something challenging that they've experienced, I think intentionality is so important. And if we can ask that person what the intention that they would like to have for the conversation maybe before it even starts, there's this beautiful moment where you can equal the playing fields and you can know really what that person wants from you and what they want to get out of the conversation itself. And maybe you'll find out that that individual just wants to be heard, maybe they're not looking for advice or a response. They just want to sit there and be with you in that moment, or maybe that person does have a different intention in the conversation. And the earlier we can get there and set that right intention, I think we set ourselves up for success and we save ourselves some disappointment as well for where a conversation may go wrong. I think of it as the fire extinguisher, having it on hand without having to put out the fire and being able to know how to navigate that scenario before it even begins.
Tiffany Yu: So many things are coming up for me right now, especially during a time right now where, in the context of the current pandemic, it's been a really hard year in so many ways. One of my go-to is even though I don't know if I actually used it, but I tell other people is the phrase, "tell me more about that." And so I'm curious if you have any go-to phrases or questions that you turn to in order to help equip people to be like, okay, this is going to be my first step in terms of learning how to ask better questions.
Sophie Beren: And I wrote that down when we spoke on my podcast and now I'm adding that to my toolbox. So Tiffany, thank you for that. I think that's a brilliant phrase. I think for me time and time again, I get comfortable with saying, I hear you. I think there's this meta idea of wanting someone to feel heard, but it can be as simple as telling that person that you hear them. And I think that can be validating in a way where you don't have to know all the right answers and you don't have to err, on the side of toxic positivity where you're just saying things to make the person feel better and you can instead just help validate what they're sharing and feeling. So I tend to say it out loud like I hear you. And then I typically follow that up by saying thank you so much for sharing that. And I think thanking someone for sharing perhaps a more difficult sentiment or a heated opinion can also validate them using their voice. I think we've gotten to a place today in 2021, where even I feel this personally, I'm afraid to share my views without fear of judgment because of how prevalent cancel culture has become in our society. And so I think if you can thank someone for sharing with you, what was on their heart or on their mind, in a way it validates for that person that they shared their opinion in the first place. So I would say those are my go-to's the, I hear you and thank you so much for sharing that. And then typically I would follow up with yours, Tiffany, tell me more about that.
Tiffany Yu: So you did mention cancel culture. I noticed that either there's ego involved of not wanting to be wrong, of not wanting to look stupid. There's the fear around cancel culture. I guess I'm just curious, we're just not having the conversations that matter. And so I'm curious if you have ideas around what we can really do to help empower people to step into a space of knowing that they have the psychological safety to be wrong.
Sophie Beren: This is really tricky. And it's something that we're trying to pioneer at TC, but it's still a struggle. We have a set of guidelines. We have something you have to check the box that you agree to before you enter that says, we welcome all views here in our community. We do not support cancel culture. Here are all the things you need to know and please know them before you come into our home. And I think this is something we're trying to practice again, preventatively, to hopefully allow people to enter knowing that they will not be canceled for sharing their views. And I think within this, there's this deeper question that I'm still trying to figure out and unpack, which is where do we draw the line between what is free speech and what is hate speech? And I think this is a really tricky line when it comes to cancel culture, where we want to encourage everyone out there to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, taking ourselves outside of our echo chambers, outside of our preconceived notions and biases to understand someone else's point of view. But something comes up time and time again within our community, which is what is the difference between disagreeing with someone's viewpoint versus disagreeing with something surrounding their identity? And where is that line between both free speech and hate speech and what are human rights and what are not? And it's becoming a little bit blurry. And so right now, I think the best thing we can do is find very specific examples of what is and what is not in those moments and revert back to them as you try to create whatever environment you're creating for whatever community you're a part of, or whatever social circles you're a part of and try to impact that local environment first. For us, it's The Conversationalist community, but I try to practice this with my friends and family as well. So I don't have all the answers, but it's this thing I've been grappling with as of late, how do we define that line so that people can feel more comfortable expressing who they are while at the same time being able to put yourself in front of groups of people who may think differently than you do and be okay with that to continue pushing and growing together.
Tiffany Yu: I think both you and I are really grappling with these conversations and I'm curious if one of the reasons why we do the work we do is because we have had an experience where we were othered, which enabled us to want to be more open-minded. Do you have theories about that and in addition, who is self-selecting themselves to be part of The Conversationalist?
