Heather McGhee ’97 is a director at Demos, a multi-issue national organization that combines research, policy and advocacy to influence public debate and catalyze change. She works every day to address economic inequality. As the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Speaker, she urged students to think about difficult economic issues.
“The relative privilege that all of us in this room have, compared to the vast majority of Americans, is not a reason to avoid questions of economic inequality—because it makes us uncomfortable, or because of where we sit on the ladder. Our relative privilege is an opportunity. It is power, and what is power but the ability to make change?”