Mónica Guzmán (center) addresses the crowd in the Leo and Joan Mahoney Wellness Center for the Brother Robert J. Sullivan, C.F.X. Lecture Series alongside St. John’s Board of Trustees Vice Chair Taidgh McClory ’93 P’25 ’28 (left) and Vinnie Occhino ’25 (right).
Bridge-builder Mónica Guzmán is working to depolarize America one conversation at a time
Mónica Guzmán urges us to avoid living by our assumptions, but it’s safe to assume that she and Ted Lasso—the fictional, doggedly hopeful, cracker-barrel wit of streaming television fame—would get along famously. For the uninitiated, Ted sort of lives by Walt Whitman’s request that we “Be curious, not judgmental.” That’s precisely how Guzmán, a New Hampshire-raised author, journalist, and professional moderator born in Mexico, spends her daily professional life.
“Curiosity sparks at the gap between what you know and what you want to know,” Guzmán told a gathering of Prep High School students during her campus visit on Wednesday. “The arch villain of curiosity is certainty. When you think you know, you won’t think to ask. When you think you know, how can you put your attention on what you don’t know?”
Guzmán came to St. John’s as part of the Brother Robert J. Sullivan, C.F.X. Lecture Series, which brings innovators and leaders to the Prep to explore how an ethics-based education can shape decision-making in the real world. A Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, she is also founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, an organization working to build a more curious world. In 2022, she wrote “I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times,” which became a U.S. News “10 Books to Read Before College” selection.
Mónica Guzmán addresses a group of Middle School students at a workshop on curiosity during the school day.
Guzmán’s day at St. John’s included running student curiosity workshops for both high schoolers and middle school students in addition to “coffeehouse” conversations with faculty and staff. Her visit concluded with an evening event at the School’s Leo and Joan Mahoney Wellness Center Field House moderated by St. John’s Board of Trustees Vice Chair Taidgh McClory ’93 P’25 ’28 and Vinnie Occhino ’25.
“Mónica Guzmán’s work with our students, faculty, staff, parents, and our community at large during her time on campus reflects our cultural priorities and aligns with our themes of respect and civil discourse,” said Matt Spearing, director of environmental sustainability at the Prep’s Center for Mission and Research. “Our center aims to foster a culture of encounter—words often used by Pope Francis—as a means of expressing our community’s compassion for and solidarity with others. Ms. Guzmán talks about everyone having a story to tell, and how the whole biography of a person is worth hearing to better understand how their beliefs are shaped. One of the best ways to build trust in the Xaverian tradition is to authentically listen for understanding, and that is something we can all do better through practice.”
Guzmán is the inaugural McGurn Fellow at the University of Florida, working with researchers at the UF College of Journalism and Communications to better employ techniques described in her book to boost understanding. She was a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she studied how journalists can better meet the needs of a participatory public.
DEMOCRACY IS MEANT TO BE MESSY
As host of A Braver Way, a podcast that equips people with the tools they need to bridge the political divide in their everyday lives, Guzmán offers practical counsel. For example, “We can’t assume (the reason) people oppose what we support (is) because they hate what we love” or, “Whomever (and whatever point of view) is underrepresented in your life will be overrepresented in your imagination.”
Guzmán echoed these sentiments during her visit to the Prep, pointing to how we frame difficult conversations as a key element to understanding one another. “People can only hear when they feel they’re heard,” she said. “As humans, we rely on cycles of rupture and repair, but in the last several years, at least in our generalized discourse, all we see is the rupture. We have lost faith as a culture in repair. That makes people too scared that they’re going to say the wrong thing, but actually, there’s no way to have a healthy democratic republic where everybody’s being honest and not make mistakes and missteps along the way.
“If I change my mind (about an issue) because of some interaction with you, it’s because I was in a place where I could really hear you (tell your story),” she added. “That means there was enough trust—not shaming, blaming, judgement—that I could really hear something you said. And that something caused me to take some part of the story that touches my own beliefs and maybe, I could interpret it differently. I do that because it fits (my experience) better. Then, it turns out that when I follow that thread, your story taps into my views, and now maybe it leads to a different conclusion.”
Guzmán joins an impressive group of accomplished professionals and dignitaries to appear as part of St. John’s lecture series, including former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, world-renowned environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben, and Father Gregory Boyle, founder of the world’s largest gang-intervention and rehabilitation program.