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Uzi failed her freshman year of college. Perfectionism, anxiety, and a transition she wasn't prepared for knocked her down hard. Seven years later she was standing in the White House advocating for 988 mental health resources to be placed on ID cards nationwide.

In this episode of Rated Gen Z, Uzi shares the full journey — from that difficult first year to becoming a mental health advocate with Active Minds, winning a national competition, and recently discovering a 48-generation ancestral lineage from Saudi Arabia that suddenly explained everything about why she's always been called to help people.

We also get into the personal stuff — her upcoming wedding, how her fiancé makes space for her advocacy work, why therapy and boundaries are non-negotiable, and how she's managing to write a book on top of everything else.

Uzi's story is about what happens when you stop seeing your struggles as failures and start seeing them as the foundation for everything you're meant to build.

Rated Gen Z is hosted by Raquel Borras — documentary filmmaker, youth advocate, and founder of Raqvision LLC.

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If you'd like to become a guest on Rated Gen Z, visit raq.vision to learn more.

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Kiki Whitman grew up in a rural town of 4,000 people near Bakersfield, California — where the median household income is $26,000 a year and most kids have never heard the words "dual enrollment." She made it to UC Berkeley. And now she's building something to make sure more kids like her get the same shot.

In this episode Kiki shares the story behind OPAL, a student-led nonprofit she founded just four months ago with two flagship programs already in motion — the Opal Impact Challenge across UC campuses and the Rural Fellows Program connecting college students with rural middle schoolers starting in eighth grade. Every decision at OPAL gets approved by a student board first. Because the students aren't just the mission. They're running it.

We also get into the bigger picture — the urban-rural divide that California pretends doesn't exist, why Gen Z is done fitting into corporate molds, how the shrinking middle class is creating unexpected common ground across political lines, and why this generation doesn't want extreme happiness. Just connection, community, and a little contentment.

Kiki didn't leave her hometown behind. She went back for it.

Rated Gen Z is hosted by Raquel Borras — documentary filmmaker, youth advocate, and founder of Raqvision LLC.

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If you'd like to become a guest on Rated Gen Z, visit raq.vision to learn more.

Send us Fan Mail

Freshman year at UCLA, Tavian spent his weekends alone in the dorms. By senior year, 58 people showed up to celebrate his birthday.

What happened in between is the story of this episode.

Tavian just graduated from UCLA and is heading to JPMorgan Chase as a global finance and business management analyst — but he's also a filmmaker with two short films, a former Daily Bruin journalist, and someone actively working toward his pilot's license. He contains multitudes.

In this conversation we get into what it really feels like to graduate — not just the excitement, but the grief of leaving behind a version of yourself that only existed in that chapter. We talk about studying abroad in London as the turning point that cracked open his social anxiety, his very intentional strategy for maintaining friendships after moving across the country, and what growing up actually looks like when the structure of school suddenly disappears.

This is one of the most honest conversations about the college-to-adulthood transition I've had on this podcast. And if you've ever felt like you were on the outside looking in — this one's for you.

Rated Gen Z is hosted by Raquel Borras — documentary filmmaker, youth advocate, and founder of Raqvision LLC.

powered by raqvision

If you'd like to become a guest on Rated Gen Z, visit raq.vision to learn more.