In many poems, the speaker is similar to the poet in terms of gender, race, age, occupation, worldview, nationality, life experiences, politics, etc.
However, in persona poems, the person who speaks in the poem is not the poet but a historical character, a well-known personality, someone from a different culture, nationality, worldview, a dead person, or someone the poet has not met. The speaker in the poem may even be an inanimate object, an idea, or an imaginary figure. In other words, there is a clear distance between the poet and the person who speaks in the poem.
Choose a person you may or may not know, a person who is very different from you. Make them the speaker in your poem. Give them permission to be authentically themselves. Listen to them carefully and transcribe their words, thoughts, and emotions. Do not censor or silence them. Let them live fully in the lines of your poem. Do all you can to bring them to life, either through imagination, empathy, or reading about their life.