I never became LL Kool J, Big Daddy Kane, Heavy D, KRS ONE, or Kid and Play (for the uninitiated, these were notable rappers of the era). I never was picked up by a record label. I never was featured on “YO MTV Raps” and talked to Fab Five Freddy or Ed Lover. It wasn’t until years later did I finally have my breakthrough. My chart topping jam was very simple. It was a song that was only one verse long. Though you probably haven’t heard it, let me tell you the story when this banger finally dropped.

Read More

To restore, build, and believe in community with one another personally/professionally it will require courage, humility, and vision for a different future. While none of us have everything, all of us have something, and when we add up all our somethings…we have everything.

Read More

The day was August 28th, 1963. It was a warm 80 degree Wednesday in Washington, DC. During what has been called the greatest demonstration of freedom in the history of the world, an illustrious cadre of speakers with people like Mrs. Medgar Evers, Diane Nash Bevels, Rosa Parks, Gloria Richardson, John Lewis, Rabbi Uri Miller and Mathew Ahmann, and singing by the likes of Mahalia Jackson. In addition to these speakers, there was a 16th speaker by the name of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was the President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights organization established in 1957 dedicated to redeeming the soul of America through non violent resistance.

Read More

None of us can do everything. But all of us can do something.

It doesn’t have to be your lived experience.

It doesn’t have to be your neighborhood.

It doesn't have to be your family.

It doesn’t have to be you.

You don’t have to be one to stand with.

Stand with them. Stand with me. Let me stand with you.

Let’s stand together.

We all fall when we don’t.

Read More

The reason why some of the movements have stalled, and after much ado it feels more like nothing than something, is because learning (books, movies, documentaries, etc) is only one of the essential elements of change. Our learning allowed us to wrestle with the concepts and theories of injustice, but conceptual and theoretical change can’t change anything.

Read More

Is there anything necessarily wrong with soggy cereal?

Not necessarily (sorry mom!).

What becomes wrong when we attribute negative value to a person who violates one of our invisible rules. We do this unintentionally and automatically. It happens in a flash without even a second thought.

These surface judgments feed into stereotypes and prejudices.

They become our reflexes.

They become our daily defaults.

They become our biases.

And to these biases we are largely blind. We can be so blind to these “bias” spots that we will passionately deny they even exist. This leads to the paradox of bias-spots.

They more we deny them, the bigger they get.

Read More

Though racism is always rooted in prejudice, the act of being prejudiced isn’t always racist. It can be racially insensitive, racially unaware, but not necessarily racist. The best way to understand racism, is to use this simple formula:

Prejudice + Power = Racism

Racism is the the dynamic where prejudice is weaponized and creates destructive impact.

It is a weapon that influences systems, policies, and behavior.

It becomes institutional eg: American criminal justice system, national health/wealth disparities, countrywide education gaps, etc, then it becomes invisible.

As time passes, it’s taken for granted that this is just how things were meant to be.

Read More

We have all seen it.

Departments or colleagues deeply entrenched in separate ideological positions while attempting to solve the same problem.

Is your organization in the middle of cultural gridlock?

A simple adjustment to the equation might just change everything

Read More

While it’s easy to become frustrated with the latest marketplace gaffe, it is much more important to address the foundation of the problem, rather than simply the problem’s product.

Said another way, we must enlarge our focus from primarily viewing branches to carefully examining roots.

If a tree has bad fruit, we can remove fruit and branches, but if our tree has a root problem the bad produce will return. Bad produce is the symptom, bad roots are the problem.

Good intentions about branches isn’t enough. It’s time to act and change at the root level.

Read More

Many companies are living in Jurassic Park.

Homogeneity, organizational silos, and lack of collaborative leadership engagement are just some of their characteristics.

And just like the dinosaurs, they are quickly going extinct.

But diverse teams that are comprised of different perspectives, origin stories, skill sets, and mindsets aren’t just surviving the changing world, they are thriving in it.

Read More

With the exponential expansion of bandwidth anything and everything now seems possible. Ironically while we have this expanded technological bandwidth, this same technology creates a more compartmentalized world. 

Paradoxically, as we are electronically linked to different people, cultures, and colors we are also digitally divided. 

We erect digital walls of separation that keep us segregated. 

Connected through machines while being disconnected as people. 

Read More

What is true in all of these instances is that until their was external cultural outcry (customers being treated unfairly in grossly overt way, complaints from consumers, social media backlash, etc), there was little to no awareness of the lack of cultural intelligence that caused the collision in the first place.

And unlike the car industry that is coming up with new technology to make drivers more safe (hence things like distracted driving monitors), we keep having these cultural collisions in the corporate space.

But what if we could devise a system to better avoid the pain, expense, and inconvenience of cultural collisions?

Read More

Our digital exposure to humans different than us from afar, can inoculate us from authentic human experiences up close.

Read More

The effectiveness of our influence as leaders in these rapidly changing times is often how well we leverage the principle of two truths.

Two truths principle means the ability to hold two equal truths in tension without invalidating one or the other.

Read More