I consider myself a mobilizer. I believe in the intrinsic human need to serve those around us, so I watch my community closely, for both opportunities to enrich others and for the people ready to organize them. Every event I put together introduces me to the person who will lead the next one. My mission is the cultivation of empathetic leadership in the human species. My inspiration for a life of service comes from many directions.

I’ve spent time studying and even trying to define my own philosophy of life, only to realize that all of life is both an inspiration and a call to action. Thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Siddhartha Gautama, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau have each shaped how I view compassion, responsibility, and the shared work of being human. The purpose of my service is simple—to lift every member of our species to an equitable level of humanity. Through mutual aid, we work to heal the broken connections between us, to remind one another that we are not separate. The rewards of this work are infinite. During one event, a child volunteer who helped us load vehicles told his father, “If I was the President, I’d help as many people as I could.” Moments like that are what make it all worth it. What could possibly compare to nurturing empathy in the next generation of world citizens?