Transcript for “America's Next 250 Years” with Layla Zaidane
Layla Zaidane describes the incredible, enduring nature of American democracy, the challenges that have been overcome during its history, what is required for democracy to last another 250 years in America, and how we should think about selecting our elected officials to ensure freedom and democracy for generations to come. Layla goes on to talk about the progress being made by younger lawmakers in bridging the partisan divide, America’s position as a leading democracy in the world, and what the responsibilities are for citizens in order for democracy to continue to thrive.
Layla Zaidane is President & CEO of Future Caucus, the largest nonpartisan organization of young lawmakers in the United States. Future Caucus works with over 1,800 Millennial and Gen Z elected leaders in Congress and state legislatures to bridge divides, collaborate on future-oriented policy, and scale a healthy culture of democracy. Prior to joining Future Caucus, Layla served as the Managing Director for Generation Progress and helped launch the It’s On Us campaign in partnership with the White House in 2014, and launched the Higher Ed, Not Debt campaign in 2013. She was named by Fusion as one of 30 Women Under 30 Who Will Change the Election. A nationally recognized expert on youth engagement, Layla has been featured in outlets including Forbes, Teen Vogue, The New York Times, The Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, and Refinery29.
Thank you to Starts with Us for their collaboration on this series. Starts with Us is an organization committed to overcoming extreme political and cultural division. Check them out at startswith.us.
Layla Zaidane: I get to work with hundreds of Gen Z and millennial lawmakers who are so freaking talented, who are so smart. They could be doing anything they want — they could be making tons of money at some private company, and instead, they’re driven by a sense of public service to do unglamorous jobs like state legislator or even member of Congress. And they have decided that they want to do it because they feel connected to something bigger than themselves because they believe that in a diversifying country where we are so filled with potential and opportunity and are not realizing that in this moment, that they can be a part of building something better.
Don MacPherson: That is Layla Zaidane, President and CEO of Future Caucus. Layla joined 12 Geniuses to discuss the future of American democracy.
My name is Don MacPherson, your host of 12 Geniuses. Heading into any election season can be divisive, that’s why 12 Geniuses has partnered with Starts With Us on this series to help you navigate the overall 2024 election. Layla Zaidane is President and CEO of Future Caucus — the largest non-partisan organization of future lawmakers in the U.S. America’s closing in on 250 years of existence. In our conversation, Layla and I talk about what it will take for the U.S. to survive and thrive for another 250 years. We discuss why American democracy has been so enduring despite periods of extreme division, and we talk about what individual citizens can do to protect democracy.
Thank you to Starts With Us for their collaboration on this series. Starts With Us is an organization committed to overcoming extreme political and cultural division. Check them out at startswith.us.
Layla, welcome to 12 Geniuses.
Layla: Thank you so much for having me.
Don: Why don’t you tell us about your background, where you work, and how you got there?
Layla: So, I have been with Future Caucus since 2016. I think like a lot of people who do this work, I ended up here totally by accident. My parents are originally from Morocco. They immigrated when they were in their 20s, they met each other in New York, which is where they got married, and they had me and my younger sister. And so, growing up, I got to spend my summers with my cousins in Casablanca and the rest of the year in New York, sort of learning how to be an American. The thing that that taught me was how to find belonging or how to find a way to be a part of a group even when it felt like I didn’t totally fit in, right? When I was in Morocco, I was always the American cousin, or here in New York, I was the Moroccan student.
And it gave me this ability to almost be chameleon-like, right? Find a way to connect with others. That, to me, is I think my superpower, I like to say. Being a third-culture kid, it really taught me a lot. And when I started to get interested in politics, it became really clear to me that there needed to be a way to bring that ability to find belonging in different spaces and in different ways to the way we do politics. Initially, I thought I was going to do it along international lines, right? Like diplomacy, and how can we sort of better work across international lines? But one thing led to another, including, as a millennial, graduating into a recession. And I ended up working on U.S. politics where I applied, I think, that same interest in how can you bring people together across lines of difference?
Future Caucus reached out to me back in 2016. At the time, it was just a startup of an idea. So, I came on as COO and I’ve been there ever since. In 2021, I took over as CEO. And really our theory of change, our mission is to activate young elected officials to bridge the partisan divide and transform American politics. And what that means is we really help the youngest members of the legislature build relationships and work on policy solutions together so that political polarization is not an obstacle to getting things done. I feel really grateful that every day what I get to do is bring that sense of belonging to political leaders to help them infuse their policy solutions with that, and hopefully train and equip a rising generation of politicians to govern in a better way.
Don: Fantastic. Today is June 28th, 2024. Next week we’re going to celebrate Independence Day here in the United States. It’s going to be 248 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And we are going to talk about how we can propel American democracy for the next 250 years. And it seems like we’re at this very vital point right now where we have a lot of division to bridge. And so we’re going to talk about that. My question for you is, how do you define democracy?
Layla: A lot of times when we talk about democracy today, people conflate that with voting and elections. And sure, that’s part of a democracy. It’s part of how you express your voice, but that’s not democracy. Democracy, to me, is the way that we relate to one another, the way that we make decisions as a community in a way that honors everybody’s needs and perspectives and preferences. And the way that you can show up for one another for your neighbors or for people who you’ve never met before, I think, that is the experiment that American democracy is undertaking in a country as big as ours, as diverse as ours, right? We’re trying to figure out how to make decisions with our neighbors when our neighbors might live 400 miles away from us. And to me, I think it’s so much more than voting, right? It’s everything that happens in between elections too. It’s that way of being with one another.
Don: Yeah. The reason why I asked the question is I think most people don’t really truly understand what’s involved with democracy, and they feel like maybe they’re entitled to it. They’re entitled to freedoms, they’re entitled to rights. And really, democracy, in my mind, is an engagement sport. It’s a contact sport. You have to be engaged if democracy is going to flourish.
Layla: Yeah, I totally agree with that. It depends on everybody showing up and having a voice and being able to use that voice.
Don: Well, the next question is a little loaded because we talked about your definition of what democracy is — why do you think American democracy has been so enduring? I am just blown away by how thoughtful the founders were when they created this form of government. And I wonder, what do you think about its endurance? And how have we survived over all these years?
Layla: I think the genius of the founders was imagining the unimaginable, right? The tools for our own modernization and growth are contained within the founding documents. And the genius of writing a founding document that could adapt and contained those tools for more democracy, I think is so beautiful. It’s one of the things that made me so proud to be an American growing up when I saw what my family in Morocco had or didn’t have compared to me. And I think that idea of this notion of democracy transcending just one person, it’s not about the king, it’s not about the president. It really is about all of us in the ways in which we have processes to make decisions, to share resources, to do something, to build something.
That, to me, is why American democracy has endured. And of course, it’s not without its scars and there have been real moments of conflict and challenge and things that have been institutionalized that don’t feel super democratic, right? But I think always; Martin Luther King said the moral arc of the universe bends slowly, but it bends towards justice. I think about that in the sense of democracy that we’re working towards that better, more actualized form of a healthy, thriving democracy. And the other thing that I guess I would just say, too, is that, again, people think maybe about the federal government or the President when they think about what a democracy is. And really, it’s so much bigger than that. It’s about all of the institutions that are a part of our society, civil society, the pillars that keep us connected to each other, engaged with one another, feeling like we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves.
And so there are a lot of businesses or social clubs or organizations that I think are really vital to a thriving democracy.
Don: One of the episodes that will be contained within this season is with Vance Cryer. He’s a retired colonel from the U.S. Marine Corps, and he was assistant to the Secretary of Navy. One of the things that I wanted him to talk about is the oath that members of the military take, and it’s an oath to preserve the constitution, which really is supporting what you’re saying about there’s not one king. The military doesn’t bow down to the president even though the president is the commander in chief. And so I think that’s really an important distinction here is they’re focused on supporting the constitution, and that’s a sacred document. And I think that’s really important for people to understand.
Layla: Yeah. I think the best leaders in our democracy have all felt a real connection to something bigger than themselves. And that’s how you sort of get the leaders who can really be the engine of an inclusive democracy. Absolutely.
Don: Do you see America as the leading democracy in the world?
Layla: Yeah, I think like hard, yes. The thing that I would say is that being the best doesn’t mean you can’t get better. You don’t have room to grow. And certainly I would say there is a lot of room for us to grow. And that’s why in our founding documents, they talk about not a perfect union, but a more perfect union. And I think that idea of always striving for excellence, for better, for just more robust and dynamic and vibrant version of ourselves is part of the American spirit, is part of that American optimism that I think has been a really critical part to what has moved us forward. I think when you focus on the future, that is really galvanizing for people. This past week I had the opportunity to meet a man named Bobi Wine. I don’t know if you know who Bobby Wine is, but he is the leader of the opposition movement in Uganda.
