Who Are You Becoming? | Connor Schoen on Leadership, Identity & Authenticity

When Connor Schoen co-founded Breaktime at just 19 years old, he set out to change the lives of young adults experiencing homelessness. Years later, after leading one of Boston's most influential nonprofits, receiving national recognition, and navigating the pressures of leadership, he found himself confronting a different question: Who am I becoming?

In this episode of At the Podium, Connor reflects on the hidden cost of leadership, learning to embrace rather than hide his youth, coming out as pansexual, and discovering that authentic leadership begins when the person you are in public and the person you are in private become one.

This conversation isn't simply about running a nonprofit. It's about identity, integrity, purpose, and the freedom to keep evolving. Together, we explore what it means to lead without performing, to hold power with humility, and to build a life that remains open to whatever comes next.

Whether you're leading a company, building a career, navigating your own identity, or simply wondering who you're becoming, Connor's story is a thoughtful reminder that the greatest leadership journey is often the one taking place within ourselves.

Connor Schoen is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Breaktime, a Boston-based nonprofit working to end young adult homelessness. He has been recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, a Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Changemaker Award recipient, and one of Boston's Ten Outstanding Young Leaders by City Awake.

Listen. Reflect. Become.

For more information contact Patrick at patrick@patrickhueyleadership.com

Transcript

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Patrick 0:00

A lot of this work started when you were 14 prior to break time. And I wonder sitting here today, what do you would say to that 14-year-old person who was just starting out in this space and figuring out what it was?

SPEAKER_01 0:13

So I would start that conversation by asking a lot of questions of my 14-year-old self to see what was making me happiest then and to hold on to the pieces of me that feel most authentically me. I would tell them that you don't know everything about yourself yet. So try to be excited about figuring that out instead of scared. You know, I think about my sexuality and, you know, my process over those five years of reckoning with it and eventually coming out when I was 19. I'd want to save that 14-year-old some time and suffering by giving them permission to embrace every part of who they are, even if it feels different or scary. Uh I would really enjoy that conversation.

Patrick 0:57

My guest today is Connor Schoen. When Connor first joined me on at the podium two years ago, he was in the midst of building something urgent. Co-founding and scaling Breaktime, an organization working to break the cycle of young adult homelessness in Boston. Since then, a great deal has changed. Breaktime has taken a decisive step forward, purchasing its own building in downtown Boston, a moment that marked a new level of responsibility for the organization, for the young people it serves, and for Connor himself as the organization's leader. At the same time, Connor has been doing quieter work, re-examining his identity, reckoning with burnout, and asking, what does it mean to lead something meaningful without losing yourself in the process? This is At the Podium, and I'm Patrick Huey. Today, we're talking about leadership, identity, and the intersection of professional and personal growth with Connor Schoen. But before we begin, make sure you like, subscribe, and comment below to support my channel. Connor, welcome back to At the Podium. Thank you so much for having me. You have a lot going on.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

It's been a journey, for sure, since I last saw you, since we last did this. But I had so much fun last time, and I've actually re-watched it a couple times, like over two years. Because it's interesting, like when you Google break time and press about break time, but it's actually like pretty high up on the SEO. So it'll kind of pop up randomly for me, and I'll re-watch it. And it's it's it's grounding because so much has evolved and it gives me a little bit more appreciation, I think, like how far we've come, but also where we came from and the optimism and like the radical innovative energy.

Patrick 2:53

I set intentions for these now when I'll work with someone, just so that we're sort of all on the same page. And I wanted to talk to you about the work that you're doing at breaktime and the journey you've been on, which I've been watching. But also I think it's interesting to see a person, you specifically, going through this really interesting transition in your career and this business that you've started, but also have that same transition happening in different ways in your life. It's parallel courses. Yeah. I think we're all kind of living in that space of the in-between, which I find very interesting to talk about, and how different people at different ages and different parts of their life and career exist in those two worlds at once. So I thought Connor is the best person to talk to. And I love talking to you. So I was like, it's time to talk to Connor again.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

