The divides in America are real, but they don’t have to stop us from seeing ourselves and each other. In her keynote conversation Mónica will discuss how to maintain balance and feel safety within a conversation that becomes fraught or divisive, including how to determine where that all-important line might be between what’s productive and what’s harmful. By learning how to detach from assumptions and ask truly curious questions, we can discover the paths people walk to their views, and close gaps in understanding across even the most gaping cultural, social, and political divides. 

Mónica Guzmán is author of I Never Thought of it That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times; founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity; Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels; and host of A Braver Way podcast. Mónica serves on the Board of Directors for the Institute for Multipartisan Education. She received an honorary doctorate degree from Wheaton College, and completed study and research fellowships at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, and the University of Florida. A Mexican immigrant, Latina, and dual US/Mexico citizen, she lives in Seattle with her husband and two kids and is the proud liberal daughter of conservative parents.