To start, I'll just say that I'm Smitha Doss. I'm the principal of Impact Investing at World Education Services, where a social enterprise that spun off a philanthropic arm called the Mario Macefa Fund in 2019 to deploy catalytic capital towards advancing economic mobility for immigrants and for refugees. And very excited to be joined today by a few co-conspirators and co-agitators, Lauren Gratton, who's co-founder, chief community officer at Mission Driven Finance, and Stephanie Thomas, who's a founding member and investor at Impact America Fund. Welcome to you both and looking forward to our conversation today. I'll start by just sharing a little bit about what we're hoping to tee up in the conversation today, and then we'll let Lauren, Stephanie and I kind of introduce ourselves and also our firms to come. So for the next 45 minutes, we're looking forward to having a conversation about what does it actually mean for us to invest in an intersectional equity through an intersectional equity lens. So we will be talking about what we invest in and then also importantly, how we invest. So to start, we will dive into some concepts around intersectionality, share how each of us centers an intersectional equity lens in our work, and then go into some details and examples around how this actually plays out in practice. We'll of course save time at the end for your questions and comments and hope that you use the chat as a forum for us to engage further along the way. We will certainly be monitoring it as much as possible and we also have some support from Alex at Zocap to bring a few of you off video and mute so it can feel like we're actually together in a room. So with that, I will maybe just start off by asking Stephanie, could you start us off by helping define intersectionality and importantly, how do you integrate this lens into your work at Impact America Fund? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Smitha for the introduction and the labeling of co-agitator. I love that. So yeah, we thought we would set the table by defining intersectionality. But before that, I wanted to give you guys just a little bit of historical context. So in 1989, a white paper came out.  She had been studying race and sex-based discrimination cases of the 1970s. And in particular, it honed in on a case brought by five black women against general motors. And through that analysis had concluded that the law and legal structure was just inadequate in terms of capturing these women's experience within the workplace. And so, thinking about sort of how intersectionality came about, right? Origins being an investigation of the different identities, particularly looking at black women as black and female, how the system was not adequate and rendering a verdict for their particular situation and experience and how intersectionality became a term that could really capture that. And so as we think about our own social justice work and how we're agitating systems, it's important to think about the different identities and the multitude of identities that individuals have and how that can shape how they interact and encounter systems. And so we think about the definition of this. We also think about it as a tool, as a prism, sort of speak, in which to evaluate the different isms, racism, sexism, et cetera. And to think about how those things interact and again, how they play out in large institutions and what that means for the communities that are involved. And so at Impact America Fund, we, I love this panel, I love the focus that's gonna be on immigrant communities in particular because at Impact America Fund, we actually invest through a racial equity lens and so everything we do is really questioning how is this gonna impact over the long term in an economic way, racially disadvantaged groups. But as we get involved in these startups and we work with the CEOs and the founding teams, we start to sort of capture these communities within the community, right? Understanding that they're not monolithic, that there's a lot of diversity within these groups and then within even these sort of sub-communities, oftentimes the bedrock of them are immigrant populations that we also need to understand. And so throughout the course of this discussion, I'll give examples of what that looks like within our specific portfolio. But at the end of the day, intersectionality is a critical piece in social justice work and we believe that, and I personally believe you're really intentional about it. You will at some point encounter intersectionality across the individuals and communities that you wanna, you hope to serve and hope to be impacted. So with that, I will pass the mic over to Lauren of Mission Driven Finance to talk about how she views intersectionality and her debt investments that she makes to companies. Thank you so much, Stephanie and Smitha for putting this panel together and just again being co-agitators. We have a lot of fun at Mission Driven Finance working with both West and with Impact America Fund. As Smitha said, I am Maureen Gratton. I'm co-founder and chief community officer of an intentional investment firm, Mission Driven Finance. And usually I talk about starting a finance company as a mixed race woman of color. I'm Irish, Chinese and native Hawaiian and that's a lot. But today I'm joining from one of my ancestral homelands. That's the mixed part, I've got several. But being in Hawaii here, where I can trace my lineage almost back to Western contact is really tinting my thoughts on equity and place and connection as the communities we're talking about today have been displaced and often don't have the privilege of accessing a powerful foundation built over generations. And growing up in Hawaii, I also want to recognize that this has been known as a melting pot money term, got some loaded connotations there, but a melting pot of immigrants and growing up, I saw every day the benefits of empowering newcomers. That is why Hawaii is as incredible of a place as it is. Been very strong economic development work for generations. I now live and launched Mission Driven Finance in San Diego, California on the US-Mexico border. Not everybody remembers where San Diego is in the country, but it's right there. And everything that we do at Mission Driven Finance is to advance inclusive economic opportunity. And what we do is always look for creative ways to close gaps in access to capital that will in turn close gaps in opportunity around education, health, and wealth. And again, with one in four San Diegans being born outside the US, there was no debate that supporting immigrants, refugees, and new Americans would be one of our key impact themes. So how that shows up for us at Mission Driven Finance, I think of this excellent quote from entrepreneur and water activist, Tiffany Ashley Bell, who says, simply make the hire, send the wire. And for us at Mission Driven Finance, that looks like our team is currently comprised of 45% first or second generation new Americans, which is not common. We're always looking for ways to invest that are more inclusive and accessible to a wide set. Again, where Stephanie was talking about intersectionality, how can different approaches that we take benefit multiple kinds of communities, multiple kinds of identities? So most vocally, we refuse to use personal credit scores in our underwriting, which I'll unpack later. But we also make sure that how we are building relationships and where we can look for opportunity where others see risk is the biggest part of our work. We also have launched a nationwide fund to support small businesses and nonprofits that support immigrants, refugees, and survivors of trafficking. So it's definitely a key piece of our work. So that's me, and I'm excited for this conversation because it's always fun, but I would love to pass the mic over to Smitha and have her share a little bit about herself and what Wes is up to. Thanks, Lauren and Stephanie. It's so great to have you, have you both on this session with us. So at Wes, as I mentioned briefly at the beginning, we think a lot about the intersectional identities of immigrants and refugees. Stephanie mentioned it's really not a monolithic group. And so I appreciate that on a personal note, I am a daughter of immigrants and refugees, also identify as a woman in a personal color and through my life fully appreciate how the different parts of my identity, some I mentioned in addition to others, I haven't mentioned yet interrelate and often affect the way that I'm seen by others and by society and systems that we operate in. And so at Wes, what we look to do is to bring this nuance and bring this complexity around the populations we're looking to serve into thinking about what are the structural barriers or the root causes for a lack of economic mobility for immigrants and refugees and how can we support organizations and proximate leaders who are looking to address those. Within our impact investing work that basically means that we're focused on three key market gaps, one around addressing capital access gaps. This is very similar to some of the language that Lauren just shared. How can we support proximate leaders deepening the bench of immigrant and refugee leaders? This often means supporting earlier stage entrepreneurs, disrupting family and friends rounds if you will, or even supporting first-time emerging fund managers as well. The second pillar that we're looking we're looking to solve is looking at opportunity gaps. That's where we're looking at interventions that are looking to unlock access for education, training, supportive services, equitable financing, ultimately opportunity or the building blocks of wealth. And then the last key market gap that we're looking to solve is outcomes gaps. That's where we're looking at a lot of wealth building models, things like worker ownership, other shared ownership models, revenue-based financing. How can we again, ultimately shift power and decision-making towards communities in that we're working with? So that's at least at West, how we're looking to deploy our capital. But as I mentioned at the beginning, we're gonna be talking about what we invest in, but importantly, how we invest. And at least at West, and I know actually at Mission Driven Finance and Impact America fund, we think about our impact as twofold. It's not only what we do, but how we do it. And so I think now we can probably transition to more of the more interesting part of the conversation, which is, okay, what does this mean in practice? And Lauren, I'll kick it back to you. It would be great if you could start by sharing some examples of how have you centered an intersectional equity lens in your work? How have you been able to address also the intersectional challenges that immigrants face? And so we'll pass to you. Thanks, Smitha. And I'll leave in a question from the chat. Someone ended up asking, do we only invest in immigrant communities at Mission Driven Finance? And the answer is no, we invest in many and that's that intersectional type of approach. And this Angela Glover Blackwell calls it curb cuts, where you make a sidewalk more accessible for ADA compliance and wheelchairs, but that also is beneficial to anybody with wheel devices or even just me with depth perception issues where I will fall off the curb. So being able to have this kind of curb cuts approach, where can we change how we are underwriting and looking at risk, right? That is the whole premise of underwriting is to see where is their opportunity and where are things that we are concerned about the finance, the impact or the management. I mentioned in my intro that we refuse to use personal credit scores. That was a big piece. We launched with a place-based private debt fund focused on impact in San Diego. And we said, we're not gonna use personal credit scores.  Also, this is true for military families as well, who sometimes are just in movement, don't have that same long-term development of a credit profile. And so we said, that is not a great indicator of future performance. We are just not gonna use it. And so while we did that intentionally to take a racial equity lens, the curb cut benefit is that this is better for military families. It's better for folks that just don't have generational wealth. It's great for women. It's great for all sorts of types of communities. And that's one of the biggest things that we've done is saying, you know what, that's not a good indicator even though this is the traditional practice of lenders across the United States. The other big piece for us is, how do we build relationships? And so often what we found in this challenging access to capital gaps is that perceptions of financial institutions is funky. I obviously don't speak like most bankers or most financiers. And I think that's actually a benefit because I can build authentic relationships with our communities of color, with immigrant communities, while I'm fourth generation, Irish and Chinese, that those histories are very clear with me. And so I can build authentic relationships in those communities that are newer to the United States. And I think that's a big piece is getting outside, not having an open door policy. That's not a bad policy, but the door is only open to those that can see it. And so we bring the door to the community. Where are you already? Where are those nodes of trust? And how can we have a real conversation about what's your vision for your community? What are you trying to do? And how can we help you to do that instead of having a conversation that's based on just talking about numbers and projections? Those are definitely part of the conversation, but they're not the entire conversation. So one of the big, I'll just give one last example before sharing the mic is that we supported in our Place-Based San Diego Fund, an organization called Somali Family Service. And they are a pillar of the refugee community. We have one of the largest East African refugee communities in the country. And so Somali Family Service got this incredible contract from the city of San Diego to train and support low and moderate income refugee entrepreneurs and starting and growing their businesses. Early stage companies very beneficial for their families, but this contract from the city was about a third of their annual operating budget and paid on a reimbursement basis, a bit after hitting those outcomes and milestones. And so that was very challenging for them to be able to float the cash needed to run the program. And so we started underwriting this and I had a great relationship with Ahmed. We just knew each other from community events. And as we were in the underwriting process, he said, oh, by the way, would you consider making this investment in accordance with Islamic financing principles? And we said, not 100% sure what that is, we'll research it, but most likely, yes, we'll figure it out. We didn't know that that was one of the barriers to capital that folks were not able to get the opportunity to grow because there was constraints that were not in alignment with their faith. And so we did ultimately make this investment in accordance with Islamic financing principles. They've repaid it, it's just fantastic, but we are in the process of making a second one in our People on the Move nationwide portfolio as particularly Muslim refugees are looking for these ways to grow their capital, and grow their opportunity. Like kicking it to Stephanie. Thank you, Lauren. And as I was listening to you speak, there's so many sort of overarching themes even though we sort of from a capital stack standpoint operating in sort of different verticals. And so Impact America Fund, we do equity-based direct investments in high-growth startup companies that are leveraging technology to scale, not only a market space solution, but also to scale impact to the communities that we care about. And again, our real focus is deeply on racially disadvantaged communities. And when we look at outcomes, we think about how these solutions can address racial wealth gaps that we all are too familiar with, that are experienced by a lot of groups in this country. And so with thinking about intersectionality, I think about it as operating with nuance and really peeling back the layers on these different communities as we grow with the companies that we work with. As a sort of traditionally structured venture capital firm that has an impact lens, we often are asking the question of, where is the upside on this opportunity? But we're also thinking about it from a different point of view than most these cities. And what I mean by that is how we look at the upside is around the embedded sort of value within these communities that tend to be overlooked. And when there's infrastructure that is built to help bring about access and agency, that is where the sort of real opportunity is had and recognized and captured. And so for instance, with Care Academy, which is one of the leading sort of home care, home health related workforce training and empowerment platforms. The CEO, Helen Adiosun, who has lived experience as being a direct care worker, has experienced as coming from an immigrant family, fundamentally understood not only the sort of markets as it relates to the home care industry, but also the workforce that is the engine behind that this multi-billion dollar industry, right? And understanding the nuances and sort of how that came to be and who these workers are, understanding that, and even at Impact America realizing 60% of the workforce that she was solving this problem for are women of color who are low income. And then a large portion of that sort of sub community or sub population are immigrant women who their sort of first entry point into the American economy is often in these direct care worker positions. And so as we've been able to help Helen grow the company and really think about how to establish partnerships throughout the industry to continue to scale her business and to continue to impact these workers directly with a curriculum that can allow them to not only do their jobs well in the now, but then also be able to upscale and really create career pathways for themselves in ways that haven't happened before because no one really cared or paid attention to that or thought these workers were deserving or worthy of that acknowledgement. And so a great example of how these things have sort of become interwoven is recently this year Care Academy was able to partner up with one of the nation's largest nonprofit community based home healthcare organizations called Visiting Nurses Services of New York. They have a reach that touches 44,000 patients. They have 6,500 direct care workers. And for the first time, partnering with Care Academy has allowed them to train up their workers in a way that is pandemic friendly, that is allowed. These workers who have access to the curriculum and the content they need on mobile devices not requiring them to be in person to get this training and to still be able to do their jobs and do them well. The other interesting fact though is that across this 6,500 direct care worker base there are over 50 languages spoken, right? And so as Helen is thinking about how to build a great business partnership with an organization like the VNS and Y, sorry. She's also thinking about how do we make sure that the workers themselves can understand and can absorb this content in their own language. So again, it's this intersectionality that happens when you have nuance to how you're operating. It requires you to go really deep and really again, peel back the layers of these communities to get into these sub communities. And then it's really, from an investor standpoint working very closely in partnership with the CEO and the teams of the startups to track impact over time but to really understand again, how that impact is playing out based on your understanding of how these communities are bumping up against barriers in these institutions and systems that you wanna disrupt. So Care Academy is one great example for us. There's a few others, but I'll pass on the mic to Smitha to talk more about how these things can play out as an impact investor and with an intersectional lens. Thanks, Stephanie and thanks Lauren. It's so much of your approach resonates with how we also think about bringing this lens into our work at West. I think what we often talk about is how can we try to embed a trust-based or inclusive investing approach in the way that we work? And this is really inspired by the trust-based philanthropy movement which has been alive and strong for some time but has mostly been focused on the grant making. How can we bring some of those principles around transparency, around flexible funding, around meeting partners where they are into the way that we think about investing as well? And so what this looks like in practice, what does it mean to have a trust-based investing approach? It means that we do our homework. It means that we try to leverage diligence from peers, try to structure co-diligence opportunities when possible so that we're taking the burden away from the organizations we're looking to investing. It means that we're trying to simplify and streamline our processes which basically means that we're trying to be very clear about what we need to know to make decisions and to understand what both the financial and social impact is of our investments and then designing a diligence process and investment process to reflect that specific, those specific needs and not just ask everything to everyone. We think about also deploying flexible blended capital to meet the needs of the organizations. And so that often means that