Podcasts about angela j

We are back to share a few more great performances from our team and other friends, and even Abby Taylor joins us to observe to see what's going on and enjoy the show. Beyond the hear out next week as we get to interview her as well, which we are very much looking forward to! Sorry, we meant to say on the lookout for a good interview next week which we are going to conduct with Abby TaylorFor a more descriptive adventure to see what we're getting into. We have paste the YouTube video description below, which you will find by searching vision cast on YouTube powered by story craze network.Get ready to dive headfirst into another hilariously chaotic episode of Vision Cast After Dark – where family-friendly goes to die and the real fun begins! Angela J (aka Cloud 11) is back, attempting to steer this runaway train, flanked by her ever-supportive co-host Phillip, while George, the resident "pain in the butt," provides commentary (and groans) from the virtual sidelines.This week, George makes a miraculous recovery from a pre-show seizure, proving his "resilient doodle" status yet again, much to the feigned chagrin of Angela who was almost free to have Phillip as her undisputed right-hand man for life. Alas, George couldn't bear the thought and showed up anyway, ready for the usual dose of affectionate torment.We're thrilled to welcome our special guest for the next few weeks, the multi-talented Abby Taylor! You might know her from the ACB community karaoke scene. In honor of Jazz Appreciation Month, Abby shares a deeply moving and beautifully performed original poem, "Dad, Fats, and Me," recalling precious memories listening to Fats Waller's "Your Feet's Too Big" with her father. Get ready for goosebumps (and maybe grab a tissue!). Plus, tune in next week when we get to formally interview Abby!Hold onto your keyboards, tech fans! Donald unveils a mind-blowing surprise: a custom note-taking program created with Chat GPT! This slick browser app saves your notes automatically, can use Chat GPT to polish your text, and even integrates with 11 Labs to convert your notes into audio using your API key. The code itself? So complex it apparently makes Angela choke just looking at it! The best part? Donald generously offers a FREE copy to the entire Vision Cast crew (and Angela promises a bonus review episode soon!).The AI magic doesn't stop there! Angela and Phillip share their own creation, the unapologetically proud anthem "Unapologetically Bisexual With You," conjured into existence by the AI text-to-song generator, Udio. Angela also treats us (and possibly tortures George) with her hilarious Udio-generated parody of "Elvira," aptly titled... "Angela." We delve into the rapidly evolving world of AI music, and Angela gives Udio two thumbs up (especially over that other platform, Suno).Big news on the home front: Angela has officially escaped the basement! She's broadcasting live from her brand-new, upstairs studio. Say goodbye to questionable acoustics and (mostly) hello to fewer dog-related interruptions... though her adorable Belgian Malinois, Lulu, still manages a brief, heart-stealing cameo.Of course, it wouldn't be Vision Cast After Dark without the relentless roasting of George. Prepare for laughs as the crew discusses everything from his alleged "Micro Penis" to his new title, "Dime Dick Doodles." It's all in good fun... mostly.From heartfelt poetry and cutting-edge AI demonstrations to studio upgrades and side-splitting banter (mostly at George's expense), this episode is a rollercoaster of tech, talent, and pure Vision Cast chaos. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Get ready to celebrate three birthdays in one episode.Philip, Angela L, and Leona.We also give you lots of random topics and discussion as we prepared to say goodbye to Angela J for now as she prepares to help the family welcome baby David into the world in March.

Deconstruction invites us to become really honest about what we believe, why we hold those beliefs sacred, how they influence the way we relate to our creator, and who is actually served by our beliefs. If we trust the process enough to lower our walls and honestly engage with our questions, deconstruction promises to reveal undiscovered bias, limiting beliefs, and any flawed doctrines that actively harm people. - Angela J. HerrringtonBack for round two, Angela J. Herrington, comes on the podcast as our guest this week. We are doubly-thrilled to have her back! Angela is a deconstructing mama to five kiddos, a deconstruction coach and as of late, an author to a brand-new book!Whether you are deconstructing due to curiosity, uncertainty, or a compelling inner voice, Angela helps you explore the deeply personal journey of faith deconstruction compassionately and without judgment. Together, the two of you will slog through the uncertainties and complexities of faith deconstruction. Laughing, crying, and raging against the toxic religious machine together.On this podcast episode, we find out why Angela is so passion about writing her new book Deconstructing your Faith without Losing Yourself and especially tackle these questions:1. Is deconstruction a trend? Why or why not?2. How do we navigate deconstruction without losing what feels like our core selves?3. What tools are there to sort through our ideas and beliefs and why is a sense of autonomy/internal authority so important in this process?4. How do we navigate the resentments that we might still hold for our old church, family members, belief systems?  We also discover what hope there is for our kids as we navigate a shifting and evolving faith, especially perhaps the importance of a relationship with themselves, so vital and different than perhaps the way we grew up.Angela is feisty and fantastic (if we say so ourselves). You will find yourself nodding along and saying lots of "me toos" and "amens" (if that's even still allowed - winky face).You can find Angela at the following:Website:  www.angelajherriington.comFacebook: Angela J HerringtonThe Faith Deconstruction Cafe Instagram:  @angelajherringtonPinterest:  @angelajherringtonX:  @angherringtonLinked In: Angela J HerringtonYouTube:  Angela J Herrington

Get ready to groove to the rhythm of the Blues as Blues is the Truth with Ian McHugh celebrates its 700th show in style. Alongside special requests from Karena K, Rob Millis, MPB, Geoff Garbow, Christian Parker, Paul Gordon White, Paul Michael, Angela J, Tim Green, and Christian Parker, this milestone episode features all the regular features you know and love. But that's not all – we're taking a moment to give special thanks to Brian Soundy, who made it possible to start this incredible journey, and to Pat West, whose musical magic has woven through every episode. Join us as we delve into the soul-stirring sounds of Jo Ann Kelly, the electrifying guitar riffs of Shuggie Otis, and the infectious grooves of The Meters. From the legendary Otis Rush to the bluesy vibes of Junior Watson and The Steady Rolling Revue, each track is a testament to the timeless allure of the Blues. Don't miss out on special collaborations like Andy Watts with Joe Louis Walker, the soulful harmonies of Kim Wilson, and the unforgettable magic of Bonnie Raitt with Mike Finnigan. And of course, we'll be paying homage to Blues icons like Rory Gallagher, Hound Dog Taylor, and Eric Clapton, whose music continues to inspire generations. So, tune in and let the Blues wash over you as we celebrate 700 episodes of musical exploration, community, and the undeniable truth that is Blues is the Truth.

Angela is a faith deconstruction coach and host of The Deconstructing Faith Summit. She helps people break free from toxic religious culture & empowers them to recover from #churchhurt. She's a firstborn, Enneagram 8, Gen Xer who loves to question everything. She holds a BA from Indiana Wesleyan and a Master's in Leadership from Wesley Seminary. Her graduate research project focused on leadership development and opportunities for Gen X women in the US church. Connect with Angela: Website: https://angelajherrington.com/ | Book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/deconstructing-your-faith-without-losing-yourself-angela-j-herrington/20274838 Connect with Maggie: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hello_deconstructionists/ | Email: hello.decons@gmail.com Learn more about Amy's music: Amy's Website: ⁠⁠https://www.amyazzara.com/⁠ ⁠⁠ | Foray Music: ⁠⁠https://www.foraymusic.com/⁠⁠ | Amy's Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/amyazzara/⁠ Transcript found here.

Angela J Herrington is a faith deconstruction coach and host of The Deconstructing Faith Summit who helps people break free from toxic religious culture & empowers them to recover from #churchhurt. She has led online ministries for a decade, enjoys working with clients 1:1, in groups, and is a dynamic conference speaker. She holds a BA from Indiana Wesleyan and a Masters in Leadership from Wesley Seminary. Her graduate research project focused on leadership development and opportunities for Gen X women in the US church. She has published articles in Hope for Women and HOPE is Now magazines. She has been featured in The New Republic, Publisher's Today, and Religion News Service. In this nuanced and important conversation, Angela explains her own process of deconstruction and outlines some of the ways in which she now encourages her clients to rebuild their lives post-deconstruction in the healthiest and most beneficial ways possible. Before You Go: Rachel expands on Angela's idea of rebuilding the self after deconstruction and offers tips on safely "reconstructing" on your own terms. You can find more info on Angela and her new book at: https://www.angelajherrington.com All of Rachel's free informational PDF documents are available here: www.rachelbernsteintherapy.com/pdf.html All of Rachel's video lectures are available for purchase here: rachelbernsteintherapy.com/videos.html To help support the show monthly and get bonus episodes, shirts, and tote bags, please visit: www.patreon.com/indoctrination Prefer to support the IndoctriNation show with a one-time donation? Use this link: www.paypal.me/indoctrination Connect with us on Social Media: Twitter: twitter.com/_indoctrination Facebook: www.facebook.com/indoctrinationpodcast Tik Tok: www.tiktok.com/@indoctrinationpodcast Instagram: www.instagram.com/indoctrinationpodcast/ YouTube: www.youtube.com/rachelbernsteinlmft You can always help the show for free by leaving a rating on Spotify or a review on Apple/ iTunes. It really helps the visibility of the show!

Purchase a copy of Deconstructing Your Faith Without Losing Yourself here*: https://amzn.to/49afVTUAngela is a faith deconstruction coach and host of The Deconstructing Faith Summit who helps people break free from toxic religious culture & empowers them to recover from #churchhurt. She has led online ministries for a decade, enjoys working with clients 1:1, in groups, and is a dynamic conference speaker. She's a Lark's Song Certified Life Coach who reaches thousands of people in 40+ countries each month on Facebook, IG, Twitter, Pinterest, and her blog.She's a firstborn, Enneagram 8, Gen Xer who loves to question everything. She holds a BA from Indiana Wesleyan and a Master in Leadership from Wesley Seminary. Her graduate research project focused on leadership development and opportunities for Gen X women in the US church.Angela and her unique online ministry were featured in Lyz Lenz's 2019 book God Land: Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America. She has published articles in Hope for Women, and HOPE is Now magazines. Articles about her have been published in The New Republic, Publisher's Today, and Religion News Service.Her first book, Deconstruct Your Faith Without Losing Yourself, Will be published by Eerdmans in February 2024.Angela is also a wife, mom to 5, and a proud resident of Marion, Indiana, with her family when they're not traveling the US in their RV.✖️✖️✖️If you or someone you know has experienced abuse, visit courage365.org/need-help.✖️✖️✖️CONNECT WITH THE SHOW:- preacherboyspodcast.com- https://www.facebook.com/preacherboysdoc/- https://twitter.com/preacherboysdoc- https://www.instagram.com/preacherboysdoc/To connect with a community that shares the Preacher Boys Podcast's mission to expose abuse in the IFB, join the OFFICIAL Preacher Boys Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1403898676438188/*as an amazon associate, I receive a small commission on purchases made.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/preacher-boys-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Invitados/as: Vilmarie Rivera, Jessica Fuentes, Angela Jímenez, Ursula Colón, y Gerardo ‘Toñito Cruz (PPD).  Y como todos los viernes, tenemos al Panel de Periodistas con Adriana de Jesús Salamán y Robby Cortés.   Para lo último en noticias, siguenos en Facebook, Instagram, X y Threads @radioislatv.   ¡Baja nuestra aplicación en el App Store o Google Play y sintoniza nuestra programación donde quieras!

Episode SummaryHave you ever wanted someone to sit with you by the fire and watch your old religious beliefs go up in flames? Maybe you've longed for a guide or a coach to help you navigate all this wandering in the spiritual wilderness. If so, then this week's episode is what you need right now!Faith deconstruction coach Angela J. Herrington joins me to talk about life after evangelicalism, and in particular this tender time in your spiritual journey when you feel alone, bewildered, angry, lost, and a bit terrified of what comes next. “There are a ton of people out here in the wilderness trying to figure out what we believe and what faith looks like during and after deconstruction. Together, we slog through the uncertainties and complexities of faith deconstruction. Laughing, crying, and raging against the toxic religious machine together,” she shares.This incredibly practical, approachable, and applicable conversation is a must for anyone in the throes of faith reconstruction. Faith deconstruction is disorienting, it's painful, it's also triggering. It's often hard to find the language to describe what you are feeling, much less to find a way forward. As you navigate this space in between who you were and who you are becoming, may this conversation guide you on the long journey back to yourself as well as to God.Bio:As a certified life coach, seminary-trained online pastor, and a faith deconstruction coach, Angela has a lot of experience helping people connect with God. But this is also a very personal journey for me. For the last decade, I've been on my own journey to break free from learned smallness and step into wild sacred holy womanhood. Long story short, after finding faith in my early 30's I began to realize that what I was hearing from the church about women didn't always line up with what God was telling me. I loved God but realized the church was teaching some really toxic stuff. So this Enneagram 8, first born, Gen Xer started deconstructing. I questioned and challenged everything I thought I knew about faith, gender, and myself. It was messy and took a lot of work to sort it out. Therapy. Coaching. Bodywork. Spiritual healing. Conferences and retreats. And even a couple of college degrees. But the thing that made the biggest difference was the presence and support of wise people who helped me up when I didn't know where else to turn. Which is just one reason why I became a faith deconstruction coach, to help people just like me make their way through the wilderness of deconstruction. Please follow us on social media (use the buttons below) and help us get the word out! (Also, please don't hesitate to use any of these channels or email to contact us with any questions, concerns, or feedback.)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review

Thousands of people languish in solitary confinement every day around this country. In today's episode, we're in conversation with the authors of a new book: Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy, and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement, by Angela J Hattery and Earl Smith. Learn more about the book: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/way-down-in-the-hole/9781978823785 —- Subscribe to this podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: lawanddisorder@kpfa.org Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/ The post Way Down in the Hole – the Violence of Solitary Confinement w/ Angela J Hattery & Earl Smith appeared first on KPFA.

"Middle Ground with JLE L.L.C." Podcast "Where We Treat You Like Family" welcomes Author, President/Owner of The Plant Whisperer's, Inc. Ambassador-at-Large Dr. Angela J. (Dr. Coach A.J.) Nealy, Ph.D. as she shares her journey as a Chemistry/Botany Teacher early on, to becoming an Entrepreneur in the Plant Industry, to advising former NASA Astronaut Dr. Mae C. Jemison, M.D. with curriculum for The Earth We Share International Science Camp.

In this Today's Workplace podcast episode we continue our conversation with Angela J. Reddock-Wright, Esq., an Employment Mediator and the author of “The Workplace Transformed: 7 Crucial Lessons from the Global Pandemic.”    We discuss the issues, challenges, and controversies that inspired the rise in employee activism as well as the evolution of essential workers and non-essential workers in today's modern workplace.    Join us on this special episode of Today's Workplace as Angela J. Reddock-Wright, Esq shares key insights into the post-covid employer-employee relationship that are creating a monumental shift in the workplace today.   For more information on this episode and to connect with Barbara Johnson or Belinda Reed Shannon, visit us at: https://www.todaysworkplacepodcast.com   The views expressed on today's program are those of the speakers and are not the views of Today's Workplace, the speaker's firms or clients, and are not intended to provide legal advice.

Angela J. Reddock-Wright, Esq. is an Employment Mediator and the author of “The Workplace Transformed: 7 Crucial Lessons from the Global Pandemic.”    With over 25 years of experience, Angela is an Employment and Labor Law Mediator, Workplace Arbitrator, Title IX Investigator, and the Founder & Managing Partner of the Reddick Law Group based in Los Angeles.  She is also on the panel of mediators and arbitrators at Judicate West, a private dispute resolution firm where she settles cases including wrongful termination, discrimination based on race or gender, sexual harassment, and whistleblower cases.   Join us on this special episode of Today's Workplace as Angela J. Reddock-Wright, Esq shares key insights into the post-covid employer-employee relationship that are creating a monumental shift in the workplace today.   For more information on this episode and to connect with Barbara Johnson or Belinda Reed Shannon, visit us at: https://www.todaysworkplacepodcast.com   The views expressed on today's program are those of the speakers and are not the views of Today's Workplace, the speaker's firms or clients, and are not intended to provide legal advice.

"Deconstruction is an opportunity to deepen your faith, not just a rejection of what you believed in the past."The author of those beautiful words, Angela J. Herrington, a fellow deconstructing mama of FIVE and a faith deconstruction coach, walks us through how unhealed trauma informs our ability to trust ourselves. We walk through how difficult and necessary it is to be on this journey to heal ourselves and the beauty that's on the other side of that healing.  Listen in as we take the water slide that leads to life (and not the slippery slope that we are often warned of).Angela's heart comes alive when she holds space for others on their deconstruction journey. If you're longing to ask questions about faith, God and what you believe, WITHOUT BEING JUDGED, Angela is the person for you. She is feisty and thorough and if you want to get a "free coaching session along with us, this episode is exactly what you need to spend your time doing! We sighed and said "YES" more times than usual, which says a lot for us. Talk about peeling back some layers that we didn't know were there. WOW!  Hope you listen in!!You can find Angela at the following places:Website:  www.angelajherriington.comFacebook: Angela J HerringtonThe Faith Deconstruction Cafe Instagram:  @angelajherringtonPinterest:  @angelajherringtonTwitter:  @angherringtonLinked In:  Angela J HerringtonYouTube:  Angela J Herrington

Angela Reddock-Wright - Prominent and distinguished employment law attorney turned mediator, arbitrator, workplace, Title IX investigator and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) professional. She also hosts a weekly radio show here on KBLA Talk 1580 called “Legal Lens with Angela Reddock-Wright.” She joins Tavis to talk about her newly released first book “The Workplace Transformed: 7 Crucial Lessons from the Global Pandemic - Moving Beyond COVID-19 and Embracing the New Future of Work.” The new book sheds light on the massive changes in the workplace caused by the global health crisis and provides specific, well-thought-out, and practical solutions critical to organizational success.

Our guest today is an expert in ALL things law, and has been named one of Los Angeles's most influential attorneys by the LA Business Journal. We're so honored to introduce Angela J. Reddock-Wright, the founder and practicing partner of Reddock Law Group, a firm specializing in the resolution of employment and labor law, Title IX sexual assault, hazing and other bullying claims within the workplace. Angela will share with us her journey and most importantly, her formula for success. She will cover all things concerning employee risk, and how best to avoid the pitfalls that come with becoming an employer. After listening to this episode you'll have the confidence and clarity you'll need to hire employees and grow your business! More from Angela J. Reddock-Wright:  Visit angelareddock-wright.com & www.reddocklaw.com  Watch Angela Reddock-Wright, Media & Legal Commentator Resources to check out: www.calchamber.com  & www.awi.org & scmediation.org  Finding Angela J. Reddock-Wright: Email: booking@angelareddock-wright.com  LinkedIn: @Angela J. Reddock-Wright  Twitter & Facebook: @iamangelareddockwright   More From Jesse & Sid:  Visit https://www.smallbusinessfront.com/ LinkedIn: Small Business Front LinkedIn: Jesse Torres, Founder-SBF LinkedIn: Sid Voorakkara, CEO-SBF Instagram: @smallbizfront Twitter & Facebook: @SmallBizFront To join our community and get the most up-to-date resources and information for YOUR small business visit our NEW website: https://www.smallbusinessfront.com *Tell us what hack you're applying to YOUR business in the review section of Apple Podcasts and we'll give you and your biz a shout out in an upcoming episode! *Thank you for listening and please share the show or an episode you love with your favorite small business! We believe that when you succeed we all succeed, so let's share the knowledge and resources!

Dr Schneider is both an ethics specialist, she is also expert on the state of drug testing in sport and works with WADA. Timestamps 01:15 Background in rowing - from recruitment at university to the 1984 Olympics and retirement in 1985 before the 2010 comeback as a master and learning to scull with Volker Nolte. 06:30 The history of drugs in sport - it's always been there We knew it took off in a couple of sports - cycling where they used strychnine or sugar and ether. 1956 Olympics in Melbourne when USSR joined was the first where steroids were used. In 1984 cyclists were blood doping. Two types of performance enhancement - Strength - testosterone and steroids - Cardiovascular - increasing blood update and EPO Some sports use stimulants too 10:00 The IOC took notice when someone died and introduced the rules. Angela joined WADA in 2000. Beating the tests is the ongoing challenge 12:00 If it wasn't banned, it wasn't cheating. When it was against the rules then it was cheating - a game of deception and the ethics came in too. There were 600 drugs on the list based on are they 2 out of these 3 things - harmful - performance enhancing - against the spirit of sport 15:30 Medics can't research on human subjects. But the military can. 17:30 Genetic doping is gene transfer technology this is the new biggie. Look for the Marathon Mouse experiment - this enabled huge oxygen uptake without training. The Schwarzenegger Rat is another one where a gene mutation is used to grow muscle strength. Baby Popeye is a third - natural in nature. 22:00 To test for gene doping you have to find the injection site. WADA asked for a green marker to be added. 25:00 WADA's expertise was laboratory until the Russian scandal in the Winter Olympics. Blood tests are hard to beat.Urine can be inserted to the bladder. WADA had to become sophisticated intelligence - a spying agency. 28:00 Rule interpretation is another issue - the letter versus the spirit. We will never have perfect fair play. Gamesmanship is probably less morally reprehensible than cheating. Is this now a skill in professional sport? Moral character is affected - what does the win mean? 30:00 the Umpires and referees do interpret it. e.g. soccer "diving" when they fake an injury. Respect for the game and for your opponent. 33:00 Sanctions - should they be standardised? - let's get down to the core drugs only on the banned list. - Consistency of the rules. Some sports are short-lived. Justice has to take into account the sport and the drug. We need minimum and maximum penalties Athletes have rights. We are a drug taking society - why are we so concerned? 36:00 Inadvertent doping. We need to scale back and not sweat the small stuff. Focus on Olympics, not on masters. Athletes have to forfeit their privacy for drug testing. 41:00 I know when I was racing rowers did take drugs. Rowing could benefit but in our culture we are anti drugs. Celebrate sport and good humans.

Hosted by Angela J. Nealy, M.S.

