- This and more coming up on "The Whitney Reynolds Show," - I'm always humbled that people are really moved by the show and my portrayal and my work.

And I just see it as an opportunity for God to connect to people in ways that are little sort of off the beaten path, you know.

- Victor was one of the first individuals to be diagnosed with Pitt-Hopkins syndrome.

And so when his diagnosis came out, there was just so little about what his life would be like.

Every time you put your chips into that pot, it's a risk.

You may not win.

And that's one of the things we love about teaching women to play poker, is they get to practice in a very safe environment, getting comfortable outside their risk zone.

- [Narrator] "The Whitney Reynolds Show" is made possible by Simple Modern, drinkware with unique styles for adults and kids.

Take us with you.

Kevin O'Connor Law Firm.

When it comes to your injuries, we take it personally.

Together at Peace, a foundation with a mission to generate financial support for hospitals, schools, and many charities that provide compassionate bereavement care and foster spiritual resilience.

We are here to inspire tangible moments and share the light of loved ones who have passed away, always doing good in their honor.

Children's Learning Place, a school for the earliest learners dedicated to aiding every child in uncovering the power of learning.

Our curriculum is centered around empowering young students with the confidence to overcome present and future challenges, to promote a brighter future for our youth and community.

The adventures of the Harry Moon book series for kids that focuses on becoming your best self with themes of friends, anti-bullying, and responsibility at harrymoon.org.

Kevin Kelly, joeperillo.com, Hi-Five Sports, Fumee Claire, Respiratory Health Association, Hearing Health Center, Mike Dyer with Edward Jones.

(upbeat music) - Join us as we feature inspiring individuals who are using their voice, talents, and resources to address pressing issues.

Here, we believe your story matters.

(audience applauds and cheers) - Whatever the story is behind those scars, I think it's beautiful.

- I was that story, the one that needed a safe space.

- We can build a stage, speak life back into this community.

- So we created it.

- From this moment on, everything has changed.

- Just treat housing as a human right.

- When I was, I think, 15 months old, my mom adopted me.

- I've been transitioning for 3.5 years, and I'm nowhere near being close to where I want to be.

♪ So tell me ♪ ♪ So tell me ♪ ♪ So tell me ♪ - [Whitney] Meet a woman who pulled her own seat up to the table.

And she found her power and is now sharing that with other women across the country.

- I spent much of my career on Wall Street, so I was surrounded by poker, but I never had the courage to just sit down and play.

And when I was asked to join Poker Power, I didn't know how to play.

Who we were back in early 2020 and who we are today has really evolved.

Originally, we were working with teenagers, with girls, giving them the skills to really help them with that first step onto the ladder.

And we still do that.

It's very much part of our origin story.

But mostly we are working with women in the workplace, all the way from interns to CEOs, to give them the skills of poker.

- [Whitney] Erin is the president of Poker Power and believes that there is a new life skill in every hand, empowering women to win on and off the table.

- So I always go first to negotiation and to risk taking, because I think those are two areas that so often women feel they want to get better at.

So in negotiation, when you're playing a poker game, every hand is a negotiation.

You have to set a price, or you have to meet someone else's price.

And when you're negotiating with your cards, you don't see anyone else's play.

And so you are working with imperfect information.

And you're having to think about, what do I have?

How strong or how weak are my cards?

What can my opponent have?

And most importantly, what do I think they think that I have?

What follows that is the risk taking.

Because every time you put your chips into that pot, it's a risk.

You may not win.

And that's one of the things we love about teaching women to play poker, is they get to practice in a very safe environment, getting comfortable outside their risk zone.

- When people come to you, what kind of stories have you heard that are at your table?

- What we see with our women is that they are looking to advance.

It can be in their personal lives, it can be in their professional lives.

They wanna go in and get a promotion.

They wanna ask for a raise.

And what they're finding is through repetitive play, they're able to improve the skills that they need to go and have the courage to do that.