I'm not coming to an organization saying, would you like a program related investment or a mission related investment or grant or a recoverable grant? Rather the question in the dialogue is what are the needs of your organization? What is the type of capital that fits those needs? So unlike Lauren and unlike Stephanie, we almost work across both of those types of capital and are pretty agnostic to the type of capital that we use as well as the structure of investments that we use to meet the organization and the problem where it is. It also means that we're thinking about our relationship with the organizations beyond the check. Thinking about, I know Lauren talks about this a lot but just thinking about how are we putting our arms around the organizations that we're supporting, providing strategic advice, access to networks. In our case, the overall enterprise of World Education Services, how can we unlock all of that value strategically in a catalytic way? And to be honest, we're still early. We're pretty new at impact investing. So I think we're having this learning approach to the way that we work. We made two investments late into 2020 and actually just of last week have now made two more investments. One in JFS Employment Technology Fund which is an earlier stage venture capital firm and then the second is an APHIS and Heritage Capital Partners which I'll just share a little bit more about. But I think over time we will have to understand ourselves and what does it mean to act in a trust-based way in a way that embeds this lens of intersectionality so that we are ultimately shifting any power imbalances, information asymmetry, trying to be as transparent as possible and empower our partners and ultimately communities that we're looking to serve. So that is kind of how we work but I'll share an example because it's always easier to share an example and just a note to the audience that actually after I'll share this example we'll pass it to you all to share questions in the chat and then also if folks do want to come off video, off mute we would absolutely welcome that and Alex from SOCAP has kindly helped raise his hand to help facilitate that engagement. So as I mentioned, we actually just recently got approval to support APHIS and Heritage Capital Partners, ANH they have a very interesting model in which they're basically acquiring small businesses that are majority workforces of color and transition them to employee stock ownership programs or essentially 100% employee owned. We're excited because kind of thinking back to the problem that we were looking to solve at West this is addressing outcomes gaps, ultimately building generational wealth for communities of color, often immigrant communities just given where they're focusing their efforts and also thinking about supporting capital access gaps. ANH represents a first time fund manager with the leaders of the organization having meaningful lived experience. So we're excited to back them and give them the runway to demonstrate this new investment approach. I'm excited to show that Todd actually who's a co-founder of ANH will be speaking at SOCAP on Wednesday. So just a plug if you wanna learn more about their approach. But we've also been thinking that again how can we wrap our hands around an organization like an ANH and all of the organizations we like to partner with and that what we're looking to do is support the investment dollars with perhaps a grant to support a fellow and build capacity and the development of approximate leaders. We've done something similar with Mission Driven Finance which is a dear grantee partner of ours. So that is just an example of how this comes to practice. And then of course we'll now pass it to you all. If you have questions, please put them in the chat. I will now be looking at it more closely and then if folks wanna raise their hands to get off of mute, absolutely welcome that. Lauren and Stephanie I might ask you have you been looking and are there any questions we can start off with? There were some around data of where can we see these other kinds of commitments. I shared the refugee investment network, John and Tim are amazing. We all work with John and Tim, but they've put together a refugee lens investing database so you can check that out at the link that I put into the chat. If there are others, they take a specific lens on refugees so it is global in approach and it does not necessarily touch on other forms of migration and displaced populations. So immigration or broad immigrants and survivors of trafficking may not show up, but it's a very good place to start and it is global in its reach. There's a pretty, in addition to WIN, which is a wonderful resource, there's also a pretty nascent organization called Refugee Integration Insights, RII, that is looking to pilot a new database. It's been essentially a new database to track public companies that are investing in refugees and in refugee first life. So I think that's gonna be a very interesting investment. I actually opportunity in the future for folks looking at refugee lens investing, but then also an incredible tool to add transparency to what organizations are up to. So I can put that link in the chat as well. And I'll just give a quick shout out to the VC firm that I like and inspires me. That's immigrant founder focused, unshackled ventures. So if you ever come across those guys, they're wealth of knowledge around this space in this focus area. And there are definitely other funds out there that are centering immigrant communities. Other questions. Brian, on cooperative transition, who I could talk to you for a long time. And that's again, to the point of intersection, shared ownership is one of the sub themes of our focus firm-wide of supporting inclusive economic opportunity. And so we are the fund administrator for APIS and Heritage. So we're supporting them as first-time fund managers and just actually running a capital call right now, but doing capital calls and distributions, other kinds of that back office for fund managers. But we also are the co-manager of a fund with Project Equity helping to convert small businesses, typically led by retiring baby boomers in converting to employee ownership. That is a lot that overlaps with immigrant communities. There's a lot of just sharing and not the same concepts of ownership. Again, I mentioned at the top of the call that I'm here in Hawaii where I grew up, but the concept of private property did not exist prior to Western concept. So we didn't have this idea of mine versus yours. It was just ours. And so I think there's a lot of that overlap between shared ownership. And I know Smitha has seen a lot in the grantee portfolio at West of cooperatives. And that was one of their key interests from immigrants and refugees. How can we look at shared ownership? Because this model of you on this and I on this does not really serve us all that well. So really fascinating to Smitha. You probably can share some insights from what you've done in the grant side. Yeah, definitely. And I think Dave, there's resources on all the networks that we're looking to all of our investee and grantee partners on West's website, also MDF and in Back to America to share their portfolios as well. So we can put our links, our own links in the chat as well. But on the cooperative approach, yes, we have supported many worker collapse, particularly on the grantee side. I think it is inherited just our first exploration of a worker ownership model on the investment side. But I have been spending quite a bit of time landscape being shared ownership models writ large. And there's some pretty interesting resources that folks are interested in. I'm happy to send you. Send some of your way. There are some aggregators, actually, the rins of shared ownership, if you will, that are aggregating and being an intermediary to facilitate more shared ownership models. And I'm hoping to do much more investments in that space to come. Lauren, I know we also in the past had a bit of a riff on catalytic capital, which, of course, is in the title for this session. So we would be remiss if we did not really unpack how we were thinking about it when we put this together. So I mean, I think we're at least Stephanie and Lauren and I were coming from in this session is how can we redefine and broaden the definition of catalytic capital, which I think, unfortunately, is often considered or completed with concessionary capital, which I believe is one expression of catalytic capital. But I think there are a merit of other ways. I don't know if Stephanie or Lauren, if you wanted to share how do you think about that word catalytic and how we might be able to redefine the narrative there. I can talk about catalytic capital all day. And I do think it means a lot of different things. It's not what is going to accelerate it. That is what in chemistry is a catalyst, something that will accelerate a reaction. And that can mean that it is patient. It has a longer maturity. It is combined with technical assistance as our funding is, it's more accessible. So it may look similar to traditional finance pool elsewhere, but it's designed to be reached by a community that has not been reached in the past. And so that's kind of the approach that we take at Mission-Driven Finance, particularly with our discretionary debt fund advance and also in supporting those other funds that we are a fund manager, a fund administrator for is how can we help get a thesis over a hurdle and be able to tap into capital that has been locked up and then be able to get it flowing to places that it hasn't. It doesn't always look like different money. We lend and I saw a friend on here earlier, Kurt Chilcott from CDC, Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners. But we like to look at and we talk very regularly with our fellow impact lenders in San Diego. We try and stay around the same rate, I mean, pre-PPP market distortion, funny things, but similar rates to SBA lending, but ensuring that if you have below a 560 credit score or 640 credit score, that's not a deal breaker. So being able to target folks that are just a little bit outside of traditional credit boxes with a very similar looking credit product and being able to do an underwriting again, that's a little bit different so that it is accessible to others and ensuring that throughout the underwriting process and the life of the loan and even after the loan that we are there as a trusted partner that you turn to when you've got questions before something turns nasty, you say, this could turn into a thing. Can you help me work through this? We have made so many recommendations to wonderful workshops that as a small business owner or a nonprofit leader, you do not have time to be vetting what workshop to be going to, being able to actually make those connections to