On our third episode of The Mothers of Reinvention, host Jess Zaino welcomes Founder of the mom blog Mommy Diary, Angela J. Kim. Their conversation is raw, honest and strong. As a woman or mother, you do not want to miss this one! Mommy Diary is a popular lifestyle brand dedicated to honest stories, inspirations and everyday tips for the modern woman. It's founder Angela is a content creator, blogger and podcast host at Mommy Diary. She is also a mother of four children. GIMME MOR: If you like what you hear on this episode, you can join our personal development community at http://patreon.com/jess_zaino which offers extra content with behind-the-scenes outtakes, additional interviews with industry leaders, journal prompts, accountability groups and one-on-one teaching time with Jess. ~~~ Empowered woman, Self empowerment, Empowerment, Women Entrepreneur, Intrapreneur, Personal development plan, Personal growth, Self worth, personal growth, female founders, creators, mothers, Mom, Mama, Leaders, Female leaders, Boss, create, independence, education, success, trailblazing, innovator, authors, self-confidence, actors, musicians, asian moms, asians, Achiever, recreate, reinvention, reinvent, community, women, female host, female podcast, mothers, mom, mom first, mama, mommy, kids with disabilities, twins, family, mom blogger --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jesszaino/support

Császár Angela Jászai Mari-díjas színművész, Kiváló és Érdemes művész szinte egész pályáját a Nemzeti Színházban, majd Pesti Magyar Színházban töltötte, vígjátékban és drámában egyaránt emlékezetes alakítást nyújtott, láthattuk Molíère, Shakespeare, Tamási, Molnár Szabó Magda drámáiban, de a zenés darabokban is remekelt, köztük a Budapest Orfeum című sikerszériás produkció ma már fogalom. Szívügye a magyar nyelv, a magyar költészet, erről tanúskodnak önálló estjei, és az albumok, amelyeken a számára komponált zenével énekli kedvenc verseit. A legfontosabb számára mégis a család. A gyermekkor ízeiről, és az unokákról is beszélgetünk, de elárulja a család kedvenc ünnepi ételei: a „bevert hús” és a „kőfal torta” receptjét is. | Szerkesztő: Pozsgai Nóra

Kyle sits down with fellow law student Brenda Milouchev as they discuss going back to school later in life, faith and spiritual life, social justice work, their favorite Broadway shows, and much more!Walk Me Through It was created by and is hosted, edited and produced by Kyle Kilkenny. Follow Kyle on Twitter, Instagram, & TikTok @kylejkilkenny!New episodes every Tuesday! Please follow, subscribe, rate and review wherever you listen!If you have a question, comment, topic or guest request for the show, email Kyle at kylejkilkenny@gmail.com.To support the show and to keep it ad-free, visit buymeacoffee.com/kylejkilkenny. Supporters will be listed in the episode description!Co-Produced by Patrick Johnson.Our Creative Consultant is Chris Dollesin.Music: VHS Dreams by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.comSpecial Thanks:Brenda Milouchev-- for her voice, her time and the laughs!My parents, Kerry & Ken-- for giving me life and some podcast equipment.All of you-- for listening!What We're Reading:How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. KendiJust Mercy by Bryan StevensonArbitrary Justice by Angela J. DavisThe Three Mothers by Anna Malaika TubbsSupport the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kylejkilkenny)

Matt is talkin' theory with Angela from CDSA

Angela J. Grayson is Principal Member and Founder of Precipice IP, PLLC that is a consultancy and intellectual property law boutique specializing in patent, trademark, copyright, and data law. Prior to founding Precipice IP, Anglea was most immediately Associate General Counsel, Intellectual Property and Patent Operations Lead at Walmart Stores, Inc.  Prior to joining Walmart, Angela had previous experience as in-house patent counsel for several Fortune® 100 companies, as well as prior experience in the examining corps for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.    Angela and I discuss; Her journey from Mississippi to Arkansas What attracted her to law Learning the spirit of being and entrepreneur from her family Companies Precipice works with today Difference between trademarks and IP's (Intellectual Property) Tesla opening all their patents The patent son Amazon's one-click process Finding the right lawyer And so much more! Sponsor/Partnership KDP Rocket Easy to use tool to help find bestselling book ideas, profitable niches, rank better in Amazon, & select Kindle keywords. Get your book noticed on Amazon.

Dr. Angela Hattery & Dr. Earl Smith are award -winning professors and sociologists with over 30 years experience, and 13 books published. Together they have been researching and teaching about social inequalities for quite some time, and their vast knowledge and experience provides a set of critical lenses for interrogating, understanding and developing policy proposals to address our country’s most imperative and far-reaching social ills. Check out their website for more: Smithandhattery.com  

What does your writing process look like? Fantasy author, Jeffrey L. Kohonek shares his process on writing and marketing best selling fantasy novels. IN EPISODE 31 YOU WILL LEARN: How to take your creativity and funnel it into storytelling.Crafting magic systems for your fantasy novels.Taking a series and going from an heavy plotter to a light outliner.Using characters to move your story forward.Gaining confidence in your writing process and understanding whether your need to plot or pants your series.Magic systems, world building and maps: key things to start your fantasy series. What to do if you struggle with character growth and deciding what your character(s) should do next.The key marketing strategies for fantasy authors. Why you should plan your releases to cover the months when income is low versus the months when income is higher.Testing different ad strategies and using a backup plan to give you more funds to test with.How to find quality subscribers for your email list.Fostering community with your email list and how to keep them coming back for more.Do free and 99 cent books still work? https://youtu.be/QjnePscMABA ABOUT Jeffrey L. Kohanek Jeffrey L. Kohanek is an international bestselling author, best known for his Runes of Issalia and Wardens of Issalia epic fantasy series.He grew up in rural Minnesota where comic books sparked his young imagination, inspiring fantasies of heroes with super-powers saving the day. His tastes later evolved to fantasy epics featuring unlikely heroes overcoming impossible odds to save worlds born from the writer's imagination. Now residing in southern California, Jeff uses his imagination to weave tales of engaging characters caught in fantastic plots to inspire the dreamer within us all.You can contact Jeffrey at author@JeffreyLKohanek.com CONNECT WITH Jeffrey Website GIVEAWAY!We'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment below or tag us on Instagram with your #1 takeaway from this week's episode. Each month we'll pick one person to win access to one of our paid workshops. HOSTS CORNER Stephanie BwaBwa is working on her serial and excited about the Indie Author Lifestyle Anthology. Want to submit? Click here for ALL the details. Angela J. Ford is stretching her creativity by writing short stories and is wrapping up her third one, Lord of the Castle. Learn more about her books here. REGISTER FOR A WORKSHOP Workshops are designed for career authors who want in depth training on certain topics to help you take your career to the next level.  Join us each month to dig into writing, publishing and book marketing strategies for only $27.99 plus access to the exclusive community. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/indieauthorlifestyle/support

How do you weave the human condition into your story? And how do you use personal experiences and flaws to create relatable characters? Listen in to fantasy author, Miri C. Golden as she shares about using the power of life experience to craft a bestselling novel. IN EPISODE TWENTY-ONE YOU WILL LEARN: Taking tragedy and using it as a therapeutic way to heal.Using life experience (both good and bad) to make your characters relatable.Drawing from your own flaws to make your writing authentic. How to get into your character's heads by adding personal vernacular, keywords and identities. Should you regurgitate what someone else has done? Here are some tips on exploring magical systems, creating your own characters and building a world that readers fall in love with.How to balance writing what readers want to read versus what brings you joy.Why we should take time to give ourselves the tools we need to be successful.Understanding that art is subjective and why you should LOVE what you do.Traditional publishing versus indie author life - what you need to know.Behind the scenes of Miri's books and why you just might want to read them!A word of encouragement as you write your 1st or 10th draft. ABOUT MIRI C. GOLDEN Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Miri C. Golden grew up in the rural mountains of Southern Oregon, where cougars and deer outnumber people. Raised without TV, gaming systems, and central heating & air, she escaped real life through fantasy novels. Not much has changed since then, save for the dinosaurs—they died off. Currently, Miri resides in the Pacific Northwest with her oh-so sexy husband and their two little monsters. She continues to escape all of life's disappointments through reading and writing, but when she stuck adulting and can't immerse herself in magic, dragons, and one-true-loves, she toils her days away in the art industry. In addition to banging words, Miri enjoys biking, cooking, reading, and exploring art in its many mediums, as well as stuffing her face, rolling her eyes, and liberally applying four-letter words and their conjugates to every situation.Oh! And Epstein didn't k!ll himself. CONNECT WITH Miri C. Golden Website Links mentioned in the show Chicago Manual of StyleOwl PurdueThe Grammar Bible HOSTS CORNER: A PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES OF WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON Stephanie BwaBwa is working on the 2nd novella in the Seraphim Resistance series and waiting on an illustrated cover. Learn more here. Angela J. Ford is dealing with creative lows and writing Fate - Night of the Dark Fae Book 2. Learn more about the novel here. REGISTER FOR OUR MONTHLY WORKSHOPS March Workshop: How to Craft En --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/indieauthorlifestyle/support

How do you balance your indie career when you also run a small business? And when do you know if you should use a pen name? Listen in to USA Today bestselling fantasy author, Alisha Klapheke as she shares some of her secrets to success. IN EPISODE NINETEEN YOU WILL LEARN: Taking the hobby of writing and turning it into a career.Using a book launch party to kick off your author career.Taking inspiration from history and using museums to spark ideas.The pros and cons of using a pen name and what you should consider before you start one.How to get pre-orders when you need to build your audience from scratch.Why you should make friends with other authors and the benefits of knowing authors in your genre.How to show appreciation to your email list and strategies for creating engaging emails.Alisha's process for shaping characters and how they vary from draft to draft. Why using a critique partner is helpful for motivation.Pro tip: Figure out what's draining your energy and give that job to someone else. (Read this book) ABOUT ALISHA KLAPHEKE USA Today bestselling author Alisha Klapheke wants to infuse readers' lives with unique magic, far-flung fantasy settings, and romance. Her inspiration springs from an obsession with history, years of world travel, and the fantasy she grew up reading when she was supposed to be doing her math homework.  When she's not writing, Alisha teaches Muay Thai kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Krav Maga to kids, adults, and the occasional country music star at her school just south of Nashville. That may be why writing fight scenes is her favorite. CONNECT WITH ALISHA KLAPHEKE WebsiteFacebookInstagramMeet Eve A. Hunt HOSTS CORNER: A PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES OF WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON Stephanie BwaBwa just released Seraphim Falling. Learn more about the short story here. Angela J. Ford just released Pawn. Learn more about the novel here. Register for an upcoming workshop March Workshop: How to Craft Engaging Emails - Register Now!April Workshop: How to Get Reviews on Amazon - Register Now! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/indieauthorlifestyle/support

The power to live your ideal life is at your finger tips! Angela J. De Palma teaches you how to manifest the things you want/need into your life. Gravitate towards achieving your goals by following three simple steps to success.

Angela J. De Palma and guest Gina De Palma discuss living in the judgement-free zone. Learn to step outside of your comfort zone in order to free yourself from your own judgmental mind and the judgement of others. Life is too short to let fear take over! Get out of your own way and let your life unfold.

Welcome to The Mindful Minute Sessions! Content creator and new-age philosophy enthusiast Angela J. De Palma introduces her new podcast, The Mindful Minute Sessions. Learn 5 ways to begin thinking mindfully and join Angela on her journey to success through a mindful perspective.

Are you in the Early Years Stage? If you have a 0-6-year-old, you are living in what Charlotte Mason referred to as "the early years." In her first volume, Home Education, Miss Mason urged mothers to "secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air." If you think that's a challenge in our hectic postmodern world, you're right. But it's not impossible. Today I chat with Leah Martin from "My Little Robins" on how to make Charlotte Mason's ideas a reality. We also discuss why the early years should be preserved as a "quiet growing time" instead of relinquishing them to academics as the culture continually calls us to do and some consequences we're seeing as a society because of this unnatural shift. In this episode you'll hear: the story of a former public school teacher turned Ambleside teacher turned CM homeschool mama why academics in the early years is usually not developmentally appropriate why the Great Outdoors is the best classroom for the early years mental, emotional and physical benefits to holding off on academics how the segregation mindset of home and school is disrupting the early years Show Notes My Little Robins Blog Home Education by Charlotte M. Mason (affiliate link) Balanced and Barefoot by Angela J. Hanscom (affiliate link) Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv (affiliate link) List of Attainments Maestro Classics The quote I fumbled through about children learning naturally at home (under Natural, Everyday Situations heading) A Thomas Locker picture book (affiliate link) What is Twaddle? Leah's Podcast: Thinking Love Leah's Facebook group

There's a good chance you aren't getting enough of this in your life, but the good news is, it's free and this is the perfect time of year to get more of it! This week's episode continues the Sorta Awesome Stories summer series with Super Star Awesome Ali Beatty who sits down with Meg to talk about how incredibly important it is that we spend time outside and in nature. Ali lives that camp life year 'round, and she's an enthusiastic naturalist who wants to tell you how awesome it is to get outdoors and get more out of life. All of that plus a powerful treatment for your body and a binge-worthy nostalgia-filled podcast in Awesome of the Week!THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:Upper Room: Go to upperroom.org/welcome to enjoy your free 30 day trialBetaBrand: Visit betabrand.com/awesome to get 20% off your Dress Pant Yoga PantsWander Beauty: Get 20% off your purchase at wanderbeauty.com/AWESOMEThank you to all of our Sorta Awesome sponsors!SHOW NOTES:Meg’s AoTW: American Girls PodcastAli’s AoTW: Gaiam Restore Deep Tissue Massage RollerLast Child in the Woods by Richard LouvBalanced and Barefoot by Angela J. Hanscomwww.tinkergarten.comwww.freeforestschool.orgSloombGrovia Lark adventure wearYou can find Meg on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!Find Ali on Facebook or Instagram or visit her website!Visit sortaawesomeshow.com for show notes on this and every episode. And don’t forget to find us in the Sorta Awesome Hangout on Facebook or @sortaawesomeshow on Instagram, and @sortaawesomepod on Twitter!

Angela J. Grayson, CIPP/US, CLP is an accomplished nationally recognized lawyer, speaker, and author. She is Principal Member and Founder of Precipice IP PLLC. PRECIPICE is an award-winning consultancy and intellectual property law boutique specializing in patent, trademark, copyright, and data law. PRECIPICE helps entrepreneurs and technology-focused businesses protect their products, brands, designs and data. In her free time, Ms. Grayson enjoys serving her community and spending time with her husband Patrick and their two cocker spaniels, Ari and Archi (aka the Dynamic Duo).

In this episode of the Finding Elara Podcast Dianna talks To Angela J ford about her worldbuilding, mindfulness techniques and what she thinks makes for a good story. Angela is very passionate about her craft and the interview flies by.In the Buffy Night segment Angela reviews the book Circe, sharing what she thought about the first person account from the goddess of sorcery. The competition link for this show is http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/99cd21087/?

When things run well, we often assume, they run regularly. From the pistons in a car to the daily changes in the tide, we often expect that processes run optimally when they progress or move forward in the same or a uniform way. Or if they change, the change is gradual and moves slowly from phase to phase – like the seasons or the way the sun rises and sets. One important body function is an exception! WHAT WE TALK ABOUT: While it may seem crazy at first, it turns out that all this variability … is good! Heart rate variability (HRV) is a strong indicator of health – of good mental and physical health as well as the potential or resiliency of the body to survive problems, stressors, and illness. It’s a big topic but today I want to introduce the concept and make you aware of what it is and how it can help you both short and long-term. Your heartbeat is controlled by your body’s autonomic nervous system (ANS). This system runs and regulates parts of your system that are always “on.” Things like your breathing, digestion, blood pressure and heart rate. The autonomic nervous system itself is divided into two main aspects: the fight or flight response or the relaxation response. When the autonomic system is relaxed, the heartbeat becomes more variable, demonstrating resilience and flexibility. In contrast, the “fight-or-flight” version of the autonomic system is triggered by stress (caused by an unhealthy emotional or physical conditions). If this stress response of the autonomic system is maintained, heart beat variability decreases as it moves to a more consistent high pitch. This racing heart beat is a symptom of high stress and is also an indicator that the body is being pushed towards an unhealthy and brittle state. It makes sense, then, that healthy heart rate variability would be an indicator of a person’s ability to bounce back from severe illness – and indicator of that person’s resilience. And, indeed, it is. One recent study showed that subjects suffering from cancer who had decreased heart rate variability were strongly associated with shorter survival time. This great indicator of overall health is surprisingly easy to access and read by being in tune with your body. It’s essentially your pulse. As you’re feeling your pulse, you’ll notice that time between heartbeats increases when you exhale and decreases when you inhale. If there are some good differences between the two, congratulations: you may have healthy heart rate variability!   KEY TERMS & IDEAS A large range of heart rate variability is a sign of health and resilience. The resilience pertains to both mental health and physical health, especially the potential to survive bouts of severe illness. Heart rate variability: the variation in the time interval between heartbeats. Autonomic nervous system: This system runs and regulates functions in your body that are always “on” and work without conscious control. This includes your breathing, digestion, blood pressure and heart rate Sympathetic nervous system: part of the autonomic nervous system that activates the “fight or flight” response. Parasympathetic nervous system: part of the autonomic nervous system that helps to slow heart rate, relax the sphincter muscles and increase intestinal and glandular activity. LINKS & RESOURCES: Follow Dr. Nada on: Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/nada-milo... Sage Tonic www.sagetonic.com Sage Tonic on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sagetonic/ Ying Guo, et al., "Prognostic value of heart rate variability in patients with cancer," Journal of clinical neurophysiology: official publication of the American Electroencephalographic Society 32.6 (2015): 516, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4668946/, accessed January 2019. Angela J. Grippo, "Opinion:“Heart Rate Variability, Health and Well-Being: A Systems Perspective” Research Topic," Frontiers in public health 5 (2017): 246, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00246/full, accessed January 2019. Oura Crew, “What Is Heart Rate Variability and What You Can Learn from It,” Oura, September 14, 2019, https://ouraring.com/heart-rate-variability-basics/, accessed January 2019. Marcelo Campos, “Heat rate variability: A new way to track well-being,” Harvard Medical School Publishing, November 22, 2017, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heart-rate-variability-new-way-track-well-2017112212789, accessed January 2019. SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/SpartanUpShow YouTube: http://bit.ly/SpartanUpYT Google Play: http://bit.ly/SpartanUpPlay FOLLOW SPARTAN UP: Spartan Up on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/spartanuppo... Spartan Up on Twitter https://twitter.com/SpartanUpPod CREDITS: Producer: Marion Abrams, Madmotion, llc. Writer and Host: Nada Milosavljevic MD, JD © 2019 Spartan

