Even though I grew up as a Sephardic Jew in Brooklyn where we ate Syrian food and went to temple it was still America.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start but where you're going. That's family values.

I went to an amazing school in Brooklyn called St. Anne's that's a really kind of creative hot bed.