Answers are always hard to come by. The challenge is which answers are we looking for and who can we enlist to collaborate to find those answers.

We have to go through the process of defining:

• What do you want to change
• What is your purpose
• What do you value
• How Do You Navigate uncertainties
• What is your role in creating commerce and culture
• How can we ask big questions that lead to progress and challenging each other

The first interview in this section was hosted by Brian Grazer, a producer and Academy Award and Golden Globe winner for his work, including his high profile show Empire. He sat down with actress Taraji P. Henson, star of Empire.

Grazer spoke about how important it is to encourage people at an early age. He could not read until he was in the 6th grade, but his grandmother encouraged him to use his curiosity. He learned to look people in the eyes and reach into their heart. His book, “Face to Face: Art of Human Connection” examines many of these issues.

Despite his accolades, he says that the words have to be interpreted by the character and the actor. He says Henson created one of the most iconic characters of the decade by showing her desire for justice.

Henson talked about her career and her feeling that she was done with TV after her role on “Person of Interest”. She felt that the show was too corporate, had too many opinions and she wanted to be more of an artist.

She went to perform at a Pasadena playhouse and says that her agent made her read the script. She was hesitant about taking on the role of “Cookie” because she felt she had been pidgeon-holed into edgy characters and that she had more depth. She didn’t want to play another edgy character and yet taking on the role of Cookie was just that because Cookie was coming back into the world after a 17 year sentence for selling crack. She said she loves when her characters make her nervous. She tries to humanize her characters and connect with their flaws.

Mental health is very important to Henson. She stands strongly against the concept of perfection by telling people that “Perfection is the perfect lie.” She looks at the fact that mental health is a very under-discussed issue, especially in the African American community. She started a mental health foundation named after her father and needed to find a culturally competent therapist to help.

Ultimately, her key is that people need to listen more. Not just listen in one ear as they are busy tweeting, texting or watching TV. Don’t just ask someone how they are, and then just keep walking.

Liz Phair then got on the stage and spoke about art as a vehicle for the truth. She gave credit to her mother who was a docent at the Art Institute.

In her memoire “Horror Stories” she talks about the urgency created by the last few years and how during the last election cycle, she became that old crabby man who yells at the TV. She wasn’t seeing values reflected in our countries leadership and that the madness was taking hold.

Rolling Stone Senior Writer Jamil Smith hosted this session to look at how we can make changes in our world.

The first interview involved Heidi Stevens and Cleo Wade, as they examined how Cleo decided to make an impact on the women’s prison population. Cleo set forth her definition of HOPE defining it as: “the belief that our tomorrows can be better than our todays.“

Cleo reiterated that it is important to recognize that it is not merely wishing for the best, but working towards the best. You want people to allow for what is possible and to build communities by telling stories. She provides live advice columns for the Women’s Prison Association. One of the things that she does is to ask people “What story would you tell if you knew that it could save one person’s life?”

Cleo’s research has shown her that women are the least visited people in prisons. She is pushing to help preserve their dignity, invest in spaces that help avoid trauma in the first place and to put more focus on how we help them re-enter the world. She emphasized that it needs to be an “us against the problem” mentality, so that we all need to collaborate to attack the problem.

Jamil Smith then sat down with Dan Edelman, founder of the famous Edelman PR firm. He started talking about their research which actually showed that consumers would be more likely to buy products from a company whose CEO stood up to gun violence. He feels that the NRA is actually holding back progress and acting counter to its own interests. He says that most gun owners are disappointed and feel that they are now getting a bad rap because of the irresponsibility. His message is that “it is okay to stand up to the NRA.” His recommendation is to focus the efforts on two critical points: 1) Proper background checks; 2) Safe storage of the weapons.

Edelman believes that the focus needs to shift on restoring the responsibilities that go with gun rights, as opposed to the frequent demand for unrestricted access. He thinks that requiring background checks for every gun sale and removing the rights from domestic abusers would help close some of the loopholes.

His research shows that 4.6 million children live at homes that do not have locked guns. The NRA has helped pass a law that prevents pediatricians from asking a family if there is a gun at home and if it is locked up.

Gun violence kills over 100 people every day. We need to train teenagers to interrupt the cycle of violence in their own homes.

The challenge of the state laws is that guns can cross state lines as easily as cars do. In Chicago, 20% of the guns come from Indiana. So we need to make sure that the solutions are federal because otherwise we are only as safe as the state with the weakest gun laws.