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. we have the pleasure of sitting down with Arent Fox associate Eva Pulliam. She discusses her career journey up to this point and shares valuable advice pertaining to privacy and security concerns. We also promote CBE Week, an event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement.Learn more about CBE Week here! https://www.cbeweek.com/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? Now look, if you haven't heard by now, Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, a non-profit organization based in California, in bringing a Special Speaker Series to promote CBE Week, an annual week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This is a special series where we highlight movers and shakers who will be speakers during CBE Week. Today, we have Eva Pulliam. As an associate at Arent Fox, Eva works frequently with issues involving cross-border data transfers and international data privacy law compliance. Additionally, she has experience with helping clients comply with U.S. federal and state regulations that impact data collection, storage use, and disclosures as they relate to children, financial institutions, and others. She also continues to review emerging laws in the privacy area as they impact clients' data collection, maintenance, and breach procedures. Eva has been recognized as a next-generation leader in The Recorder's Women Leaders in Tech Law from a pool of over 200 nominees for extensive work in the tech industry. Eva regularly presents on advertising, intellectual property, and privacy. Her recent presentations have spanned topics such as the European General Data Protection Regulation, online gambling, and social media influencers. Eva, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Eva: I'm well, thank you so much for having me.Zach: Thank you for joining us. Now, look, for those who don't know you--I know I read a little bit about your bio, but would you mind telling us a little bit more about yourself and a bit about your professional journey?Eva: So I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on the East Coast. I started undergrad at Howard University, and I've always had a love for the real HU.Zach: Shout-out to Howard.Eva: Yes, shout-out to Howard. I finished at Old Dominion and then went onto law school at George Washington University. I had a great experience. I just have a love for D.C. and spent most of my career and adult life in the D.C. area, but once I became [about a mid-year?] associate, one of my mentors shifted from our D.C. office to our San Francisco office, and I was offered the opportunity to come along, and I took the opportunity as I never want to make a decision out of fear. That's one of my guiding principles. So I said, "You know what? I'm gonna not be scared to California, go cross-country away from family, and take the bar all over again," and here I am in California having a great experience. I've been able to work internally at technology companies and just really get to get a whole new grasp on tech from a hands-on perspective. So that's been--that's been my journey thus far, and it's ongoing.Zach: That sounds incredible, and, you know, I have a sister-in-law who moved--she went from Texas and then went to Spelman for undergrad, then went to University of Michigan for the rest of her undergrad. Now she's in San Francisco. So it's interesting to watch her and her path, and so I would imagine, you know, your journey was similar in that it's just completely different worlds, you know? Like, you jump from one coast to the other.Eva: It has been an extreme culture shift, which is part of what gave me the passion for CBE when I met Angela Johnson, the founder of CBE, and she spoke about it. The lack of unity or a united black professional community in the San Francisco area was a bit striking and unexpected. I had been slightly warned, but it was a different thing to see it. I found some really amazing friends and people in the community, and I think that CBE is gonna do a lot to help bring us all together and help to grow the community. It gives you the vibe of CBC Week, the Congressional Black Caucus Week, that I grew up with in D.C. So it's kind of bringing CBC to the West Coast, and I'm really, really excited about being a part of it.Zach: Well, it's incredible, right? 'Cause it's interesting for me, and I think black folks, we're not a monolithic culture, right? So me coming from, like, a Southern perspective, when I see kind of, like, what's happening in San Francisco on the coast, and I see all these black people with all these huge names tied to 'em, I kind of just assume there's an interconnected network or something there, but, like, not as much, right? And so that's why these types of events and these organizations, such as the Coalition of Black Excellence and CBE Week, are so critical and so important. Well, let's do this then. Let's talk a little bit about privacy, because I believe that's what you're--I believe that's what you're gonna be speaking on during CBE Week. So when I think about privacy, I think about making sure, like, no one has access to my social media, people can't log in to my email, but I know that it's deeper than that. I know that it's broader than that. So, like, could you talk a little bit about privacy and why it matters? Especially for black and brown folks.Eva: So I think that your definition of privacy is right on. The privacy law is concerning all things that make you you. And U.S. laws differ from European laws. European laws go a little deeper to include pretty much anything that would make you you. U.S. laws can be a little more limited in what's protected. In either case, the goal that I balance on a day-to-day is helping my clients to collect information and use it in a responsible way, so that when you provide information you know how it's being used, where it's going, and you're comfortable with that information. I think that the way that the individual consumer, or user, of various technologies and those providing their information online and offline, on paper, I think it's important that users empower themselves and actually read the policies and documents that are provided to them and understand what they're giving away. I would say that when I'm signing on for an app, for instance, if they ask to use my location, don't just click "Allow" right away. Know that when you click "Allow" you are agreeing to something, and I don't click "Allow" for location or use of my video or use of my contacts or my camera unless that's something that I actually need the app for and I understand how my data is being used. So I hope that users will walk away a bit more empowered. In the black and brown community, I think that it's something to always remember, that your data's being used, profiles are being created that, you know, you may know nothing about. It may be connected just to your IP address, the number that identifies your computer that you're using, knowing that this user shops here, eats this type of food, searches for this type of information, engages in these hashtags and conversations, and that you--people know who you are and that you're creating a profile for you and the type of advertising that you receive, be it positive or negative for your health or well-being.Zach: You know, it's just so interesting, especially when you used the word "profile." It reminds me of a story, and I don't remember the name of the comic. This was, like--hm, like, 4 or 5 years ago, but I remember I was--you know, I'm very active on LinkedIn. I have a--I have a very current profile. I have a headline. I have the image and all that kind of stuff, whatever. So at one point I got an email from a company that seemed on its face very legitimate. It seemed very established--well, it kind of had that startup feel, but very polished though, and the idea was "Hey, I see that you're on LinkedIn. Would you mind creating a profile on our page? 'Cause our website is mainly focused on mentorship. We will pair you with a college undergrad student, and you can help them as they prepare to graduate. You can be a mentor and a coach for them." And so, you know, it's like, "Eh, okay." I mean, whatever. And so it took me, like, just a little second, and you could essentially transfer your LinkedIn page to their website, right? And it would just kind of, like, lift and shift it over there.Eva: Yes.Zach: And so I did it. Like, I clicked it really fast. It said, "Do you agree?" Blah blah blah, and I clicked "OK." To your whole point, I did not read, did not really slow down and really read it read it. So then, like, I forgot all about the website. I forgot all about the thing. And so then, like, fast-forward, like, maybe 3 or 4 months later. I see a profile up on their website, and it's not my name, but all of the work information, all of the career history, all of the skills and stuff like that, it's an exact copy of my profile. And so I reached out to 'em and I was like, "Hey, you need to delete this, take this down," whatever whatever, and they took it down, but it's scary, the fact that, like, that was out there for months, and, I mean, it still might be out there now. I don't know. Maybe they just took that one version down. Who's to say how many shells they made, right? How many copies they made of that? Who knows?Eva: Exactly. Reputation control is a big thing, especially as black professionals. You are constantly mindful of the way that you are putting out yourself on the internet and just in the world. So having someone take over the identity that you've worked hard for would be a terrible thing, so it's good that you were able to at least--that you came across it. Far too many times I think we don't even find out when our information is used without our permission.Zach: Well, you know, it's becoming more and more commonplace when you hear these announcements of, you know, thousands and hundreds of thousands of passwords were leaked. It's more than common, and it's kind of like we just shrug our shoulders at it because--I think this whole world, like, the tech world and just technology in itself is so big and so hard to wrap your arms around that I think it's kind of easier just to default and be like, "Oh, it'll sort itself out," until you then get some notification that your social has been stolen or something crazy. Then you want to pay attention, but it's--like, there's plenty of, like, "little" things--quote unquote little. They're not little, but little things that kind of sprout up fairly common and often enough that we should be paying a little bit more attention I think.Eva: We should be paying a lot of attention. I think that, you know, identity monitoring is one way that you can help yourself, at least in the financial world, but then paying attention, like I said, to the privacy policies of what you're agreeing to. So at least when someone's doing something wrong, you're able to say, "Wait, I know I did not say yes to this. I know that you should not have this feature turned on on my phone. You shouldn't have any of this information," and sometimes people are using information that they--you know, they're not following the rules that they've agreed to. There have been FTC and Attorney General actions around that, and those are often who you have to turn to when someone becomes a bad actor. You're reporting them to, you know, regulators to help you sort these things out, but the more proactive we can be on the front end I think is going to help us a lot more in the long run.Zach: As technology continues to progress around us, right--I mean, it feels as if technology's almost growing at the speed of thought. Like, it just seems like there's so much happening. There's so many new innovations that are coming across month after month, year after year. As technology continues to grow, how do you see tech and privacy law needing to change and adapt, particularly around things like cryptocurrency?Eva: I think that cryptocurrency is a powerful tool that's still being worked through in some spheres. You know, we know that governments may be reluctant in some instances to give over control of the dollar. That said, where cryptocurrency's in place--and not just cryptocurrency but the actual blockchain, the bitcoin, the technology on which its built--it gives a lot of power in the sense that it provides anonymity. And so when we think of the black and brown community and institutional prejudices that have faced the black and brown communities, we have to remember that sometimes, you know, we can move in a bit of silence through cryptocurrency by trading and having finances and assets that are unidentifiable. It wouldn't be identified through black and brown until the decision to reveal, and that takes up some of the middleman, some of the potential prejudices that can arise when middlemen are involved. So I think there's a power to it, but I also encourage anyone interested in cryptocurrency to really research. Research the company or the type of currency that you're interested in purchasing. Research cryptocurrency itself. Understand the blockchain a little bit more, and do the work before following the fad. I think that that's the biggest--the biggest tip, is to never just follow the fad and, you know, "Someone did it, so I'm doing it too." Make sure that you actually know what you're doing. Know the technology and understand the finances behind it, and also understand the risks when you're doing any type of investment. But cryptocurrency and the blockchain, we'll have a lot more to do in the future I do believe, particularly with the potential uses for it. It can be used for polling and voting and a lot of ways, when we look at the recent elections and how the votes got mixed up we'll say or lost, and, you know, Atlanta and Florida vote issues. I think the use of the blockchain could be a beneficial thing in that you could submit your vote. It's all handled within the blockchain, and no middleman has any say in involving himself in that.Zach: No, I 100% agree. I think that there's so much power in kind of eliminating opportunities for bias, right? So a lot of times when we talk about bias, conscious bias, unconscious bias, a lot of times we try to figure out ways to change the individual, and maybe I'm being a bit of a cynic, but I think, you know, another angle that we could go from is let's just eliminate the opportunity for you to even be biased. Let's just make it anonymous, right, where can. Let's eliminate avenues for folks to be discriminatory, and let's make sure that, you know, where we can, we empower people, and empower the most, like, objective playing fields possible.Eva: Definitely. I think that there's a power in it, and that's because the black community holds so much power, and the brown community holds so much power, and I think that harnessing it and working together could create a very mighty force.Zach: Now before we get out of here, you know, any parting words? Shout-outs? Any special projects that you're working on? Anything at all that you'd like to share with us?Eva: I would--I guess my parting word is that everyone, please read your privacy policies and understand the way that your data is used, and from a professional standpoint I would say to just keep, you know, working hard and moving forward. I think that my career has largely been based on faith and intention, and things seemed to just work out the way that they're supposed to. Every setback has always ended up landing me where I want to be, including--I would say this move was an exciting and scary adventure, but it was definitely worthwhile. So I'd just encourage everyone to find their passion and work hard, and also protect your data. Protect who you are.Zach: Amen. You know, we might need to call this podcast episode "Protect Ya Neck." What do you think about that, Eva?Eva: Right. [laughs] I like that title.Zach: [laughing] Oh, man. Well, that does it for us, y'all. Thank y'all for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast, a Special Series sponsored by the Coalition of Black Excellence. To learn more about CBE check out their website, www.cbeweek.com. Make sure to follow them on Instagram @experienceCBE. Make sure you follow Living Corporate on Instagram @LivingCorporate, Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through www.living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, feel free to email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Zach, and you've been listening to Eva Pulliam, associate at Arent Fox. Peace.

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. we have the pleasure of sitting down with 500 Startups venture partner Clayton Bryan. He sits down with us to discuss his career journey up to this point and to share valuable advice for young leaders and founders, particularly in the VC space. We also promote CBE Week, an event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement.Learn more about CBE Week here! https://www.cbeweek.com/Learn more about Transparent Collective: https://www.transparentcollective.com/Learn more about HBCUvc: http://www.hbcu.vc/Check out the Dorm Room Fund: https://www.dormroomfund.com/Check out 500 Startups' VC Unlocked: https://education.500.com/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and listen, y'all. Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, CBE, a non-profit organization based in California, in bringing a Special Speaker series to promote CBE Week, an annual week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This is a special series where we will spotlight movers and shakers who will be speakers during CBE Week. Today we are blessed to have Clayton Bryan. Clayton has over 12 years of experience in the tech space, initially working as a marketer. He transitioned into business development and over the past 3 years has worked in venture capital. Currently, as a venture partner at 500 Startups in San Francisco, Clayton is focused on the media, e-commerce, and frontier tech. Clayton is also one of the co-founders of Transparent Collective, a non-profit launched to help founders of color connect with investors and mentors. Prior to returning to the Bay Area, as a member of the Dorm Room Fund team in New York, Clayton worked with and invested in some of the best and brightest student-funded startups on the East Coast. With that being said, welcome to the show, Clay. How you doin', man?Clayton: Zach, I'm doing great, and to all the listeners out there, good evening, good morning, good afternoon, whenever you might be listening to this. Happy to be here, and looking forward to, you know, having a good conversation.Zach: Absolutely. So look, man. Of course I read your profile in the introduction, but for those of us who might be wanting to know a little bit more--I know I'm one of those people--would you mind talking a little bit more about yourself and your journey?Clayton: Sure, happy to hit on some of the high notes and the milestones. So I'm originally from the Bay. Big shout-out to Oakland. And, you know, growing up I always felt this gravitational pull towards technology. I was fortunate to be able to have an Apple II back in the day and played, you know, some games on that, everything from, you know, Oregon Trail to Mavis Teaches Typing, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Yeah, those are some of the OG titles.Zach: Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me ask you this real fast about those games though. Did you ever played this game called Gizmos and Gadgets?Clayton: I don't recall that one. That one--Zach: 'Cause man, it was really dope. Okay, okay, but you said Oregon Trail. Did you ever play that Mario typing game? Where you type and then Mario moves?Clayton: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was a classic too, you know? So for everyone from that era, you know, those were great, and I think that they did a good job of really kind of getting a lot of folks into technology and just, you know, bringing up that awareness. And so once I saw the application of that--and then I also was able to go to, you know, great places as a kid growing up in this area. Places like the Lawrence Hall of Science up in the Berkeley Hills, and, you know, really getting to see all of these cool things happen with science. And so when I got to high school I started to code a little bit, and I took CS in high school. When I got to college, I thought that was gonna be my track as well, but I happened to go to a school where there's a really tough computer science program, and I was like, "Actually," you know, "I think I'm a little more creative than this." So I wanted to touch technology, but not necessarily from the coding perspective, and so I became actually--I was a poli-sci and economics major, and then when I graduated I joined Yahoo as a content marketer, and I was there for a couple years. Then I decided I wanted to go do the startup thing, so I worked at a couple different startups, and that's when I first got--started to really hear the term "venture capital," and back in the 2000s it was a very different time and place within Silicon Valley and the way that we think of things. Investors weren't blogging, they weren't tweeting. It was very obscure as to what investors actually did. Now it's different. Now, you know, you see--it's kind of a who's who on Twitter. Twitter has a VC category you can follow. There's Medium. It's just very easy to kind of stay plugged into that scene if you really want to learn how different investors are thinking. There's a lot of information out there. Back in the 2000s that was not the case, but I was very fortunate at the time--one of the companies I was working with, we had done a Series A and a Series B--and also the check sizes were much different than a Series A and a Series B were today--but I was the seventh hire, and I got to really see, you know, what these meetings with investors look like, and I was exposed to that, and I was like, "This is kind of cool. This is interesting," and that's really, you know, kind of planted the seed for me to want to be on that side of the table. And so fast-forward a couple years. My first--my first kind of role where I was in an investor-like seat was running an accelerator program that focused on underrepresented founders, and so through that program I got to know a lot of folks who I'm gonna shout-out later on in, you know, our conversation. But I got to see--I was even closer, but the problem with that program was that we were not writing checks, and I wanted to actually deploy capital. In order for me to feel comfortable doing that I decided, "Okay. Well, I want to go back to school," which was kind of a controversial decision at the time, because I still think MBAs are not necessarily all that welcome within the space, but I think it's changing now. But for me it leads--the decision was to go back, learn more about finance, build up that skill set, and then finally venture out as a venture capitalist, and so that's what I've been doing since 2015, and I've been incredibly blessed to join a great team at 500 and incredibly blessed to be a part of something called the Dorm Room Fund. And yeah, that's my journey in 3 minutes or less.Zach: Man, that's incredible. And, you know, it's interesting--you know, to your point about some of your decisions being a little non-conventional, still--you talked about yes, there's definitely more information to learn about venture capitalism and being a venture partner. However, Clayton, I have to be honest, man, I'm still really kind of confused when I think about the role of a venture partner. So, like, would you mind sharing a little bit more and kind of breaking it down, what it is your role entails? On, like, what you actually do on a day-to-day basis?Clayton: Sure. And, you know, I think--before I answer that I'll answer a question that I think is a good kind of intro or good for just context in terms of, you know, "Well, how did I get here?" And "Is there a certain path?" Right? I think a lot of folks that want to get into venture are like, "Well, how can I also get into venture?" And I think, you know, a couple years ago there were maybe two different pathways in, where, you know, being a founder that had success. So exited a company, sold a company, right? That was a path. Another path would be, you know, becoming an executive at a top internet company, a big brand that, you know, everyone in the States would know, and then really develop a skill set in sales or marketing or even people ops, and then market yourself to one of these firms as being able to add value. But today, you know, there are so many different firms that are popping up, and I think that if you talk to the folks that are at these firms, they all have different pathways in. And so I think the primary thing is just to have that interest and really network, and be beneficial to founders. Be beneficial to folks that work at these firms. Do the job before you have the job, and I think that's a great way to do it. And there's great programs out there, like HBCUvc, Dorm Room Fund. There's a lot of different programs out there, depending on where you are in your stage of life. We have one at 500 that's called Venture Capital Unlocked. First Round Capital has one called the Angel Track. So there's a lot of programs out there that will help you, you know, kind of get the right skills, because things change so frequently within this space. So I would say that was a little bit of a prelude to the next thing, which is "What do I do on a day-to-day basis?" Well, you know, no two days look alike. I would say the core of my duties, really I'm out here trying to help founders, and so I'm meeting with founders all of the time. If you look at my calendar at any given point in time, there's a lot of meetings with some of the current investments that I have, some of the investments that are a little bit more mature, meaning that, you know, I'm not working with them on a day-to-day, because we have an accelerator program, and so we're--it's essentially like a boot camp for entrepreneurs. So we're helping them with their marketing, their sales. We're helping them really craft the way they're thinking about their investor strategy, and then also with the execution, because a lot of the folks that come through our program, you know, they might be really good at their core competency, whether that's, you know, data science or agriculture tech or spinning up something--you know, some kind of hardware play, but when it comes to the nuances around going out and fundraising and selling your business to the investor audience, it's a little bit of a different type of game. So just understanding and acquainting yourself with the language and the types of models and terms that are being used at this stage. I'm talking about things, you know, as far down as, like, customer acquisition costs, but just understanding things like, you know, your revenue, your different growth rates, right, and how to present that in a way that's meaningful, impactful, but translates well into the minds of investors. So a lot of what I do is coaching. I'm always looking for the next best--the next greatest thing, right, that I can invest in, but even if I can't invest in it right now, I still need to be able to talk to with those founders, help them as much as I can, because I'm always looking for potential, and that means a couple--that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I'm out there always looking for potential. So a lot of what I do I categorize kind of as just, like, helping founders. That would be one big category, and then other things that I do is meeting with other investors and really trying to assess how they're looking at the market or markets right now, what's interesting to them, because as someone that's at the seed stage, I--at the end of the day, I need to have confidence that I can help my companies raise money, and if the later-stage players are not as actively looking for deals in that category, it might be--it might not be the right time. Timing is so big in what we do, right? It's a huge--I would say timing and [seeds?] are so important. So you really have to get an understanding, if you're a founder, "Is this the right time for me to go and fundraise for this business? Should I try to hunker down, just focus on product right now, and come out in 6 months when things might be a little bit different?" Right? So again, going back to that fundraising strategy piece, but a big part of what I do also is just networking with investors, networking with other stakeholders in the States, folks that might be doing products at Slack or Pinterest or wherever and just asking them, "What are you seeing that's interesting within your category," right? Because that's helping me make more informed decisions when I'm looking--when I'm crafting my theses, my investment theses, and when I'm starting to go out and I'm meeting with different founders trying to see "Can I find founders that think similarly about the way the future's going to be, and then can I back those founders?" And that's--at the core of my job, as someone that's thinking actively about my fiduciary to my [inaudible] partners, I'm constantly thinking about that, right? Constantly trying to think about the trends that not everyone else is seeing just yet, right? Especially at the early stage. That's what we have to do. We have to be able to look across--look around not the next corner but two corners, because we're investing at such an early stage.Zach: Man, that's just--that's incredible, and there's--you know, I have--I have a couple questions about that role and how you show up. Before I ask that question, you know, all of the things you're talking about and the brands that you're mentioning and the conversations that you're having, I'm curious, how many--how rare is it to see black men moving in this space? And I'll say--I'll just say people of color. I'll just say non-white folks to start, but then how--but how rare is it? It seems like it would be rare.Clayton: Yeah. I mean, like, it's rare to see women. It's rare to see Latinx. It's rare to see black men. It's rare to see anyone that doesn't fit a certain profile of what you're already named, right? And so it is rare, but I think it's starting to get better, and, you know, I can't quantify that growth rate, but I think that more and more investors are starting to realize that there's a need to have multiple perspectives, right? We can't all think the same when we're doing an investment. We can't all, you know, have been trained at the same academic institution and travel in the same social groups, because we're gonna miss out on big movements. And even on a geographical note as well. There's big things that are happening across the continent of Africa, right? And there's big things that are happening all across the world, and we can't just think in that tunnel vision of "What's the next greatest thing that's gonna come out of Northern California?" We have to think--we have to think beyond that, right? And so there are things that are helping. There are things that are getting us where we need to be, but I think that the pace can pick up. And I mentioned, you know, groups like HBCU VC, which I think are great, but we need more of that. We need more of that, and we need more funds like what, you know, Chris Lyons is doing with the Cultural Leadership Fund. We need a lot of that. We need to amplify that times 10 at least, because I'm not seeing enough folks that look like me and have similar backgrounds when I go to these different conferences, different networking events, and I think that's problematic when we start to really see, you know, what's getting invested in, who's getting invested in, right? There's steps out there that talk a lot about that, you know? Talk about the amount of fundraising going to folks of color compared to, you know, folks that are coming from, you know, I'd say more common backgrounds within tech, and it's staggering in terms of the disparity.Zach: You're absolutely right, and we actually had an--we actually had an episode about that last season where we talked about--where we talked about being in venture capital while black, being in venture capital while other, and we discussed the disparity and fund allocation to the point where--they were talking about certain demographics, it was, like--to represent it in dollars would've been, like, basically zero, right? So it's nuts, and that--to your point though about the role, you know, it seems as if your role requires, like, a cocktail of being able to kind of influence without direct authority, a lot of emotional and social intelligence, and then also all of that still being backed up by significant business competence. Can you talk a little bit about how you show up being, you know, one of the few, and what is it that you're doing in these spaces that are--that are majority white? And what challenges, if you have any, have come with that?Clayton: Yeah. I mean, I think it's just, like, being able to paint pictures. Like, for one, I mean, you definitely need to have your facts, right? You need to have your facts and your stats down, and you need to be able to help those around you, and I'm talking about other investors, see what these trends are telling me. I need to translate that over to them, right? And I need to translate it over to them in language that they will be able to understand, because at the end of the day, like, we're all here to try to, at minimum, 3X our money, if not greater, right? 5X, 10X, and sometimes, you know, if these other investors lack that background, they might not be able to understand things in the same manner, right? And this is why I think every board room--and you're starting to see this within big tech companies, like the Twitters and the Salesforces and the Googles of the world, where they're realizing that they're building products for the entire world, so they need to have a team that reflects that, right? And so--but in the venture scene, we're not seeing that as--you know, we're not seeing it develop as quickly. So for me, in order to go in, you know, I need to be able to pound the table, have the facts, but really build these theses in a way in which can align with what my firm wants to do, right? And so I think a lot of it is just, like, you have to go the extra mile, right? You have to really put in that extra work, and it's making me a much better investor, but part of me is like, "It shouldn't have to be this hard," at the same time, right? Like, if I want to do a deal that's founded by a person of color and I think that--and I'm able to show the data, the trends, all of this is really supporting going in this direction, right? And it's funny, sometimes even money that's coming from outside of the United States sees it better than money that resides within the United States, because it's--like, they understand how emerging markets work, and sometimes, you know, if you put it in that lens, like--I mean, we're not emerging, but we have the same capability of an emerging market in terms of the growth potential. Then a lot of the dollars from overseas are like, "Oh, I want in on that," right? And so sometimes it's just you have to be creative, but, like, you just have to--you have to persevere. I think that's the biggest thing, is really, like, you just have to keep willing to push through, and that's the same note that I want to give out to the founders listening, which is, you know, you have to knock on--especially the seed level. You're gonna have to knock on a lot of different doors. I have founders that come in and tell me, like, "Look, I heard "no" 91 times, and I heard "yes" 9 times, but that's all I needed to close my seed." So don't get--you know, don't get, you know, depressed. Don't have anyone try to knock you off your hustle. You're gonna just have to find the folks that your message resonates with the most, and so that's the message I want to give to the founders that's out there.Zach: No, that's incredible, and you're absolutely right. You know, my father--you know, he's a bit of entrepreneur, financial background, sales background, and what he would--he always tells me is he's like, "Son, you know, you don't need but one yes." Like, often times you just need that one. Like, people keep on--like you just said, you know, the majority said no, but you really just needed, like, a scant few to say "yes" for you to continue forward. And I think it's hard though when--you know, when you continue to present and you present and you present, and, you know, who knows what those no's look like, right? 'Cause a no is a no, but, like, you know, the way that they--sometimes the way people tell you, you know, can hurt. Like, maybe you were told no like, 10 times, even though you were just told no once. You know, so those types of experiences. It's tough, so that's great advice. Before we--before we let you go, do you have any other parting words, shout-outs, or special projects that you're working on?Clayton: Yeah. So I just want to, you know, give a shout-out to Transparent Collective. You know, it's a great initiative that we're trying to, you know, continue, and we're actually looking for sponsors for that. So that's a--it's a great initiative. It's a labor of love, and I want to see that continue in the future. So folks out there that might be interested in sponsoring, hit me up. Big shout-out to--you know, this is gonna be a little bit of a long list, and there's people that definitely if I--it could be a lot longer, but, you know, I want to keep time in mind. So big shout-out to Monique Woodard. She's done a lot to help me out professionally. Big fan of hers. Chris Lyons, Marlon Nichols, Connie LaPuebla, Richard Kirby, Eric Moore, Austin Clements, just to name a few. And then also I love what initiatives like Black VC are doing and also HBCUvc, which I mentioned a few times in this podcast. So that's it. And also one last shout-out to all the founders out there, all the hustlers, all the innovators that are grinding right now. You know, keep building. Keep moving forward. Keep persevering. I know it might be tough. I know that, you know, it might be disheartening when you hear "no" here and there, but you really gotta keep grinding, and you will find your path. And, you know, to the best extent that I can, I'm always willing to make myself available for folks that have questions on the businesses that they're building or the careers they're trying to build, because I believe that you really have to pay it forward in this world. So on that note, that's all I have, and signing off. Thank you, everybody. It's been a great pleasure to have this conversation.Zach: Clayton, man, first of all, the pleasure has definitely been ours. Wonderful feedback, thoughts, and points of advice here. We're gonna make sure that we list all of the organizations that you listed, that you named off, that you shouted out, in the show notes, and then we'll also make sure to have your LinkedIn information in the show notes as well so that people can reach out to you as they're able. Now, I think that's gonna do it for us, folks. Thank you for joining the Living Corporate podcast, a Special Series sponsored by the Coalition of Black Excellence. To learn more about the Coalition of Black Excellence check out their website CBEWeek.com, and make sure that you actually sign up for CBE Week, which is gonna be happening February 18th to the 24th of 2019--that's this year, come on, y'all--in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you go to their website, you'll be able to learn more, get your tickets, and all that kind of stuff right there. Now, make sure you follow us on Instagram though, okay? @LivingCorporate, and make sure you follow CBE at @ExperienceCBE. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. Check out our website, living-corporate.com. This has been Zach, and you've been speaking with Clayton Bryan. Peace.