I think one of the things I've got uncomfortable with now is, and I think the world just sort of demands it of all of us at this moment, is just being really real and being very vulnerable about who I am behind the like curtain of a leader and someone who put up a face sometimes, you know, because that's what the job demands of me. And I've found that it's something people are a lot more excited to engage with and watch because it's it's a lot more relatable than the polished pitch. And so I would be happy to delve into more of the personal side as you talk about those two tracks and that journey. You know, when I started breakdown, I was 19 and now I'm 27. And so the amount of life that I've lived in the last eight years with the pandemic and like 85 million other things that we could talk about, I just feel like it's been, it's it's been really interesting and challenging and crazy. And I've learned a lot just about how I approach life, how I approach my leadership. And there's so much I'm working on and trying to, you know, figure out. And so I'm excited to go into any of those directions. So I'm, I'm, I guess my intention is openness, authenticity, and honesty with you. And I'm ready.

Patrick 5:12

Something I sort of no doubt, something you said. But it's interesting that I think you said something really interesting about this idea of sort of letting people sort of see behind the camera lens and see who the real person is. And I think part of what happens, particularly as you move up the, and we'll talk about this growth that you've had in terms of just your visibility and recognition within Boston, but people need to know you. Because at the end of the day, the thing that is the thing that is break time or that is a person's job or this platform that we're on right now, the genesis comes from you. And if you're not transparent, and now recklessly so, there's a difference between hype and all of that, but genuinely present and real with people, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything at all. So it's an interesting balance that you have to strike, which I think is interesting. I do wonder how has your approach to your life and leadership changed over the last eight years? So much has happened as you alluded to.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Well, when I started break time being a 19-year-old, I felt this need to be older than I was, to pretend like I was older than I was, to be taken seriously, and to sort of hide my age and conceal my age in different ways. My co-founder and I used to joke that, like, when is it going to come up in the conversation that we're college students? Because we would pitch about break time and we'd be talking with a potential funder, with a partner. And sometimes you get through the whole conversation without it ever coming up or us ever being point blank asked, like, are you in school? And so we built entire relationships, not deceptively, but just by putting forward the parts of ourselves that seemed more mature and polished, and not leading with the fact that we were students, the fact that we were young social entrepreneurs figuring it out. And part of that was, you know, internalized stuff, I think. And part of it was very much the way the external world treated us and affirmed and reaffirmed that in many ways our youth was a weakness. And so something that has really evolved over the last eight years, in addition to many things, is the fact that I have sort of owned my youth. And when I talk to um, I try to spend a lot of time talking to younger leaders, um, to groups of students, to folks who are aspiring to careers in public service. And what I share with them is that your youth is a superpower and own the parts of it that are, you know, unique to being young, some of the energy and the optimism and the hope and the fearlessness that comes with that. And then recognize and acknowledge the lack of experience and contextualize it with well, here's how I'm being mentored and supported, or here's who I'm teaming up with who has 10 years, 20 years of experience. And so Tony and I were able to do that. I would say the primary example of that is one of our mentors, Michael Brown, who's the co-founder of City Year, worked intensely with us for many, many years. And we I still work with him today, actually. We just absorbed like a sponge everything that he had learned over 30 years of starting City Air when he was 26, 27, and building it into an international organization. And I think sharing that with people is what gave them sort of the context needed to believe in us. Because we weren't saying, you know, precociously that we knew it all or that we could, you know, figure it all out and that it didn't matter that we didn't have experience, but we were sharing how we were being mentored by folks who have been in the trenches for many more years than us, who have learned things that only come with time. And the thing that I've had to let go of that's been healthy for me is when doing that to minimize myself and what I bring to the table with my youth and to embrace the fact that there are pieces of my leadership when I was 19 and pieces of my leadership now that I'm 27 that uniquely come from the position of life I'm in, and still in my leadership today, now that I'm starting to get, you know, every day a little bit older and older, partnering with the young people in Break Times Partner program, partnering with young people who are up-and-coming leaders, partnering with folks who have 10, 20, 30 more years of experience than me. When we all work together intergenerationally at different levels of experience at different points in life, we can kind of come to a direction that is really effective and formed by different superpowers that exist within experience, within youth, and with all in within all of that. So I've learned to embrace the fact that I'm a younger leader and lead with it. I think it was scary for me last uh last year when the the Boston Globe came out with a piece that had my age right in the headline. But even within the reaction to that, I've learned to just embrace it and say, yeah, I don't know everything I'm doing because I haven't been in this career for 20, 30 years, but I'm learning a lot and I am completely committed to learning from and honoring the folks who've come before me. And so, yeah, that's something that's definitely changed for me. I'm not hiding my age, I'm leading with it, I'm embracing it, but continuing to contextualize the fact that there is some trade-off between age and experience, and you've got to bring all the people together to get the right direction for whatever you're trying to do.