And he challenged the current president, who has been president for nearly 40 years. So, some might not really call that a free and fair set of elections. But he has been a cultural force in Uganda as galvanized young people to get involved to come to the polls, to make their voices heard. And he and his wife Barbie were recently in conversation with me. And I asked them like, “Are there things that we can learn from you as we seek to renew and revitalize our own democracy?” And here’s what Barbie, Bobby Wine’s wife told me, she said, “America is like the eldest child in democracy. What you do sets the tone for the rest of us. And so if you don’t lead, if you are not the role model for us, then everything that we do is like writing on water.”
And to me, that really drove home. That despite all of the struggles, despite all of the ways that we wish we could be better, that we work to be better, we are the leaders, and the things that we do have consequences. And that to me — with great power comes great responsibility.
Don: It’s a huge responsibility.
Layla: But I think, unequivocally, we have to see ourselves as leaders, and then we have to be responsible with that power.
Don: We’ve seen a lot of division in the United States over our 248 years. How is this time different?
Layla: As humans, we are wired for connection. And so I truly believe that our natural instinct and state is to want to connect and want to bridge perceived differences. And instead, we get to these moments that are so, just to continue where we were just talking about, so driven by fear that you get to this intense, intense hate, to this intense division, this intense fear that escalates, in many cases, into political violence. Talk about sort of the original polarization in this country with the Civil War and how that tore, the saying, like brother versus brother against one another because of these deep, deep-seated fears of change and loss and the future. I think that another moment maybe more recently is in the 1960s when we saw incredible instability, assassinations, protests in the streets, just really, really difficult times.
And I think, in both of those instances, to me, the unifying theme and where I see some hope today of how we get out of this moment that we’re in is the importance of leaders and of good leadership. Because, even though in those moments it exposes the worst of us and it can show an ugly side of our human nature, I think it gives courageous, creative, empathetic leaders an opportunity to shine, an opportunity to inspire, an opportunity to build — to build the path forward and to build the way out. And in this moment today, I think that we are very focused on the leaders who maybe don’t have what it takes and ignoring the fact that we have a great deal, a great number of leaders who are stepping up to the plate and who are excited to build, to help bridge those differences.
As Future Caucus, we get to work with Gen Z and millennial elected leaders all across the country in congress, in state legislatures. And one stat that I bet you and your listeners don’t know about is that right now about 25% of all state legislators are young. 25% of all state legislators are young, but they are responsible for enacting 40% of bipartisan legislation. To me, that’s an opportunity to find hope in the next generation of leaders who are looking for ways to connect to one another, who are looking for ways to be solutions-oriented, who are looking to do politics and policymaking in a different way. I feel very optimistic that in this very moment where it feels very tempting to disengage and to just tune out and say, "Politics, we’re just too divided, it’s too hopeless,” that we’re actually seeing young people run towards the problem running for office, not running away from it.
Don: Layla, what’s required for democracy to endure another 250 years in the United States?
Layla: I think there’s really three main drivers of how our democracy and how our country has gotten so polarized in this moment. One is there are some structural changes that I think we can make to our institution, some policy changes that make it easier for people to participate in the system and for the system to fully listen and be accountable to its citizens. And so those are some laws maybe that we might want to change. The second thing is more of the social piece of it. And that is the things that break social cohesion. Things like social media that create echo chambers and a distorted perception of reality that make it harder for us to know other people or to connect with those who might be or think differently from us. And so that’s another real driver, I think, of polarization.
And the third thing is sort of what I was just talking about right now, it’s leaders. And when you have leaders who are conflict entrepreneurs or who seek to exploit the system for their own profit, then we’re doomed. But if you have leaders who want to step up and lead with integrity and bring people together and find ways to meet the needs of the people and fully bring the people along in that process, not to dominate them, but to be alongside them, I think that is the third and critical key that we need to make sure that this American experiment lasts another 250 years. And so we work very much on the leadership piece of it. And that looks like equipping them to just be successful with leadership training, leadership development, connecting them to good innovative policy experts or each other to trade policy ideas.