Sophie Beren: Such a great question. And Tiffany, I'm happy you brought that up. I think that was such an important perspective to think about. For me, I so believe that the reason why I created this platform is both because I wanted to give voice to the voiceless or to young people who currently don't know how to use their voice because I never had that growing up. But I also strongly believe that I created this platform as a direct manifestation of what I struggle with. There are so many topics that are traversed every single day that I don't know all the answers to. So in hopefully a good selfish way, I wanted to create a place where I can continue to push myself and learn and grow and also break open my echo chamber in bringing all of these people together in one place who I've never interacted with before. And so, it all originates from that experience of feeling othered. So it's so interesting that you and I both have experienced that to some degree at different moments in life and coming from different backgrounds, different places geographically. And I think it connects to something so fundamentally human and that at the end of the day, as human beings, all we want is to be seen and heard and valued and loved and understood. And I hope that I can give that to other people. And it's interesting, the people who are joining our community, I would say for the most part are similar to my experience growing up in that they have been looking for a place to go with other young people who actually want to have those conversations. I think it's a lot of times young people who really care about what's happening in the world, but they're not finding those important conversations at the dinner table, on their sports teams, in their singing groups, at school, and even in their social circles outside of school. And it's almost like we've created this larger friend group of all of these people who want to come together and actually be conversationalists. People who aren't just there to stir the pot or to be a troll on the TikTok comment section. It's people who are really dedicated to having the difficult conversations. So it's been interesting to watch.
Tiffany Yu: I think you're so right. This is part of the reason why I am attracted to a platform like Clubhouse, and I see parallels with Diversability as well. Our community is open to disabled and non-disabled allies. And it kind of reminds me of Clubhouse in the way that we can be a fly on the wall for conversations, that just by listening, and coming back to this theme of listening, the allies in our group, they're listening. They're listening because they want to be better. I think on Clubhouse the times I've gone in and not raised my hand immediately and not jumped onto the stage, and even when both you and I are moderators on the platform, a huge part of it is listening. Coming back to ultimately we all want to be seen, heard, and valued. I remember I was part of a workshop where the first question they asked is what breaks your heart? And we spent some time either journaling or reflecting, then we came together as a group. And my answer was what breaks my heart is when I don't feel seen. And what I mean by that is when I think things aren't fair and either that's a scenario where someone made an assumption about me and I didn't have a chance to respond, or I feel like something about me is being erased.
Sophie Beren: What a powerful question, I feel like that's where you get to the heart of someone's passions, like in such a fast, direct way. I'm adding it to my toolbox.
Tiffany Yu: I think back to this conversation of how to really engage in difficult conversations. For me, it's really understanding someone's origins. What are the experiences that you had growing up that really contributed to the way that you think about things? I would love to ask you, Sophie, what breaks your heart if you've had a chance to reflect on it?
Sophie Beren: Well, I haven't had as much time as you have but I would say the first two things that flooded my mind are one, whenever I see some sort of hate crime occur in our country. And I think particularly the ones that come to mind immediately for me are anti-Semitic hate crimes because it's so closely intertwined with my identity. And that's like the heartbreaking moment that someone out there essentially wants to hurt someone who is like me, which I think can translate to so many other attacks on other identity groups. So I would say that is a huge piece for me. And the other one that probably is of less of a magnitude, but this actually even happened last night in the TC community. I think my heart breaks a little bit when a difficult conversation is occurring and we forget our shared humanity. And there are so many moments in which I so want someone out there to adopt the values of a conversationalist and want to see the other side and want to have that scenario happen, where we find common ground, but at the end of the day, that person doesn't want to get there. And it's something that we have to accept, but it breaks my heart a little bit because I think there is so much good in our shared humanity. And at the end of the day, there are so many constructs that have been created to make us want to hate each other and be divided to a further degree. And I think it just breaks my heart a little bit when there are moments where it seems like we're not able to see through to the other side.
Tiffany Yu: I would almost challenge you a little bit and say, I have to believe that that is not what we're going to accept. I think that's why I'm so fascinated by this idea of proximity, because what I have found in my work is when people get to know me and they get to know Tiffany, now they are an ally to the disability community. And so I'm curious if through The Conversationalist and beyond, we're able to facilitate these ways where the person that you're seeing across the table isn't othered as a Jew or at least for me, isn't othered as an Asian woman who is exotic and hyper-sexualized and fetishized, but then you get to know my personality, or, and you get to know my personality and then it's almost like, it feels like a video game or something where like each new piece of information you learn about that person fills in the whole image, or maybe it's a puzzle, where every new piece that you get allows you to see what that image is. That's my hope. And so as we wind down this conversation, in a way, you and I are still both in our echo chambers, even though we are doing what we can to get out of it. And we also understand where our spheres of influence are. So you're saying right now where you can see the biggest impact of the change you want to see is through this incredible community you've created similar with me. I want to close by asking you what your vision is so that we can start expanding our circles of influence. What are you hoping happens to help enable more people to have these conversations with people who initially I'll say initially disagree with them? Is it getting rid of cancel culture? What needs to happen?
