Embracing Differences and Finding Value| Mariana Atencio |TEDx

NBC News journalist Mariana Atencio has traveled the world from Haiti to Hong Kong. In her TEDx talk, Mariana tells us how the people she's met along the way and her own immigrant experience have taught her that the only thing we all have in common is being human. Get ready to 'get human' and embrace what makes you different! Take a stand to defend your race: the human race!

When you're different, you have to work at belonging. You have to be either really helpful, smart, funny, anything to be cool for the crowd you want to hang out with. Later on, when I was in high school, my dad expanded on his summer plan, and from Caracas, he sent me to Wallingford, Connecticut for senior year of high school. This time, I remember daydreaming on the plane about the American high school experience with a locker. It was going to be perfect, just like in my favorite TV show, Saved by the Bell. I get there, and they tell me that my assigned roommate is eagerly waiting. I open the door, and there she was, sitting on the bed with a headscarf. Her name was Fatima, and she was Muslim from Bahrain, and she was not what I expected.