Some of the things that we’ve actually looked at are, it’s really hard actually to serve in elected leadership right now at the state level in particular. The average salary is somewhere around $35,000 a year. Most state lawmakers hold multiple jobs. They don’t have any staff who are doing research for them. So, some of those things to say, “Well, what do leaders need to actually lead effectively?” And as we look forward 250 years, I think there’s, of course, a huge piece for people, voters, citizens to play and being informed and engaged. I think there is a really, really important role for leaders to play in better representing the people who elected them to serve.
Don: Maybe you could talk about this story I heard you talk about before which is the State of Mississippi and the flag issue. Because I think, so often, issues are kind of forced down the throat of the party that’s not in power. And what I love about this story in the state of Mississippi is there was a lot of trust that was built over a period of time, and there was bipartisan support for this.
Layla: What Future Caucus does is we try to build community for lawmakers, just like I was looking for belonging when I was growing up. That’s what we do for young lawmakers. Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, an independent or something else, you all share a generational identity. And so what if we created spaces within our legislatures, within our institutions where our leaders could connect not along a partisan identity, but along a generational one? What would that unlock? And so we’ve launched Bipartisan Future Caucus Chapters in Congress in now 34 states to create those spaces for people to meet and build genuine relationships. So each caucus led by one Democrat, one Republican, anyone 45 years old and younger is welcome.
I’m very proud to say we’ve served about 1,800 young elected leaders in the time that we’ve been around. So, quite a movement of young lawmakers who are rising the ranks as we speak, who have this sort of approach to policymaking. That’s what we saw in Mississippi back in, let’s see, it was 2017, where we launched the Mississippi Future Caucus, and we worked with a young lawmaker named Rep. Jeremy Anderson and his colleague, Rep. Toby Barker. And they said, “Let’s get all the young people together. We’re going to put them in a room. We’re just going to have some drinks, have some food,” because, you know, people don’t come to things unless you have food and drinks. So, of course, they had to do it over dinner. And just had a moment behind closed doors, no press, to just get to know one another, to just start to talk.
And at that very first meeting with the drinks and the food, they started going around the table and saying, “Well, what do we think this group could work on? What do we want to focus on as a group of young people?” And somebody threw out some tax policy idea, somebody said something on education. And then gets around the table and somebody says, “Well, what about the state flag which currently has Confederate iconography on it? What if we did some legislation to change that?” And you could hear a pin drop in the room. That is not the low-hanging fruit that this group was looking to sort of start with.
And they said, “You know what? That’s okay. We can disagree on that. We don’t need to start with the things that we disagree on. Let’s start with the things that we do agree on.” And so they did just that — they kept meeting, they kept getting to know one another, they kept having happy hours and dinners, and, eventually, they started working on some tax policy stuff and they started working on some education stuff. They started notching wins, they started doing things together. And then they would get wins, and that would feel good, and they would feel like they’ve got this rhythm, they’ve got trust. They’ve built an ability and just familiarity with working with one another. Fast forward now, it’s 2020, and in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and just the racial reckoning that swiftly followed across the country everywhere, in Mississippi, what that looked like was a renewed call from the people for action on this state flag that still had the Confederate iconography on it.
And so somebody in the Future Caucus said, “Let’s talk about this now. We didn’t want to talk about it in 2017, but would you all be open to a discussion?” And they said, okay, because now they had trust, now they knew that this was going to be in good faith. And they were able to sit down and share authentically what it meant for them, what they were scared of, what they hoped for. And ultimately, at the end of that discussion, the Mississippi Future Caucus, mostly Republicans and Democrats, voted in favor of changing the state flag. And today that state flag does not have Confederate iconography on it. I love that example because, to me, it takes the impossible and it shows how you make it possible. And the caucus was not meeting just so that they had this sort of like secret end goal in mind where this is the thing that we’re going to do. No, they wanted to meet because they wanted to strengthen the fabric of how they made decisions, of how they made choices in service of other people. And because of that trust, because of the transformation that occurred within that group, something almost unimaginable was able to happen in just three years.
Don: It’s an example of what can happen.
Layla: Right.
Don: And that trust is so important to build, it takes time to do that. But when leaders are focused on delivering to the constituents, that’s an outstanding outcome.