Patrick 10:49

It's something interesting that you said, which I think we don't think about because it's us walking through our lives, and you don't usually have the perspective of the camera watching you, so to speak. But I would imagine that in those beginning years, that when people were meeting with you and Tony, they knew that you were college students. But also, based upon what break time is, their decades or multiple decades of experience removed them potentially from the constituency that you're serving. And there you are, literally the person they're trying to serve, that person's age, that person's view of the world, which is very different than the person who's 20 or 30 years. So they probably, what you and Tony may have been thinking were negatives, were probably the thing they were like, this is really good because we're getting that person who's that age, they know the language, they know the things that motivate someone that age. So it probably made sense for them who you two were and are in the space that you were occupying. And I also think no matter what it is, whenever there's something new coming up that we're addressing or looking at, it's always new. It's always the first time. And so part of smart leadership is being able to be comfortable in the newness and adjust and not hold on to ideas that are fixed because it's forever a moving target.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Yeah. And I I would say that I could honestly spend hours listing all the people who I met along the way who embraced me and embraced just life in general with that perspective. Folks who had a million times more experience than me, who believed in me, spent time with me, all the people who got a cold email from me and said yes, probably thousands of people who did that. It was a few people who didn't, and a few people who actively made me doubt myself, who actively belittled me, and that still happens in my life and in my career. But if we're being honest about it, I've been so fortunate in the fact that I would say about 99% of people have been so supportive. But the voices of that 1% that are stuck in this false narrative of I know best and I will always know best, that are embracing the fact that the world is constantly changing, that problems are changing, um, they're very loud and they can have an influence. And I think something that's really guided me throughout my journey is something I learned from my parents growing up, is that everyone has something to learn from everyone else. And it's really, that's really the sort of motto that guides my life. If I walk into breaktime, I'm working with a young person experiencing homelessness. I have so much to learn from their experience, from their perspective on the world, from their perspective on break time and how it can be better. Every single person on my team has invaluable perspective that I can learn from. And I think some people have bought into this false narrative that just because of the actual job they have and the rank they have, or the amount of experience they have or their age, that learning will always be one-directional, that they're the teacher and that everyone else is the student. But I saw it role-modeled by my parents who always asked about my perspective and then sowing in my mentors who say they've learned from me, which was always so shocking, but has really allowed me to recognize that my perspective is uniquely valuable. And so that I can come into any conversation feeling confident in what I can add and very curious and very hungry to learn from everyone else. So I hope with time that I don't lose that because I think it's been the most special and important mantra guiding my life, not just over the last eight years, but truly throughout the entire 27 years of my life.

Patrick 14:41

I found as I've gotten older, and I do it more intentionally now, is I put myself in situations where I'm not the expert. And what does that feel like to have to be in a situation where you're constantly making yourself learn, where you're constantly moving out of comfort zone? I mean, there are all kinds of books, truisms, quotes, sayings about comfort zone is the death of creativity, all of that kind of stuff. But in a way, it's true. If there's no risk involved, then you're not doing it. Yeah. And you're already behind the curve because with the rate of information that we have access to on how quickly things grow, change, and shift, we should all be playing catch up, always to still be relevant and functioning, I think.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

You know, I would affirm that by saying that to your point, I'm often not the expert in the room. And I find it fun to just be able to learn from other people, to hear people's perspective, and then go back to my life and be able to apply that. Like what a gift to not have had to live all the lived experiences of the people who are teaching me these things, and then use it to guide my own leadership, my own lived experience. I've probably escaped a number of headaches by doing that. And I hope to be able to help others avoid challenges through talking through my own ups and downs and obstacles I've faced.

