There’s no such thing as a level playing field, or at least not one that comes without a great deal of effort. Someone has always had a steeper hill to climb, someone has always started a little bit (or a not-so-little bit) ahead. But the thing is, you can create a space where the ground is level, or close to it. That more-level-ground may be criticized as artificial, but aren’t all constructs artificial? If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be constructs, after all.
So even the ground between people, where you can, and as best you can. Make a space, as large as you can manage, where those people can come together on equal footing. This doesn’t mean that things will be made easy, of course, but easier is still worth striving for.