Phillip Milano

Phillip Milano is a 20-year newspaper veteran who grew tired of his industry's inability to document real cross-cultural dialogue for fear of offending readers. A straight, married white guy who grew up in the affluent, lily-white Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, he yearned for a way to get people talking across their differences - differences he himself was sheltered from as a youth. In 1998, while an editor at The Florida Times-Union, he began YForum.com (Y? The National Forum On People's Differences) as a way to prove to himself and others that such conversations could be promoted and would lead people to a better understanding of one another. The site asks users to volunteer in a one-of-kind experiment: to ask and answer burning questions about differences of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and more, without fear of judgment. The project has been lauded by hundreds of national and foreign media, including The New York Times, BET, CBS, Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, the BBC, Le Monde, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, The (London) Guardian, Boston Globe and many more.

Phillip is the author of I Can't Believe You Asked That! (Perigee, 2004), which takes Y? to the next level by supplementing replies to its no-holds-barred cross-cultural questions with answers from world-renowned experts and thought leaders. This ground-breaking book is a "best of" from the web site, focusing on some of the most provocative dialogue about our differences ever documented in print. Phillip and his book have been featured in and written about by USA Today, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Playboy, CNN, FOX News, the Associated Press, Air America Radio and more.

DARE TO ASK: Let your curiosity do the talking

DARE TO ASK: Please allow a stutterer to finish