This has actually kind of been my platform as a Partners in Policymaking graduate, and I'm a very big advocate for helping others learn how to become self-advocates and encouraging them to become self-advocates, and what I do always tell people is "Your story matters, your voice matters, you may just be one voice but that one voice has the propensity to change everything." You never know who your story is going to impact, and who they know, and what they're going to change, and that if you just sit quietly and you don't ever speak up, and you don't ever tell anyone your story, or what you want to happen, you're taking something valuable from the world that you have to offer. Self-advocates, we have the chance to direct our history and create the path of where we want our community to go.

I would like to see us as a society, especially as the state of Minnesota, moving past the prejudices and the judgments and the preconceived ideas of limitations, and interacting with people with disabilities as people, not disabilities, and accepting them for who they are. As we move into a technological society, we're seeing a lot more digital bullying and cyber bullying and I would really really like to see that acceptance end the bullying and the exclusion, and have people just more accepted as they are, not as people with disabilities.

I think the grand opening of the Minnesota Capitol is a phenomenal event in our current political climate. I think it's a really great reminder for Minnesotans that this is our building this is our home and our voices are the ones that matter when it comes to making decisions and when it comes to influencing our lawmakers. They work for us at the end of the day. We're the ones at the voting polls giving them their jobs, and it's a great reminder to open up this building and welcome all of Minnesota back, and to remind us that we all have voices and those voices all deserve to be heard.