 Hi everyone, my name is Adriana Ponce. I use the pronouns she, her, hers. I am a current doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and I am also your graduate student staff assistant for the 2020 to 2021 academic year. That means that I was the one who had the privilege of reading through your reflection forms, responding to your emails, sending out newsletters, and keeping track of your progress among other things. I also had the honor to meet with some of you virtually in office hours, so I really thank you for your friendliness, your thoughtfulness, and your attention to detail. I want to give a huge shout out and congratulations to all of you for completing your DEI certificate. This has been an incredibly difficult year. We have survived and continue to survive a pandemic and on top of that we had a number of current events that shook us to our core. There was the killing of George Floyd, the killing of Breonna Taylor, the insurrection of the Capitol, violent hate crimes against the AAPI community, and we're currently facing a immigration crisis at the border among many things. So this year really called on us to pull our diversity, equity, and inclusion toolkit out. So I thank each and every one of you for your reflexivity, your vulnerability, and your desire to create a better society for all of us. Although there was a lot of bad and negative that happened in our society, there was a lot of good that happened in our program and there were a number of workshops that I really appreciated. My favorite workshop this year was by Dr. Ebony McGee and how she talked about ways that we can help our BIPOC graduate students thrive in the academy. I also appreciated the lead talk on how to support student activists. We had poets and a playwriter come in to demonstrate different ways that we can incorporate DI work. I really urge all of you because as professionals we all hold a lot of power, whether it's in our research, our teaching, our mentorship, or other facets of our professional lives. I urge each and every one of you to use your power for good. That means for us to continue uplifting marginalized communities and to continue holding space for privileged communities to learn and grow. So again, congratulations on this huge accomplishment. Thank you for everything.