Robin Comey, the state representative we had met with while searching for an ally to our allergy legislation project, introduced us to Jason Linde, senior Vice President for government relations at Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE), the largest allergy nonprofit in America. We set up a meeting in which Linde, who is very experienced in testifying in front of government bodies, laid out the strategy for our meetings. The speeches we had prepared used some personal anecdotes, but were mainly fact and statistic-based arguments. Linde told us to scrap it — they were already having plenty experts testifying on the facts, and they needed us, as kids, to make personal, emotional, appeals. So, we rewrote our speeches in preparation of the big day.
Since Hartford was a two hour drive and Maia’s mom, the only person who could drive us, got COVID the night before, we testified over zoom instead. The testimonies had started off moving very slowly, so we ended up testifying 3 hours after schedule, but the actual testimonies weren’t stressful at all. The senators were extremely friendly and welcoming, thanking us profusely. Besides, we were just talking into screens like we had done hundreds of times since the outbreak of the pandemic. Thus, despite all the anxious preparation leading up to the moment, I felt zero stress about testifying im the moment.
This is amazing!!