Layla: That’s right. That’s right.
Don: What can individuals do to lessen this partisan divide?
Layla: Well, I think there’s obviously a huge role that people have to play in being engaged. And I think being engaged means more than just showing up every four years to vote for the president. It means staying informed. It means volunteering, it means maybe running for office yourself. It means attending a town hall to get information directly from the source. And I think the more that we show up in these processes, the more our democracy is accountable to us. I work with lawmakers every day and they would love nothing more than to truly understand like, “What is it that you, my constituent, want me to do?” And if your voice is not a part of their decision-making process, there’s a good chance the thing that they do is not the thing actually that you wanted. You can’t just wish it. You have to be engaged in the process.
I think that that, to me, is one of the most important things that you can do in between elections, showing up and engaging in dialogue. And then I think in just more of day-to-day sense, finding ways to engage with people who are different from you. We all tend to live in echo chambers of our own making, whether that’s digitally and the way the algorithm sort of feed us things that we already agree with, or even where we live or worship or work or go to school. We actually don’t have a ton of opportunities these days to really get to know people who are super different from us. And so I think savor those moments where you are able to get curious about somebody and to engage in a debate authentically and with curiosity.
Don: Where is democracy most vulnerable?
Layla: You know, they say the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is indifference — that to me is where we are most vulnerable, is that if the exhaustion and the frustration becomes such that we lose hope or interest in being a part of building the future of our country, of our democracy, that disengagement and that disillusionment is where I see the greatest vulnerability in our democracy. Because remember, when we talked about what’s the definition of democracy at the start of this conversation, we said it is a way that we all show up for one another, the way that we all are able to express ourselves and our preferences and we make decisions. And if only 10% of us are participating in that decision-making process, then that is not a robust democracy. And so there are ways to make it easier and more inclusive for people to be engaged. But I think when we self-disengage, when we self-disenfranchise, when we decide it’s not worth it, like throwing the towel, to me, that is the biggest risk if people check out entirely.
Don: So, I referenced this episode that I did with Vance Cryer. He was in the military for 26, 27 years, the U.S. Marine Corps, and we were talking about the greatest threat to the United States and our adversaries, right? And we started talking about external adversaries, China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, terrorism. And what became clear to me is that the far right and the far left, and this polarization, these echo chambers, these are the tools for our external adversaries. And what they’re doing is creating this apathy that you’re talking about. So, in fact, in my opinion, the divide is not the threat to democracy. Well, it’s the tool that our adversaries are using. And so I thought, well, okay, I don’t want to be a tool to America’s true threat, so maybe I need to get out of my echo chamber. Maybe I do need to have conversations with people who are different than I am. Maybe I do need to reengage in democracy. So, that was just something that really stood out during our conversation.
Layla: Yeah. What an interesting way to think about how the most patriotic thing you can do is actually to get out of your echo chamber. That maybe we need to be doing like billboards and slogans for that just to get people comfortable with this connection to national security and your individual ability to push back.
Don: More and more we’re seeing local news being really… it’s going extinct in a lot of places, which is really, really sad. And I think that’s actually a bit of a threat to democracy as well. And I wonder if you can comment on that.
Layla: Yeah. I mean, the news deserts at the local level are really troubling because we do know that most people get their news now from social, or at least young people, get their news from social media. And when you’re not hearing things that are related to the place where you are, or with the context of the environment in which you live, you lose a lot of I think credible information and data and ability to make decisions and to make decisions for yourself rather than sort of just going with what your ingroup says or what your “tribe” believes. The other thing that I would say is there’s a group called Starts With Us that recently did a report that shows that the most hyper-partisan lawmakers get four times the amount of media coverage than sort of your run-of-the-mill workhorse lawmakers.
What that tells the average person who now doesn’t have local news to turn to, to read about what’s happening, and is just looking at national news about what’s going on in the world, and they’re seeing four times the amount of stories about super hyper-partisan leaders and what they’re doing. That starts to shape your worldview and your perception of reality in a way that is inconsistent with what’s actually happening. And so I think that there’s a lot of reasons why we should invest in more of a local media ecosystem, not just because they tend to be less polarized or less likely to fall into that four times amplifying the hyper-partisan lawmakers. They’re going to cover the lawmakers that live in your district and what they’re doing. But I think it’s things that feel more actionable too and more relatable to your day-to-day life when you’re covering sort of things at the more local level versus things that are sort of national in scope.