You know, I've been talking about equal pay for years and years and years.

And the reason for that is that, you know, early in my career on Wall Street, I learned I wasn't paid equally.

And it was a very difficult lesson to hear when I was 29 years old.

What came out of that is one, a TEDx talk.

So I was able to talk about it and put words around it.

But what I did is I came up with practical solutions to solve that problem.

And this was before I knew about poker.

And now what I say is if we want equal pay, if we want workplace equity, all we have to do is teach women how to play poker.

It is that powerful.

- You mentioned that poker brought out this side of you that made you very reflective about your past.

Whenever you were in the investigation of how poker could have helped you when you were younger, what did you discover?

- Well, one is I didn't have the courage to make decisions.

Tough decisions, life decisions.

You know, I find marriage challenging.

Let's just start with that.

But I also have worked really hard to be successful at that.

I think of myself as not being a quitter.

One of the lessons you learn in poker, and it's called discipline.

It's you have to have the discipline to fold.

There is a Kenny Rogers song about, you know, being able to walk away from the table, and poker gives you the permission to walk away.

And I think so often in our personal lives and in our professional lives, sometimes we recognize it's time to change.

We are at a dead end.

We are not being valued.

We're not in the right place.

I think poker helps you understand when it's time to fold those cards and start again.

Because in poker, there's always another round.

- Wow.

- There's always another opportunity to place a bet, and that's incredibly empowering.

- Wow.

Well, thank you so much for coming on.

- My pleasure.

Thank you.

(gentle music) - I may not be able to not be Jesus to some people for possibly the rest of my life.

And the weight of that just kind of hit me.

- Hello, how are you?

- Hi.

Hello.

- Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you too.

- Yeah, I know.

Like I said, it's not every day that you're sitting down with such a person that has so captivated the, I would say every room I'm in when I talk about what you've done with "The Chosen," people all have these different viewpoints of what you've been able to create over the four seasons.

- Oh, it's been the role of a lifetime.

Yeah, it's been life changing for me.

- In what way?

- I think in how I approach my life on the day to day and how I connect to people.

- [Whitney] 24 hours with Jesus.

Jonathan Roumie welcomes us into his journey and the crossroads this role has taken him on.

- To just decompress and through prayer and to get solitude.

I think solitude for me is an opportunity to refresh and to really just dialogue with God and recharge.

- Last fall, we flew to Texas, and one thing was evident when we walked the set: There's been major growth in every season.

What has been one of the hardest pivots by being now portrayed as Jesus?

Because with that, there's a lot of responsibility.

- Yeah.

I'd say the hardest thing has just been dealing with the celebrity of it, I guess.

Trying to, I guess, or knowing that people have certain expectations when they meet you in person.

And as a famous saying, what people think of me is none of my business.

So I try to really embrace that and just be present with people as I meet them.

Whether or not I meet their expectations, I don't know.

But I try to meet people where they are and to be gracious, and I'm always humbled that people are really moved by the show and my portrayal and my work.

And I just see it as an opportunity for God to connect to people in ways that are a little sort of off the beaten path, you know.

- And with your celebrityness expanding like it has, I saw that you made a video on Instagram, and you were saying, "Oh my goodness, I have hit a million, and I wasn't even on here that long ago."

And I found that fascinating because it is this growth.

You know, sometimes celebrities have these rock-bottom moments of when they expand so fast.

Have you had any of those in the last four seasons, of like, pick myself back up and keep going?

- I think that happened before I booked the show.

You know, I just released a documentary called "Jonathan & Jesus," and it sort of chronicles the journey that I've been going through as a result of playing this character.

And so it's been a reminder of how far that I've been brought, you know.

At one point, I just needed to like, in documentaries, at one point where it just kind of came crashing down, and I just needed to sit there and do nothing.

'Cause I'm like, "I can't get away from it."

And as a man of faith, like, this is my path.

This is what I've been given.

