My passion for others and my experience as an actor and citizen of the world has naturally shaped me into a social and political activist who finds fulfillment from their work with meaningful organizations.
I lived in Burma for a couple of summers in the '90s, working with the democratic resistance that had fled to the jungles.
You can't always measure the effects of activist work; you just have to wish and pray that the message gets through.
I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.
In my work as an actress and an activist, I've spent many years working with low income communities and people of color who don't always have a voice in our political process.
So much of my work is as Yara, not as a character. If you're attacking my work as a philanthropist or activist, you're attacking Yara. But because of "Black-ish" and this national audience we have, I get to have a larger or louder voice.
My earliest memory campaigning was going to the dump to get petition signatures or handing out literature.
If there's a cause you believe in, go out there, get active, and do it.
I began working with the John Muir Institute and then started helping found Friends of the Earth organizations here and there in other countries. That pretty well brings us up to the present.
