I have always worked at the intersection of culture, design, writing, and technology. For over a decade, I've examined thousands of sources to research the world's positive trends. I've been a manager with Meetup, a web site that helps millions of people self-organize into local community groups, and now work for Proust.com. I am an experienced public speaker on topics such as critical thinking, democracy, peace, and technology. In addition, I'm a member of Mensa and a professional artist. I grew up with parents who taught me about human rights and participated in a wide range of community service projects. I was continually hearing about equality and peace. I studied Gandhi's work a lot, too. As an adult, I also became interested in critical thinking as a topic, especially after reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World a decade ago, and that led me into examining media bias. In putting the two things together (critical thinking plus progress/peace), I began to see that trends and clues of progress toward world peace are being neglected by the media. So I set out to uncover them, and link them together.