the good ones and sometimes a bookkeeper or sometimes some other kind of resource that helps to protect our investment, honestly, but also makes each business a stronger position for any future financing. Stephanie, no, you've got to, yeah, go for it. Yeah, when we think about catalytic capital, Lauren mentioned sort of jumping over hurdles, right? And for us, we talk about it in chasms. We see founders needing to cross and being impact America funding a bridge across those chasms to get companies to the next pool of financing, and which is hopefully a larger, more sophisticated pool that has even more resources that can support company growth. And so we believe that our capital bridges our founders to those next pools or next rounds of financing, which are critical to them being able to succeed over the longer term. And we look at it also as, again, not only what this financing can do, but so how can we be valued as a real partner to these companies in a way that is significant, in a way that also builds trust and lasting relationships? So that's very important in the ecosystem, as companies are thinking about how to bring their capital stacked together in a way that not only gives them more runway and more time to stay alive and figure things out, but also gives them a good sense of who is around the table that can be, again, a value add to them and a critical partner in what they're building. And then one other thing I will mention too around sort of just catalog the capital is there's different levels to it, right? So we invest in founders, but often these founders are sort of being catalytic in their own way to the communities that we really want to benefit from these business models. So Camino Financial is an online lending platform for Latinx mall businesses and solopreneurs. The way that they figured out how to underwrite for these micro businesses is incredible, leveraging their sort of skill set and knowledge coming from Wall Street, but then combining that with a lived experience of growing up with a mother who is the entrepreneur and small business owner and having to figure that out. And so the catalytic capital piece is important, but it can be looked at in different ways and different levels in terms of how it plays out. And so we've had the benefit of having a front row seat with Camino Financial and helping them aggregate and pull different types of capital beyond just our equity investment to support their portfolio of small business owners who otherwise wouldn't have access to this financing or to this funding to support their businesses. And then one interesting stat is that over 50% of their portfolio is driven by borrowers who are classified as undocumented. And so that was really compelling in terms of how embedded they become in these communities and again, these sort of sub-communities that usually don't have voice and are usually not recognized or even thought of when we're talking about capital access. Well, I'm saving up on you. Go ahead, Lauren. I was just gonna say that last example, Stephanie, reminded me of one in our portfolio, Arago Trekking, that is based in San Diego, but a bunch of their work is moving, is shipping cross-border. So a majority of their workforce is in Tijuana and they did not qualify for literally anybody else that's financing except for their loyal customers who said, every time that I ask them to do something, they do it and they figure it out even though I have no idea how. And I think it is that kind of ingenuity. I see in a lot of startup founders that say, I am not 100% sure, but I made you a promise and I'm gonna figure it out. And that is so much of what we see in immigrant businesses. It's not limited to immigrant businesses, but is this scrappiness of we're gonna figure it out. It does not look like a traditional checkboxes, but they deliver and they are committed to finding a way to make it work. And so we try and show up with that same kind of commitment. How can we structure this that in a way that doesn't cripple the business? What Arago had requested in their loan terms were like, this is not good for you. It's not good for you. So we actually tailor the terms to better meet what they've actually got on their finances. We've made a custom amortization very, very different in the ways that we set their terms up versus other folks in the same portfolio. Still meets the criteria that we've built for our investors, but it's a different type of look in being able to balance that. Because again, coming back to, we see opportunity with if they can build and they can grow, this will be really big for our binational border region. I love those examples and it was sad to say that we're already technically over time. But what a rich conversation that we were able to have in a pretty short, short amount of time. I hope that folks keep the chat going. I'll certainly go through and answer some questions after the call and welcome more conversation after the session. But I think kind of to quickly tie some of these threads together. It seems like ultimately what we're talking about is how can we adopt a narrative change when it comes to supporting immigrants, refugees and communities of color? And I believe we're gonna be talking about this idea of a narrative change later on today at the main stage with the Kellogg Foundation. But in one way, we talked about how can we embed this concept of intersectionality so that we can bring nuance and complexity to the way that we assess the structural barriers that immigrants, refugees and communities of color, the barriers that they may face. In another way, we talked about how can we start redefining the way that we think of catalytic capital? In addition to taking additional financial risks, we can think about it even broadly is how can we ultimately build markets and drive markets where there may not be existing markets? And that can also occur in different ways. Just to give a very micro example from Wes, we think a lot about this definition of what does it mean to be catalytic, providing patient capital, perhaps being one of the first institutional investors at the table, raising our hand to lead around when no one else perhaps will. We ended up doing that actually with our first direct investment into Saled, which is a really incredible micro credentialing mobile platform, which is truly trying to meet immigrants and refugees where they are. We ended up leading the verge round as our first direct equity deal and using that as a way to crowd in other capital or in other words, be catalytic. So I think there's just other ways to think about that definition. I know that that's generally a theme in SoCAP every year, this idea of catalytic capital. So I imagine we'll be revisiting this topic over time. But I'll mention kind of the third narrative shift that we're also talking about is this idea of how can we invest in a trust-based inclusive way and in a way that using kind of Stephanie's language of her last example utilizes culturally appropriate terms, ultimately shifting power to communities. So I think across all these three different dimensions, we're looking to build a movement around narrative change, but then also deeply support communities of color and immigrants and refugees. So with that, I'll share Lauren or Stephanie, if you want anything to add, final takeaways, but otherwise, thank you all so much for your time and engagements. I have totally been remiss on the chat while I was speaking, but look forward to seeing what's been going on. Thank you, Smitha, this was great. And I wanna continue the conversation offline via email, Twitter, LinkedIn, what have you. You two said it best. Thank you all so much for joining us today. And I am a very easy person to find on the internet. So I'll drop my email in the chat, just know that I am slow this week catching back up. But thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your SoCAP experience. Enjoy the rest of SoCAP, thanks everyone.


Hey everybody, this is Brian and welcome to the 139th C++ Qt GUI tutorial. Alright, so we are going to begin our path along the Qt Quick QML programming. Now is it Qt Quick or is it QML? Qt Quick is actually the name of the libraries. You can see Qt Quick importing. QML is the language we'll be working with just to kind of clarify that. And if you kind of look there's a lot, a lot to this. Well, I mean a lot. So wow, yeah. So we'll probably be doing quite a bit of tutorials on this. I don't know if we'll cover all of that but we'll get through a good chunk of it. So the first thing you need to understand is in Qt, we're used to working with C++ Qt, is that everything is a Q object. I mean a base object. Well in QML they have this base object called an item where like Qt, almost everything inherits from it. It's not everything but as you can see it's a good chunk of stuff. And it has a lot of properties. And you notice how most of these deal with, you know, anchors like positioning, anti-lazing, offset, whether it has children, the children rectangle, clipping. If you're familiar with these terms, you know like opacity, you know that a lot of these are very visual. So basically what I'm trying to get to here is Qt Quick was built from the ground up to be the visual representation. Now can you still build applications using the quote-unquote old-fashioned Qt windows forms, et cetera, et cetera? Yes, absolutely. This is just something different. The reason why this exists is some operating systems such as iOS and Android do not have a concept of a windowing system. So we have to build our own windows. So we are going to start off with the most basic of shapes called a rectangle. You can see it imports items so it has all of the properties of the item like anchors, opacity, anti-lazing, et cetera, et cetera. And it has a few of its own such as a border, border width, border color, color gradient, radiance. Probably not going to cover gradient in this one. We'll cover that in a future one. So as you can see, well, you know, shocker, rectangle is, well, rectangle. So what you need to understand about the rectangle is it is the most basic shape. If you're thinking that you're going to be drawing all of your graphics dynamically, you're wrong. They have another class called the image, which ironically loads images that we'll be discussing in a future tutorial. But you should understand the rectangle is kind of like your foundation building block here. And here's a good example. Import Qt Quick rectangle and then we've got the properties. Now you'll see a lot of these examples out on the internet. And putting a rectangle as your base object, I have actually never gotten that to work, like ever. I always have to put it inside of a window. So if we go in here, let's just create a new project here. Call this quick one. And you see how automatically it even puts it in a window for us. So if we just actually change this from window to rectangle, save this and try and run it. It says QML debugging is enabled. Only use this in a safe environment. Well, that's not very helpful now, is it? But if we change this back to window, it runs just fine. So just be aware of that when you're working with things out on the internet. Alright, so I'm going to get rid of that example stuff. And I'm going to just say my window is now width of 500, height of 500. Because I want a nice big area to work with here. Now, the window is our parent. What I mean by parent is everything that we put in here will be a child of the window. So we'll say rectangle. And we're just going to say width. And I'll say 50 height. If you're wondering how I'm getting that to appear, when you start typing, if you hit control and hold it down and hit space, it'll autocomplete it if there's just one.  