A star was born on Wednesday. It wasn’t any one of the individuals we had in mind. Red, blue, green or purple, Amanda Gorman’s words spoke to the world and collectively moved us towards hope in a way that is rarely seen.

This young poet, in just a few minutes, reminded us all how words matter. How tone matters. How the elegant gesture of one’s hand matters.

She schooled us all in how to move a nation.

The amazing thing these days is that we all have platforms at our disposal. Platforms that can provoke a few or a few million. It is an awesome responsibility that needs to be held with care and used with discretion.

The past few years we have all been assaulted by words. They come at us from all directions. Brands. Leaders. Friends. The unknown. As a marketer, my life is words, images, and the exchange of the two. A lot of thought goes into the words we put down in a vision statement, or name, or tagline. We labor over them. We certainly labor much less over our daily exchanges and passionate tweets and posts.

But words most certainly matter. Thank you, Amanda, for shedding such a beautiful light for us all. You give me hope. I will most certainly use your lesson to make sure my words matter in a way that is kind, provoking, and supports our movement to grow and do good.