Angela J. Grayson is Principal Member and Founder of Precipice IP, PLLC that is a consultancy and intellectual property law boutique specializing in patent, trademark, copyright, and data law. Prior to founding Precipice IP, Anglea was most immediately Associate General Counsel, Intellectual Property and Patent Operations Lead at Walmart Stores, Inc.  Prior to joining Walmart, Angela had previous experience as in-house patent counsel for several Fortune® 100 companies, as well as prior experience in the examining corps for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.    Angela and I discuss; Her journey from Mississippi to Arkansas What attracted her to law Learning the spirit of being and entrepreneur from her family Companies Precipice works with today Difference between trademarks and IP's (Intellectual Property) The patent son Amazon's one-click process Finding the right lawyer And so much more! Sponsor/Partnership KDP Rocket Easy to use tool to help find bestselling book ideas, profitable niches, rank better in Amazon, & select Kindle keywords. Get your book noticed on Amazon.

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. we have the pleasure of sitting down with Tucker Ellis partner Monica Williams Monroe. She sits down with us to discuss her career journey up to this point and to share valuable advice for younger leaders in the corporate environment. We also promote CBE Week, an event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement.Learn more about CBE Week here! https://www.cbeweek.com/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and listen, y'all. Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, a non-profit organization based in California, in bringing a Special Speaker series to promote CBE Week, an annual, week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This is a special series where we spotlight movers and shakers who will be speakers during CBE Week. Today, we are blessed to have partner at Tucker Ellis LLP Monica Williams Monroe. In her capacity as local national and trial council, Monica represents a variety of corporate and insurance interests, including those of property owners, service contractors, product suppliers, and equipment manufacturers. She defends clients in several litigation areas involving premises liability, including both premises owners and subcontractors and claims arising from construction improvements. Monica also handles client matters involving general council--sorry, general contract analysis, business disputes, real estate litigation, and bankruptcy proceedings. Monica, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Monica: I'm great. Thanks so much for having me, Zach. I'm excited to be here, and it's a super sunny day here in California, so no complaints on my end.Zach: There we go, and no, excited to have you here, and shout out to California. Definitely a beautiful place. Just got back from San Francisco a couple weeks ago. I had a great time. For those of you who don't know you, and I recognize that I gave a little bit of an intro, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?Monica: Sure, yeah, and thanks for reading that background, but basically I'm a trial lawyer. I try cases here in Northern California and actually throughout the state, and I'm entering my 16th year of practice, which is kind of hard--Zach: Wow, congratulations.Monica: Thank you. It's kind of hard for me to believe that. I'm currently the Partner-in-Charge of the San Francisco office of Tucker Ellis, and the focus for my work is really on [inaudible] litigation, which is just business disputes, and product liability. Like I said, 16 years. It's really hard to believe, but I still love what I do, and it feels like a new challenge kind of every day. So that's a little bit about me.Zach: Wow. So now, you know, would you mind talking to us--so you talked about 16 years, [inaudible], and again, congratulations. Please talk to us about your professional journey and how you became a partner at Tucker Ellis.Monica: Yeah, yeah. You know, I was thinking about that, and just kind of even going all the way back, you know, my path was a little bit different than some others. I started out--I went to undergrad at Clark in Atlanta, and when I was in college I thought that I was gonna be in communications. I was really into marketing and PR. That's where my focus was. My degree was in communications. Then when I got out of undergrad, that's straight--what I went into was a media sort of focused career, and while I was there doing that work--it was really fun and exciting, but I still kind of wanted to do something different. So I had a few friends who were actually looking at law school. I had never thought about it. I'm the first lawyer in my family, and it just seemed like an interesting path for me. I've always, again, loved communication, loved words, and then kind of a wordsmith, and so I thought, you know, I should try. Some people encouraged me to go ahead and try and apply to law school, and when I did I ended up not just getting accepted, but I ended up getting full academic scholarship offers. So when that happened I was like, "You know what? That's probably something I should think about pursuing," and so I ended up, you know, going to Loyola Law School in L.A. I loved, loved, loved it. Had a fantastic experience there and practiced for a little bit after that in a few different areas. I did some transactional work and just dabbled in a few different things before I ended up at Tucker Ellis. And people really encouraged me as I sort of moved along, and when I found litigation, when I found myself in the courtroom, that's when I really found my love, and I was like, "Oh, you can do this. You can basically get up and argue with people, and people pay you to do this? I'm in." So when I really found my love and then found the right firm, I just matriculated through so quickly. I joined Tucker Ellis as an associate, and then I moved up later into the council position, and then in 2016 I was elected into the partnership, but for me it was really a natural progression. It was sort of just the thing I loved to do, and then I got lucky enough to be surrounded by people who really encouraged me and fostered me along the way.Zach: That's a beautiful story, and that's awesome. And, you know, it's interesting also, because I can count, like, the number of black lawyers that I know on one hand, and none of them are really working at a--at a firm. Like, they have their own kind of private practice that they've set up. What is your experience in navigating that space?Monica: Yeah. I mean, I think for me it's really been purposeful. It is a beautiful story, and I love my story, but it definitely didn't come--you know, it didn't sort of happen by accident. I really just surrounded myself with a network of folks, either, you know, both inside and outside of my organization. No matter where I've been, and that's been true for me now, is that I have a network of people that I can go to. When I'm figuring out my next steps, I'm definitely using them as much as I can as a sounding board. People who have done what I done and then some, people who are at positions that I can only dream about, right, that I think are really successful, those are the people that I kind of reach out to and say, "Do you think this looks right?" Like, "I'm headed in this direction. This is the next thing I want to do," and they give me honest and real feedback, and I think that that's the most important thing for me, is that I don't surround myself with people who just, you know, sound fantastic and tell me how great I am. They're real, and they'll tell me whether or not, you know, my goal or my expectation needs some more time to cook or if I really should be going after sort of that next thing. And so that's kind of how I got to the partner level, was really just having that strong network of folks, both inside and outside of the firm.Zach: So I'm--first of all that's awesome, and I know for me, in my experience, having folks who are in your corner, who you can talk to, who will give you honest feedback, right? Who are not just a cheerleader section, but at the same time ain't a bunch of haters too, right? But people who really care about you (laughing) and who actually will help you and help make sure that you're--you know, that you're staying on track and that you're--when you have ideas about the next steps that they actually make sense, and they're people you can trust, really. You know, as a senior leader who is also a black woman, do you believe that you have had any particular hurdles or challenges to navigate when it comes to building trust and establishing rapport and really building and leveraging influence?Monica: Yeah, that's a great question, and that's a very real, true thing. I mean, we have some very real stereotypes and perceptions I think, you know, for communities of color and black women in particular, that we have to deal with and sometimes break through, and for me, I think I've learned to try to find the commonality, right? I may look different than someone else. I may--you know, maybe come from a different background, but I try to find the commonality so I can develop the rapport and gain the trust, right, of others, whether it's inside of the firm, whether it's client relationships. Those are the things that I think bring us together, are the commonalities, and, you know, to be sure, I am--I've got a lot to work with. I am a first-generation American on my mom's side. She was from Panama, and my dad was born in the South and then later raised in New York. So I was constantly sort of surrounded by people of different cultures and different socioeconomic backgrounds. I spent a summer, you know, in Brazil one year, and then spent the next summer in Brooklyn. And for me, you know, I think my parents really--I look back, I think they probably did a lot of that intentionally, because I feel like when I walk into a room, no matter what it looks like, I'm comfortable, and I look for what I have in common as opposed to--you know, what might be different between me and the folks maybe at the table or in the room. So that's, you know, something that I talk to a lot of young lawyers about now, is when you're building your brand, sort of figuring things out and trying to develop a report, look for the commonalities. And like I said, I feel like I'm lucky, 'cause I have--I have a lot to dabble in. There's usually something I can find where I connect with someone. But that's important, you know? When you're working, particularly in the legal industry, you know, we're dealing with problems, right? People are not coming to me when they're necessarily happy about what's going on in business, and so you've got to trust me, and we have to have a good relationship to get through it sort of together, and same thing internally, you know? We are sort of building--we have a business and a law firm that's built on helping other people with their problems, so people in the firm have to trust me to move things along, you know, whether it's just in the office setting, with human resources or with clients, and we have to--you know, people always default to that. I feel like when, you know, things get tough, they default to just a common style of communication and the commonalities. So that's--that's what I try to do.Zach: So I definitely--that's just--that's great feedback to give, because often times I think it's easy for us when we feel--when we feel other, it's easy for us to, like, further otherize ourselves and be like, "Okay, well, of course. Of course you're not gonna," you know, "trust me, because I'm X, Y, and Z," as opposed to kind of leaning the other way and being like, "Okay, wait. Well, let's just--let me think about some of the things that actually are common between us that I can really leverage and really play to," and maybe even overplay to, in the spirit of creating those bonds. So when I talk to professionals--and you talked about younger lawyers, and so--you talked about 16 years. I've been working for about 7 years, and when I talk to professionals in my peer group--so, like, kind of, like--not mid-career, but, you know, early, early-career still professionals who are also black and brown, one of the things we always commiserate together is the feeling of not being heard at work, right? Like, we're speaking up in meetings to contribute or we're facilitating a meeting, and for some reason or another we're not connecting with our audience. Sometimes we'll even have the words that were shared repeated back to us as if we didn't say them. And so I'm curious, have you ever experienced that? And if so, you know, what advice do you have for younger leaders trying to manage that, you know, emotionally, mentally, and professionally?Monica: Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's definitely something that comes up. I think in various times in my career I've, you know, experienced that. We all have. The first--the first advice is just breathe and try not to take that stuff in personally, right? Especially if you're facilitating a meeting. That's tough, when you feel like you're not really connecting with your audience. That's just a tough kind of situation to sort of navigate through. And it may be an uncomfortable meeting, and it may not kind of go the way that you want it to, but my--you know, the way I dealt with it and the way I talk to young folks about that is just stay true to you and stay true to yourself. And you're talented, right? That's why you're facilitating the meeting or why you're raising your hand, because you have something of value to add and you know that, and so you're speaking up. And so just having that understanding that you are adding value to the conversation or to the room or to the group is huge, and if you stay sort of true to that and understand that, you know, it may just be that somebody is looking at you a certain way, and they're not seeing you or hearing you, or they're, you know, kind of overlooking what you're saying, or it may just be that that person, you know, is not in tune or connected for the day. It could be a variety of reasons, and so--those settings too are moments and opportunities where we try, as senior leaders, right, to listen to what's going on and to really validate, right, what someone's saying. Like, if I were in a meeting and you were talking, and I felt like people weren't connecting with you, I would probably jump in and say some things like, you know, "Another point that Zach made," and I would really try to validate what you said in order to get people to hear you, because now we're building consensus sort in the room. And that kind of goes back to that whole point, right, of having your mentors and your network and your allies around you, because people that are down for you will do that in the meeting setting, and they will make sure that they're kind of ushering things along for you. And I personally--when I look back now, I know I've had people do that. I just didn't know what they were doing at the time. [laughs] You know? And now I'm like, "Oh, yeah." You know, "That person was fully supporting me and kind of ushering my thought along," 'cause maybe somebody didn't hear it or didn't want to hear it, but then another voice came in of someone senior, and it was her. And, you know, that's just kind of the setting--the corporate setting, right? Sometimes it's unfortunate that it takes that, but it's helpful to have, and I know a lot of women in particular are very good about doing that. You know, for a lot of other women of color, when we're in meetings, they try to sort of support and really validate what the other woman has said, especially if we feel like someone wasn't paying attention or the room just doesn't get it, you know? So that's kind of how I look at it. And the other thing I would want to say about that setting is it might have just been a bad meeting, and you may get through it and it wasn't great, but debriefing afterwards is always huge. Like, if you feel like it didn't go well or you really weren't connecting, find somebody, you know, that you would consider to be an ally--if you don't already know that they are--in the room and ask them afterwards, you know? "What could I have done better?" "What did you think about it?" And, you know, take it from there.Zach: No, those are great points. Now, let's do this. Before we get out of here, any shout outs or parting words?Monica: [laughs] For sure. Well, definitely a huge shout out to Angela Johnson, the CEO and founder of CBE Week. This is an amazing opportunity for us to get together and not just network, but to build each other up and to improve on so many levels. So for all of the work that Angela's doing, I just want to give a shout-out to her. But for parting words, definitely--we'll be talking about this, these topics, at CBE Week, and I think it's a huge opportunity for us to get together and really, you know, talk about building our brand and being strategic and thoughtful about where our careers are going, so I'm really excited about the panel that I'm on. We'll have a whole host of people in legal positions, in diversity positions, really trying to help those, no matter what stage you are at in your career. You know, we can all use advice, right, on how to strategize and build ourselves up for the next step and make sure we have the support that we need. For me, this is, like, a true passion of mine, is trying to work with the pipeline and the next generation and making sure we all have access, you know, and opportunity, and so I'm so excited about CBE Week and our ability to, you know, talk about these issues. So I want to say thank you to you for giving us this platform.Zach: Yes. Well, thank you, Monica, and this is awesome. And actually, that's a great segue, 'cause that does it for us on this particular interview. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast, a Special Series sponsored by, you guessed it, the Coalition of Black Excellence. To learn more about CBE Week, check out their website CBEWeek.com. Make sure to follow them on Instagram at @experienceCBE, and make sure you follow us on Instagram at @LivingCorporate, Twitter at @LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate--please say the dash--dot com. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Zach, and you've been listening to Monica Williams Monroe, partner at Tucker Ellis. Peace.