Patrick 16:00

You mentioned earlier the Boston Globe article, which I read, of course. And there was a quote in there when I read it, I was like, this is a very interesting statement. And it was made by Jeremy Kramer, who is the philanthropic advisor to the Ori Family Foundation. And what he said about you was he has a unique ability, especially for someone his age, to find himself at the epicenter of the power and influence centers of our city. And I was like, this is not just about recognition. This is a clear signal that you're not just this young upstart kid within the nonprofit world. You are a power player and actually perceived with weight and gravitas within the philanthropic nonprofit centers of Boston. And I was like, I wonder how Connor feels about that.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Well, there's definitely some moments of imposter syndrome reading that. Um, I'm so grateful to Jeremy and all the ways he's mentored me over the years. And I think that something that I've learned from him and many others is the importance of understanding the dynamics of power and influence. Power is such a dirty word. And I think that's because we associate power with abuses of power. We associate power with the things that people do, leveraging it for evil, leveraging it for personal gain, leveraging it for greed. But power is the vehicle by which we can fuel social movements, we can fuel radical social change. So understanding power is so important. How do you influence centers of power and policy advocacy? And so power has always been something that I've thought deeply about, especially in the context of philanthropy, where you have folks who may have tremendous amounts of wealth who are deciding discretionarily where they want to allocate that money, and you're trying to convince them to allocate it towards a cause that you really care about, towards the work that you're doing or the work that you support. And that ability to influence someone's decision about what they do with the money that they've accumulated throughout their life, that they've earned, that they fought for, that is something that I think is one of the most important skills in the world. Because the way that money moves and the way that influence and power over money works changes basically everything. It changes what gets funded, it changes the type of work that we can fuel because things cost money. Great work is fueled by great people who need to make a salary. And so I've really focused on being a student of how do you influence folks with resources to fuel the movements you care about with the resources needed to get them done. You know, break time, we directly empower young people with not only the skills they need to succeed in their careers financially and in their lives, but also with the resources. You know, all of our trainings are paid. We have a match savings program where we're we're matching any money that young adults put aside. We have emergency financial support that they have access to. And we're getting those resources from incredibly generous, amazing, kind individuals who have decided that with the resources they have, that they want to allocate a portion of that to these young people and to the futures of these young people. And so the ability for me to go into a room where I can influence decisions over philanthropy or over government spending, that's such an important skill. And I don't take it lightly that having access to rooms like that comes with such tremendous privilege. So my ability to be an effective advocate and a really effective fundraiser is so invaluable to being able to go back and support the young people that I that I so deeply care about and work with. And so I appreciate that quote because I feel like it celebrates a skill that I've been honing and working on essentially my whole life. Definitely comes with some imposter syndrome of there's so many people like Jeremy, I know, who can do so much more than than I can. I have so much more to learn from. But I appreciate him recognizing the journey I've been on, what I've learned from him and others, and excited to continue to lean into that skill. So we can use power as an engine for good versus it being a force for evil, corruption, and greed.

Patrick 20:37

It's interesting your perspective on power, because I think in the 21st century, power has become a totem for negativity. And I'm speaking very broadly here. Obviously, it is not a sum total of power. But if you look at some of the key events of the 21st century, they've been tied to the negative abuses of power. Um, looking all the way back to September 11th, right? Look what power was able to do to New York City, it changed the face of New York City. But it's interesting because I think power has always been a complex noun. Um but you look at John Kennedy's desire for us to go to the moon and the idea of exploration, and you think about what American exceptionalism brought to bear during World War II. And so we have very distinct, clear examples of what power and the positive can add to our lives, our culture. And hopefully, as we move into the third decade of the 21st century, we're able to sort of recapture the beauty of what power can bring and not so much the destructive side of it, which we are currently living through.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Ditto, I completely agree with that and have that same hope for our country. And I'll share that my own relationship with. And understanding of power has has transformed so significantly over the last decade and seeing everything and reacting to everything happening in the world. And I think if we put ourselves in 2016, I was I was finishing high school. I thought I wanted to go into politics and be in elected office. I felt very confident about that, but was deeply committed to the nonprofit work I was doing through an organization called Project 351 and figuring out how that fit into it. And it felt so definitive that I was going into politics. And then the 2016 election happened. And I just saw so many examples and have seen so many examples over the last 10 years of a lack of political courage and people doing things that are just so cowardly, so immoral, and just completely doing a 180 on all the things they've said their whole life and all their values. And it's so hard for me, with the way our political landscape is right now, to imagine myself in that space, um, despite how I felt when I was 17. And I think what's evolving for me right now in this moment, I'm gaining more hope and optimism that we can turn the tide of what power looks like in our country. And I think after 10 years of feeling a lot of pessimism and feeling a lot of hopelessness, I'm trying to cultivate that little sliver of hope that still exists because we've been through a lot as a country. We're entering our 250th year. And I think about the people and the movements that have overcome what seemed like insurmountable obstacles to get us to where we are and to empower people with the rights that they deserve. I'm gonna just embrace that whole wholeheartedly. Because if we think of power as a negative thing, we'll never be able to create the change we want to in the world. Because power is that lever that can make the world a better place. It's just turned in the wrong direction in many ways right now. We gotta turn it back and we gotta believe that we can.

