-: When I went to UVA I was relatively younger
than most of my class and I was
an out of state student as well, I came from Miami,
so I did not have a lot of, let's call them
independent life skills. (laughs)
And I learned a lot of that from my friends at UVA
and I think the thing I learned the most
and I cherish the most, is I learned
that you can hear and acknowledge
and be respectful of a lot of differing opinions
and still at the end of the day, you know,
be friends with that person.
I think that, particularly in this climate,
that's something that I've really clung to,
is the idea that like we are more than
our opinion about this topic.
And because of that I feel like in my work environment
I've been able to like bridge,
and built a lot of great relationships
with a lot of different people from across ways.
You're gonna see it a lot, particularly also
in working with communities
that are very isolated, immigrant communities.
You're there doing, I would say,
what most people would qualify as very liberal work,
but those communities tend
to be incredibly conservative actually.
And so, you know, it's really like interesting
in being able to understand that
and I think that like Virginia really prepared me
for seeing and understanding
like a very wide cross-section of this country.