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. we have the pleasure of sitting down with speaker, author, financial coach, and clinical psychologist Dr. Rosche Brown. She sits down with us to discuss her website, Doctor of Rethinking, and she shares some wisdom for young black professionals. We also promote CBE Week, an event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement.Rosche's website, Doctor of Rethinking: https://www.doctorofrethinking.com/Find out more about CBE/CBE Week! https://www.cbeweek.com/TRANSCRIPTAde: What's up, everybody? It's Ade, and listen, we're--Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, like some of you may know. Coalition of Black Excellence is a non-profit organization based in California, and we're bringing a Special Speaker series to promote CBE Week, which is an annual week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This special series is one wherein we'll spotlight movers and shakers who will be speakers during CBE Week. Today we have with us Dr. Rosche Brown. Dr. Rosche Brown is a PsyD--I don't know too many of those. Congratulations on your awesome.Rosche: Oh, thank you.Ade: And a licensed clinical psychologist based out in California. Thank you so much for joining us today.Rosche: Thank you for having me.Ade: Most certainly, most certainly. So like I mentioned before, we're just gonna have a conversation. We're great fans of mental health, mental wellness, on this show, and it's so great to meet and speak to other proponents who are not just, you know, talking the talk, they're walking the walk in a lot of ways. What brought you to becoming a mental health professional?Rosche: So I became a mental health professional mainly because of my background and my childhood.; There was a lot of dysfunction within, like, my family, and also my community, with violence and substance abuse, and, you know, lack of communication, as is always in most families, and so actually at a very young age, when I was about 14 years old, I actually decided that I wanted to be called a doctor, and I wanted to be able to help people. People were already telling me about their lives, and I was like, "I can do this." And so at a very young age, I had already placed in my mind that I was gonna become a doctor of some sort, either a (pediatrician or a psychologist?), so I began to figure out, you know, what the steps were to becoming a mental health professional, or either one of those professions actually. So I ended up going to Xavier University, which is an HBCU, so it's a historically black college, in New Orleans, and by going to that university, it was all about placing African-Americans into medical school, and so there was--like, that's when I really understood black excellence to a whole 'nother level, just being around so many people who were at the top of their classes that were actually there, and so I went through that process, and with my major being psychology/pre-med initially--I had enjoyed psychology, and actually from there continued to go into grad school instead of going the medical school route.Ade: That's amazing. For one, your tenacity--you were in school from 2001 to--to how long?Rosche: I graduated actually in 2009.Ade: Oh, my God.Rosche: Yeah. Well, it was a long time. You know, I understand that's a long time in school, but in the grand scheme of things, from, like, the way that my life was, I actually was done with my degree at 25 years old, which is very young, and I was--I had my doctorate. I had my Bachelor's, my Bachelor's and my doctorate by that point. Like, my 26th birthday was like, "Happy 26th birthday, Dr. Roche Brown."Ade: Wow, that's incredible.Rosche: Yeah, so it was awesome. I mean, so even though it took some time, I was so used to school that it was a lot easier compared to people who would take a break and then [inaudible].Ade: Right, yeah. You just went straight through. Yeah, that isn't easy. What are some of the biggest--I don't know, what were some of the biggest issues that you dealt with kind of pushing your way through school? I know you said from a young age you kind of made a decision about the path that you wanted, but did you ever come across any obstacles in your education? How'd that go for you?Rosche: Yes, I did. [laughs] So I went to school, you know, out of--I mean, in a whole other world, right? Like, going to New Orleans coming from California. So, you know, I did get a good group of people who were around me, and so that part was great. However, you know, like I said, I was pre-med initially, and one big challenge--which was kind of an interesting challenge that most people wouldn't think of--but one big challenge was mostly, like, the MCAT, which MCAT is the test that you take to get into medical school, and the part that was hard for me was actually kind of growing up in--you know, in the hood, in the community. I was so used to, more than anything, not having to--I didn't have to read that much in life. Like, (Pops?) would make me read. I wasn't a person who liked reading. Like, it was very, very difficult for me, and most people wouldn't think so 'cause I did well in school. It wasn't like it was so difficult where I couldn't excel, but it was difficult when it came down to the MCAT because it was all of those, like, reading comprehension tasks. You ever have, like, on SATs or anything like that? [inaudible], and they wanted me to comprehend, and I was like, "Oh, Lord. I got ADD. I know I do." Like, "I cannot focus for this long." It was, like, an 8-hour test, and I just couldn't--even when they were asking me certain questions that I could know the answer to, because the way in which they were asking it, it was very difficult for me. I took a lot of prep courses, and in the process of taking those prep courses, when they translated it for me, I was good to go. Like, when they translated it, I was like, "Oh, I know the answer to that," but I had difficulty with translating it on my own, if that makes sense.Ade: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense actually.Rosche: Yeah. So it was really hard for me to--so even when they were asking me about biology, any chemistry questions, physics questions, all of those had reading passages, and that's where I really struggled. And so I end up going through school doing pretty well. Like, my GPA was fine. I had, like, a 3.5 or more, so I was doing well, but I got to that place where it was time to, like, apply to medical school, and my MCAT scores were just not, like, really making the--making the cut, and a lot of it had to do with just really poor reading comprehension and the fact that I wasn't, like, in a school or--wasn't in kind of, like, a family environment in a household that really encouraged reading.Ade: Right, yeah. That makes a ton of sense, and I can absolutely see the repercussions. You mentioned that you struggle with a learning disorder. How does that affect--well, how did that affect your education generally, and how does it affect you now?Rosche: I don't know specifically if I have a learning disorder. It's never been diagnosed as a learning disorder at all, but it's a lot of--it's more about me attending to things. Like, I just don't stay long enough to pay attention to, you know, the words and everything for reading comprehension, and so it's always--and it probably was always a struggle throughout school, but I never noticed it until that point, and then currently with me being an entrepreneur and the aspects of being an entrepreneur, you really want to read as much as you can. You want to read Think And Grow Rich and How To Win Friends and Influence People, all of these, like, great books that are gonna just motivate you and inspire you to be better and push yourself. It's always a struggle for me to sit down and focus in order to even read those types of books because I--my mind goes all kind of different places. So I want the information in the book, but sitting down and having to read it can be very difficult. Even to this day, like, I still would say I dislike reading, even though (I don't often say that?), but I'ma make my book reports and everything. I'm just gonna make them love it. [laughs]Ade: I can totally get that. I get that. So what impact--just kind of pivot a bit and talk a little bit more about your career as a mental health care professional. What impact has, I guess, your background, coming from Oakland, going to this illustrious HBCU in Louisiana, what has that--how has that added to your practice? Rosche: It has added a lot, you know? When I first started in school, you know--considering that I was so young, right? I was 21, 22. Most people in my class were, like, in their 30s, and so I felt like I--felt like I was, like, an impostor. Like, "How did I get into grad school?" You know, "How did they accept me?" You know? And feeling like I just didn't have enough life experience initially in order to do the work that I was doing, so initially it was, like, a struggle just to be--to try to do therapy, but then after some time--I would say, like, after I graduated, maybe around 26, 27, coming into my own as just a woman in general and having had a lot more experience in it, I started realizing, like, my background of life experience actually was really helping me, because the places that I was working, I was working in, you know, urban communities. I was working in Richmond. I was working in Oakland. I was working in communities that were very [inaudible] the same community that I grew up in, and so I realized that the way to build rapport and the way to build connection was really by utilizing what I already knew, the stuff that was even outside of grad school. It was just knowing even just practical skills that I had learned on my own. I learned how to navigate certain worlds, you know? I learned how to even just--I guess you say code switch, but I learned how to navigate in the community, but I also learned how navigate when I was in professional settings, and because I was able to do that, it really worked very well for me to build the best relationships with my clients. And then also I served as a role model, even unintentionally, that you can be something better. So, like, even the idea of just striving for excellence, the way that I saw my clients was like, "You can [inaudible] a doctorate. No matter what." Like, "I see your skill, where you are right now and what family circumstances you come from. I have expectations of you to get a doctorate if that's what you desire." I don't have lower expectations like some of my--I would say my white counterparts would often sometimes feel. Just like, "At least they're coming." I'm like, "No, your expectations should be a lot higher for them."Ade: Right, right. I'm so glad you said that because I think--I've heard a lot of conversation around the danger of lowered expectations and how important it is to kind of expect better of yourself, and I imagine that it is much easier to do so when you are surrounded by people who are doing the same. Rosche: Yes, definitely.Ade: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off.Rosche: No, no, no. Just definitely. I agree.Ade: Yeah. So tell us about--speak a little bit more about kind of your practice and how you--any suggestions that you might have for young professionals who are navigating their way and kind of noticing a decline in their mental wellness.Rosche: So I think you mentioned something really good on the last point of, like, just the level of surrounding yourself by good people. I think that's always the biggest thing, right? So I would say #1 - surround yourself with the right people. I have an--I have an acronym that I often talk to people about, and it's called Check Your Pace, and what it means is, like, you know--have you ever noticed, like, when you've been physically walking with someone, and that person maybe started walking slower, or maybe they're unhealthy, out of shape, and you find yourself kind of, like, slowing down your pace in order to stay in connection with them, and then vice versa, versus you end up going with somebody who's walking fast. They're super healthy, and you're like, "Oh, my God, I'm trying to keep up with you," and if we can physically do that, like, unconsciously take on the pace of the person that we're walking with in a physical way, we ultimately do that mentally and spiritually and socially and financially, right? That, you know, we'll take on just kind of the energy of the people that are around us without even paying attention that we're doing so. So I just believe that it's so important when we're in this--like, just levels of being professionals or wanting to strive for excellence, that we first, like--the first part of pace is P, [inaudible], check the people that you're around, right? Because you are the average of the five people that you're around the most, right? So you want to check "Where is their money like?" You know what I mean? "Where is their career?" Like, you know, "What kind of degrees do they have? What's happening around them?" It's gonna be a reflection on what's gonna ultimately happen with you, and then also I think when it comes down to people, you also want to check what's all the--I call the A, the A part of pace, is alignment. Like, who are you aligning yourself with? And alignment to me is more vertical, like, you know, who's doing better than you in your world? Significantly better than you. You want to make sure you're aligning with that person who's making good money. If you're, like, making $50,000, and you want to make six figures, you need to be around a six-figure earner, right? You're a six-figure earner and you want to make $250,000, you need to be around somebody who's making $250,000, because there's no way for me to get there if I'm not around somebody who's actually showing me the habits that's necessary, the skills that are necessary to get there, right? So I have to be, like, in alignment with somebody who's even doing better than me in certain areas. So I believe that that's another area. The C part of pace is choices, and so you want to check every single choice that you make, right? And I was just actually at specifically this thing--this lady named Renae Bluitt, she just did a documentary called "She Did That," and it was talking about black women entrepreneurs, and what came out in that a lot was the level of not--of self-care and not practicing self-care, you know? Having that, like, Superwoman type of complex. Like, "I can do it all. I can do all of everything," you know? Like, "I can do family life. I can be--I can do everything in my career and not even outsource it, and I'm taking on too much," right? And I know I've been there. I live in that space a little bit now still, right? Where I haven't really figured out a way to release all control over what's necessary in my business, but it's also--it's creating a level of stress, and I think that we're just so used--specifically within our community, I would say we're always so used to juggling so much. So the mental health thing, we need to learn how to take breaks. We need to learn how to, like, you know, do even just mindfulness breathing. All about mindfulness, and I often tell people, even if you think it's weird, start with just five deep breaths, you know? We should, like, have five deep breaths, like, into our nose, holding it and breathing out. In our community, we know how to, you know, breathe in and--well, not just in black communities, but all communities clearly because now it's legal. People know how to breathe in and hold, right? Like, that's part of something that they do, but there's a way to do that without needing a product or an assistant. You can actually just learn the power of just breathing in, like, life force, and then being able to, like, hold it and then breathe out just kind of the waste and toxins that are in our body and even just, you know, negativity, and be able to learn how to, like, you know--to think more clearly. Like, "What's my next move?" Versus us just kind of going and going and going. And so that's a level of--that's the C. So kind of checking your choices. Sorry, I'm all over the place, but that's a part of my checking your pace. The C part is just check your choices. What choices are you making, and are they making you get towards your goal or away from your goal? And are you taking care of yourself in that process? And the E part of pace is expectations. Like, what are you expecting from your life? Because whatever we expect in our lives we will manifest in our lives, things that we're expecting unconsciously or even consciously. We need to really pay attention. "What is happening? What am I bringing into my life?" You know, people call it law of attraction or whatever it may be, but, you know, what's always coming into my life that I dislike, and how am I on accident and unintentionally bringing it into my life?" So, like, kind of check your expectations.Ade: That is--I'd really love to, like, follow up with that so that we can have a quick write-up for our listeners, but that was a great framework for kind of understanding your mental health and taking charge of that. Thank you for sharing it. Is there anywhere that--do you have any material that we can follow up with [inaudible] or anything that you would like to share or plug?Rosche: Yeah. I mean, I guess people definitely can go to my website. My business name is Doctor of Rethinking, and so my website is DoctorOfRethinking.com, and that's D-O-C-T-O-R-O-F-R-E-T-H-I-N-K-I-N-G. So DoctorOfRethinking.com. So, you know, on there you can get information about, you know, how to, like--you know, doing, like, coaching with me, or doing, you know--it can be therapy as well. I'm in more state of more solution-focused levels where we kind of visit the past, but we don't stick in the past as much as what therapy does anymore. And then also I do financial coaching, because I've come to realize that there's definitely, like, a psychology to the way that people spend and save their money, and so you can also go on there and be able to get information around, like, the financial area and even setting up an appointment with me for us to, you know, maybe meet and check and get educated on finances, what should you do next with your finances, and see what kind of solutions that are out there that might be helpful.Ade: That's a great point. I know that for quite a few of the people in my circle, a lot of our stress is financial. Being, you know, kind of the first person in your family to be a professional or the first person in your family to "make it," as it were, is a burden. Like, it's a blessing, but it's also a burden in a lot of ways, and so just finding out ways to develop healthy relationships with your finances cuts out a bit of the stress that you experience, yeah.Rosche: I mean, I totally agree. I mean, when you're the first person in your family to even be making money, and everybody around you, right, never knew how to, like, manage theirs, then now you have a lot of it and you're mismanaging yours because you don't understand how to manage your money, right? And you may even have a lot of emotions tied to your money, and then you also have family expectations that are tied to the money, right? And how do you set boundaries that are correct? I'll give you, like, just kind of--it's a simple example, but when I was--I used to work with foster youth, and I used to work with them in the community, and my client, her mom was a substance abuser, and I had substance abusers within my family as well, and she had--she had just got her first job, right? And she was like, "My mom always asks me for my money. What do I do?" And, like, for me, I know, like, coming from the community, I couldn't just tell her, "Don't give her nothing." You know? It doesn't really work like that. It doesn't work in families to just say, "I'm giving you zero," but I do believe that you should have a budget in mind of what you're planning on or willing to give to your family, if that's--you know, 'cause that's kind of how it works. I mean, "I know that I'm gonna have to give them something, but if I don't pay attention to what I'm giving them, I'll give them too much," right? And so what I often--what I told her, and I think it's the same even as we get older, is I told her, like, you know, put your real money--like, if you have $100, you know, you might want to put $90 of it in one pocket and then the $10 in the other pocket, and then when your mom says, "Oh, I need something," you pull out the 10 and say, "This is all I have," so hopefully she'll only want to take 5. [inaudible] you pulling out the 90, she'll need all 90, you know? Because she'll think that you're in overflow, and I feel like that's the same type of concept that even as we get older and we start to have more money that you have an idea of what I'm willing to pull out for my family so they don't end up taking my all and I'm finding myself in debt and, you know, poor credit and all this kind of stuff because I'm always bailing them out, right? And I'm ultimately bailing out irresponsibility. I'm never really teaching them to the skills to be better. I'm just--they're irresponsible, and I'm just gonna keep on helping their irresponsibility, and they're gonna always need me, right? So I need to figure out, like, what's the best way that I could, you know, bless them and, you know, all of that, but also make sure that I'm still doing what's right for me and my future.Ade: Right. That was perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that. We've kind of reaching the end of our planned conversation for today, but if there's anything else, any other wisdom that you'd like to share for young black professionals who are just kind of figuring it out on our own?Rosche: Yeah. I mean, it's--it's a process is all I would say, and I feel like every single step of the way, you know, you've just got to get help. You've got to get support when you need to. I recently--this is my own personal journey. I've been saying that you need to break up with your old self, and you have to break up with your old self, like, daily. Like, you know? And so I would say, like--so for me I feel like there's always--there's a part of me that's kind of holding me back at times, and it can be based on whatever - your personal experience, your child experience, backgrounds and everything like that, but some things are always holding you back, and so you have to kind of get to a place where, like, "Hm, how do I break up with that part of myself that's not really, like, serving me anymore," you know? Maybe it served me when I was younger, but it's not serving me now, and I need to really think about that a little bit. [inaudible]. Like, how do I--like, how do I go through the process of breaking up with myself and moving into my new, better, excellent self? Like an upgrade to myself, on a regular basis, and it could be simple things. It could be breaking up with, like, self-doubt, right? It could be breaking up with, like, your fears, breaking up with insecurities, you know, breaking up with poor habits, a lack of discipline. You know, all of those things, 'cause those things are really holding you back from your greatness. And like I said, I notice it in myself, right? And though other people outside of me can be like, "Oh, you're awesome, you're doing this, you're killing the game," but you know what you're capable of, right? And so sometimes you know that there's more that you could--that you can pull forth and you're not pulling it forth, and so you kind of have to find time to just, like, "Oh, I got to break up with this part." Like, when I lack discipline, when I don't want to wake up, when I want to be a little lazy, like, "No, get up. You have to do this," because, like, there's a better you that's out there, and the world is gonna miss out on that person if you don't--you know, don't get out of your own way basically.Ade: Right. Yeah, that was amazing to hear, and I'm probably gonna right down "break up with yourself" on some Post-it notes and put them in my workspace. For one, it's important to know that you're not the only one having certain experiences, right? So when you said that there are things that have served you in the past that no longer apply or no longer fit into this new world you're in, I can't tell you how hard I relate to that, and even further, that there are people overcoming those circumstances, you know, that that path has been walked before, is good to know, good to hear, and very, very useful. Well, I want to thank you so much, Dr. Brown, for joining us, for spending time with us today and for sharing your wisdom. It's been helpful in a ton of ways, and I just wanted to know if you have any Favorite Things or any shout-outs, anything that you'd like to share with our listeners before we go.Rosche: I don't know. Just continue--I often say, like, you know, "Don't be ordinary when you can throw some extra on it," you know? Ade: That is so cool. I love that.Rosche: So I'm all about "throw some extra on it," so what is that little extra that you need to do? I have no idea what I'm gonna be talking about specifically during the CBE Week, so maybe some of these same concepts might come up again. Don't be mad at me. You might need it again though at that point, but just I'm all like--we always have to do a little extra, so go ahead and put some extra out there and be, like, the best you that you were designed and destined to be.Ade: That's awesome, thank you. All right, that does it for us. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast, everybody. Do make sure to follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, on Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through www.living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, please make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Ade, and you've been listening to Dr. Brown. Peace.

