My guest today, Valerie Kaur, is an activist, documentary filmmaker, lawyer, educator, and faith leader.
She rose to global acclaim in late 2016 when her watch night service address asked the question, is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?
The video went viral with 40 million plus views worldwide, and her question?
It reframed the political moment and became a mantra for people fighting for change.
The daughter of farmers in California's heartland, brought up in the Sikh faith, Valerie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School.
But it was 911 that launched her down the now two decades long path of activism and advocacy, when those in her family and community became the targets of hatred and violence.
And over the last two decades, Valerie's work has led to policy change in everything from hate crimes, racial profiling and immigration detention to solitary confinement, Internet freedom, and more.
She founded Groundswell Movement, faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project to inspire and equip advocates at the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and justice.
And more recently, she's headed up the revolutionary Love project, which is both a movement and a powerful learning hub designed to help you learn about love, loving others, opponents, and ourselves.
Her debut book, see no Stranger, it's both a memoir and a manifesto calling us into our better, more expansive, and conscious selves.
This conversation opened my eyes in so many ways, and as I've been sharing the last few episodes before we dive into today's conversation to help celebrate the launch of my new book, Spart, we have been sharing spart stories, drawing these fun and inspiring two to three minute stories from the book in the beginning of each episode leading up to the launch of the book on September 22.
I was so inspired by these amazing people, I wanted to share their experiences in kind of short hits of inspiration and insight as we all make the transition into a season of reimagining and, for many, reinvention.
So here's today's story.
Laura Pena, who's a maker advocate, is an animator, designer, and filmmaker.
Growing up in the Dominican Republic, she was always drawing everyone around her thought she'd become a fine artist, but her mind was more drawn to creating physical spaces.
She'd vanish into a room for hours, moving boxes and pretty much anything else she could find to create physical representations of imagined environments.
In her mind, the box in the corner would be an oasis in a desert.
She was moving people around, creating scenes and telling their stories in virtual space.
And Laura eventually moved to New York to study design at Parsons School of Design.
After graduating, she began building her career at an agency, designing video games for kids before focusing on digital motion design for everything from tv to film and the online realm.