CEO of Gen Z forum The Conversationalist says respect is paramount

Sophie Beren, 28, grew up as the only Jewish student in her grade in Wichita, Kansas. She often wished she could find a community of other Jewish kids so she could be heard and understood. When she arrived at the University of Pennsylvania as a freshman, she immediately sought out other people from her identity group. She realized everyone else was doing the same thing.

“I thought there had to be more to life,” Beren tells Fast Company. As a result, she started a club called TableTalk, with the goal of bringing different types of people together to get to know each other. She scaled this up to 80 different schools and universities. During the 2016 election, Beren realized that we were enmeshed in ideological echo chambers, which she wanted to break down. This was the catalyst for launching her company, The Conversationalist, in 2019. 

The Conversationalist’s mission is to unify the world by empowering Gen Z to have difficult conversations, using two main methods. The first is a talk show that Beren hosts; the second is a community of over 150,000 strong on social media, and a moderated online forum on an app, where members of Gen Z can talk to each other about controversial topics. 

Fast Company chatted with Beren about how to facilitate unifying conversations during a particularly polarized times. As might be expected by someone who has built a career upon conversations, Beren is a gifted conversationalist. She has a knack for making you feel special. She stops and asks for feedback. She wants to know your opinion, especially on knotty topics. By the end, we were volleying opinions back and forth. 

Fast Company: How do you ensure conversations remain respectful but include many different points of view, especially given the difficulties other platforms have had with conversations?

Sophie Beren: I have built this platform from the research I’ve done, which posits that the more interaction [and contact] with people outside of your own bubble or background or identity, the more we’re actually able to foster empathy and tolerance and understanding. 

We’ve built conversation norms, community guidelines, rules, and regulations that we adhere to as a platform. We’ve built this culture within our communities so that our community management team, as well as the Gen Z in our community, now uphold it for themselves. So now, when new members join, and maybe things get out of hand, you’ll see members of our own community course correcting and saying, Hey, just a reminder, you know, please try to use an “I statement,” which is saying “I think” or “I believe,” instead of saying “You did this” or “You did that.”

FC: We’re at a point as a country where sometimes having a conversation can be unsafe for people. We’re scaling back LGBTQ rights and women’s rights. There are questions about who does and doesn’t count as an American. How do you allow for multiple points of view while also keeping people safe?

SB: We do our best as a platform to take things case by case, conversation by conversation. But at the end of the day, we fall back on those guidelines that we’ve built. We filter out hate speech, which we define as comments or speech that directly opposes someone’s right to exist. But what differs from other social media platforms versus ours is that our goal, first and foremost, is to educate. We’re an educational platform, and we want to give people the benefit of the doubt. 

What I’ve learned from talking to thousands of young people [is that] oftentimes, when human rights come up in conversation, or identity politics come up in conversation in a way that makes someone feel that their human rights are up for debate, I’ve learned that for the most part, the person presenting that viewpoint is simply ignorant. And so, my philosophy is how can we help educate.

FC: Conversely, Gen Z also has a reputation for being censorious, given cancel culture, etc. How do you advise people to figure out the line between discomfort with a different point of view and safety?

SB: You have to ask yourself some really hard questions. For me, I had to kind of go to my limits in order to understand what I was okay with and what I was not. You know, growing up in an environment where there was a lot of anti-Semitism, it felt uncomfortable in the moment, but I brushed it off because I was young. I didn’t fully understand. And a little bit later in life, I was able to see why certain things were incredibly harmful. And if I could go back, I think I would have better asked myself some questions. 

There’s a tendency among young people to try to numb that feeling. I tend to go to TikTok and just start the never-ending scroll. It took me some work in therapy to understand that numbing out the discomfort doesn’t get me any closer to understanding myself in a way that could discern what is unsafe versus what is discomfort. So, I think for anyone out there struggling to discern that for themselves, try to catch yourself in that moment and try to lean into it to understand what is happening and why.

FC: How do you measure progress on the platform?

SB: So, unfortunately, it’s not a formula. But we constantly speak to the members of our community and collect testimonials. And right now, it’s based on the people who are joining our community or coming on our show, and gauging where they are at the end of a conversation or throughout their journey as a community member, based on where they started. 

FC: What tips do you have for having a difficult conversation, whether it’s in a public arena or at the dinner table?

SB: The advice I would share is advice I try to give myself every day because I am in it with you. 

1. Try to attain conversational consent. I think we’ve all been there where someone has approached us with a hard conversation that we were not ready to have. And so immediately, we’re defensive, we get so heated, and we were caught off guard and we start to resent the dialogue itself. That ruins the conversation’s chances before it starts. So ask someone if they are in a headspace, or if they have the right amount of time to have that conversation before it starts. 
2. Set intentions. You want to set an intention so both sides know what they are aiming to come out with. Oftentimes, conversations end up in anger and frustration because you didn’t end up actually talking about what you wanted to. Make sure you both hold yourself accountable for what you wanted to talk about.
3. Try to go into that dialogue with the intention of listening more than you speak and understanding someone’s point of view before inserting your own point of view. Try to listen to someone else with the same fiery passion that you feel for being heard. 
4. Know yourself. Have a conversation with yourself before you talk to someone else to know what your beliefs are, what your voice looks like, what you believe in, what you don’t, and what are your boundaries. So if you get to a point in a conversation where you can no longer participate, because it’s negatively impacting your mental health, where you need to step away, you know yourself well enough to make that judgment call for you. You are your own best advocate.

FC: As a host, how do you handle having your own point of view and opinions when confronted with someone else you disagree with?

SB: Something I’ve been reflecting on a lot over the past year or so is the notion of staying silent. I have created a platform that is nonpartisan. I thought, as the leader of this platform, the best thing I could do was don’t share my point of view or get emotional when someone shares something I disagree with, and just create this neutral feeling for others to unload on. 

But over the past year, I’ve been doing thinking and learning . . . I want to be the most authentic version of myself. I hope that my legacy will be helping to guide others to unify within their own communities. I don’t believe that means being devoid of viewpoint. And it can become incredibly challenging when I’m in a conversation and I hear something that I so strongly disagree with and can’t respond. I’m actually going to start making a change, where I’m going to start sharing more of my own views in the context of helping people unify.

This platform is more about Gen Z than myself. So I don’t think I’ll be sharing my point of view every single day on every issue. I want to be really intentional about it. But I want to be a leader who shows people that unifying doesn’t mean being silent and agreeing with what everyone says around you. True unity is being able to share your point of view while listening to others. I don’t want to just watch from the sidelines—I am so much a part of this, and I am a human being learning and evolving and growing. New things every day challenge my views.