And we're going to say color. See how it's doing that. And with color, you can either write in the word or you can write in the HTML hex color code, which if you have one mouse over it, you'll see, oh, I actually screwed up. It'll show me it's blue and I actually wanted red. So we're going to change that to red. And there is our beautiful rectangle. I know probably the coolest application on the planet. I could make millions selling this. So we're going to close that. And we're going to give it a, we'll say color. No, let's not do that. Let's go border.color. And we are going to say, I want to give it black. Actually, we could just go. I personally, you know, I don't like writing in the color names, but sometimes they're easier. And because now we have a border, we've given a border with, and we're going to say this is now four pixels.  Now we want to get this kind of out of the way here. My other computer just kind of made a noise. I have a calendar reminder. It can wait. So what we want to do here is we want to say, whoops, lost my train of thought on totally what I was going to do with that. So we're going to grab this rectangle. See, that's what happens when you get interrupted. And we're just going to make a couple more of these little rectangles here. And you see how it only shows one because they're all stacked up on top of each other. So we're going to say position here, right? I'm going to say X, we'll say 100, Y, 100. Get rid of this little guy here. And we'll say he's at 200, 200. And now you can see we have our three rectangles. Now, would it be nice if we could position this without having to actually type in the number? Well, that's where this concept of anchors comes in, which we will talk about in a future tutorial, but I just want to introduce it in this one. This is really just to get you comfortable with the rectangle shape here. So we're going to say anchor. And let's make this one, why not center in parent. Now remember our parent is this window, so it's going to center it right in there. And let's make it much bigger. Make it 200 by 200. And we're now going to take this little guy and we're going to make him a child of this one. See how it's now nestled in here? And we can actually collapse these so you can expand and collapse inside the editor. Coming from the old school days where we didn't have these new fangle technology, such as coat collapsing, this is just like voodoo magic for me sometimes. And I'm going to actually change the color of this to green. And we'll say the border is going to be dark green. Let's see what happens here. It's kind of interesting how it did that. So we've got 00 center in parent and then this guy off to the side here. Did we screw that up? I think we probably did. Wonder why it's done. Let's do this. I think I herped it up there. Let's do this anchor center in. There we go. We had to anchor it in there. It was positioning it off because we had the X and the Y. We didn't have an anchor in there. What's going on here? If we take this anchor out, you see how it says X, Y, 200? It's because even though it's parent is this, it can go outside of the parent. I hope that's abundantly clear. So the minute we anchor, we are now effectively negating the X and the Y. See how it's nice and beautifully centered in there. We can say anchor dot left parent and we'll say anchors bottom parent. So we want to anchor that left bottom. That didn't work out as well as I wanted it to. Probably because I needed to do this bottom and left. There we go. Sorry for the confusion there. The concepts we're really trying to drive home here is that you can make a rectangle and you can control the properties just by very easily typing this in. If this looks like a mixture of Java and cascading style sheets, it's because personally I feel it really is more leaning heavily towards Java. You can have multiple objects and you can have them as children of parents and you can position them in or out of the parent. It doesn't really matter. So one question that I know I'm going to get asked here is when we look at the types, you'll see there's a rectangle but there's no ellipse. There's no circle. None. So how do you make a circle? Well, let's play around with this a little bit. Let's say this is... I should probably make this a little bit bigger and we can even just do this parent dot width divided by 2 and we'll say parent. We're just going to play around here a little bit. I'm totally going off script. I kind of have been this whole tutorial which is why we've been having little issues. So we're going to say it's going to be 100, 100 parent width because we can dynamically resize that. And now we want to do what's called a radius. And we'll say the radius is 5. Now let's run this. And I don't know if you can pick that up but that corner is rounded. I'm going to actually make it a little bit better. Let's say 15. Yeah, it should be more clear that that green is rounded here. And let's actually change that around here. You can probably pick it up now much better because it's in white. So the radius defines the corner radius. And what we can really do here is we can play around with this. You can see that 100 makes it well, you know, this nice circle shape. So how would we do this? Well, we would just say width times 0.5. So we're going to times it by basically half. And it's pretty much the same thing. That's how you make an ellipse. Now I want to kind of explain that really rectangles are meant for dynamically drawing user elements. If you want any sort of complex shape or animation, it's really recommended that you do an image. The reason being is it takes less power and less time to load a file and render it than it does to tell the processor to draw a line here and then draw the line there and then fill in the shading, then do this, do that. It's just easier if the bits are already stored on the disk and then you load them and display them. So that's it for this tutorial. As you can see, rectangles are actually pretty simple but they're really actually kind of fun to play around with here. We will be deep diving a little bit more into anchors and gradients and positioning and things of that nature in future tutorials. Thank you for watching. I hope you found this educational and entertaining. And as always, visit my website, voidrumbs.com.  There's like 400 of us out there that are working on stuff. Feel free to jump in. People are willing to help out. And I put the source code for this in all other tutorials. Whoops, in the tutorials tab. Under the tutorials tab under acute. So you can find all the stuff out there.


You're just doing that to I'm telling you I've literally always had coffee and water Literally for like over a year. I've always had a coffee and a water The little you pay attention.    I know I know I forgot to tell you waiting to see what we're gonna react. Just catch up Mustard. Yes, just like I'll say stuff and then you can just yeah, you know, all right, cool either Not We were watching the 2018 film October which even though it's June it is June and we reacted to this thing like a year ago a long time ago long long time ago. I know it's a very popular like Not like a mass film, but like I know a lot of people really really like this film And so I remember getting a bunch of messages about it how people it was a very different film for Indian cinema. Yeah, as well. But anyways, so it's a hundred and four. We came out in 2018 if you haven't watched it go watch it We saw what we see it Netflix. Was it Netflix or is it Amazon? It was one of Amazon was Amazon. It was Amazon. It was Amazon.  Yeah, which we haven't seen yet, but we see those other ones and then obviously starring Say his name Varen Dowan and Benita Sandu, which I understand this was their debut performance this both of them Now I could be wrong. I don't think my homework because we've done No, his is caporn sums, right? We saw him there. Well, that's where we saw him But as far as his very first film, this was it. I Thought it was like as a lead Because there's assistant director, so it's not it's first, but I maybe it's the first lead I don't know but it's definitely not as first. All right. Where did I see it that said that? I think it was on Wikipedia, which of course everything there is true. Okay, and also am I incorrect? This is not the same guy from Oh, it's not you look with you. That guy looks similar At least I need to be is not saying I know he's in Badlapur, which is with Nawaz as well I know a lot of people enjoyed that one. We haven't seen that one yet But yes, starting those two directed by a surjit surjit, right? I believe so I believe that's the proper denunciation for good surjit Let me see the spelling against we pronounce a prayer Sanjit should it should it should it anyways should you should it sir car Rick your initial thoughts, please It's a mixed bag for me that ultimately lands on there was less than I liked than I liked I think the best thing about the film was the concept the story and the fact that it is it is different But there were aspects of it that are admittedly Some of it is purely subjective on my part of what I particularly wanted, which is not their fault They're not supposed to you know, they don't have to make the film with me in mind Yeah, but for me kind of what I was anticipating expecting based on what the trailer showed me And then some other aspects of the script that really troubled me That's probably my biggest thing the bright side of this was I think that I would the story I think is Absolutely fantastic and has the capacity to be Incredible There were some cinematography things that were just straight out beautiful But ultimately for me if someone were to say should I watch October my my take on that would be you might like it There was more I disliked about it than like that's my that's my takeaway. Okay, and we'll get into that I actually enjoyed this film because it was very different There was I there was a