It's been a gift.

It comes with a little bit of sometimes discomfort, but so does anything worth having.

It shouldn't come so easy, you know?

And it hasn't, and it won't continue to be easy, but it will always be worth it.

- [Whitney] Jonathan was born in New York City and is no stranger to television.

From "Night at the Museum" to "The Good Wife," his scope of work extends beyond faith based.

However, each role he plays with purpose.

- I think for me, I always try to find the inner journey of the character, no matter what he is.

What he's done, who he is, where he's been.

To me, there's always, because of who I am and what I bring to certain roles, namely, myself and my experiences, there's always a journey, a spiritual journey somewhere.

And sometimes part of that journey is not having a spirituality.

And then, like, where does that fit into a character's life?

Even if we never talk about it or see it on screen, for me, in order to ground and motivate the character, even subtextually, there has to be, for me, I have to ask and answer those questions in the character.

I don't have healing powers.

If there's any healing, it's from me getting to do my art and people deriving something from that internally.

But, you know, that's what I can do.

I can only do with the things that I perceive God has allowed me to do.

- In your legacy, what do you want it to read?

- Oh, that I tried to serve God with all my heart and my soul and my strength, and that somehow people were affected by it positively.

- [Whitney] Now we turn to a college student who made the decision early on that she would joyfully be a caregiver for her brother, Victor.

Francesca wants people to know that this journey to caregiving isn't a sad decision or forced.

It's actually a beautiful gift that she is sharing not only with her brother, but her hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

- [Francesca] I'm 21 years old, and I'll be my brother's caregiver in the future.

He requires full-time care.

My parents care for him now, and they have for the last 18 years.

They want to be his caregivers for the next couple of decades.

Next year, I graduate from Princeton, and I'm coming home.

Don't mistake this for a sad story.

We need him just as much as he needs us.

- You are taking time to be with your brother, but you don't want the world to think that's sad.

Tell me about that.

- I think that really all goes back to the beginning for me.

My family has always instilled a sense of, I guess a love for caregiving.

And really to emphasize to my sister and I, I have an older sister as well, to emphasize that caregiving is beautiful, and that there are so many things to learn from and be grateful for.

And a lot of that started just by learning how to caregive for my brother at a very early age.

- When your brother was born, there wasn't real signs of any type of issue right away.

How did that evolve?

- My parents started to notice his developmental delays as he started to get older.

When he was first born, it was really hard to tell any differences at all.

And as he aged, my mom, who was previously a special ed teacher, before she had my brother, was able to recognize some signs and developmental milestones that were not there.

And so she started to notice those, and my father also started to notice those.

And though they started working on his skills, like walking and crawling, just trying to facilitate that, they also started doing genetic testing.

- Growing up with his family that is now trying to understand the diagnosis of your brother, what did you feel in that moment?

- When Victor got his diagnosis, I was probably just a little bit over five years old.

So I was probably a little bit too young to fully understand what his diagnosis meant.

And his diagnosis is Pitt-Hopkins syndrome.

It's a rare developmental disorder that causes developmental delays and also complex medical needs.

And so I think definitely at the time I didn't understand anything other than, well, my brother has more needs than me.

- When you have a child or you have somebody that needs extra attention, it does take attention from others away.

- Right.

- Was it always we're on the same team here?

- It honestly was, and I will give all of the credit to my parents for that.

They really emphasized that my entire family, so my sister and I, could be a part of Victor's caregiving team.

And we used to call ourselves, like, Team Pauca.

- How did you navigate taking care of yourself in the midst of being there for your brother?

- I think that self-care is something that I've grown into a lot.

When I was younger, I really started to equate caregiving with just helping in general.

And so I noticed a type of inequality within my own family and that I had abilities that my brother didn't have.

And that meant that I had opportunities that my brother didn't have also.

- So the fear that's associated with having a sibling that is in and out of the hospital, how did that impact you as a kid?

