This Tuesday and Wednesday (July 1 & 2), I attended the Keyston Rising Global Leaders Conference (KGRL Conference) hosted by high school students of the Beijing Keystone Academy. During the conference, I met with several dozen international students from all over Beijing. We shared with each other personal ideas and projects that we wanted to initiate to make the world a better place. Together, we discussed how to be a global leader in such a time of uncertainty. This conference opened my eyes to passionate, energetic change-makers just like me – students who, as we talked more, slowly grew to become invaluable friends and mentors. From this amazing experience, I was not only able to connect with like-minded students across Beijing but also gain valuable insight into what it means to be a student leader.

First and foremost, one of my biggest key takeaways from the conference was really the importance of the ability to relate and empathize with people from different cultures and backgrounds. Compassion and empathy were two major keywords that came up during the discussions. In today’s ever-globalizing world, it is certain that, at some point, everyone will have to work alongside people from diverse countries, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds. In these instances, building genuine connections through mutual understanding and respect can not only bridge cultural divides but also remind us that we are not lone cells, but instead part of a wider global community. Growing up as an international student and constantly being around people with different cultural identities, I have never felt this to be more true.

Moreover, having empathy and compassion also makes us more human. As AI begins to emerge more and more as a transformational power that could potentially replace humans, the best thing that we, as humans, can do is to become more human. AI may eventually surpass us in fields such as logic and repetition, but the one thing it will always be inferior in is in being human. Humans can connect, feel, and create meaning in ways that no machine ever truly can. This is precisely why people will, more than ever before, need to practice their unique traits as humans. And to do this, we must first learn to think as a human, feel as a human, and, more importantly, live life as a human – in short, learn to empathize with others.

During the conference, I met with student leaders, whose projects were almost always based upon empathy. There was one group who had been, for the past three or four years, working with rural villages to promote their craft to the world; another group that was organizing sessions and workshops to help address mental health problems. In all these initiatives, students were developing solutions to real-world problems that they addressed through empathy and compassion. Empathizing with different people allowed them to identify the problem that needed to be solved, and connecting with people all around the world enabled them to take action to solve the problem. In this sense, empathy has empowered students to become active change-makers, showing just how powerful it can be in making our world a better place and bringing out the most human side of people.

However, at the same time, empathy has also succeeded in connecting us at the KGRL Conference. Throughout the conference, we not only freely shared ideas and dreams with one another but also accepted suggestions with an open and sincere heart. During all the discussions, we weren’t competing with each other to prove whose project was the most innovative or the most impactful, but rather, we were, thinking the whole time about how we can cooperate with each other and collectively work on improving the world. Despite our differences, empathy and connections have turned us, this disparate bunch of teenagers all across Beijing, into one, unified group of student leaders all linked in the vision of a brighter future.

And in the end, I suppose that this is the case with all humanity. Empathy and connection with one another are the one thing that has turned us away from all-out war in the 1970s, made us create the United Nations to broker so many peace deals, and pushed us to dedicate so much to the construction of a better world for everyone. It has connected all humanity, people everywhere on earth, in so many unimaginable ways. Much of our current advancement, from scientific discoveries to social progress, has been achieved through empathy and connections, and in the future, the evolution and overall survival of the human race will still depend on empathy and connections. Thus, as I have learned so powerfully at this year’s KGRL Conference, may everyone continue to empathize, continue to connect, and most important of all, continue to be human.