bunch of stuff that going through it. I was like what is going on. Yeah, why is this happening? Right? and then it Surprised me in multiple aspects and then there's obviously a whole bunch of I don't know if you want to call them philosophical messages in the whole thing about Like a lost death Existential crises and and how obviously Very different this situation be if it wasn't an American situation as opposed to Indian as well So I actually quite enjoyed this film. I enjoyed the the performances him. He was very very subtle And I've been told like this is like his best that he's ever done in terms of not like he was like I know was or anything, but I thought he did a a good job her I mean for a little bit got to see of her that was yeah, that She wasn't just in the coma state. Yeah, even though that's that can be done wrong Yes, a coma can be done wrong like like people like you see them moving when they're supposed to be in a Vegetable I noticed something as simple as and it may have been her choice It may have been the director But something as simple as the fact that when they were when the camera was on her eyes She was ensuring that she wasn't moving her eyes behind her eyelids. You know that something that simple It does it it's not nearly as difficult as say my left foot that kind of a challenge Or like what Kalki had to do and my straw doesn't even remotely come close to that But it is still it is still very a challenging. Yeah, no, it's it's it's not I think it's like hard, but it's also like you can't just throw it out like you know She's just having to sit there. No, she's still having to show stuff with her eyes and making sure She doesn't look like she's aware right when she's actually an aware person, right, right, right? And so I thought she did why I enjoyed the direction and the fact that it just there was so many moments that just kind of caught me off guard that And it ended I don't want to say differently than I thought it would but it I didn't expect I was expecting the happier ending. Oh, really?  Yeah, I'm sure you did I Expected from the get-go. I'm like from the early part of the film like yeah They're gonna break our heart. It's only because I thought that you know Since we've seen a bunch of Indian cinema that a bunch of it likes to end on the happy note Yeah, and so and we've seen I forget which film it was but like where they get miraculously healed by What was it that that film? What was that film with the miraculous like miraculous healing? Yeah, what was it? something oh Well, like a light can't I can't remember what it was a docent had a miraculous healing, but he was never really dead. No No, but yeah, so I this director I feel the subject likes to do unique stories Especially for Indian cinema with Piku, which is even though I mean, I guess they're simple but unique Because Piku is just yeah, that's just a almost a road trip with family drama Yeah, and Piku for me is a toweringly better. Oh, yeah, I'm not comparing the films right now Yeah, but that pink obviously Yeah But and I would agree those I think those are better films But I don't think it took anything away from this film for me in that aspect so the two the two biggest things for me that were My the things I liked least and really didn't allow me to get into the film The first one was I didn't like him. Okay. I I felt like he was Well, I don't think he was supposed to like his character Well, that's fine, but I like I so didn't like him that like I Didn't care gotcha and I was and I thought to myself I have no vested interest to root for this guy.  Yeah So it was really hard for me to have any level of either empathy or sympathy for the character when I was like Why are they even keeping you on board here? And then When he kept fixating on why was she was asking for me? I like that idea in the story But for the character traits that I saw in him It just seemed definitively narcissistic in his part to just be everything he seemed to do was was more for him What I was expecting from the trailer was a genuine caring for the girl And I saw that but I never cared for him Yes, and I think maybe if it I kept longing for like I wonder if someone like a Raj Kumar Rao Would have engendered something in it or earphone would have a Likeability into a character that's written in such a way that just like he just every turn. I was like, yeah You're why are you doing that? You are everybody has to work a job. They don't like so shut up and do your job show up on time if You're not getting time off from work. Don't lie just so you can go do what you want. So consistently that and then I felt I My favorite thing about the movie is the ultimate the ultimate message of the film and in particular like her name and what that means in the Jasmine Night Flowers But the way it ended it just kind of spoon fed the message to the degree when he even said and so she felt like they felt Like put my head in my hand and went we you don't need that we get it That line in and of itself for me didn't need to be said And so it felt I just but I never connected with it.   This is my girlfriend now I'm gonna spend time with her yeah, I got a hair of her. That's definitely different. It was almost about his existential crisis going on that that he Was dealing with inside of him and how He was dealing with tragedy or death. I guess and how others dealt with it Obviously, he's it's douchebag, right? And I think they led on even though They they wasn't specifically said I think those two Cared for each other more than they let on because they gave some hints of that Yeah, yeah, yeah a little bit and obviously they weren't dating. I don't think they no no no I was waiting I thought for a while. I was like are they gonna show that they had a secret relationship? Yeah, or whatever they'd never happened. Yeah but I think that they they care for each other more than they thought and when And so when when he found out that she fell obviously he was trying I just probably the first person that had ever almost died I guess in his life or something like that But then when it happened that he asked for she asked for Dan in the end he almost felt like This guilt and I do think it was some narcissistic miss as well I totally think because that's that's who this character was. Yeah, he was a nurse Narcissistic like douche for most of the film and I think he kind of used this as a Chance to kind of either make up for that and he also felt bad that that family Didn't have anybody there to really help like a father to help out with what was going on I can see some of your I totally get it because I was Trying to figure out almost the entire film. Why do you why do you care so much? You're not you're not you're not her girlfriend You're not family and that's one of the things I was talking about with how different it is from American If a random person who's not a boyfriend or anything even if it was a boyfriend was like budding in on family conversation Right that would not go over well here, right? You just don't but it on family conversations, right? If you're not part of the family, right? Just doesn't even if you're even if you're part of the family like a cousin That's even stretching it here and I know that's different obviously in India sure almost anybody has like they have such big families and they kind of Kind of Take others into the family and I think the mom even said that she was like I was I was being selfish for letting you letting you do this and go as far as you did And so I think he was dealing with some Some stuff in his own personal life Especially when he talked to who was her best friend and how he was at that time I think grown to actually start caring for her in terms of Making like she's still a person in the live as opposed to just writing her off as she's right dead Right, which is a whole nother conversation in and of itself and one of the sad things that We here in America have to deal with of like going into debt or you know making sure her loved one stays Oh, yeah, what it costs you just just have as opposed to just caring about that person And right you don't have to worry about the cost like a bunch of the other world Deals yeah, both as a both as a family member and as a patient because there's a lot of patients who are dealing with something That's gonna cost millions of dollars to treat. Yeah, and in their mind It's like millions of dollars to treat this. I mean this happened. This is Walter White's story Yeah, of I two things. I want my good life Yeah, I want my quality of life to be a certain way But also I don't want to leave my family with a lifetime of debt and me not here Yeah, and so you could see that that side of the uncle His argument right but it's still like, you know, you can't like just Blow off of a person like they're not a person correct, and that's the person you talk to you That's their daughter. There's no way. They're just like, yeah I'm gonna pull the plug on my daughter, of course that would it doesn't you don't do that I and I get why you didn't you didn't like it Yeah, the trailer the trailer the trailer gave the impression per se and it's fine Not not all films have to do in fact It's nice sometimes when a film is different than the trailer, but I was kind of anticipating there to be a story where we watch I thought based on their kind of distance that what was gonna happen was he was gonna fall in love with her While this was happening and she would fall in love with him and then she'd probably die in the end But what we would see is that aspect the very clear Relationship and when it didn't go there when we were Three-quarters the way through the film and she's pretty much still in her coma or just starting to come out of it And the focus was on him. The other thing I was expecting was okay for focusing so much on this guy Why are we being at best really really subtle in? Him learning life lessons through her and she's not knowing it if that had been more Accentuated if we had seen a character arc for him where he went from being this guy that was very selfish and was very rude And wasn't fulfilling his responsibilities And then she somehow through this experience became the person that even in a coma Taught him some of the biggest lessons in life that seemed to be way down here if it had been more Over storytelling I would have actually liked the subtleness of it I think because I And I do agree with that like the one line is like the the Jasmine line that was that was that was a little heavy I do agree with that one But I enjoy it because it's so different than what you normally get you don't normally get the very subtle You figure out mostly outside a couple lines like that that were you know on the nose But you do though That's where I don't want to let it off the hook that easily because even Pika Which is his film that has far more subtlety