- One of the most challenging parts is uncertainty.

But as a child, you really don't understand whether or not your brother will come home from the hospital and what that really means.

Because my parents emphasized that we were a part of my brother's team, and I just loved my brother from the start, and so did my sister, it definitely inspired me very early on to look into the medical field.

Right now I'm a senior at Princeton.

I'm pursuing psychology, and I will seek to do a master's in healthcare administration when I finish.

- Well, and I don't think you would call yourself an influencer, but you are influencing the world with empathy.

- Thank you.

- Again, that's how I found you, was on Instagram.

And your videos connected on a deep level.

You were sharing the story of what you have been through, but also reminding the world this is your choice.

- [Francesca] Right.

- What is it with the videos and what you're doing online that you want people that would find you to know is your story?

- You don't always see siblings that are a little bit younger doing the caregiving.

And I wanted people like me, so other siblings, and just really everyone, to see that caregiving is something that is not a burden in my life, and that I find it to be something beautiful, like an art in a way.

And it's something that I truly, truly enjoy.

And that's all because of the love that my brother has given me.

- Now, he only knows one word.

- Yes.

- [Whitney] But he knows you when you come into a room.

- Yes, absolutely.

- What's his signal to you?

Like, "Hey sis."

- So his word that he uses is uh.

It's kind of like uh-huh, which is really cute.

And so he can answer all sorts of yes-or-no questions.

And he really understands a lot when you're talking to him.

But he's actually pretty shy.

So when I come into the room, I come to him and just give him a big hug, and he's like, "Ooh.

You know, I'm too old for that."

He's a teenager.

He's 18 now.

And so he thinks it's a little funny to be, you know, hugged by his big sister, but I do it anyways.

- And I saw a recent video with him back in the hospital, and you were with him.

How jarring is it when you were away to get that call that your brother's in the hospital?

- It feels very, I guess, just strange and unusual to be physically separated from my brother when he's so ill, especially because I really like to be someone who gives physical caregiving and who just spends time with him whenever I can.

So if he is really ill, I sometimes try to fly home if I'm able to.

And sometimes that's not an option and that's challenging.

So I really end up calling my parents a lot and just trying to check in with them and provide some emotional support.

- And you are going to take a gap year in between your studies.

- Yes.

- What kind of content are you going to make, and what do you want the world to know with that?

- I'm really just looking forward to being home with my brother and understanding what Victor's life is like now that he's an adult.

You see a lot of children with developmental disabilities online.

And even a lot is maybe not the right word, but you see more children than you see adults.

And so I think it's really important to provide representation of adults with developmental disabilities.

And I call my brother a disability advocate because by showing his life and agreeing to show his life online, he's able to show others what it's like to live with a developmental disability.

- You're really, like, teaching the world empathy here.

But there's also a component of vulnerability 'cause you're putting yourself out there, and you're also putting Victor out there.

How have you navigated that?

- It has all been a very new journey because I just started this page back in May.

So it's really just been a few months, and the page grew very quickly.

So I've had to adapt to sharing, you know, my empathy.

That was a mission very early on.

That's something that's always been very important to me.

And once I started gaining more traction and getting more views on my videos, it started to feel more and more vulnerable.

- How do you introduce Victor to a future spouse, saying, "Hey, this is my plan."

- I've always had Victor in my life, so to me, looking at a future with Victor just seems natural.

And so I have to kind of step out of my own shoes and into somebody else's to understand what that would look like for someone else.

And I've thought a lot about that because a future of caregiving would change someone's life.

And I think that it makes me think a lot about the traits that I would look for in a future partner.

But I think I mostly feel excited about what my brother could bring to somebody else's life.

- Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story.

- I'm so excited.

Thank you.

(gentle music) - How does it feel to be back in your hometown doing a performance like this?

- It feels fantastic.

I mean, this is where I'm from.

I'm part of a theater company called Lookingglass.

And yes, I mean, I love performing in Chicago.

