Their collaboration started in late 2019, when Nura was connected to Penn through a mutual friend. Nura was teaching classes about love and relationships at Arizona State University, and had noticed that many of her students had unhealthy and often unrealistic expectations about love -- many of which were based on portrayals of romance prevalent in popular culture. She thought having a conversation about how media shapes these beliefs could be beneficial for her students, and figured what better way to have this conversation than with someone who had been acting for years, often playing some of the very characters that influence our hopes and expectations? She invited Penn to ASU, and he quickly accepted. 

 

In preparation for that talk, they discovered their overlap was broader than the initial focus on media, or an in-depth deconstruction of common misconceptions of love. What emerged in Nura and Penn’s earliest conversations was a desire to hear in real-time from the demographic they wanted to reach. It became clear that they were both motivated by encouraging young people, who are undoubtedly facing unprecedented challenges, and who need more opportunities to express themselves in spaces where volatility and polarization are not the norm. The question of how we have conversations became as vital as the topic at hand.

 

It also became clear that this is easier said than done. The first step was to start, and response to the first event was so positive that when other schools started to invite them to their campuses for similar conversations with their students, Nura and Penn decided to turn their one-time collaboration into a more permanent professional partnership. Always seeking to refine their approach and learn from each event, they consider their platform to be a constant work-in-progress, where authenticity and evolution are essential.