in it than being heavy-handed and talk about subtle lunchboxes the king of Giving profound messages by saying nothing example She didn't need to say anything when she was going through the laundry and you see her smell the shirt She didn't need to smell the shirt and then walk to the window and say auntie The shirt smells like a woman. We didn't need that No, so the subtleties are in the films that we've seen that so I just I don't I think it was subtle for the most part I'm outside of a few instances But yeah, I'm not comparing it to his other films I do agree pink and be cool are better films, but that didn't really keep me from enjoying this film and I would personally like say if somebody was like should I watch October I would say yes In terms of just is it a quality film? I do think it's a quality film But in turn like do if what they feel like if they were like should I watch Pika or pink or this? I would definitely say watch pink and watch watch Pika of course first I mean, I think I don't know who wouldn't say that. Yeah, but I Still appreciated the film and I think you got some of that growth with him It was just it was very subtle. There was there was just no almost romance in it No, which is fine. No, and there was also believability aspects like he goes from being this guy Who should have been fired and is an absolutely awful awful employee at low-level internship at a hotel where he is doing menial work Suddenly he is a manager of a posh resort. How the freak did that happen? Might have known somebody might have I know but for me it was like How it was a just a believability thing. Yeah, how did this guy just suddenly go from that to this? Mm-hmm. So that that too was another disc yeah disconnect. Yeah, absolutely but Overall, let us know what you thought about this film. What should be the next? Sujit Sarkar. Yeah, Sujit Sarkar. Oh, he did Galapos Otabolo as well. Oh, okay, even yeah that That film I know we didn't really get really Because I remember walking out. I think we thought it was a comedy is essential or at least had the huge aspects It should have been yeah, and I think people did tell us that the subtitles were terrible on that But yeah, I yeah, he died. I that's apparently a very Common outside of pain. I guess pink wasn't that subtle. No pink wasn't that subtle Piku obviously was more subtle Oh, he was director of my dross cafe. Yeah, which is John Abraham Vicki Donner I haven't seen that Well, I'm he direct the other of those because I know What's his name the lead a Ushman he did like a series of these types of films Badajo and A couple other ones, but okay. No, so he's a pretty established director Yeah, but let us know what the next film of his that we should watch and let us know in the comments down below What you thought about this film


from House of Virgo. Doing your next 24 hours love reading for Virgo's Sun, Moon, Rising, or Venus. This reading is for all and only Virgos, so some of the messages may or may not resonate. Take what fits, leave the rest. If you would like to get a personal reading from me, there is a link in the description box below this video. Okay, and if you're new, please do hit like, share, and subscribe on my channel. I would greatly appreciate that. Okay, all right. So we've got the past, present, and the future. We are looking here at Virgo Energy, Libertaris, and Scorpio, and Aquarius. All right, let's take a look at this past energy. Okay, I'm seeing someone here in the past who took a risk, I almost said Rick, so maybe somebody's name is Rick or Richard, took a risk to, it's amazing that there's, it's three major arcanas, so it's pretty much like, not by choice. It was like there was nothing else left to do.  I feel like this person viewed you as the Empress, someone who is, you know, abundant. The Empress represents all the queens, so queen of cups, queen of pentacles, queen of fire, and the queen of swords. And also, I'm just using as an energy for, to say like divine, feminine versus masculine, it could be masculine as well, so it really just depends on your situation. But whether you're male or not, the Empress is in the feminine energy. She is soft, she is nurturing, she is caretaking, she is kind, she is gentle, but she is firm, she is solid, she's a good communicator, she's bold, but she's also patient, okay. She is someone who's very resourceful, it's like the total package the Empress is. And I feel like your person viewed you in this way, but I just kind of feel like there was some conflicting energies here. There was a lot of retreat, pulling away, and then coming back or taking a risk or trying to have a new beginning with you in the past. So it feels like there was like a lot of back and forth energy. Let's get a little more clarity here.  I go of any control issues, but then maybe at times they might have ghosted or pulled away from you.  Okay, here's death again. Yeah, I feel like your person was really trying to overcome some struggles. You know, the death card represents big changes and endings and a need to move on. But I feel like they wanted to move on, but then they wanted to move forward with you. A lot of conflicting energy here with this person that you may have experienced with them. They might have said, oh yeah, I'm gonna, you know, I'm going off in a new venture. I'm doing my own thing. But then they keep coming back to you and trying to have a new thing or something with you. Okay, so yeah, wanting to try to like build something with you. And then it feels like then they would leave again. So it's very often on cold energy that I feel here in the past with somebody, you know, yeah, we're going to do something together here with the three, we're in harmony, we're in union, you know, threes can represent birth. So it may have had something to do with birth or having a child. And the three appendicles can represent, you know, teamwork, marriage. So I kind of feel like your person was like one minute on next minute off. Okay, queen of pentacles, there you are that this is how they view you more than just being a Virgo but but more in the sense of like having it all you were the total like the everything for them. Your person has control issues. And I have a tendency to disappear. At least they did in the past. Okay, we'll look at all this major arcana. All right, they're struggling trying to change. I feel like your person really wanted to do right by you, but they couldn't come to grips with themselves. A lot of fear of death can death can be also like, sorry, my microphone, I charged my phone. Death is can represent like the grim reaper, you know, the fear, great fear in this person. I feel like they really wanted to be in some type of marriage or partnership with you. But it seems like it was very difficult in the past for them to do that. So they were kind of like on the fence in the past. There could have been family influence or involvement with this person. Let's see. What's the future for yourself? It's time to take back control of your life and religious factors here. All right.    Okay.  But I also feel like your person sees these differences presently, the beliefs, the way you communicate, the way you operate together. I feel like your person here is freeing themselves from controlling beliefs. What does that even mean?  And, you know, I don't know if you were dealing with someone who was like really high on the narcissistic trade, I don't know if this stuff was intentional, or it was just done so that they could be in control of the relationship. So they could be spared time to sort things out or figure out what they wanted. And perhaps leaving you kind of hanging is how I feel. So if you're presently moving yourself away from this person, because you're just feeling that, well, there's just no compatibility, I feel like this person is going to keep watching you, you know, they're going to offer up another opportunity, ace of pentacles and the ace of cups and offer and then try to initiate out of a sense of like, I feel like because they just keep their eye on you, it's almost as if they don't want to let you go, they want to just kind of like stay in touch or keep communicating or what have you so that it's always a potential though here, when we have two aces, that's always potential. Oh, we can do this. It's it almost kind of feels like you're always having to start over with somebody with the same person and the cycle repeats and nowhere, you know, they are they, they show up with something for you a gift or not or a concept or an idea or something to give you like a sense of hope of some sort.  And, you know, I want to be able like we can do this. Let's promote our relationship. Let's try to make it go forward. Ace of pentacles. Okay, queen of cups. So Scorpio cancer. Pisces and energy. Yeah, they kind of make an offer for you here. And it's emotionally driven. This person, I do feel like they have feelings for you, but they can never get past. It's hard for this thing. It's always easier to just have a restart. It can never just not never but it seems like, because it's always like a restart or it's a new start again with them. It never goes further than a potential for some reason. Ace of cups. Yeah, the moon because their emotions they're very conflicted deep inside. This person just lives in a place of deception or, or confusion, I feel like in their in their mind and their heart and their emotions might have a watery moon placement. Alright, let's see with this. Why do they just keep watching you? Okay, the shadow side. So there's a lot of toxicity with this person. It's like, if they can't have you, they'll find a way to keep tabs on you. But if like if they if you let go or something or you free yourself and you just they're done with it. But that shadow side, that's the devil, you know, this person is like obsessed with you. So it's kind of like leaves you in a stalemate, right with them.  