Like us, the US has a big election coming up. Will you come out in support for any presidential candidates?

I think running Eighteen x 18, and in order to achieve my goal of getting young people to vote, it’s important that we remain a nonpartisan platform. People know generally how I align, and  so how I’m approaching this election is by identifying the values I deem necessary for candidates, which is a value-based system of saying, “OK, this is what we generally stand for in support of our global community, in support of the maintenance of human rights.” It’s pouring more into our education system, working with and for communities. And also being more aware of how people propose solving our problems.

You spoke at the Glamour awards about how groundbreaking it is to say no. When did the power of that word crystallise for you?

The speech itself was something I didn’t think about till I was on stage. Sometimes when I know that I’m going to experience something that will influence me, it’s hard to write as though I’m already in that moment. So I try and wait it out. But for the larger concept of no, I actually called this my year of no. Which at first sounds a little counterintuitive because we see so much on the power of yes, which I absolutely do believe in.

My year of no really stems from [the fact] I’m fortunate to have a team around me, both familial and professionally, that protect me and advocate for me. My year of no was a reminder to advocate for myself equally as strongly, and feeling OK about being particular and insisting that something should change. When I’m thinking about movements, a lot of them stem from saying  no, but it’s about making your no an action. So rather than merely saying, I’m not OK with how you’re operating as a government, we come globally from a history of people who say no and then go and do something.

Yara Shahidi on what it really means to be a young woman in 2019