Don: You talked about this earlier, conflict entrepreneurs among our leadership, and you talked with the Starts With Us, and by the way, they’re my partner on this series, so I’m very well aware of their research. But how do we mitigate these conflict entrepreneurs? Because they do consume a lot of the oxygen in the room and the print in our media and our news stories.
Layla: I think that it’s the same way that you treat misinformation is how you treat conflict entrepreneurs, which is you have to arm enough trusted other messengers with the information and megaphones that they need to not just counterbalance but to overtake the conflict. Entrepreneurs. One of our goals for Future Caucus over the next five years is we hope to get to 51% of all young lawmakers in the country are a part of Future Caucus. We believe that that can set a new norm. It is more popular than not to be a part of a group that is working in collaboration with one another, that is working to shift the way we do policy. And if you can create new norms, new permission structures for people, it’s not just one person who is then in charge of or accountable for getting rid of the conflict entrepreneur.
It becomes on all of us, and all of us sort of set that culture and set that norm to make that conflict entrepreneur go away. But it starts with, and this is why we’re so passionate about the value of good leadership, is it starts with really equipping trusted messengers and trusted leaders to step up and to realize their own power, their power that they have. Because I think sometimes people see themselves as helpless and just sort of in the system, and this is how things are and this is how things always will be. But there’s more of us than there are of them. And really waking up to that can be an incredibly empowering and incredibly effective way to silence some of those who might otherwise exploit sort of vulnerabilities or conflict.
Don: I’m going to reference something that I saw on the Future Caucus website. It was a presentation that you were doing. You said, “I believe America’s best days are ahead.” And I want to know what fills you with a sense of optimism related to the United States’ future.
Layla: How in the world could you not be optimistic if you had my job? I get to work with hundreds of Gen Z and millennial lawmakers who are so freaking talented, who are so smart, they could be doing anything they want — they could be making tons of money at some private company, and instead they’re driven by a sense of public service to do unglamorous jobs like state legislator or even member of Congress. And they have decided that they want to do it because they feel connected to something bigger than themselves. Because they believe that in a diversifying country where we are so filled with potential and opportunity and are not realizing that, in this moment, that they can be a part of building something better. That stat that I shared earlier that only 25% of lawmakers right now are young, but they are responsible for 40% of all bipartisan legislation that gets enacted, signed into law.
They’re punching above their weight. And so when I look down the next 10 years, the next 15 years, this is the cohort of people who are going to be committee chairs and speakers of the House and mayors and holding positions of power where they get to set the norms or they get to set how we do things and who we’re doing them with and who we’re doing them for. And so I am filled with so much hope every day getting to work with these leaders because they’re doing the hard work to build the version of America that is a more perfect version than the one that they inherited.
Don: That’s fantastic. I’m very optimistic, as well. I think we’re in this period, it’s difficult. We are divided. There’s a lot of fear. But the sky’s the limit for this country, for democracy, for humans, for humanity. I didn’t always feel that way. Last five to 10 years, absolutely, I feel that way.
Layla: There’s more of us than there are of the people who would seek to undermine what we’re doing. And that alone, just knowing that there’s other people, there’s people who are even listening to this podcast who want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger and better and good, knowing that we’re all in this together and there’s more of us, that’s incredible.
Don: Layla, is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have?
Layla: No, just thank you so much for having me on. If anyone wants to get involved with Future Caucus, you can visit our website at futurecaucus.org. And please reach out, let me know if I can connect you to any of the amazing young leaders in your state or in your city, and help us change the world and make a better America.
Don: Layla, thank you for your time, and thank you for being a genius.
Layla: Thank you so much.
Don: Thank you for listening to 12 Geniuses. This is the final episode of the 12 Geniuses collaboration which Starts With Us. Together, we produced a dozen episodes to help people navigate the 2024 election. We will be back this fall when I interview guests like Seth Godin, Marshall Goldsmith, and other geniuses who will help us understand the trends shaping the way we live and work. A special thanks to Kristie, Amelia, John, Tom, and the rest of the team at Starts With Us for making this series possible. Also, thank you to Collins and his team in Nairobi for the help in producing this season of the show. Thanks for listening, and thank you for being a genius.