Why I Do What I Do: A Pattern of Advocacy

People sometimes assume that what I’m proposing now is sudden, radical, or driven by ideology. It isn’t. There is a clear throughline in my life, and I want to name it explicitly.

1. Standing Up for Same-Sex Parents (2006)

When I was a master’s student at the University of Southern California, I earned a degree in Communication Management. It was intentionally broad. The goal wasn’t finance or accounting. It was learning how ideas move people, how change happens, and how humans communicate, lead, and influence one another.

Before that, I double-majored in psychology and communication as an undergraduate.

And even earlier than college, I competed in speech competitions as a teenager.

Why? I was preparing to work with ideas that shape human behavior, because ideas change the world.

For my master’s thesis, I was free to choose my topic. This was around 2004–2006, a time when the cultural narrative around gay parents was openly hostile. The dominant storyline suggested that gay people would be dangerous parents, that they would “turn” children gay, or harm them. Even the most generous academic literature at the time framed same-sex parenting as something to be tolerated, not respected.

I didn’t buy it.

Based on lived experience and reason, I argued something different: that many gay parents are better positioned to parent well.

Their children are always wanted. Many understand marginalization, judgment, and suffering firsthand. Those who do the inner work often become deeply compassionate, emotionally regulated, relationally intelligent people.

Suffering can harden people. Or it can humanize them. I have always believed it should do the latter.

That thesis was my first act of public advocacy. It didn’t go viral. It didn’t make headlines. But it exists. It’s available on Research Gate for the public to find. And nearly twenty years ago, I stood up for a group that needed defending, because it was the right thing to do.

2. Advocating for Polymaths in the Age of Specialization (2018)

Years later, when I entered my doctoral program, I asked a similar question: Who is being discriminated against now?

The answer surprised many people. It wasn’t a group defined by identity politics. It was people who refused to be narrow in an era obsessed with specialization.

Highly capable, multidisciplinary thinkers were being sidelined, misunderstood, and dismissed as unfocused or unserious. Yet these were often the people most capable of navigating complexity.

So in 2018, I published the first doctoral dissertation ever written on polymathy as a human phenomenon. I conducted an in-depth qualitative study of modern polymaths, documenting their lived experiences, strengths, struggles, and contributions.

That dissertation was about 300 pages, written entirely by me, without AI. It went on to become far more impactful than I anticipated.

I later supervised the second doctoral dissertation in the field. I built the Polymaths Place community because I didn't want these ideas to be stuck in an ivory tower of academia--I wanted them to reach real people, and to help shape how they think about their own intelligence and their capacities to be broad, not just narrow and deep.

I dedicated more than a decade of my life to understanding and advocating for people whose minds don’t fit neatly into boxes.

And now, in the age of artificial intelligence and extreme complexity, it turns out polymaths are not a liability; they are essential.

3. Criminal Justice Reform and Human Dignity

Then came my most painful chapter. For five years, I became a criminal justice reform advocate. I created helpfreeshawn.com, built a movement, ran social media campaigns, appeared on podcasts, created merchandise, organized petitions, and spoke publicly about injustice.

But my concern was never just one person.

That’s why I created the Prison Transparency Project: my assessment of what is actually happening inside our criminal justice system, paired with concrete recommendations for reform, as well as a platform where system-impacted people can tell the truth about their experiences.

What I found was devastating.

Mass incarceration functions as a humanitarian crisis. It is modern-day slavery in many respects. Incarcerated people are used for cheap labor. Government systems and private contractors profit from their confinement and labor. Prisons are filled not only with people who committed harm, but with the mentally ill, the addicted, the traumatized, and the poor. Many entered the system already broken and leave it worse.

There are people who are genuinely unsafe and must be separated from society. That is reality.

But warehousing human beings does not require dehumanizing them. Safety and humanity are not opposites. Rehabilitation is impossible in conditions of abuse, neglect, and humiliation. A system that treats people like animals should not be surprised when it produces more suffering.

People come out of prison more damaged than when they went in. That is not justice. It is social corrosion.

That chapter of my life took an enormous toll. I paid for it emotionally, financially, and personally. But I do not regret it, because it revealed something fundamental to me:

Our systems do not fail accidentally. They fail because they were designed without sufficient intelligence, ethics, or care.

The Pattern

When I step back and look at these chapters together, the throughline is clear.

I am consistently drawn to groups of people who are:

• Misunderstood rather than dangerous

• Flattened by simplistic narratives

• Harmed by systems that refuse to see their full humanity

  
  

I don’t advocate because it’s fashionable. I advocate because the story being told doesn’t match reality. The truth deserves to be known.

Again and again, I’ve seen the same mistake repeated at different scales: We design systems for control instead of flourishing. We reduce complexity instead of learning how to hold it. We punish difference instead of understanding it.

And each time, the cost is human suffering.

Why This Matters Now

We are entering an era where complexity is accelerating faster than our institutions can manage. Artificial intelligence, climate instability, geopolitical fragmentation, mass migration, economic precarity—these are not problems that can be solved with slogans, tribes, or legacy frameworks.

They require:

• High intelligence

• Strong social and emotional skill

• A deeply anchored ethical compass

  
  

Intelligence alone is not enough. We already know that. Intelligence without ethics builds weapons, not wisdom. Intelligence without social skill fractures collaboration. Intelligence without humility becomes tyranny.

What we need now are people capable of thinking deeply, working together, and caring broadly.

That is why I am trying to convene what comes next. Not as a savior. Not as a hero. Not as a leader with all the answers. But as someone who has spent her life asking the same question in different forms:

Who is being harmed by the way we are currently thinking—and how do we think better?

Looking Forward

This is not about tearing everything down in anger. It’s about designing what comes next with clarity, care, and courage.

I care about the future because I care about people. Because I care about children who will inherit what we build. Because I refuse to accept unnecessary suffering as the price of doing business.

The old systems are not just broken. They are exhausted. They cannot carry the supercomplexity of the world we are now living in. So we must grow beyond them.

That has been my work for twenty years. Beyond just being a scholar or a content creator, I consider myself a social reformer.

Convening bright minds to develop a strategic plan for humanity at a global scale? This is simply my next project in a line of commitments I undertook to tell the truth, and to do work to relieve suffering, and enhance thriving.