We have to stop pretending that there's no adversity, or that we can't do anything about the adversity we face. We need to fix the culture of silence and ignorance surrounding bias and adversity.

One you have to get a unique insight. It starts there. Two, you need to be prepared to devote a lot of energy and commitment.

It's not enough to sit in our ivory towers or offices and think we have to go out and talk to people who are affected by a problem to understand what's going on, on the ground.

We've had a collective gap of imagination around economic bridges. Lincoln used the government as a battering ram to bring opportunity to those left behind. The country was modernising, industrialising, and Lincoln wanted to empower people. We did that. Franklin Roosevelt did it with the GI Bill. We know how to build bridges; we just don't build them.

It shocks me that our society has not caught up with the fact that mental illnesses should be treated like any other disease, and not relegated to the justice system. We have so many different therapies and medicines, and people can make significant recoveries.