Patrick 24:09

I'll also say power is the headline. But I can tell you that in my career, that equally as important as power, and power doesn't exist without it, is the idea of storytelling.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

Because if you own the story, you own the power. If you look at the great leaders throughout history, if you look at Martin Luther King Jr., you look at Gandhi, you look at the people who who we used to study about in history books.

Patrick 24:46

I don't know what kids study in school anymore. See, that seems upper grabs, right? But you look at these people who are seminal figures.

SPEAKER_03 24:55

Moses, right? They control the narrative. And the power is derivative of that.

Patrick 25:02

And so I think our ability to shape the perception of power is to shape the stories that we're telling. We have to get the story right in order to exert power in a way that will yield results that we want to see.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

I've always felt like storytelling and the people I know who are such incredible storytellers, yourself included, to be so powerful and to be so influential. And stories that I hold close to my heart are the things that have most informed my worldview and perspective. So who's telling that story and how they're telling it matters a lot, especially with how limited our attention spans are. I'll, you know, put myself in the same bucket as many of us, where it's like, I've got five seconds to look at this notification before I go and respond to this text, before I go on Instagram and scroll, before I get to my next meeting. And so when you have five seconds to absorb the impact of some of the things going on, the way someone tells that story to you in those five seconds is so, so important. Some of the people I most look up to in my life have been people who are just so effective, who can completely change your perspective and just move your heart in the ways that they tell stories. There's a skill that we can all continue to build because it seems to be the most powerful weapon that we can use to fight tyranny or oppression, and the most important tool we can use to build a healthier democracy and a better, uh, more inclusive community.

Patrick 26:31

We still don't know what the long-term impact of these last, I would say 20 years. I know we're sort of zeroing in on 2016, but things were off before that. In the course of history, it's a blink of an eye what we're talking about right now. And we don't know how this will echo past even our lifetimes. And perhaps the narrative is look what we had to go through to get to where we are in a positive sense. It's interesting. We're talking a lot about the work. And as Jeremy Kramer is writing this really beautiful byline about you in the Boston Globe, you're writing on LinkedIn that literally you're having an entire shifting and understanding of who you are. And you're talking about things like burnout and really pondering and thinking about how do I still show up as a leader for not just the 40 people who work for you at break time, but for the constituency that you represent. If you have nothing to give because you're so burned out, you're so tired, you're so in search of funding, support, all those things. And I thought that was a very interesting juxtaposition that while you're buying a building, it's a big story in the governmental nonprofit world. There's an internal personal reckoning going on for you. And I wonder how your life has changed and led you to that point over the last eight years.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

