What if the biggest enemy we face isn’t each other but division itself?In this heartfelt and hopeful talk, Newton Cheng a mental health advocate, father, and global leader shares a simple yet transformative truth: connection begins when we dare to be human with one another. Drawing from his own experience navigating depression and anxiety, Newton reveals how vulnerability became his most powerful tool for healing, understanding, and bridging divides.Through one unexpected encounter in a small-town diner and years of work helping people open up about their mental health, Newton shows that empathy isn’t weakness it’s a solution. By choosing connection over conflict and truth over performance, we can turn division into dialogue and fear into understanding.Watch this talk to learn how the courage to share your story could be the first step toward healing our world. Newton Cheng is a husband and father, champion powerlifter, and is Director of Health + Performance at Google. Defying conventional business leadership practices, Newton has risked his professional reputation by sharing openly about his struggles with mental health and burnout in order to demonstrate that vulnerability and exceptional achievement go hand in hand.Drawing on his unique background at Google as well as his journey to becoming a world champion athlete, he models and teaches a unique performance-oriented approach to vulnerable leadership that he’s developed throughout his career. His goal is to dismantle the stigma around mental health in the workplace and beyond so that we can achieve our most ambitious goals without sacrificing our ability to take care of ourselves and each other.He’s spent his 16-year career at Google developing, launching and scaling global programs aimed at helping Googlers to thrive. Today he oversees a global portfolio of Google’s physical and digital health & wellbeing amenities. He spends much of his time exploring how Google can leverage spaces and services, community, culture and technology to support the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of Googlers, their families, and our neighbors.As a powerlifter, he has set multiple world, US, and California state records, and is a world, US national, and California state champion multiple times over.Newton was born and raised in Macomb, IL. He earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from University of California, Berkeley. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx