Joseph Petrila: Being different is less unique than you think

Joseph Petrila has led an extraordinary life sailing and trotting around the world from a young age, so it's safe to say he knows a thing or two about feeling different. In his talk, he shares what he's learned through his experiences and how our differences are what really connect us all. Joey Petrila spent 9 years growing up on a sailboat traveling around the Caribbean, USA, and Central America with his parents and older sister. Life at sea and travel brought a wide variety of challenges and experiences to an ever-relocating kid-turned-teenager. Joey was a homeschooled student, then a student at a local school in Mexico for 2 years. Then he transitioned to online correspondence learning while living in Malaysia and across Europe - and finally graduated from an American public high school in 2017. Joey learned that there are common bonds between people that can go unseen beneath the consistently polarizing discourse that divides us. Today, Joey works in the field of communication and is an activist in favor of youth-led solution building when it comes to tackling pressing issues in society. At 23 years old, he's the youngest elected Curator of the World Economic Forum's youth initiative based in Prague, which he oversees in his free time.