I think the dissonance between what happens in my work life and what happens in my personal life has ballooned and grown substantially at different parts of my life and my journey, particularly over the last eight years. You would think that as Breakthrough was buying the building, as this globe piece were coming out, that I'm riding the high of that and I'm doing perfectly well and everything's great. But we're all dealing with our own stuff outside of whatever's happening in work. And it's always up and down. What's been so interesting to me is to have an experience like the globe piece and just the reaction to it, where, you know, you're being celebrated and it's exciting and it's big and it's awesome. And then to go home and sit with and reckon with all the things you're working through personally. And that disconnect has always been challenging to navigate. But what I've learned through that is the importance of giving time and energy to both your career and to your life. Because when you neglect one, the gap between what's happening in one part of your life and what's happening in another just continues to grow. And it's it's a dissonance that's so hard to live with because you're just flipping a switch when you go home and you're flipping a switch back on when you go to work. And it just feels weird. And so I think what I've been able to do is just sort of heal that dissonance a little bit. And I'll talk about it first on the personal side in terms of what it looks like when I go home at the end of the day. I have been very intentional the last two years about setting goals for myself that are clear, measurable. I use the same framework we use in our job training program at break time, which is SMART goals, goals that are specific, goals that are measurable, they're realistic, they're time-bound. And so at the beginning of 2024 and 2025, and now in 2026, I've set a list of six SMART goals for myself. I kind of chose six arbitrarily because I did it with colored pencil and I wanted all the colors of the rainbow, true to form, with me. And it looks really pretty, except for my handwriting, which is really bad. But it is a goal sheet that I created for myself that's got the six goals and then quarterly benchmarks that I want to hit. The same rigor and sort of methodology that you apply to work goals, I've started to apply in my own life. So I've had goals like I want to attain conversational proficiency in Portuguese. That was one goal last year that I was able to achieve. And I had places I wanted to get to or kind of themes for each quarter of, okay, I knew I was going to Portugal uh in the summer. And so that was a you know, quarter. I was really going to focus on immersion and trying to have as many sort of immersive experiences as I could in the language. One of my goals basically every year has been deepening my one-on-one friendships that connect to hobbies I have. Uh, and I've set goals like once a week, engage in a hobby with a friend. In quarter three, try to make a new friend. Quarter four, try to go on a trip with a new friend. And it has been so effective. It has been the most effective thing I've ever done for personal change. What's funny about it is in 2024 and 2025, I remember doing it like in two hours on New Year's, you know, hung over and tired on New Year's, sitting down with my colored pencils and writing out this goal sheet. Yet it changed my entire year, those two hours. And obviously the goals that I chose were informed by tons of reflections, therapy, and journaling that had happened. But it wasn't this like huge step. It didn't take me days or weeks to complete. It just took me carving out an hour to just sit down and write. And you don't need to do it with colored pencils and you, you don't need to make it rainbow and you don't need to choose six. And I've sort of brought the power of manifesting into all this by thinking about okay, where am I going to be at the end of this year and what and what do I want to achieve? And so I'd say that's the biggest thing I've done on the personal side. And on the professional side, I'm really working to just continue to bring my full self to work. I'm so inspired by my coworkers who do that. I'm so inspired by the young people I work with, you know, the 444 young adults that break time supported last year, who come so authentically and so vulnerably to share their experience and to share who they are. And I'm trying to do that in my own way. You know, I already have done a lot of work to embrace my youth and to embrace sort of the unique place in life that I'm at. But I'm I'm trying to bring the quirks of my personality and and and the things that make me uniquely me as a human into my work too, because I find that especially as my position of power has changed and grown within the context of my own organization, but also within the community, that the biggest thing that I want from people of power is authenticity and honesty. So I got to embody that. And I just got to be fully me. And so that's meant everything from the last couple of years of going to work with my nails painted because it's something I love. And I've seen it kind of take off in the office a bit, and more people doing it, or just cracking jokes with coworkers make me just feel a little bit more relatable and human, or being honest about my emotions, being like, I am really upset about this, or I'm really struggling right now, you know, and I've gone through a lot in the last couple of years and I've been honest with my team. I'd say, I said last week to my team, I was like, this is a hard time for me right now, and I am not at my personal best. And so I appreciate your patience and flexibility as I go through this. In the past, I would have buried and hid that stuff as much as I could when I got to got to work. And so I'm excited to continue to be more authentically myself in the workplace. Obviously, to a professional extent and with the boundaries that are healthy and important to maintaining the best possible workspace. Being authentic and honest is really important to me. And I'm trying and aspiring to do that more and more in my leadership. And then at home, bringing that rigor and that energy and that discipline I bring to my work, to my life, and being honest with myself that to achieve certain goals, I need to be more disciplined. I need to have more rigor. And I have to treat it with the same importance. I think sometimes we treat our job, even if we say we don't, we give our energy in a way that asserts that our job is the most important thing in the world. And if we don't bring that back to our life, we're always going to be behind on our goals and we're always going to feel bad about it. And so I'm really trying to shift that. But those are like the two things that have most come up for me as I've dealt with the dissonance between my work and my life and tried to find a balance between it all. What about love? Love in all of this. Well, I left a two-year relationship at the end of 2023. So 2024, 2025 were two years where I was really able to focus on myself because of that. I was very intentional about that. It was hard for me because I I think for many people, but I'll just speak for myself, it can be hard to be single because society messages to you in so many ways that like being in a relationship or being married is like part of the steps that you have to do to be like a successful person, adult, whatever. And I've had to kind of dismantle that and for myself and embrace the power of being single and what it's allowed me to do in terms of just focusing on my own goals. I would have not been able to commit quite the amount of time and energy if I'm investing in dating. I'm definitely more open to a relationship now and at this point, and I feel like I would be able to balance it all. I think the process of dating is uh is challenging. And I think there's a lot of dissonance there, you know, going from I remember I think it was the day or the day after the Globe article came out, like going on a date, and then someone asked me what I do. And he was just like, it's like so hard to like explain. And I was like, well, I work at this nonprofit, and like, cool, let me tell you about what I do. And they just talked about themselves. And this is a dissonance of like, I've been like, everyone's been calling me all day, and I go on a date, and they act like I'm so uninteresting. And that's happened to me a lot. There's a lot of dissonance there. And I think for me, I'll know it's right when I meet someone who values what I do and is excited about what I do, even more so than I am, and reminds me to be excited about it. And I hope I can find a partner like that because everybody deserves curiosity. Everybody deserves questions, everybody deserves interest, no matter what they do. And so I think it's been hard to find that, but I'm really excited to commit a bit more time and energy to that. And I feel just such a better place personally. So I'm so glad that I took the last two years to just focus on being single. It's been so amazing for me. It's not always been easy, and there's definitely been a lot of loneliness to it because so many life events and things center around having a partner. Um, I've gone to a lot of weddings and been reminded of um the amazing people that my friends and family have brought into their lives, and I'm so happy for them. And I feel so much more ready to approach a relationship in the right way. And I really feel like I know what I want in a way that I did not last time I got into a relationship.

