I'm Hanan Ali Yahya. I'm 24 years old. I'm a Yemeni American immigrant. I'm a proud Detroiter and a social entrepreneur. I believe that the pieces of my Yemeni culture and identity that I bring to my home in Detroit is the sense of family, values of family and hard work. 

I think the community I am a part of is the Detroit community. And that means that there are numerous backgrounds and cultures included within this beautiful, abandoned city of ours... you know, and that the value that we share most is understanding the humanity in one another and the stories that we bring to the table. I definitely think about what my future may look like all the time. You know, I'm always doing soul searching and like I said, I'm always evolving. And so at this point, I think I'm very interested in combining my social work with my passion for entrepreneurship and trying to bring that into spaces within Detroit and back home in Yemen... and so my future looks a little bit innovative. 

Detroit is filled with people with empathy and love and passion for justice supporting one another. And I know this entire idea of what the definition of Detroit completely contradicts what's in the media. But that's the reason why I love it, is that it's so unique to me. It doesn't need to please others... it doesn't need to please outsiders perspective. Detroit is the future.