So it's Capricorn energy, cancer, Pisces, it just feels like there's a heavy duty of like deception or unknown, unforeseen things, things that your person isn't aware of in themselves. And yet, they have this obsessive need to keep tabs on you or watch you or, you know, maybe even communicate with curious questions, like, what are you doing? What's going on? That kind of thing where we've been or who are you talking to? Like, it's very, very devilish type of energy. And it doesn't feel very good. I know this isn't like the biggest greatest happy, happy ending kind of thing here. I mean, at least so far that we've gone, but it for some of you, there may be something here that you just need confirmation on with a relationship with somebody that you you try, I feel I do. I'm not really 100% sure what's going on with you. But I know with this person, they're always like right on the edge of going forward with you. And then they pull back or they don't or they or they try to find a way to just maybe keep you there until they're they get over their fear till they're ready. And that might be draining for you, Virgo. Okay, so in the future, you have engagement chemistry. Well, Virgo, you are you will be in a commitment with this person because there is a very strong magnetic attraction, chemistry with this person, there's no doubt. I don't know exactly how you're going to get there. But I feel like if your person is trying to reach you and you're just like I'm out, are you just not responding or because you kind of know that, you know, well, I you may talk to them in a friendly way, but you you've got your expectations are very low because you know that they need to deal with their stuff whatever they need to come to terms with things on their own first. And you're not really planning to entertain anything or invest with them. I feel like maybe you'll have that conversation and tell them that or if you if you already have had that conversation, you may just kind of like I don't really feel like you're officially ignoring the person that I just kind of feel like you're just going to pull out your energy redirect into either someone else or something else and just let them sort things out on their own. But they've got the hermit here. Okay, there you go. Six of swords facing their fears and moving forward, overcoming. That's what the Six of Swords is making some kind of necessary transition. I feel like your person will sense that you're freeing yourself from them and and they're going to have to do the same and I feel like they don't want to like I said, they have a hard time letting you go over go. And I see them here with the four pentacles still again in that energy, you know, this can be a very possessive energy. This is greed and they're very greedy for you. And they do wish for the long term with you and I see them going forward that they kind of come to terms with like they're going to have to face their fears and get over things or whatever they're dealing with. You can't fix it for them and you're going to stop trying. Maybe just be a friend. But they want that long term security and they desire to have that safety and bring that towards you as well. That's what the Ten of Pentacles is. It could even be moving, moving in together, buying a new home in the future. See this Ten of Pentacles. Okay, there's a king of wands, Aries Leo Sagittarius. This is someone who makes bold moves here.  So this person getting up this courage, showing a sign of strength and courage to give you what you want and to bring you what you want. But you need to know that I just feel like there's a caveat here that you need to be wary of them coming in possible with proposal or coming in with engagement or wanting to be in a committed relationship. You need to understand that that ring or that those words do not automatically, magically mean that this person has completely changed because this is about them and this is about them not wanting to let you go and being willing to cross this bridge for you. However, the Four of Cups can sometimes be a card of still being apathetic, indifferent to love or as they say, emotionally unavailable. That theme is going to ring true still for this person, you know? Just because you walk through a door doesn't mean your internal core has changed. This is taking a risk and giving you what you want. However, they still come in with this Four of Cups energy here and so what does that mean for you? How does that look for you? You want to be with this person more than anything but do you want to or can you deal with this energy? Right? And this is a surprise gift so I will tell you also that it is going to be a bit of surprise them coming in to give you what you want but for some of you it may not be enough anymore. Some of you may still want this commitment and this thing but you also want a healthy relationship and with the devil card sitting here it seems like your person has a lot more work to do than just coming in with okay I'll cross this bridge for us. I'll give you what you want just don't leave me or just don't you know don't end the connection but for you it's like it seems like it has to be a lot more than that now Virgo for you. So, what does that mean? They have to go get some help or they have to maybe they have a chemical addiction of some sort or something going on they have to get some help they have to seek some mentorship or you know some spiritual counseling hopefully if you guys decide to you know get into a relationship again or rehash things or just come back around however long you've been apart it it really couldn't hurt for both of you to go in to get some like good counseling together in order to just kind of like ensure that the relationship will progress beautifully but both partners have to obviously be willing to do that. I don't really don't understand why people just don't do that from the beginning unless they're like completely securely attached. I mean it certainly doesn't hurt to get some training if you're going to spend your lifetime together and to really help someone like at least good six months work with like a spiritual coach to help you both understand one another and how to communicate. Let's take a look at this person's messages denial detach with love to clearly see the truth okay so Virgo I do feel like I said this person is going to come in and bring to you what it is you want but you need to really like listen to this message if this resonates for you and take a look that just because they're coming in with us again does not mean that everything is just going to be Skittles or Rainbows there seems to be a lot more work that needs to be done release radical acceptance and surrender can help you let go so I feel like right now Virgo you you probably do need to just completely release and just radical acceptance means it's a radical bold move you don't want to accept this person you don't want to forgive them for the things that they've done but it's a radical move for you to do something to radically just accept it even if you don't want to act as if and just surrender just every day you got to wake up and radically like out of your out of your element element and just really say you know what okay I accept that this is how things are between us and I'm surrendering and letting letting go and you may have to do that every single morning because I think it's going to take some practice because for you Virgo I feel like you're someone who really wants to try to make something work and well you know it just kind of feels like your lab partner is just not showing up to do any you know to help with the project and it feels like you're the one who's carrying the weight up their whole relationship and it's too it's too much of a burden you can't do it you can't how you can't love what's the word I want to say you can't have I mean you could have it listen to me tripping on my words it can't be you being the only one who's got enough love for the both of you it has to be teamwork and your person knows this so allow them to like they're aware and for whatever reason that they keep retreating um you know and just letting it be you know I mean you know you leave a flower outside in a flower pot you know it has to be watered every day and it all has to have sun you know and and um or else it will just rot and it will die you know I mean I don't know I just kind of feel like it's like that goes both ways I bury myself in work to forget you or to not think about you so it's pretty much what they do so if you you try to reach out they'll say oh I'm busy or I'm I'm working right something else or whatever work related things or I don't know cleaning out their garage you know it's kind of an avoidant tactic because this person has um like an emotional unavailability thing here um they just have this avoidance avoidant avoidant going too deep or connecting it or they just cannot maybe are not capable of doing it but they fantasize about you absolutely they know they were careless with you they hide behind material things money cars homes jewelry um you know they just put like obstacles in the way but they do want to tell you how they feel and I do feel like they are going to take a leap of faith okay but I would just keep your expectations very low with this person um because this seems to be maybe I always like to say don't don't make your decisions based on this person's words or based on their actions if you're going to make any decisions about something you need to like clearly see the pattern look at the patterns because patterns will tell you everything sure you can consider their words and their actions but it's not just those two alone it's all three you have to look at the patterns because people can walk away from you and then come back and tell you they miss you and they love you and then they could do it four five six times and every time you would fall for it but if you take a step back and say wait this is a pattern this is a cycle that keeps getting repeated you have to break the pattern if it's unhealthy and toxic which with the double card there I do see that it is oh they can't stop thinking about you because they're obsessed with you and they know they cross the line with you they have some good news they do want to share with you um and they hope that you'll be happy for them but at the same time um oh they are trying to become a better person so that's good um I feel like even with that right there um if they're trying if they really are trying to become a better person um give them that you know but don't expect that one that this person is because you're logical Virgo and you you're very sensible when they return and they're like yes let's do this I'm ready to do this everything will be fine let's go full steam ahead don't expect to that like all of a sudden it's magically going to be okay you have to take your time and go slow because I don't people don't change overnight but if they're making an effort to change and you're seeing it then that's very positive and if you want to give that give the relationship a chance to progress then definitely go for it I mean I do feel like there will be there is a very strong attraction between the two of you and I do see future commitment I mean or possible engagement here for some all right Virgo so I hope that was helpful I hope you enjoyed this reading again please do hit like share subscribe on the video and a link is in the description box below if you would like to get a personal reading and I will be here tomorrow Saturday between 11 and one eastern standard time 11 a.m to 1 p.m not here but on my other channel loon pie tarot you want to pop into the live chat at that time and you can get a mini reading from me twenty dollars for three cards all right you guys I'll see you soon take care