Patrick 37:42

It's been a big decade for you, professionally and personally. But a lot of this work started when you were 14 prior to break time. And I wonder sitting here today, what you would say to that 14-year-old person who was just starting out in this space and figuring out what it was.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Well, I had such an interesting experience recently, which was Project 351, the organization that I became part of when I was 14, which takes one eighth grader from every city and town in Massachusetts and supports and coaches them through sort of a year of service and leading projects in their hometown community. They chose to honor me as a service hero this year, which means that there's a Connor-Shone team of eighth graders from different towns across Massachusetts, including Westboro, my hometown, that are supporting each other through this experience of being an ambassador at Project 351. And it was really cool to meet my team and to talk to 14-year-olds, 13-year-olds who are excited about service and interested in developing service leadership skills. And it was definitely a deja vu moment for me, a reckoning moment for me where I was like, whoa, I'm talking to folks who were in that same inflection point of their life that I was when my life totally changed. And I really found a love for service. And that completely changed the entire course of my life. So, one, I was sitting with a lot of like pressure, like, okay, don't screw this up. But two, also this immense feeling of uh an opportunity to have an impact. And I hope I did, but it it really got me thinking about that 14-year-old version of myself. The first thing I would say to them is I I would want to hear from them about what is making you happiest in your life. What are you most excited about? What are you thinking about? Because I had a unique experience as an eighth grader, which I think very few people have because middle school is by and large a very messy time for folks, where I somehow had this very like defined sense of self. And it was weird because basically no one else does at that time, and I have lost it a hundred times since then. So I know that whenever I go to a project 351 event, a re-engage, in some ways, that's my way of revisiting my eighth-grade self. And it always feels so grounding. It's like, oh yeah, this is what I care about. This is what's right, these are the values that are most important to me. What I would tell them is to hold on to that and to hold on to the pieces of me that feel most authentically me. I would tell them that, you know, you don't know everything about yourself yet. So try to be excited about figuring that out instead of scared. You know, I think about my sexuality and, you know, my process over those five years of reckoning with it and eventually coming out when I was 19. And want to save that 14-year-old some time and suffering by giving them permission to embrace every part of who they are, even if it feels different or scary. And then I would, I would just say, like, you're on to something with Project 351. So hold on to that, hold on to the other things that feel right to you, hold on to the people and the relationships that are important to you. Um and when I look at the last 13 years since then, the times when I've done that have been the times that have resulted in the best things for me, for my career, for my life. And so um I would really enjoy that conversation to see sort of what was making me happiest then.