There's nothing better.

- You know, I saw a couple of your different things from the past.

I was in the archives, man.

And I have to say, I'm a big fan.

- In the way past.

- Let's go to the storyline of this play.

This is like a moment in time.

This is something that shaped so many different things that now we live in today.

What is it like telling such a deep story?

- Well, the script is incredible.

It was originally, he wrote a book.

Stefano, this Italian guy, wrote a book about this experience.

It's a huge book.

And it's written almost like in prose.

So then it was adapted.

And then he made a theater piece out of it, which was about five hours long.

And then it was adapted into a smaller piece where now it's just three actors telling this story.

And yes, it begins 2008, and then it goes back in time.

And we see these three brothers who come from Bavaria, Germany, to America, and they have this, it's this immigrant story, Jewish immigrants coming in and creating a life for themselves.

And through that, they create a bank.

Capitalism is born out of many things, but that is one piece of it.

- Part of it.

Yeah.

- And yeah, it's a very, it's a really wonderful, beautiful story.

- As an actor and you're reading through these lines and understanding, okay, I'm taking on this role, what do you mentally go through to get there?

- Well, I think it always comes back to, how am I like this character?

You know, what part of me can I take from?

Where can that begin?

And one of the characters that I play is a guy named Robert Lehman, Bobby Lehman.

And he's a real, he's a little tense.

- Oh.

- He's a little tense.

- He bites his nails.

- Are you tense?

- Sometimes.

- I wouldn't gather that.

- He bites his nails.

He maybe bites his lip.

And I was like, "Okay, I can identify with that.

Sometimes I bite my nails."

But there's something inside that's going on, but he doesn't show it.

He's very cool and calm.

And okay, that's a little way in.

You have to find these little kind of ways in.

He's an artist.

He loves to draw, he loves to paint.

He loves horse races.

You know, so there's all kinds of little things.

The brother that I play, Mayer Lehman, he's innocent when he first comes to America.

He's young.

He's the youngest of the brothers, and he gets made fun of.

And, you know, there's always these little things that you can kind of start with.

- What do you hope the audience takes away?

- Well, I hope they get to see a really exciting, deep, moving story about three brothers.

And I hope they take away that and what that must have been like to come to a new place where you don't speak the language and where you have to begin again.

I think a lot of people can relate to beginning again, to starting over, to starting with nothing, perhaps.

- We hope this inspired you with a closeup look at the innovative ways these entrepreneurs are creating meaningful impact, driving positive change and inspiring others to do the same.

Remember, your story matters.

(upbeat music) ♪ Don't oppose ♪ (upbeat music) - [Narrator] "The Whitney Reynolds Show" is made possible by Simple Modern, drinkware with unique styles for adults and kids.

Take us with you.

Kevin O'Connor Law Firm.

When it comes to your injuries, we take it personally.

Together at Peace, a foundation with a mission to generate financial support for hospitals, schools, and many charities that provide compassionate bereavement care and foster spiritual resilience.

We are here to inspire tangible moments and share the light of loved ones who have passed away, always doing good in their honor.

Children's Learning Place, a school for the earliest learners dedicated to aiding every child in uncovering the power of learning.

Our curriculum is centered around empowering young students with the confidence to overcome present and future challenges, to promote a brighter future for our youth and community.

The adventures of the Harry Moon book series for kids that focuses on becoming your best self with themes of friends, anti-bullying, and responsibility at harrymoon.org.

Kevin Kelly, joeperillo.com, Hi-Five Sports, Fumee Claire, Respiratory Health Association, Hearing Health Center, Mike Dyer with Edward Jones.

- [Narrator] Want to stay connected to all things Whitney Reynolds?

Well, follow us on social media, and you'll get exclusive content and updates from the show.

♪ So tell me ♪ - [Narrator] All episodes are available for streaming anytime.

- [Children] Our mommy!

(laughs) (bright music)