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. we have the pleasure of sitting down with the founder and CEO of GIRL STEM STARS Kiwoba Allaire. Kiwoba sits down with us to discuss her exciting non-profit and its commitment to advancing young girls of color in STEM. We also promote CBE Week, an event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement.Donate to GIRL STEM STARS today! http://www.girlstemstars.org/donate-todayFind out more about CBE/CBE Week! https://www.cbeweek.com/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and listen, y'all. Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, a non-profit organization based in California, in bringing a Special Speaker series to promote CBE Week, an annual week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This is a special series where we will spotlight movers and shakers and leaders who will be speakers during CBE Week, and today, we have Kiwoba Allaire.Kiwoba: Hi, everyone.Zach: Kiwoba Allaire is the founder and CEO of GIRL STEM STARS and an executive business partner at Google. She is inspired and dedicated to helping young girls build successful futures in the tech industry. Kiwoba sits on local non-profit boards for the United Way, the Sheriff's Activities League, The Family Network, and Ronnie Lott's All Stars Helping Kids. Among her many accolades, Allaire was named one of the top 50 mufti-cultural leaders in technology by the Coalition Diversity Council, Women Worth Watching by Profiles in Diversity Journal, recipient of the Sistahs Rock Beyond the Limits Award, San Francisco Business Times’ Most Influential Woman, Forever Influential Woman, and Silicon Valley Business Times’ Most Influential Woman. Now, listen, y'all. We typically have air horns. We're gonna drop the air horns right here. She got all the badges. She's certified, y'all. She is here. Welcome to the show, Kiwoba. How are you doing?Kiwoba: Fantastic. Glad that the fires have subsided. God sent some rain, and we have blue skies. It's nice to be in California today, to say the least, you know?Zach: Absolutely. Well, no, definitely happy that you are--you and yours are safe and sound. So I know I gave our audience your profile in our intro, but do you have anything else you'd like for us to know about you?Kiwoba: I'm from San Francisco, born and raised, and I'm married. I have a wonderful husband named Patrick, and I have a little boy who's turning 5 next month, Christophe, and they are the love of my life. I have a, you know, great family. I'm blessed to be alive, you know? You'll know why when I say it--when I tell you later, but I am very grateful to be healthy and alive.Zach: Absolutely. You know, what do you--you know, we're gonna talk about Girl STEM Stars today and your background at Google and the work that you've done within your organization as well as your job and your career. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to STEM?Kiwoba: I would say that there's no room for creativity in the STEM fields. There are creative STEM careers, such as working in virtual reality, Pixar, making movies, or music data journalists or NASA, Spotify, Electronic Arts. There are even fun activities that I like to do myself, which is, like, paragliding and scuba diving. When I'm flying in the air with my husband, there's a lot of STEM. Scuba diving? There's a lot of STEM on my back, keeping me alive under 100 feet of water, underwater, and I generally don't see people that look like myself doing any of these activities, you know? It's the same with, like, golf. I mean, look, there's only one--we have one really highlighted person of color, black man, playing golf, and there's a lot of STEM when it comes to golf when you think about it. You know, just--there's a lot of fun activities that I just don't see people that look like myself doing, and I like to highlight that to the girls at GIRL STEM STARS.Zach: No, that's so true, and I will say that for me, as someone who doesn't really have a STEM background, it is easy to think about STEM and say, "Okay, well, it's just Xs and Os, 1s and 0s." Very binary, right? Kiwoba: It's everything we do.Zach: Right.Kiwoba: Yeah, it's everything we do. Zach: Absolutely, and when you talk about it--even, you know, in just, like, makeup. Makeup. You need deodorant, and I'm just looking--and the reason I said makeup, I'm looking--I'm in my bedroom right now, and I'm looking at my wife's nightstand, and I see deodorant--and I see deodorant on my--you know, just cologne. You know, print design. Just all types of things that it's integral to. So what impact, to your point around not seeing a lot of us in the spaces that you engage for--that you engage recreationally, what impact do you believe you are making when black and brown girls see a black woman featured so prominently in STEM, in the STEM field?Kiwoba: Huge impact. You know, I've been on both sides of it. You know, when I worked at an AI--artificial intelligence--company, tech company, called Rocket Fuel, I was the director of global giving, so we wrote a lot of checks, but I--like, thinking, you know, we need to do more than just write checks to charities. We need to actually--me, as the only black woman at the company at the time, I need to be able to lift girls up, not just give hand-outs. So in the position that I was in there, you know, I was the only black female executive, and I had the opportunity to bring children to our campus. Gorgeous campus, you know? It had a big gym and Olympic swim pool, rock climbing wall, the whole nine yards, and a cafeteria. Great lawns. And the kids would come and they're like, "Wow. What do I have to learn to work in a place like this?" Or when I bring them to NASA. Because of, you know, my position in the community, I have people that reach out to me from NASA, from, you know, Google in the past, and Microsoft, Yahoo. They reach out to me and say, "Hey, we want your girls to come." We bring them--we've had a relationship with NASA for the last five years, and some of the parents and the mothers will come as chaperones, and they start to cry. They're like, "Oh, my God. I didn't know anything like this existed." So being able to be in a position to lift girls up into what it looks like to work at a STEM--at a tech company, it blows their minds. Literally. I could imagine--I remember when we took them to Yahoo, and I had a bus to pick them up. Took them out to--I wanted to kind of give them a cultural experience. I took them out to dim sum. They loved it. And, you know, keep in mind, these girls are coming from either homeless shelters or they're coming from deep, deep in the unrepresented communities where, you know, some of the girls are--they live in a flat, an apartment, with 10 other people, and one bathroom, one bedroom, you know? Some of the girls are from very violent neighborhoods, right? So for them--you know, some of the parents are incarcerated. I remember one of the girls who was on the bus got a call from her father, who was in jail, in prison. So just getting them out of their community, one, giving them a good meal, and then I've got them now, or--[inaudible] I've got their attention, and then, you know, to step foot onto, like, the Yahoo campus. They literally all went, "*gasps*". Like, "This must be what Disney Land must look like." I'm like, "Yeah. Yeah, it is," you know? And then they're like, "Ooh, look, there's some cute Asian boys over there." [inaudible]. And, you know, they come inside to the lobby and they see all the gadgets, and they're given gift bags and t-shirts, and they're like, "Okay, I'll make sure to give this t-shirt back at the end of the day." I'm like, "No, sweetie. That's for you." They're like, "*gasps* This new t-shirt is for me?" 'Cause some of these girls haven't had a new piece of anything all of their lives, right? And then when we get the ERGs, which is--Zach: Employee resource groups?Zach: Employee resource groups, exactly. When we get, like, the black networks and, you know, all the females--the female engineers coming, or I have--when we're at NASA, I have the black female rocket scientists come and speak to them. They're just like, "*gasps* Oh, my God." You know? When we're on the bus, I'll ask them "What do you want to be like when you grow up," you know? And they're like, "Ooh, I want to be like Beyonce," or I want to be, you know, "a dancer in a video," and at the end of the day they'll be like, "Ooh, I want to be like that pretty black rocket scientist. I want to be like her." I've had congresswoman Jackie Speier come, and I think that's actually one of your questions, so I'll go ahead and let you ask it.Zach: [laughs] Well, first of all, this is great, and we don't have to have--we can freestyle it too, but this is good. I'm curious, really kind of talking about the program a little bit more, can you give us the origin story? Like, what was the motivation behind it? And where in you building GIRL STEM STARS did you realize how big of an impact it was making?Kiwoba: Okay, so I'll start with the first question. And, you know, I'm Christian, so it's okay, right?Zach: Absolutely, yeah. Go ahead.Kiwoba: Okay, great. Okay. So I--GIRL STEM STARS was born very organically. So I had to have an emergency surgery, and after that surgery I was told everything was fine, and two weeks later everything was not. I wound up passed out on my floor in our home, and my husband had to rush me to the emergency room, and all I remember them telling me was that "Call your family," and I'm like, "Why?" And they said, "Call your family, because your white blood cell count is off the charts." I don't remember anything after that but my husband telling me, after it's all said and done, that I had three absesces in my abdomen, and they had to do an emergency surgery to get them out. Supposedly, I woke up after all the surgery. I was in a normal room for two weeks, and I was holding court. I had my computer on my food tray, and I was having people come in from work and working, right? And I guess I was late working. It was, like, 3 in the morning, I was told, and I was talking to a nurse, and the next thing you know, all of my major body functions crashed at the same time. My heart, my liver, my lungs, my kidneys, everything crashed and, you know, they sent the crash cart, and my husband said they called him at 3 o'clock in the morning and said, "We have induced your wife into a coma because she's dying," and I was in a coma for about three--a little more than three weeks, and they figured out finally what was wrong with me. I had--we had some help. God sent--at the last moment, God sent some--all of the chiefs of surgery, the chief of pulmonary, some guy from Stanford, and then they finally figured out what was going on, and I was septic, and they had, like--had me on, like 10 IVs, and I was all, you know, needles everywhere, hoses and wires. So when I came out of it, my aunt--I was in ICU for over a month. When I finally got home, I couldn't walk. I had lost 50 pounds of body mass, and I'm a thin woman, so I couldn't afford to lose it. So I couldn't walk. Everybody carried me up three flights of stairs in our home and put me into bed, and my aunt came and visited me, and she's my prayer warrior. She's amazing, Auntie [inaudible], and she said, "Honey, you know that God sent his [inaudible] angels to save you, to keep you," 'cause my doctor said that I nearly died. I was 5 minutes from death three times. She says, you know, "That is God working hard. Those angels are--they're warring over you," and she said, "The devil tried to take you out, but I'm telling you right now that you were saved not to go back and work at that tech company--yes, you know, do your job, but you were saved for a greater purpose than just working at a tech company. You need to think and pray about what that greater purpose is, because you have a greater purpose on this earth." And I said okay, and I believed her, you know, after, you know, my cardiologist. The fact that I had a cardiologist was crazy because, you know, I was, like, a gym rat. I had a trainer. I was all [inaudible] up, you know, and, you know, for my cardiologist--she was an Asian lady that stood halfway up me, right? And she's screaming at me like, "You must take your medicine! Do you realize you were 5 minutes from death three times?" I'm like, "Okay, I guess I'll take the heart pills."Zach: Oh, my goodness gracious.Kiwoba: So yeah. I was intubated. You know, they had a tube down my throat for breathing and all of that. I was out out. So when I was home, you know, I was home for about three months, and I thought about, you know, "What is this greater purpose that I would--that I was saved for?" And I started to think about what bugs me the most, and then I realized, you know, I used to complain to HR and recruiting, "Please start hiring people that look like me. Stop hiring people that look like you." And, you know, being the only black woman there, I mean, it started to get kind of creepy, you know? I'm married to a Frenchman, a Caucasian guy, and, you know, if I didn't go to--if I didn't go to church or my parents' house, I didn't see anybody that looked like myself then, you know? Our [cert?] wasn't around then, you know? We live in--we live in an Asian neighborhood, so it's like, you know, "When do I get to see anyone that looks like me?" Right?Zach: Sure, yeah.Kiwoba: So then I realized, "Hey, instead of complaining about the situation, be the change you want to see," and I picked up the phone from my recovery bed and called LegalZoom and said, "I want to start a non-profit that advances girls of color in STEM," and--at first I said black girls, but then I--like, let's be a little more inclusive. Girls of color from underrepresented communities, and that's how GIRL STEM STARS was born, you know? It took me nearly dying to realize I had a greater purpose in me, and that greater purpose was to have an impact on the young girls in my community, and--you know, my bigger vision is to take it globally. Zach: So what was the moment, or did you have a specific moment in building GIRL STEM STARS, where you saw the impact and you realized how global and how major this could be?Kiwoba: Yes. When I was at Rocket Fuel, I--you know, the program was growing pretty, pretty big, and I had 100 girls, mostly black girls, but we had, you know, Pan-Pacific girls we had Pan-Asian girls. We also had Latinas and such, and we had a room of 100 girls in the same t-shirt, GIRL STEM STARS t-shirt, and we had little goodie bags, and we fed them breakfast. I had a black female rocket scientist come in and speak to them, and I remember--she's gorgeous. Her name is Aisha, Aisha Bowe, and she's amazing. You should interview her one day, and she said, "How much money do you think I make?" And the girls are like, "I don't know, $5,000?" You know, 'cause [inaudible] where they're coming from, right?Zach: Sure. And they're kids, like, you know? Yeah.Kiwoba: "No, higher. Higher." "10,000?" "No." "50,000?" "No. Higher, higher." She says, "I make over $100,000 a year," and the girls fell out of their chairs. They're like, "*gasps* Whoa. Wow. You must be a millionaire," you know? And I have all of my speakers bring in their pictures from when they were the age of the girls, which is between 8-18, but I prefer pictures, like, from when they're, like, 10 or something in pigtails, you know, doing sports or whatever, and then show them now, like, in different countries and then in their home and whatever, and their families, so they can really relate and--you know, so she'll say, "This was me when I was a little girl in pigtails, and this is me now, standing next to a celebrity," or whatever it is, right? And the girls are just, like, going, "Wow. Wow," you know? And then she talks about the type of work that she does. I had another lady come in and talk about how she's looking for water on Mars, and the girls were like, "Wow." Then I had--you know you've got them hooked, right? And then I had congresswoman Jackie Speier come in, and she is a mature woman, and she's Caucasian, and, you know, they had--you know, she had her security guards and everyone come in, and, you know, we had--I had the girls line up and clap when she came in, and they were mumbling to themselves, "What's this old white lady gonna have to say [inaudible]?"Zach: [laughs] That's so funny because that's so, like, true. That's so black. That's such an honest--[laughs]Kiwoba: And Jackie's my friend, right? And she's spoken for me many times, and I know she heard them, and she's like, "Uh-huh." "Okay." And I know I heard them. So Jackie and I are looking at each other and, you know, we wink at each other. So we get all the girls to sit down, and I don't remember if Jackie showed a picture of herself young. I don't remember, but she started off--and, you know, I introduced her, "Congresswoman Jackie Speier!" And she gets up there and she looks at them and she gets--everyone's quiet. She's quiet. She waits for the moment, and she goes--and she pumps her--she beats her chest, and she goes "I got shot up five times, left for dead overnight, nearly died," and they're like, "Ooh, here she comes. Okay. Okay. Okay." Then she said, "Then I got married, I got pregnant, and my husband got run over by a car on his bicycle at Golden Gate Park," and they were like, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" And they're like, "Okay." She got their attention. They're all at the tip of their chairs. She goes, "Now I'm gonna talk to you about adversity. Now I'm gonna tell you how I need to know STEM to run this constituency. I am a boss," and then she ends it with a picture of her and President Obama. The girls jump out of their chair and they're like, "Oh! Oh, man! Oh, man!" And I'm like, "Oh, my God." I had goosebumps going up my arms, and--so then, you know, at the end of the day--they all had little notebooks, and at the end of the day--and Jackie spoke forever. First, you know, her people were telling me, "Okay, you know, she's only got 30 minutes, okay?" "Only 30 minutes [inaudible]," and they were, like, frustrated. They were so frustrated. They were all spinning around in the hallway going, "What are we gonna do? [inaudible]." She was in her moment. She was in her element, right? So at the end I said, "Okay, now you told me what you want to be when you grow up. You wanted to be like Beyonce. You wanted to be, you know, a veterinarian so you can play with puppies, or you wanted to be a dancer in a music video. Now what do you want to be?" They're like, "I want to be like that badass congresswoman. Can I get her autograph?" They all run up, and they get in line to get an autograph from the badass congresswoman and take pictures with her and do selfies with her. We have just created a new STEM hero and icon in their lives. That's when I knew we were making an impact.Zach: So of course all of this is amazing, and really--in alignment with the story you just shared as well as when I'm looking at your content on your website--what I'm noticing, and what I'm really excited about, when I look at GIRL STEM STARS is that there is a clear effort and intention around making STEM practical and available for the girls that you're trying to reach, and I think for me coming up, when I thought about STEM, I would think about being, like, a scientist, or being some type of engineer. For me, those things were, like, as far away as being, like, an astronaut. Right? I was like, "Okay, how do I even do that?" When I would think about some of the math and things behind, it just seemed so far away, and I think, again, one thing kind of talking about the program, you all, you have these camps that I believe, again, kind of bring STEM to life and kind of bring it up close for the girls, and so I'm curious, do you have a favorite camp? Do any kind of stick out to you or anything of that nature?Kiwoba: Yes, NASA. NASA is one of the most mind-blowing camps that we have. The parents, you know, they fight to get on that list. We've been doing STEM camps with NASA for the last five years, and we're grateful to be invited every year, and we will get a busload of girls, 50 girls, every year. They're all from underrepresented communities, and some of the mothers to chaperone, and when we roll into NASA, we stop at the big front gate, and one of the engineers will get on, the one that invites us every year. He will give us a driving tour of NASA, and the girls are just--their faces and noses are pressed to the windows going, "Wow. Wow. This looks like a movie set, like a sci-fi movie," you know? They're all just blown away, and some of the--like, the mothers crying going, "I never knew anything like this even existed in the Bay Area." And then we will go to a big conference area, and we will meet the interns, the summer interns, and we usually have our teenagers do this camp, and it's all day from 7:30 in the morning until about 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon.Zach: Wow.Kiwoba: Yeah, and at first, you know, they're on the bus, and they're all tired, and I ask the same question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I tell you, Beyonce is famous. I mean, they always say Beyonce.Zach: She is beloved though, yeah.Kiwoba: I'm waiting to hear, like, Nicki Minaj. I don't know.Zach: Oh, no, no. I think Beyonce has--she has Nicki beat by a good mile or so.Kiwoba: Yeah, yeah. [laughs] So anyway, that's what they're saying on the bus, and I've got video of it too, you know? So when we get there, they all get into the conference room, we feed them breakfast, and they're--you know, they're tired. They're not used to being, you know, up that early in the morning, especially when they do these on Saturdays, you know? And I tell them, you know, you should congratulate yourselves, 'cause, you know, you're investing in your future, you know? You could be home like the other kids, watching cartoons and eating cereal, you know? You're here, you know, investing your future. And your parents, you know, thank you. And then a beautiful black woman with braids down her back comes in with a NASA jacket on, and they're all like, "Ooh." "She's pretty," you know? And she'll say, you know, "Hi, I'm Dr. Wendy, and I am a rocket scientist here at NASA," and they're like, "Ooh!" They're like, "Okay," and then the interns are all in their teens. They're, like, 16, 17, 18 years old, so the teenagers are seeing--will go from station to station. We probably hit by five different departments in NASA, and we also do breakout sessions, and we also [inaudible], and there was an engineer, a rocket scientist, that would take us--give us a tour, and we'd go around to these different locations. One could be drone testing. Another is a simulated space ship, where we can actually go in and see what it looks like to live in a space ship and touch things and hear what the interns are doing. They're creating little robots that fly in the air and bring tools to the astronauts. I mean, wow. Just amazing stuff, right? And there's other kids that are, you know, also working with rocket scientists to find water on Mars. That's a really big thing right now. Then we'll have a big--they host a big lunch, a big barbecue lunch, with a DJ, and the girls get out, and they dance, and they get--the black engineer group at NASA will come, and they'll dance with them, and they'll get to talk and get mentored by the black females at NASA, and at the end of the day of course, after Dr. Wendy will speak to us again and show videos, I'll say, "Okay, what do you want to be like when you grow up?" "I want to be like Dr. Wendy! I want to be like those other black women we were dancing with!" So I want them to have a real experience with these black female engineers and rocket scientists where they eat with them, they eat at NASA, they dance with people, they get to hear what they do, the type of work that they do, how they got to work they got to. So they're completely immersed in the environment, and, you know, it's like, "I did NASA." It's, like, you know, a major field trip to another country, to another world, really. Another world, because, you know, from their little perspective where they're coming from--some of these girls, like I mentioned before, you know, a flat or a homeless shelter--a flat with 10 people or a homeless shelter. This is--this is mind-blowing, and you see their little minds just go pop, and I'm like, "Yes, we got them." [laughs] Yeah, it's cool. It's really cool.Zach: It's easy to underestimate the value or the impact that that--outside looking in, what that has on a child. I remember for me, STEM wasn't really my background, Kiwoba, but it was music, and so for me, in middle school and high school, you know, I was one of the--one of the better players in Dallas, and I actually played in the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra, and I was--Kiwoba: Very cool.Zach: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so I was able to play with the orchestra. I was able to play at the [Meyerson?], which is, like, this big concert hall in Dallas, and it was great, and so--Kiwoba: That changes your world, right? That changes your whole world.Zach: Yeah. It changes your entire world, and then even like, you know, when I did some volunteer work where you have underrepresented kids come in who are--who come from poor backgrounds and they get to see your workplace, and they view the work site, and they see you. You know, they see somebody like me. I'm a young, black man, and I tell them I'm a manager or, you know, I just did this, that, and the third, and I travel every week. Just them seeing me and them asking, "So wait, you do this? You travel?" And it just blows--it changes their entire perspective, so that's incredible.Kiwoba: Yeah. I do the same thing. I bring the girls by my desk, you know, like at Google or, you know, wherever I was, at Rocket Fuel. I would give them a whole tour of the whole building, and they're looking around, and, like, "There's where the engineers work. See, there's accounting," and one of my friends--they hired another black woman, who was the head of accounting, and she'd come out in all her glory--you know, she wore beautiful clothes. She was stunning--she still is--and she's like, "So I'm the accounting part of this tech company," and, you know, "You have to know math to be able to be in accounting, but this is another way to get into a tech company," is through accounting. Then I would introduce them to the--you know, the head of marketing, who happened to be a female as well. Not of color. And the head of legal was female as well. The head of HR was female. So I would have them--we would go by each of their offices in their departments. She's like, "I'm the boss of this whole department." They're like, "*gasps* Wow." They can see the different departments in a tech company, right? So they meet, you know, everybody. The engineers, everyone. So that also allows them to see the different avenues into tech companies or into tech in general.Zach: You're right. Like, I think it is really is, when you think about STEM or when you hear the word STEM, rather, it's easy to go to, like, some scientist with a white lab coat and their sleeves rolled up, and they're, you know, pouring mixtures back and forth, and again, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's much more far-reaching than that. Kind of going back to the top of our discussion, STEM is in every single thing we do. There's some version--there's some version in STEM in literally every single thing that we touch or interact with or think about, and I think to your point around having them see the various avenues of how it all intersects is really important. So where can people learn more about GIRL STEM STARS? And how can they support? Like, what are the various avenues and options they have to actually support your organization?Kiwoba: So they can go to GIRLSTEMSTARS.org. That is, you know, where the Donate button is. We really need donations because these camps are not cheap, you know? And I don't charge. I don't charge the parents at all. I've had parents from Google and, you know, from different tech companies try and have their kids come to my camp, to pay. They're like, "I'll pay you $300," you know, "for my kid to go to your all-day camps," and I'm like, "No." This is for kids that can't afford to go to fancy camps, right? Their parents can't afford to. So we want to continue to make the camps free for the girls, you know? That means paying for buses and food and all of that. T-shirts, you know? All day to keep a child all day long, you know? So donations are definitely how people can help. Please, please. Give monthly. A monthly donation has more impact than a one-time donation, but that's most definitely what we need to do.Zach: Well, so first of all, I don't want to--and I don't want to zoom past that part, because there's so many opportunities and things out there, but they're limited by economic barriers, right? Like, the fact that you're able to offer these programs for free. Not for a reduced cost, not for a discount, but for free to these families is so important, and it's one less excuse, you know? And it's a big deal when a parent gives up their child for a day, even if they're chaperoning them, to follow them--to allow them to go off from their direct care, and then to do that and then to ask them to give up something monetarily in a situation where they may not--they may not have the means to do so. So that's beautiful that you're able to do that, and we'll make sure to have the donation link in the show notes, and we'll direct folks to donate there. Now, this has been a great discussion, but before we go, I feel as if--I feel as if you have some more wisdom and some more jewels to share, so I'd like to ask if you have any parting words or shout-outs before we wrap up here.Kiwoba: I would say, you know, thank you, God, for saving my life, so that I can have this impact on girls around the world. Also, keep in mind that I'm trying to--GIRL STEM STARS isn't about getting girls just into tech companies, but we're also--you know, this is why our girls are from 8-18. We're also creating the future board members, the future decision-makers, the future entrepreneurs of the world, you know? And that--you know, we want to have our girls be in those higher seats that are making the decisions about the world, about, you know, starting their own tech companies maybe. Starting whatever. Being entrepreneurs, right? And we're trying to give them that entrepreneurial mindset that you are in control, you know? That these kids, they can make a decision to say, "Okay, I can watch cartoons in the morning, or I can go to a GIRL STEM STARS camp at NASA," right? So giving them the opportunity, picking them up with a bus, feeding them, doing this all day long with them, it literally changes their whole world. I've had parents constantly sending me emails going that one trip changed their whole daughter's perspective on life, and she's starting--you know, her grades are better. She knows that--she knows what she sees, you know? 'Cause we--a lot of the girls are regulars. Sometimes, you know, they're different, but for the most part, you know, when these girls to go to all of these different events, you know, Makers Faire, and to city hall, and be treated like absolute ladies, you know? We treat them like gold. We roll out the red carpet for them. That day will never--it will never leave them, you know? It changes their whole life, and we know that we've changed them in that one day and that they're looking for--they've seen and experienced a better future for themselves. Zach: Absolutely, and often it just needs that--takes that one spark to set off a whole new set of dreams, so that's incredible.Kiwoba: Exactly.Zach: Well, awesome. Look, that does it for us, y'all. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. Remember, this is a special series brought to you by the Coalition of Black Excellence. To learn more about the Coalition of Black Excellence and their CBE Week, look them up at CBEWeek.com. If you have a question that you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Zach. You've been listening to Kiwoba Allaire, founder and CEO of GIRL STEM STARS. Peace, y'all.Kiwoba: Goodbye. God bless you all.