Patrick 41:22

Yeah, and I think the suffering's okay. It's part of the muscle that makes you build empathy for other people. Um I loved your six-word memoir that you wrote for your Project 351 return. Serve Relentlessly, Learn Tirelessly, Be Kind.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

I loved it when I read it. I also saw it recently because they put it up on the screen at the Project 351 event. And I'd kind of forgotten that I wrote that. So again, it was a good reminder, a good grounding reminder of what most matters to me. It was almost like I was talking to my future self when I wrote that. To be like, when you're 27, you're gonna read this and you're gonna be like, oh yeah, that's what I should be doing. Um little time capsule moment for me. So I appreciate you bringing it up because it's definitely uh something that I should uh uh I don't know, tattoo on my hand so I can read it every day. Right.

Patrick 42:19

I think the last time we talked, we were talking about finding your voice. And this season of the show, I'm really interested in this idea of what it means to return home because I actually moved back to where I grew up. Those words return and home have many meanings. And I wonder in the space you are now, what does that return to home look like, feel, or mean for you?

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Well, interestingly, I'm, you know, uh taking this call from the house I grew up in, and this room here, and the desk I'm sitting at is where I did homework since I was probably that 14-year-old. And so I moved this fall from Dorchester, Jamaica Plant in Boston. And in that process, I started spending a lot more time with my parents, with my family, and my childhood home in Westboro. And it was so grounding because this is where I grew up. This will always be the core of what home means. And it was also disorienting because there was a time where I didn't really feel a full sense that any one place was my home. I'd moved out of my place in Dorchester. I was waiting to move into this new place in JP that definitely didn't feel like home yet. Spending time in my childhood home that felt a little foreign to me because we've moved out a lot of the stuff and there's nothing on my walls anymore. And, you know, my community, my routine isn't necessarily here anymore. But what I discovered in all this, first and foremost, for me, is I'm lucky enough to say that home is family and that I've had a family that has stuck with me and supported me throughout all of this, uh, on all of my journey. I just spent the weekend with my two older brothers, my sister-in-law, my parents, and that feels like home. Going on a walk with them at the park together feels like home. Playing a game at night with them feels like home. Those are the experiences that ground me and the people that ground me. And then I would say, in terms of place, because I've spent my whole life here, like definitely have this strong sense of roots and this strong sense that this is home. But I think what I've realized is that the thing that makes it feel most like home is the people and is the community. It's going to Project 351 and running into, you know, 80 people that I've known for over 10 years. It's coming back to Westbrook and running into that friend, that neighbor, that teacher. It's the Globe article coming out about me and me getting texts, Instagram messages, Facebook DMs from people who have known me some for over 20 years, some for over 10 years, and who've watched my journey because have been proximate and close and still engaged and coming back and engaging. And so I guess people is always defined home for me. And as I'm settling into my new home and Jamaica Plain, I'm really excited about this next chapter and to create a physical place that feels like home that supports my hobbies and the things I love to do, like hosting people and hanging out with friends in a neighborhood that I'm really excited about, neighborhood that has a huge queer community, lots of outdoor space for running and walking and biking. I'm really excited about this next chapter for me. But I think regardless of the physical place, no matter where I go in life or where I live, because I don't know if I'll live in Boston forever, but I've learned that it's the people that feel like home and it's the people that ground me. Connor, thank you so much for today. Thank you. This has been such a great conversation, and I really appreciate the opportunity to get to be so open and asked about things that, you know, I don't typically get to talk about in interviews. So thanks for giving me this opportunity to be so open and honest with you. Thank you. And the next time I'm in Boston, we have to go have dinner.

Patrick 46:09

Yes. And you have to visit Break Time's new building. The new building. I think the last time we went somewhere was the MFA. Yeah, no, yeah. So we have we have we have some things to do, which is gonna be awesome. But thank you, Connor. And to those of you who are watching or listening, remember we all have a voice. We all believe the legacy. And the journey home is how we learn to embody them both. And thank you, Connor. Thank you so much.