Sophie Beren: This is such a big question. And again, this is what gets me out of bed every single day. But I would say that my vision through and through is to create a more unified world. Our mission at The Conversationalist is to unify together. And if I could somehow be on a big enough stage with a microphone and I could share one message with the world to get there, I think it would be to rearrange our preconceived definition of unity. At The Conversationalist, this unified world that we speak of doesn't mean that we're all coming together to conform and ignoring the things that have divided us. But unity is finding a way to stand together as a unified people to advocate for the future we want to live in. And that unified world isn't necessarily going to happen with every single person on earth buying into this idea. There are going to be people that are going to hold on to their ignorance. There are going to be people that will not want to live in that same world that we want to live in, but I am a hopeless optimist, maybe I'm naive, but I have this fundamental belief that for the most part, we all want to create a better world. We want to have that growth mindset. We want to be better. And I think if we could all unite under one shared definition of unity, which is what we're working on at The Conversationalist, I think we would be able to equal the playing field in terms of what we're actually trying to accomplish as a society and maybe be able to see through the things that currently divide us. Because at the end of the day, we all want some conception or version of the same thing, but the things that have divided us have just shown that perhaps we all have different ways of how we want to get there. And so for me, I think it's going to be continuing to have dialogue where we can see through to the other side. And I think some conception of that will be hopefully some erasure of cancel culture while clinging tightly to accountability, finding some happy medium, where we can talk, we can share opinions without fear of judgment. And hopefully through that exploration, through conversation, we can hopefully actually picture that unified world. I think right now the clouds are preventing us from seeing it. But I think if we can all in a way, reset our expectations and reorient ourselves with what really matters at the end of the day and seeing other people around us, who we have othered as people who all are equally as human and want to get there right along with us. I think that's that's what I am determined to create. And I really believe that every conversation that we're having, whether it's here on your podcast, Tiffany, or on Clubhouse or in the Diversability community, or in The Conversationalist community, those are the seeds. And we might not see this progress happen till years from now, maybe till Generation Z is holding office in our country. But I really believe that the conversations we're having now are being planted as the seeds that could potentially grow into that unified world down the road.
Tiffany Yu: You're making me think about what my visions are for the world. So my vision is, and this is me coming from a very U.S.-centered perspective is I want to create a world where each person has the opportunity and access to be their best version of themselves and live to their potential. What I'm seeing right now is certain people, myself included, feel unsafe. And I guess I'll share my mini vision, which then leads to this broader vision. My mini vision is that all of us can go about our lives without fear, without feeling unsafe. It pains me that I have to talk about safety in terms of my vision for a future world because that ideal is there. But right now the reality is that I think there are a lot of people out there who look like me, who look like you, who do feel unsafe in certain situations because of something so deep. And I'm curious if it comes down to a root of having their hearts broken from not being seen and even in those moments too, one of my friends really challenged me. And she was like, have you thought about asking them, what are the things they've learned or can they share articles that they're reading? All of our algorithms are different, as you and I have chatted about. So we're all moving throughout the world with a different reality, and I think fundamentally, similar to your shared humanity, we do all want the best life for ourselves and whoever's around us. And I want people to see that it's not at the expense of someone else. I think the "at the expense of" is where this lack of safety comes in.
Sophie Beren: That resonates so deeply. I can't wait to re-listen to this over and over and over again because Tiffany you're so right. And I think my definition of that world down the road shows my privilege. In order to even start talking about that world where we can be unified and live together in harmony with empathy and the walls of ignorance being broken down, we have to have that Maslow's hierarchy of needs met, which is safety. And right now there are so many people in our world that don't even feel safe to be who they are and we have to start there. So I hope that I can do everything that I can with my platform to help us get to that world so that we can open up the possibility for a more unified world down the road.
Tiffany Yu: I always close with the same last question, which is, I ask my guests what you're grateful for today.
Sophie Beren: Oh man. I don't know if it's cliche, but Tiffany I'm grateful for you and Yu no pun intended. I feel like over the past year, I've really started to come into my own. And I really have the people surrounding me in my life to thank for that. And I feel like from the minute I met you, Tiffany, you ignited a spark within me to really start reflecting on the things that really matter. I think I've started to get a little bit comfortable in telling other people to have conversations that matter, use your voice for good. Do this, do that. And I haven't quite gotten there. It's something I really struggle with, but having role models like you in my life shows me how I can actually do that. And I feel like in a way I'm able to now give it to others. So, Tiffany, I'm grateful for you. Thank you for coming into my life and for leading the way and lighting a path. And I just can't wait to keep following in your footsteps.
Tiffany Yu: Sophie's my favorite hype woman. I always feel, she always makes me feel like I'm like the best person. And I'm like, do you say that to other people, but I receive your words because I feel like many of us are not good at accepting praise and words of gratitude. And so if people want to follow you or they want to follow The Conversationalist, where's the best place to do that?
Sophie Beren: Yes, I will gladly be anyone's hype woman as well. I think everyone needs a hype woman in their life, but if you want to come hang out at The Conversationalist, you can find us really on any platform at @theconversationalist. We're primarily on Instagram and our website, theconversationalist.com. And if you want to come join this community that I've been alluding to with the ear emojis and the, this, and the that come join us. We're on the Geneva App. You can click on our link in bio, on Instagram or head to our website and you'll come join us on the Geneva platform and we'll get the conversation started.
Tiffany Yu: Thank you so much, Sophie, for coming on the podcast. And thank you to our listeners for listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu.
Sophie Beren: Thank you so much, Tiffany.