‘Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you’: Amy Poehler

Actor Amy Poehler, who spoke at length at the Harvard University, had many suggestions and advise up her sleeves. “If I wanted to give you advice as a New Yorker, I’d tell you, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, could you move please? Don’t walk in the bike lane — get off the bike lane please.’ And I would also like to take a moment to inform you as a New Yorker and as my cab driver did recently that Bloomberg pretends to take the subway, but we all know that’s a bunch of baloney,” she said.

“And if I wanted to give you advice as an actor, I would tell you this: Don’t do it. Don’t be one. There are too many. I have a lot of talented friends who aren’t working. Sorry, no more room at the inn. I bet you are great, but just work with the human genome instead,” she added. “All I can tell you today is what I have learned. What I have discovered as a person in this world. And that is this: you can’t do it alone. As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own.”

Stressing on the need to learn from others, she further said, “Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life. No one is here today because they did it on their own.”