A Day of Unreasonable Conversation Bringing Change Makers and Creatives Together featuring First Lady Jill Biden, Halle Berry, Kerry Washington, Paris Hilton

by Yvonne Gurley

Monday’s invite-only A Day of Unreasonable Conversation hosted its fourth event by Proper Daley’s social impact agency in collaboration with Invisible Hand, a culture change agency. The summit featured change makers and a star-studded group of speakers including first lady Jill Biden, Paris Hilton, Halle Berry, and Kerry Washington.

The event took place in Los Angeles at the Getty Center with an entire day of bridging connections between television producers, directors, writers, and change-makers for the culture. With intentions to influence the future of authentic onscreen storylines, conversations were led with unreasonable topics such as emotional health and menopause, education and the crisis in our classrooms, race, climate change, and politics.  

“My ego told me I was going to skip menopause.” Halle Berry gasped throughout the room as she described her first personal experience with perimenopause, leading attendees with such a taboo topic to giggles and smiles from ear to ear. Berry joked about her love life and how it wasn’t until age 54 that she found true love in her partner Van Hunt. When Halle got into her sex life, the First Lady blushingly chimed in with a joke stating, “I’m not talking about mine!”

Berry brought attendees into the day she recalled having pain after sex that felt like razor blades. After visiting her doctor, she was told she had the worst case of herpes he’d ever seen. Confronting Hunt, both were tested and neither had herpes. Following the results, “I realized that was a symptom of perimenopause due to dryness. My doctor had no knowledge and didn’t prepare me.”

It was that experience that prompted Halle to make the bold decision to use her platform to educate and inform others about perimenopause and menopause. Both Berry and Dr. Biden spoke with urgency to an audience filled with creatives to write more narratives that tell the stories of women over 40, living in their prime in efforts to empower them.  

Kerry Washington along with Rebeka Peterson discussed the crisis in our classrooms. Kerry shared about her childhood and how it was her family’s custom, “Whatever we said we loved, we immersed ourselves in that”. Peterson charmed the audience with talks of how she allows her students to tell their stories although she teaches math. “Allowing people to see themselves changes the trajectory of their lives”.

The audience witnessed a softer side to Paris Hilton as she spoke with such vulnerability while discussing her mental health. Accompanied by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who also dove into the depths of what it looks like to suffer alone in his own life.

Hilton gave a brief, heartfelt description of what it was like growing up with undiagnosed ADHD during a time when no one was talking about it and how it affected her. “I was taken to a boarding school that had deceptive marketing where I experienced all levels of abuse, and nobody knew. I created a character as a trauma response. I had to play that character year after year. I told myself that maybe God allowed this to happen to me so that I could be the hero that I needed as a little girl”.

Dr. Murthy joined Paris in sharing his experiences with what suffering alone looked like for him. “There are all kinds of stories that we tell ourselves to rationalize”. Dr. Murthy shared that during an in-depth conversation with his wife, he was told, “Your problem is not that you don’t have any friends, you’re not experiencing friendships”.  This statement granted attendees a deep pause in reaction. Surgeon General left the audience with “Something is happening to our youth where kindness is seen as weakness”.

“We are too tired to advocate for ourselves,” said actress and host Yvette Nicole Brown when describing what it was like to be an unpaid caregiver for her father. Brown went on to describe the importance of imagery. “We can’t be it if we don’t see it”.

Genevieve Roth sees her job as founder and CEO of Invisible Hand as a social impact agency that “gives the industry access to the best information possible on the forces and issues that are shaping our world right now’.

About A Day of Unreasonable Conversation

A Day of Unreasonable Conversation is a program of Propper Daley, the social impact agency behind the world’s leading changemakers, produced in partnership with Invisible Hand, a social impact and culture change agency that blends storytelling and community to propel the world forward. 

Propper Daley was founded as the nation’s first social impact agency, fusing “left-brain” strategic expertise with “right-brain” creative execution to help clients across sectors accelerate their purpose. Today, the firm is known for building and executing world-class social impact programs in close collaboration with leading foundations, nonprofits, brands, and individual philanthropists.

Invisible Hand uses the best of community organizing, creative storytelling, and investigative research to craft strategies and activations for clients ready to build a more equitable and sustainable future. Together with influential companies, nonprofits, and individuals, the agency engages in deep dialogue with communities to co-create programs that build lasting impact.