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. we have the pleasure of sitting down with the founder and CEO of I Love Being Black and Traveling Black, Kumi Rauf. Kumi sits down with us to talk about both of his companies and their collective vision of documenting black life and positivity. We also promote CBE Week, an event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lovebeingblack/https://www.instagram.com/trvlblk/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ilovebeingblackhttps://twitter.com/TRVLBLKFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lovebeingblack/https://www.facebook.com/TRVLBLK/Find out more about CBE/CBE Week here: https://www.cbeweek.com/Kumi’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumirauf/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and listen up. Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, a non-profit organization based in California, in bringing a Speaker series to promote CBE Week, an annual week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This is a special series where we spotlight movers and shakers who will be also speaking during CBE Week. Today, we are blessed to have Kumi Rauf. Kumi Rauf is an award-winning businessman with several recognitions under his belt, including being an officer and chair of the National Society of Black Engineers, a recipient of the Urban League Top 40 Under 40 Award, awarded Most Successful App Developer by Novacoast, and collegiate track and field athlete, so he dippin' on y'all. He has shared his knowledge and experience with a diverse mix of audiences via radio appearances, one-on-one seminars, conferences, television, and more. Welcome to the show, Kumi. How are you doing, sir?Kumi: Ah, man, I'm doing great. Thank you for that intro. I think I couldn't have done it better myself. Zach: Well, look, I find that--I find that hard to believe, but I'm also flattered, so thank you very much. For those of us who don't know you, would you mind sharing a little bit more about yourself?Kumi: No, I think that was a good summation. My name is Kumi Rauf. I founded the I Love Being Black movement, which I'm sure we're gonna get into in a second, and, you know, everything I do is sort of centered around black positivity. Zach: That's awesome, man. So yeah, let's definitely get into it. So let's talk about I Love Being Black. What was the motivation behind founding that company, and what's your mission with it?Kumi: Okay, okay. So the motivation--I went to school, to college, at a place called the University of California Santa Barbara. They had about 2.7% black people there, and, you know, things would always happen. Like, there were racist occurrences that would happen on campus. Off-campus they had, like, Dress Up Like A Minority parties, things like that. So, you know what, I need to make a statement, and I need to do it in a way that's not tearing down someone else's community but lifting ours up, because what I realized is that I don't think the answer is trying to fix someone else, trying to fix someone else's community. I think the answer is in fixing ourselves and in building ourselves up. So the mission for I Love Being Black is positivity, awareness, and action amongst black people worldwide.Zach: Man, that's beautiful. And it's funny--so you said dress like a minority? So just like in that movie--hold on, don't tell me. It's the movie--Dear White People. Like that movie.Kumi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Zach: That's crazy, and the funny thing is in that movie, at the end, they show pictures of those real parties, and I don't know if UC Santa Barbara was in there, but they showed a lot of pictures. I know they showed SMU and some other colleges that do those. Man, that's crazy. It sounds as if I Love Being Black is all about, like, pouring back into self, self-reliance, and self-affirmation. That's awesome. So somehow, in spite of all of the work that you've been doing with I Love Being Black, you've also founded and you lead Traveling Black. So talk to us about that company and the inspiration behind that one.Kumi: Yeah, yeah. I mean, with I Love Being Black--so it started with just t-shirts, and that, you know, spun into a huge social media enterprise on Facebook. I Love Being Black--we have about 6 million fans on Facebook, I think 140,000 on Instagram, and so we started traveling to a bunch of different places around the world because, you know, most black people don't live in the U.S. They live outside the U.S. So we started, you know, going through the continent, going to Columbia, going to Brazil. Like, you know, even London and Paris and all kinds of other places like that, doing photoshoots and just kind of documenting black life and positivity in these different places, and, you know, we kept hearing, "Hey, you know, I see all these pictures on Facebook and all that, but, like, how can I go with you guys? Because my friends keep flaking. Each time I try to leave the country, X, Y, and Z." So we said, "You know what? Let's do a pilot trip," and we did a trip to Cartagena, Colombia, and just--you know, just to see if I can actually plan travel for people that are outside of my immediate organization, and it worked, you know? It worked out really well, and we kind of kicked it off from there. We did South Africa next, and then we did Cuba, and we just got back from Ghana.Zach: So that's incredible, man, and it's--to your point about most black people not even living in the U.S., you know, let me tell you a story about me being black and traveling while black. My wife and I celebrated our five-year anniversary. We went to Belize this past May, right?Kumi: Okay. Congratulations, brother.Zach: Thank you very much, man. So we go to Belize, and, you know, I'm ignorant. Genuinely, like, there's plenty of stuff I don't know, but when I go to Belize I was so taken aback at just how, like, everybody there was black, right?Kumi: Yeah.Zach: And they look like--they look like black Americans. Like, they don't--you know what I'm saying? But, you know, if you look at, like, the mainstream media, or you look at whatever, you just don't--you don't see us being portrayed front and center like that, and it was amazing to see, like, us being in a position of being, like, the majority. Like, that was crazy to me. A beautiful experience. It was just crazy, and it was--the other thing that was funny about my time when we were in Belize, we saw some other black folks, some of them who were also from my city, Houston, and just from D.C. and California, and we all just linked up, and it was like a family reunion. Like, we got out there, we having a good time, we're traveling, we're doing our thing, and so I guess--and so I guess my question is, you know, how does traveling black encourage exploration and adventure? And I say that because even just in--'cause I haven't been out of the country many times, but any time I go and I see more people that look like me, it just changes the entire dynamic. It feels--it feels different, and so I imagine Traveling Black kind of has a similar vibe. I'm curious, like, how do you all achieve that, and how do you all facilitate and drive that?Kumi: That's a good question, that's a good question. So what we do is typically we want to bring our money that we have over here and put it in the hands of someone else that looks like you somewhere else. So it doesn't make any sense to me to go to, like, a South Africa and do, like, a safari with somebody that's not black and I'm in Africa. That doesn't make any sense, but you're kind of assuming that you're gonna find all of these black people and all kinds of tourism efforts and stuff like that, but you don't, especially in places like South Africa, you know, Brazil, things like that. You have other people sort of telling your story. So I think that's really important to kind of annotate, because a lot of people in this tourism space, even in the black tourism space, they don't do that. You know? They just--you know, "Whoever shows up from the tourism office, or "These people that we contracted to do this thing is who we're gonna give money to," and I'm like, "That doesn't make any sense if over here we're preaching, you know, spend money with black people and black dollars, black hands type of thing, and then when we go abroad we don't, you know, embody that same thing." So that's something we really, really try to make sure that we do. So our guides are black, drivers are black, photographers, everybody. So I say all that to say this experience that we try to create and curate for people around the world, we try to make sure it's authentic, number one. Number two, we want you to learn a bunch of stuff, but number three, we want you to kick it and have fun too. It isn't just like, you know, open up a history book and, "Okay, on your left you see this, and this date and this time," and all that. Nah, we want to--we want to drink some rum and dive in the ocean and, you know what I'm saying, learn how to do the dances and all of this other stuff. We want to learn all of that stuff. Yeah, and then be safe obviously as well.Zach: Of course. There's a certain level of intentionality that you have to have in terms of driving and centering black identity and black experience, like, regardless of where you are, and so I would never--I didn't even think about that, about the fact that, you know, other people telling your story, even if you're in majority-black spaces, and how--but I can say that, man, when we have people that look like us and who share the same--who are part of the same diaspora involved in that, man, like, the experience is way different. There's just a certain level of community and familiarity and just touch, personal connection that is not there otherwise, and so that's incredible.Kumi: Absolutely, yeah. And, you know, there's this whole idea that, like, Africans don't like African-Americans, and I'm like--you know, I don't know where that started from or who started it and all of that, but I know that I've been to 12 different African countries, and I'm considered family in half of those, and people love me and love us in all of those. You know? They're waiting for us to come back and just go there--don't bring the negative aspects of being from the U.S., you know? Don't bring all that stuff with you. You know, all the ignorance and stuff that we may not even know that we embody. Don't bring all of that stuff, and try to have an open mind. You know, try the foods. Learn something about the language. Be genuinely interested about those people, and they're gonna welcome you with open arms every time.Zach: I 100% believe that. I do think it's easy for us to kind of, like, get in our cynical bag, right? And then, like, make assumptions based off of just stereotypes and things that we've seen, and I also think, man, you know, just as a side note, I do think sometimes, man, like, Fake Woke Twitter be messing us up. Like, we end up kind of being a little too negative. It's like, "Let's just give it a try first." 'Cause when I went out to Belize, it was love everywhere I went. I had a phenomenal time. Like, everything [inaudible] was great, right? And I've heard amazing stories from people who also--they'll travel to South Africa, they'll travel to Zambia, they'll travel to Nigeria and Cambodia. Like, they'll travel various places and see us, right? And have a wonderful time. I think that--so that's a great point. So let me ask you this. Where can people learn more about I Love Being Black and Traveling Black?Kumi: Okay. Definitely you can, you know, touch base with our Facebook page for I Love Being Black or Instagram page for I Love Being Black. Just look up--the short tag is just LoveBeingBlack, no spaces. Just @LoveBeingBlack, and same thing with Traveling Black, and then the short tag is @TRVLBLK. So that's TRVLBLK for Traveling Black, and, you know, we try to post up pictures, and we definitely want to inspire people, you know? Just get that sense of wanderlust, but we want to go deeper than that obviously, and we want to take it into those black spaces and these stories that haven't really been told, and, you know, a lot of times there's more we need to unlearn then there is we need to learn, you know? Because if you don't unlearn these certain things, you know, these things that you may not even know--these stereotypes that you have, X, Y, and Z, you're not gonna be able to learn the correct thing in the future. Zach: Nah, that's so true, and it's interesting because of just the way that American society works. A lot of the things that we need to learn anew we won't really fully grasp unless we go and experience it for ourselves, you know what I mean?Kumi: Yeah.Zach: So that's incredible. Well, look, we're gonna make sure that we have all of your--we'll make sure we have all of the information on Traveling Black and I Love Being Black in the show notes, so for everyone listening, make sure you click--you click those links in the show notes to learn more about that. Where can people learn more about what's happening in 2019? Or rather let me ask you this way - what do you have planned in 2019? What's on the horizon? What are you excited about? What are you excited for folks to see, and what are you excited to share? Kumi: We have lists of--we have a great list of trips that we're gonna run down for 2019. Let me--first, in a month we're going to South Africa. We're gonna be there during the Afropunk Festival [inaudible]. So we're doing Johannesberg, Cape Town. Just gonna have a real good time. South Africa is, like, very near and dear to my heart. If I leave--I live in Oakland, California right now. If I leave Oakland, I'm most likely gonna live in Johannesberg. So we're doing that, and then I think three days after I get home we're going to Cuba, on the Experience Cuba trip, in January, wrapped around the Havana jazz festival. We always try to wrap our trips around some sort of event or festival that's, like, a cultural aspect of wherever we are. So let me see. We're going back to South Africa for the Jazz fest in Cape Town in March, and then I think the trip that I'm most excited about for next year is Ghana, because the president of Ghana dedicated 2019 as the year for the diaspora to come back home, and that's huge. Literally the president.Zach: That's crazy. That's crazy.Kumi: Yeah. Yeah, right? I mean, he's like, "Look, this is the year y'all need to come back home." You know, it doesn't have to be come back home to live and blah blah blah, but that is an option, and once you get there and you look at things and you're like, "Oh, wait a minute," and you sort of realize in your head, "This is an option." I've been to Ghana a few times, and each time I see a different opportunity. I'm like, "All right, so not just on cultural level, but for business, you know?" For setting up shop here. For doing something. For leaving your mark in other kinds of ways. So yeah, we're extremely excited about that trip. That's in August, and then we may introduce a new trip next year to Brazil in November. November is Black Consciousness Month in Brazil. They don't do Black History Month. They do Black Consciousness during the whole month of November, and then the day of Black Consciousness is November 20th. There was this really important figure in their history named Zumbi dos Palmares. He basically was like their MLK in terms of popularity, not in terms of what he did. You know, he was a freedom fighter. He helped a lot of people escape slavery into what they called quilombos, runaway enslaved encampments for free Africans. And, you know, he was caught, and he was killed, but they celebrate that on that day, November 20th, and there's a huge parade, and it's all cultural, and there's drumming and music and speeches and Portuguese, and, oh, man, it's amazing.Zach: Wow, that sounds incredible. So I'm gonna definitely, again, make sure to encourage our listeners to check the show notes so you can stay up to date with Traveling While Black--Traveling Black, excuse me, and I Love Being Black. Like, this is amazing. So before we let you go, any parting thoughts, final words, or shout outs?Kumi: Yeah. I will say that--I think most of what we need to do is just a mental shift. Once we shift mentally, everything else sort of--it doesn't automatically fall in line but, you know, it's a lot easier to be attained, right? So if we stop thinking of Africa as one place, that's a mental shift, right? That's a mental shift, because Africa is not one place. It's 54 different places, you know? It's the continent with the most amount of countries in the world, you know what I'm saying? And they have, you know, thousands of languages and customs and all kinds of different stuff. It snows in certain places. It's hot in other places. You'll have greenery in certain places, and there's--you know, there's a desert in other places. It's got every single climate, and, you know, a vast amount of diversity in the types of people and the things that you're gonna find there. If we start thinking of the different places in Africa like that, I think it's gonna open up a lot of different options. If you want to go on some luxury trip or something like that, they have all that, you know? Go to Zanzibar, you know what I mean? The richest square mile in Africa is Sandton, in Johannesberg, right outside of Johannesberg, you know what I mean? So if you want to do that you can. If you want to go on a backpacker thing and save money, you can do that too, you know? So don't only think of Africa as like, "Oh, we need to go on some sort of missionary trip," or, you know, bring some toilet paper to donate to people and this, this, and that. They're doing a bunch of amazing things. They're on blockchain technology. I'm on a team out of Rwanda that's leading the charge called Africa Gen, you know? So they're doing a bunch of stuff, even some stuff that we're not doing. Sometimes I find technologies over that we don't even have here, and I'm like, "Yo." We just need to learn more about each other and just open up that line of communication, you know?Zach: Man, absolutely. Again, what I'm hearing more and more is just go. Experience. Like, that's what I'm hearing. Well, look, this was awesome. Well, look, that does it for us, y'all. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast, a special series sponsored by the Coalition of Black Excellence. To learn more about CBE, check out their website - www.cbeweek.com. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, and make sure to follow CBE on Instagram at ExperienceCBE. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Zach, and you have been listening to Kumi Rauf, CEO and founder of Traveling Black and I Love Being Black. Peace.Kumi: Peace, y'all.

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. we have the pleasure of sitting down with the woman herself, Angela Johnson, to discuss CBE and its vision to unify and elevate the black community.Find out more about CBE/CBE Week here: https://www.cbeweek.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/experiencecbe/Twitter: https://twitter.com/experiencecbeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/experienceCBE/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coalitionofblackexcellence/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and listen, y'all. Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, a non-profit organization based in California, in bringing in a Special Speaker series to promote CBE Week, an annual, week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This is a special series where we spotlight movers and shakers who will be speakers during CBE Week, and today we have the founder and CEO of the Coalition of Black Excellence, Angela Johnson. Angela, how are you doing? Welcome to the show.Angela: Good. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.Zach: We'll wax a little bit poetic about your organization, its origins, on how we even got connected, because I think all of it comes together and really paints a [picture] into what the Coalition of Black Excellence is all about. Angela: Yeah, absolutely. I love the story of the Coalition of Black Excellence because it is truly a testament of really what happens when individuals work together to uplift the community and use their skills for that purpose. So it kind of all started in 2017 with a desire from a number of employees at different organizations, at black employee resource groups at a number of companies, who really just were looking at their Black History Month planning, and, you know, we have this idea of--it's very simple. What if we work together to sort of amplify our impact and, you know, what can we do to collaborate, to tell a different story that really is uplifting to the black community, highlighting excellence in the black community, and just is something that's really inspirational? So that was sort of the basis of conversation with a number of people, even at Uber Hue, where I work for my day job group, and once we sort of had that idea of--once we had that idea of, you know, "Let's collaborate," it was a really easy conversation to have with other black employee resource groups and diversity and inclusion committees and community organizers across companies in the Bay. So how--after we sort of had this big idea, we were, you know, kind of like, "Okay, well, what does this look like? How does this collaboration come together, and what's the goal?" And so the Week idea really came from--I grew up in the DC area, going to the Congressional Black Caucus and the Legislative Conference in DC, and I was just always inspired by how black professionals across, you know, a number of industries who focus on policy and politics come together to, you know, network, to talk about different ways that they can work together, to address unique issues impacting the black community. So that's where the idea for the Week came from, and, you know, our theory was pretty simple, that if we could kind of concentrate our time to one week, that amplifies the opportunity for us to be in the same room and network and kind of strategize collectively. And then after that it really became a lot of--a lot of people just bringing their expertise and their contributions to the table in different ways, which I think is really where this sort of coalition idea came from. The different companies would basically offer, you know, their expertise or their hosting capabilities or, you know, they had curated an event in a certain area. So some had curated an event in entrepreneurship or [inaudible]. You know, they're willing to open up to the community or open their space up to the community, and so it just became this really beautiful story of sort of everyone coming together to offer their expertise or their talents or their contributions for that week, and then my goal really was just--or my role was really just to kind of organize it all and, you know, ensure that people who had similar ideas worked together. You know, give 'em a day for the week and a time of the week. After the success of this year--so 2018 was our first year. We had 14 events over the course of the week. We did it the last week of February this year as well. Black Joy Parade was another non-profit organization that we got partnered or connected with during sort of our collaboration with a number of companies that was planning a huge parade in Oakland that really was focused on celebrating black culture and black artists, and it was just perfectly aligned to, you know, [ending?] events. You know, all-black companies took the lead of different events that I help facilitate, just their days, but then the Uber Hue team really took charge of the gala. So the gala was on that Saturday of the week, and the goal there was to really, you know, sort of be a more celebratory opportunity for us, to not only celebrate black excellence but to honor trailblazers, and then to give back. So we had six non-profits that we honored as a part of the week, and, you know, we picked a theme. It was non-profits promoting STEM and entrepreneurship in the black community. Once we identified the six non-profits, we featured them as a part of the Week, and then all of the money that we raised as a part of the gala went to those non-profits, because, you know, there was no organization associated with the Coalition of Black Excellence. It was just this conglomerate of black professionals at different companies who were coming together. So we donated all of the money and gave it all away, and then after that it really--just going through all of that process and, you know, figuring out sponsors, and we had a lot of great sponsors contribute to the gala and other events. It made me realize it was really important to formalize the structure to make it easier for people to engage and for us to be able to really, you know, move forth our mission that now is to unify and elevate the black community. So yeah, so it's an exciting path.Zach: It's extremely exciting, and, you know, I'm curious--in season 1 of Living Corporate, there were various guests who may have in their title "black" in some way, and I would always ask them, "Why do you have Black Texas Magazine?" Or "Why do you have Black this or Black that?" So help me understand why it was important for you to call the organization the Coalition of Black Excellence and not just the Coalition of Excellence or the Group of Really Cool People Doing Stuff. Like, what was the--what was the point in specifying or highlighting race within the title of your organization. Angela: Yeah, 'cause I think the--as I mentioned, the [inaudible] aspirations of the group that came together was really planning Black History Month Event, so that was sort of one thing. Like, the group that came together, they were all people who were--in some way, they were personally identified with being a member of the black community or really wanted to address some issue in the black community or highlight something, you know, amazing that's going on in the black community. So all of the people who came together for the founding of the organization were motivated by issues impacting the black community. Me personally, I think for--for me, you know, I identify as a black woman, and, you know, it's a community of people that, you know, I just really want to see come together and work together to amplify, you know, our impact and to address issues that I think are unique to the black community. I mean, it's not that--you know, there are a lot of issues that other communities have as well, but I think that there are some that--sometimes it's helpful to have people who understand some of those issues or have a personal experience that relates to it. And it's a range. It's not necessarily just issues, but just anything impacting the black community. I think sometimes it's helpful to have people who identify with being in that community to be the ones to kind of also help amplify that voice.Zach: What I'm excited about and what I think is important when I look at the Coalition of Black Excellence and I look at the website, I look at the information, I think it highlights the reality that the non-white experience is not monolithic and that the black experience is unique and that it's important, and there's nothing wrong with specifying and really zooming in on black perspectives, black experiences, because the black experience historically is unique, juxtaposed to other non-majority experiences. So that's great. So I'm really excited about the guests that will be a part of the Speaker Series. At a larger level, I'm excited about--of course Living Corporate is just really pumped about being a part of and working with the Coalition of Black Excellence with this. Let me ask you this though - what are you most excited about with CBE Week? Like, you know, what was the first one like? What do you feel like went well there? What are you excited about coming up on this one in 2019?Angela: The thing that I'm excited the most about CBE is I think it's gonna be a great opportunity to really unify black professionals from various backgrounds, generations, from, you know, different industries, and I think--you know, I'm a lawyer. I typically go to a lot of legal conferences for black professionals. I know there's a lot of great black professional conferences for tech, for business, you know, for engineering, for a lot of different areas, but what I think is exciting about CBE is that we're really trying to have sort of a really broad outreach in terms of who we want to reach in the black community, and I don't know if there's--I've never been personally been to a lot of spaces where, you know, in one space you can hear from experts in health and well-being and finance and entrepreneurship and tech and life sciences and music and art and entertainment and education in social impact and government and legal, and you can really--really get the spread of issues that are impacting the black community. It really is about, you know, sort of this 360 professional development experience. So that's one thing I'm really excited about, just to see all of that black excellence in the same room across all of these different perspectives. And to your point that you mentioned earlier, you know, there is--there is a lot of diversity within the black community, and so I think it'll be beautiful to see it all in one space, and then to take it to the next level, for us to start figuring out how to develop organic relationships so that we can start to work together to figure out, you know, how we can address some of the issues that we're seeing impacting the black community. So that's really the Thursday thing that I'm excited about. The Friday of the summit, of the two-day summit--which, I should add, is an addition from what we did last year--so the Friday portion is also exciting because that day to me is really about creating sort of an ecosystem of support, and, you know, it's more about, you know, looking--we have a legal pitch day where we have in-house counsel sitting with outside counsel who are African-American or who identify as being in the black community to engage whether or not there's an opportunity to hire those individuals for work, which I think is a lot--is really important to a lot of companies who are interested in improving their supply diversity programs. And then we have a health and well-being fair where it's gonna give an opportunity for black professionals to really hear from black therapists and black doctors. The vendor showcase and career fair, an opportunity for companies to showcase their products and engage with individuals in the black community, as well as recruiting these, you know, excellent black professionals. So it's exciting to see a day that has such a broad reach across different sectors and just will allow people to, you know, experience black excellence in a different kind of way. Zach: That's just so cool, and I think it really reminds me that the way that we typically, or that we're--I think professionally that we're conditioned to think about our jobs and we think about industries, which is often very siloed and sectored and, "Well, I should only talk to people in this space because I'm in this space" or "I should only talk with people in that space 'cause I'm in that space." We as black professionals can't really afford to adopt that mindset because there's not many of us in any of these individual spaces, and so the more we can be collaborative and cross-functional in how we think, how we operate, how we network, the better. And so what you're describing when you're talking about CBE Week, I agree it's extremely exciting, because we're creating bridges, not only from an inter-generational perspective but also from a professional or industry specialization perspective too. So that's really cool, and it really reminds me CBE Week has some major sponsors. And let me just take a step back. So when you and I first met and I told you, "On the LinkedIn profile I got little pocket squares and stuff, but don't let that fool you. I'm very country," and, like, I don't meet and see a lot of black folks, especially on the coast, 'cause I'm from the South, right? To the point we've both been making, the black experience is extremely diverse, and so it was so interesting when I met you and you were like--you worked for Uber then somebody else, then worked for Facebook and, like, Amazon. Like, all these major names, and again, I work for--I'm in a big firm consulting and everything like that so I'm not trying not to, like poo-poo myself, but I was just looking at all these names and looking at these black folks connected to these very large companies and the sponsorships. And so I'm curious, how were you able to build those relationships and connections?Angela: Yeah, it's really honestly the volunteers. So CBE, I should add, is an all-volunteer-run organization. We probably have 50 to 60 volunteers, and nearly all of them are black professionals at various companies or community organizations or schools, and they're not just in the Bay Area anymore. We have quite a few that have spread throughout the U.S. as well. But yeah, between our advisory board and our volunteers, who are spread throughout, I think it's really a lot of people who get the mission, get what we're trying to do, and support it wholeheartedly. Yeah, to your point earlier about, you know, just the black professionals coming together and using those--you know, using their talents and, you know, not being siloed, I mean, honestly, the CBE story is really that. Like, our marketing lead, for example, does marketing--I think she's the marketing director at Forbes, and, you know, we had a comms person who focused on, you know, our comms work, and, you know, we had tech people from Apple and other companies, and so I feel people who, you know, are at these different companies who have these skill sets, applying them to CBE and, you know, providing their time, which is making it easy for us to sort of move quickly, right? 'Cause--I mean, I'm a lawyer. There's so much I don't know about design, about marketing, about, like, even--honestly, like, the non-profit filings and getting all the non-profit paperwork. Like, that took lawyers too who were interested in, like, the mission and really wanting to--lawyers from Winston & Strawn, [inaudible] Taylor, to, you know, use those skills and, you know, offer them for free for, you know, uplifting the community. So I think we're just really fortunate to have a lot of volunteers who are connected to these companies and who are not only willing to give their time and their energy but are also willing to make the asks, the sponsorship asks, which, you know, at the end of the day is crucial. Zach: Super crucial.Angela: Yeah, to be able to fund all of this, and I think for us it's more crucial because the socio-economic gap that we really want to bridge--I mean, the main story is just access. I think a lot of people don't have access to these really amazing world-class professional development experiences because the cost is just too high, and so we're really aiming to use the sponsorship dollars to, you know, cover all of the costs, and not have to pass those costs down to the individual to attend. So my dream for 2020 is that CBE's summit will be completely free to the community and that it's completed sponsored by, you know, all of our great sponsors and paid for by our great sponsors. 2019 unfortunately we're--you know, we're not quite there, so we're gonna have a modest ticket price, but in the future that's definitely where we're going, and I think it's just so great to have sponsors and donors that get it and, you know, are supportive of it.Zach: No, absolutely. Now, let me ask you this. Where can people learn more about the Coalition of Black Excellence? And then, more specifically, about CBE Week?Angela: Yeah. So they can go to www.CBEWeek.com. Our registration will be opened up tomorrow actually for the summit, for the vendor showcase, for the gala. We'll be keeping it updated with speakers as they come in. You know, we're getting a ton of great speakers, as I'm sure you're aware since you're interviewing them all.Zach: That's right. [laughs]Angela: [laughs] But yeah, so we'll be updating that as well, but yeah, CBEWeek.com, and then you can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, where ExperienceCBE is our handle. Zach: And when is CBE Week? What are the dates for CBE Week?Angela: So CBE Week will take place February 18th to 24th. Monday is gonna be a volunteer day that's gonna focus on a number of volunteer projects throughout the day. Tuesday and Wednesday are gonna be more like 2018, where different companies host events that will be open to the community. The actual CBE summit that covers the different panel topics will happen February 21st and 22nd. The career fair and vendor fair will be that Friday, the 22nd, of the CBE summit. The gala will be on Saturday, the 23rd, and we're partnering with the United Negro College Fund this year for the gala, which should be exciting. Zach: Wow.Angela: Yeah. And then Sunday, again, will be the Black Joy Parade in Oakland. So the CBE summit will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, and then the other events throughout the week will take place throughout the Bay.Zach: This is--this is incredible. So before we get out of here, do you have any parting words or shout outs?Angela: A huge shout out to all of the organizations that are collaborating with us. So that's one thing I forgot to mention, that there's a lot of organizations, community organizations, like Traveling While Black, Our Collective, Toasted Life, Black Joy Parade, UNCF. There's so many organizations that are coming together, which I think is also a beautiful story, because, you know, we could all be competitive and try to fight for time and money, but this is really actually--you know, it's been completely the opposite experience. We've really been super collaborative, and it's been beautiful just to see the different organizations come together and host events throughout the week and, you know, work together in different ways. So yeah, so I think this will be an exciting time, and I hope to see everyone there. Zach: Absolutely. So this is the thing--so Angela, I'm gonna say this on the show. I want you to hear this while our audience hears this. Please don't underestimate the impact that you're making. Your point around access and the level of collaboration that the Coalition of Black Excellence is achieving here and already has achieved is incredible. You're absolutely right in that so often times you can kind of get caught up in competing against one another and trying to, you know, "I want to be Mr. Such-and-Such," or Ms. Such-and-Such, as opposed to really working together for a collective goal to achieve a unified vision, and so that is incredible here, and I'm just honored to be a part of this. I'm honored to have you here. We're gonna drop some air horns right here. Angela: [laughs]Zach: And we're gonna make sure that everyone has all of the information in the show notes, and then, folks, as you're listening to this, make sure that you realize this is the Speaker Series that you're listening to, Angela Johnson, Coalition of Black Excellence, and make sure that you continue to stay tuned with us, folks, because we're gonna continue to spotlight the speakers that are gonna be a part of this. Again, the dates are in February. You'll have all the details in the show notes. Make sure you continue to follow us, and we'll continue to drop information as it's released and updates as the Coalition of Black Excellence makes them. Now, that does it for us, y'all. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod. Remember, you can follow the Coalition of Black Excellence on Instagram at ExperienceCBE, and then you can follow them and keep up with all of their organizational updates on their website, www.CBEWeek.com. This has been Zach, and you've been listening to Angela Johnson, CEO and founder of the Coalition of Black Excellence. Peace. Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J., we have the pleasure of sitting down with strategist, leader, entrepreneur, educator, and mentor Adamaka Ajaelo to discuss her program, Self-eSTEM, and its vision to provide young women of color strong support models while supporting their pursuit to achieve a successful career in the STEM field.Learn more about Self-eSTEM here: https://selfestem.org/Contact or Donate to Self-eSTEM!CBE Week runs February 18-24, 2019! Learn more about it, and the Coalition of Black Excellence, here!https://www.cbeweek.com/Connect with us here: https://linktr.ee/livingcorporateTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and listen, y'all. Living Corporate is partnering with the Coalition of Black Excellence, or CBE, a non-profit organization based in California, in bringing in a Special Speaker series to promote their CBE Week, an annual week-long event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for the professional development and community engagement that will positively transform the black community. This is a special series where we spotlight movers and shakers who will be speakers during CBE Week. Today, we are blessed to have Adamaka Ajaelo. Adamaka is a strategist, leader, entrepreneur, educator, and mentor. Her 11+-year career spans over some of the world's largest companies, and she's leveraged her passion for the betterment of under-represented people to launch programming that helps build STEM capabilities for black girls. But don't let me give away too much of the sauce. Adamaka, welcome to the show. How are you doing, ma'am?Adamaka: I am doing well. Thank you for having me here. Just really trying to stay indoors, just with the poor air quality that we're having in the Bay Area, but besides that I am doing well.Zach: Absolutely, and yes, that's a poignant point. I know that the wildfires have been crazy. My sister-in-law, she lives in San Francisco, and she's telling me they can--she can smell the smoke. Like, she can smell it.Adamaka: Yes. I'm able to smell the smoke too in the air as well, and I live in Oakland.Zach: My goodness gracious. Well, so glad that you're safe, and of course our prayers go to the folks out there, and I know that news is developing on the condition. Wow. So for those of us who don't know you, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?Adamaka: Sure. I am an Oakland native via Nigerian parents. Both of my parents are immigrants from Nigeria, but I was born and raised in Oakland, California. Went to school down in Los Angeles, went to Occidental College, and I've always had a passion for the STEM fields. Majored in math, and then upon graduation I came back to start working for Kaiser Permanente, and I did my MBA program here in Oakland at Holy Names University. I really have a passion for getting young girls excited about STEM education and career opportunities, and I am a diehard Warriors fan. Really love basketball. I played basketball also in college. But yeah, I'm just someone that also just works in--uses my spare time to really give back to the community I grew up in.Zach: That's awesome, and that actually really kind of leads me into my next question about your non-profit. Can you talk to us a little bit about the program, its origin? I want you to tell the audience the name of the program and the vision of it too.Adamaka: Okay. So the name of our program is Self-eSTEM, and we were founded in 2014, and sort of the vision behind Self-eSTEM came from my I would say--I hate to say it, but painful experience as I transitioned from high school to college and found out kind of, like, the hard way that there weren't that many people that looked like me in the STEM field, and there were a lot of obstacles. There actually were a lot of people who were actually resistant to seeing someone like me walk into their physics classroom or their math classroom or their chemistry classroom in college. So my father was a chemical engineer by trade. He graduated from UC Berkeley, and he really instilled the resiliency in me to pursue my STEM education and career pathways. However, I imagine if I didn't have that solid foundation, you know, would I have continued down the STEM pipeline? So my vision is, like--there's probably other girls, young girls out there, who don't have that strong support model. So the vision is just really to provide the girls support at--young women, primarily young women of color, that support to pursue their STEM education and STEM career path throughout the critical stages of the STEM pipeline. And the name for Self-eSTEM, it's really sort of, like, a play on the word "self-esteem," and what we try to do is really build the girls' self-efficacy and build their self-esteem by promoting STEM education career opportunities for them.Zach: That's awesome, and, you know, it's interesting because I--I think I can't overstate the fact that the future of AI and machine learning is leaving even more black and brown folks behind than we already are, right? So, like, by the year 2025, the workforce is gonna look way different than it is, and we've had some earlier podcasts on Living Corporate talking about the workforce of the future and how, you know, things are really gearing to rev up even more, and that folks who are, again, already disenfranchised, already, for factors beyond their control, lacking access to the tools and information and resources so that they can really be set up for success, that they're gonna be even more at a disadvantage. And so while everyone doesn't need to be a coder, there needs to be some type of radical uptick, I believe, in our technical literacy, and so how do you help prospective members of Self-eSTEM get over the perception this is just so beyond anything that they can do?Adamaka: So what we do--it's really in our program service delivery model. So what makes us unique is--what we try to do is to have this approach of demystifying STEM, and what we do is we try to make sure that when we're providing our programs or we're delivering any type of workshops that we make it culturally relevant, gender-specific, and really connect STEM concepts to things that they're very interested in. So for example, we had one workshop called My Lip Gloss Is Poppin', and in the workshop the outcome was for the girls to create their own lip gloss. You know they got really excited by that, but through the process they started to understand the chemical compounds behind lip gloss. And then we started to also have guest speakers of people that worked in the makeup industry and talk about the chemistry behind it, to actually say, like, you know, "This is looking at makeup from a scientific perspective," and the girls were just like, "Wow, that's amazing." And then also another approach that we try to do is just really give the young girls role models, for our volunteers and our partnerships we try to do our best to make sure that the representation is there, that when they're going to these events that they also are looking at engineer--an engineer that's speaking to them or that's working with them looks like themselves, because I know that that's very key in sparking the interest in the young girls. And then the last thing that we try to do I would say is sort of, like, a re-engineering. What do they want their life to be? And trying to get them to really be in the space of dreaming, and then highlight, you know, some information about stats, about the STEM careers and how they can help you set up and allow you to afford the lifestyle that you desire, because a lot of the girls, although we're tapped into the under-served community, they still have those big dreams, and we encourage them to dream, and then we try to highlight and connect and say, "Based off your dreams, you know, these following career paths will allow you the opportunity to afford the lifestyle that you're looking to create."Zach: That's incredible, and it's so interesting when you--the example that you gave around lip gloss and make up, and I think it really underpins the reality that STEM is in everything that we do and everything that we touch, and it's easy--it's easy to get distracted or to get a bit discouraged, because I know for me growing up--so my father was a mathematics major, but, you know, for me, math was just always difficult. It was just--it was intimidating to me, and a lot of times I just psyched myself out. Like, "I can't really do this. I can't really do this," and, you know, while I'm certainly better at math now, I do wish that I would've dug my heels in a bit deeper when it came to really engaging STEM, because it's just in so much of what we do. So that's incredible, and it actually leads me into my next question, which is around the exploration camp within Self-eSTEM. Can you share more about that aspect of the program and all that it entails and maybe some successes and stories around that?Adamaka: Yes. So that's--the STEM exploration camp is our signature or actually a pillar of what we call our Early STEM Immersion programs, and with that the STEM exploration camp is a one-week summer camp that provides STEM curriculum and career exposure through a culturally-responsible lens. So that example of the lip gloss workshop, that was one of the workshops that we had in the prior years of our STEM exploration camp, but we also know that just having the girls only for the summertime is not enough, so there's two other components of our Early STEM Immersion program. So we also have a STEM networking club, and what that is is a weekend program that really curates hands-on field trips and interactive conversations with STEM professionals. So with that, our model is to really try to take this approach of linked learning, and that's to get out of the classroom, and the things that they're learning in the classroom, actually link it to actually a career path or a career field so they can see how the information that they're learning at school can help them in the future with whatever career path they decide to select. And then the third part of our program, our Early STEM Immersion program, is our robotics club, which I'm super excited about this, and our robotics club is a weekly after-school FIRST robotics program, encouraging coding and engineering principles, attacking real-world problems, and then what we try to do is set the--select a group of cohorts, of people in a robotics club, to have some type of challenges or missions, and they get the opportunity to compete--friendly competition--to compete against each other to see who can accomplish the task or the mission through programming their robot, and in 2007--and I know it's 2007--this statement is also something that our organization is proud of, but also too it highlights that we need more work. We were the first all-girls team, all-girls underrepresented minority team, to compete in a FIRST Lego League NorCal competition, but while we're really excited about that, it still highlights the fact in 2017 that we still have more work to do. And this year, in 2008, we launched our first tech challenge team, which is a more advanced robotics team where the young girls actually configure and assemble their own robot, and they have to code and program it for the robot to achieve their own--certain missions and tasks through our program. So we're really excited about that and really excited at the work and the effort that our robotics club teams are putting forward.Zach: That's incredible, wow. Now, I recognize that this program is primarily focused on young women of color, black girls, brown girls. What could someone who's interested in supporting Self-eSTEM--for folks who are in Corporate America, what are opportunities for them to kind of give back or really support the program?Adamaka: That's a great question. Well, on our website, www.selfestem.org--and that's S-E-L-F-S-T-E-M.org, on our Contacts tab--people can go on our Contacts tab and sign up to join our emailing list, and what we do is we send out information about upcoming workshop opportunities where people can volunteer and get engaged. In addition to that, people can also go on our Events tab and also see the upcoming events and programs that we have currently running, in operation. And also, two, if anybody has any questions of wanting to donate--we always need resources, volunteer resources. [inaudible] in addition to financial resources they wanted to make a donation or a partnership opportunity with the company that they work for, they can either email us at info@selfestem.org or go visit our Contact tab on our website to see other forms to get in contact with us.Zach: So thank you for sharing all of the information about how to contact and reach and donate, but is there anything else? Any other ways that folks can support Self-eSTEM? Adamaka: Yes. We have our annual fundraiser--it's Martini Splash Fundraiser--happening Saturday May 4th, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. at the California ballroom in Oakland, California. So people can definitely subscribe to our newsletter and even follow our social media pages, @SelfeSTEM on Instagram and on Facebook, to get the latest information on when tickets are going to be released and for sale. But definitely coming out and supporting us at our annual fundraiser, and we definitely keep it lit and very fun, and people have a great time. But the fundraiser is another option to support our organization.Zach: That's awesome. Well, we'll make sure--like I said before, we'll make sure to have all of this information in the show notes, but this is great. Okay. That's incredible. I can just tell--I'm so excited just to hear about all of the things that Self-eSTEM is doing, and it's just--it's just really incredible, Like, robots? This is the thing for me, right? And I'm sorry. I know you already--you've already come and gone by this example, but robots? Like, as a little boy, I just remember me making--like, just thinking about me making a robot was just so complex to me, like, and just the practical ways that you're reaching and inspiring and teaching these girls is incredible. And, to your point, plenty more work to do, and so I hope that our audience is hearing this, they're hearing your information, and that they actually pay attention and engage. We'll make sure that we'll have Self-eSTEM's, you know, relevant information and how to get in contact with you all, how to donate, how to support, in the show notes as well. Before we go though, do you have any parting words?Adamaka: I just--I do have some parting words. Just for the listeners, one of the things that I wanted to highlight is to really push forward the message that STEM literacy for youth in the United States has become a matter of national security. The STEM education and career fields are the gateway to America's continued economic competitiveness and national security, so we have to make significant investments in our youth's interests and engagements towards STEM fields, as well as their interests and willingness to select STEM education majors, STEM majors, as well as STEM career pathways. It is projected that by 2022--between the time of 2012 to 2022, it was projected that companies would need approximately 1.6 million employees who possess some basic STEM literacy. So just to really highlight the importance of it, that it's not necessarily just for the kids' ability and their skill set, that it's something that's needed--this is something that is needed on the national level, and it has been an imperative for our national security as well as our economic competitiveness in the global economy. Zach: Amen. Come on, now. You got me excited. Well, awesome. Well, that does it for us, y'all. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast, a special series sponsored by the Coalition of Black Excellence. To learn more about CBE, check out their website - www.CBEWeek.com. Now, make sure you follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Zach, and you've been listening to Adamaka Ajaelo, founder of Self-eSTEM. Peace.Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

