Category: Arts & Culture.

During the fifth annual Diversity Summit, keynote speaker MJ Rodriguez, who stars in Pose on FX, discussed how she learned to be proud of her identity.

For her keynote address at George Washington University’s fifth annual Diversity Summit, Pose actress MJ Rodriguez said her main goal was to share love.

The GW community crowded Lisner Auditorium to see Ms. Rodriguez share her insights on fearlessly being yourself when the world can be harsh to those with differing identities. As an Afro-Latina transgender woman who struggled with her identity growing up after being bullied by her peers as a child, Ms. Rodriguez said she never imagined life would grant her opportunities to inspire young adults who may identify with her story.

“It’s kind of beautiful to see all these faces in a Diversity Summit, talking to every single last beautiful color of the rainbow in here,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “I didn’t think I was qualified for this, but there was this moment that I felt like I could finally take hold of me and feel truly bold.”

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GW Today.

Planet Forward Summit speakers share how to use storytelling to persuade an audience to rethink waste and eat plant-based.

Marco Borges, the man behind Beyoncé’s plant-based eating challenge, knew that the interactive tool he created to quantify the environmental impact of a plant-based diet would not get enough media buzz on its own.

But once he showed The Greenprint Project tool to Beyoncé, she suggested sharing it on Instagram with her more than 126 million followers and attaching a sweepstakes for one participant to win concert tickets for life for her and/or her husband Jay-Z’s shows. National media outlets picked up the story immediately, and Mr. Borges was invited to talk about the project on multiple broadcast networks.

“The reality is that they were interested in the story because of how we wrapped the story,” Mr. Borges said. “It’s not just the subject of the story, it’s how you package the story…it is not just something you can create in a vacuum, it is something that you create with amazing people around you, but it has to be authentic.”

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