The Mackinaw Policy conference is known for bringing in prominent speakers.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo was a special guest this year and the former U.S. Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, talked about politics and his experiences in Congress.

Plus, NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd sat down for a conversation on the main stage and so did the CEO of the Barack Obama Foundation, Valerie Jarrett.

There's a lot at stake right now in this kind of polarizing toxic climate, political climate in which we're all trying to survive and thrive and I do think that the strength is on the ground.

And I think that one of the things that I have observed here in Michigan and I said this earlier, your reputation outside of Detroit, outside of Michigan, is great.

People think Detroit is coming back.

They think the state is doing great.

And part of it is because you have people from outside of Detroit who have invested money here, who go around talking about how great that investment was around the country.

So kind of drink your own Kool-Aid a little bit and appreciate how great this is and talk about it and broadcast it.

And I think one of the one of the qualities that we try to instill in our young leaders is to make an impact.

And how do you take a great idea to scale?

And I know if you look around Michigan, there is so much that is working.

And the question is how do you take those best practices from serving 50 people or 100 people or 1000 people and take it to scale?

And what are the evidence based strategies that, you know, work?

And that's again, where I know you fund a lot of these organizations that are just doing that work, and then you've got to talk about that work and you've got to market it and you've got to convince people that this is an evidence based strategy and people want to be associated with what works.

They want to feel like they're big, they're making an impact.

They want to know that their resources, their time, their energy is well spent.

And I think right now it is so easy to recoil into your own kind of comfortable place, because to come out of it can be really uncomfortable.

Believe me.

I know having been out there, you face a lot of incoming.

If you say, you know, the sky is blue, somebody is going to disagree with you.

Right now.

And so you have to have a tough skin and you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

And I think this is some place where philanthropy and government can be very helpful.

When I worked in the Obama administration, we had a lot of contentious issues, to say the least.

And I would invite people in who would call me one on one and scream and yell about somebody else, and then the next person would scream and yell about the other person.

But when you put them all in the room together and you say, these are the rules, this this is we're going to these are our rules of engagement, if you will.

And they're actually looking at the person who they were trash talking the day before.

They're not as likely to do it.

And so what you want to do is appeal to people's better angels and the better angels are in all of us.

And I think, unfortunately, just so much of what we see in media and social media is so negative that you lose sight of the positive.

And so my advice is accentuate the positive.

Don't be Pollyannish about the challenges, but go forth with the strength.

And there is so much strength in this state.

My goodness, I've never been to Mackinac Island before.

How could that be?

I'm from Chicago.

It's right next door.

And you know, from tourism perspective, come and get the people.

And I would go back and tell everybody how great this is.

And that's kind of the attitude that people who come here need to have a good experience.

And I don't mean just here, I mean in the state.

And then they get to go out and talk about it and that's how change happens.