Through our partnership with the Coalition of Black Excellence founded by Angela J. , we have the pleasure of sitting down with movers and shakers across the industry to discuss their unique programs and visions. This is a series promoting CBE Week, an event designed to highlight excellence in the black community, connect black professionals across sectors, and provide opportunities for professional development and community engagement. CBE Week runs from February 18-24 and will be located in the Bay Area!Find out more about CBE/CBE Week here: https://www.cbeweek.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/experiencecbe/Twitter: https://twitter.com/experiencecbeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/experienceCBE/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coalitionofblackexcellence/

On today's episode of She Walks In Truth, Life and Digital Strategy Coach for Christian Entrepreneurs Angela J Herrington chats about finding freedom and fulfillment in our God-given calling.   Go to www.shewalksintruth.com for more episodes!

Går det att skapa ett lajv eller ett cosplaycommunity där alla känner sig välkomna? Lajvaren Anna Erlandsson och cosplayaren Angela Järvela Uchebe berättar om sina erfarenheter av rasism inom både lajv och cosplay.

Går det att skapa ett lajv eller ett cosplaycommunity där alla känner sig välkomna? Lajvaren Anna Erlandsson och cosplayaren Angela Järvela Uchebe berättar om sina erfarenheter av rasism inom både lajv och cosplay.

Käes on puhkuste hooaeg! Miks sõita kaugele, kui ka Eestis on palju avastamist ja huvitavaid kohti? Stuudios on EASi turismispetsialistid Angela Järg, Karmen Paju ja Kaja Karlson. Tunni lõpus räägime eesti parimatest toiduainetest, lihakategoorias oli kaks võidutoodet: Rannarootsi grillkoot ja Talleggi rukkikattega kanafilee. Kuuleme, millega on täpsemalt tegu.Saatejuht on Krista Taim. Kuula 22. juunil kell 10.05. Foto: Tiia Teder

Käes on puhkuste hooaeg! Miks sõita kaugele, kui ka Eestis on palju avastamist ja huvitavaid kohti? Stuudios on EASi turismispetsialistid Angela Järg, Karmen Paju ja Kaja Karlson. Tunni lõpus räägime eesti parimatest toiduainetest, lihakategoorias oli kaks võidutoodet: Rannarootsi grillkoot ja Talleggi rukkikattega kanafilee. Kuuleme, millega on täpsemalt tegu.Saatejuht on Krista Taim. Kuula 22. juunil kell 10.05. Foto: Tiia Teder

Join Life Coach Ade, his special guests Angela J. Brown and Patrice A. London for "Birthing Divine Ideas: Birth Doulas' Stories" on Ask Life Coach Ade Radio Show. There is an order to life. For whatever you want to achieve, there are steps, systems, experiences (painful and joyful) that you will go through. There is the correct/balanced way to do it and then there is the slow (forceful) way to go about it.  Call in 347 426 3346 or post your questions on "Ask Life Coach Ade Radio Show" LIKE page on Facebook. Angela J. Brown is the Founder of DoulaLove’sCreation in Orange County. She is a licensed Registered Nurse, Certified Birth Doula, Childbirth Educator, and Pregnancy Life Coach. She has been a Birth Doula since 2003 and has been a holistic practitioner for over 20 years. In 1992, she graduated as a Spiritual Practitioner from the Agape International Spiritual Center  in Culver City, CA. As the director of the Eternal Life Ministry, she facilitate monthly support groups for individuals who were diagnosed with terminal illnesses.   Patrice A. London is a native of Washington, DC, and graduate of Duke Ellington School of the Arts (vocal music) and Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, FL (BA Speech Communication). Patrice currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.  Patrice is a proud Christian Unschooling mother who loves learning alongside her children. Additionally, Patrice is a birth doula, placenta encapsulation specialist, classically trained coloratura soprano who also loves public speaking, acting, writing, reading and cooking. Patrice is also the co-owner of Eden’s Pure Herbals, making quality herbal product like soap, lotions, salves and more!  

This Week’s Episode I’m excited to share an interview with a fellow podcaster this week. Ijeoma Eleazu is a calligrapher who is also the host of the Etsy Conversations Podcast. You can also find Ijeoma on Facebook, Twitter, and BlogLovin. I discovered Ijeoma when she spoke on a panel at the Podcast Movement conference in August, and I invited her on the show to talk about selling on Etsy. After the interview, I share my experience selling crochet and knitting patterns as instant downloads on Craftsy, Crochetville, Etsy, Kollabora, and Ravelry. Ijeoma’s Tips for Etsy Success Read the Etsy Seller Handbook Join Etsy Teams Set goals based on your motivations for selling on Etsy Brand your shop and optimize your listings Engage with the Etsy community Why Etsy? Etsy is an online marketplace focused on handmade and vintage goods, along with supplies for making handmade projects. Etsy currently has over 1 million active shops that collectively sold $1.35 billion in merchandise in 2013. An Etsy “weather report” from November, 2013 reported that over 7.4 million items sold during the month ($147.5 million of goods sold) and there were 2.15 billion page views. In addition to being a great marketplace for crochet/knitting/weaving makers, yarnies, and sellers of supplies and notions, when Etsy introduced instant downloads in spring, 2013, it became more interesting to authors and designers who want to sell PDFs. And, Etsy now curates a separate wholesale marketplace. About Ijeoma Eleazu Ijeoma Eleazu is the current (and third) host of the Etsy Conversations Podcast. I first heard about the show when I attended Ijeoma’s panel at the Podcast Movement conference. About eight years ago, Ijeoma learned calligraphy through a friend who is a wedding coordinator when she was tasked with helping out with wedding invitations. Ijeoma later took additional classes and now has a part-time calligraphy business (primarily focused on weddings) in addition to her full-time job. Ijeoma first became an Etsy seller to destash vintage sewing patterns she bought at an estate sale. Occasionally, she sells her calligraphy services through Etsy, too. In 2013, Ijeoma discovered podcasts through the Podcasts app on her iPhone. She soon became a heavy listener of both the Etsy by Etsy podcast and the Etsy Conversations Podcast. She listened to a whole year of episodes in the Etsy Conversations Podcast, but realized it had stopped airing new episodes. In the meantime, Ijeoma took the Podcasting A to Z online coaching course with Cliff Ravenscraft, host of the Podcast Answer Man. She contacted the Etsy Conversations Podcast show host, and then the show founder, and eventually became the host in September, 2013. (You can hear more details in Episode 21 of the Etsy Conversation Podcast, where Ijeoma interviews show founder, Angela J. Holden.) In my interview with Ijeoma, she shared several tips for Etsy sellers. 1. Read the Etsy Seller Handbook The Etsy Seller Handbook is a frequently updated category on the Etsy blog, and the posts walk you through every aspect of setting yourself up for success on Etsy. Ijeoma recommends reading the Handbook first so you can understand the way the platform works. In particular, she thinks their tips on branding, naming your shop, setting up listings, and optimizing keywords for their search engine are helpful for new shops. (You can find an indexed version of the Handbook archives from 2013 here and the wholesale guide for Etsy sellers here.) 2. Join Etsy Teams Etsy has literally hundreds of teams, organized by region, product type, and function (e.g., marketing). Ijeoma recommends listening to Episode 35 of the Etsy Conversations Podcast, where she interviews the owner of the Laughing Cabin Etsy shop, who is also the co-captain of the North Georgia Etsy Team, for more information about Etsy teams. An active team can help an Etsy seller in several ways, including Clarifying updates to Etsy policy, search, or site functionality, Providing shop critiques to members to help sellers optimize listings to increase views, Taking a critical look at product presentation and sharing feedback to help convert more visitors to buyers, and Engaging in collaborative marketing efforts.  3. Set goals based on your motivations for selling on Etsy Consider your goals in opening (or maintaining) an Etsy shop. Understanding your motivations can help you to gauge your success. Is your shop there to provide side income, cover the costs of a cherished hobby, replace a full time income, and/or to support a charity? If you understand why you are getting onto the platform and know your goals, you can work towards achieving them more easily. Additionally, knowing your goal for your shop helps you to clarify your time commitment which is important because finding success on Etsy usually requires a substantial investment in time. You need to make your handmade goods or instant downloads, take shop photography, understand the platform so you can optimize your listings and tags, and market your shop.  4. Brand your shop and optimize your listings Branding can help you get noticed in Etsy’s crowded marketplace. You want to ensure that when people browse a category, they recognize your brand through your listings for future purchases. Decide who you are marketing your Etsy products to and speak their language to help them find your items. (Etsy shares 6 Tips for Defining Your Target Customer here.) Other important elements for optimizing your Etsy listings include photography, proper use of tagging, and descriptions. Tagging with keywords is critical on Etsy. Ijeoma recommends searching for similar items in another tab on your browser so you can use common and relevant keywords. There are many great articles about branding and optimizing your listings on the Etsy blog, and teams and the Etsy forum discussions are also a resource. Etsy sellers also have the option of opening multiple shops, which may be helpful if you have different target audiences. Ijeoma mentioned that it is always possible to correct your course on Etsy and to start over with your acquired wisdom. 5. Engage with the Etsy community Etsy has a supportive community environment that is different from other online marketplaces where Ijeoma has sold her crafts. Sellers often work together collaboratively rather than in competition. Many Etsy sellers are also Etsy buyers with an interest in “shopping handmade,” but for various reasons. Some may be supporting local businesses or cottage industries, others aim to move the handmade movement forward, while still others may be seeking eco-friendly products. Ijeoma interviews Etsy shop owners in every episode of the Etsy Conversations Podcast. Here are four that I found particularly relevant to yarn-related business owners: Episode 9 with Beate from Patterns Tried and True, Episode 25 with Gloria from the Creative Glo, Episode 28 with Robyn from She Makes Hats, and Episode 29 with Hailey from Ozetta. Ijeoma also invites Etsy shop owners to contact her if you are interested in being interviewed on her show.  Marie’s feedback on marketplaces selling instant pattern downloads In response to questions that Beth Graham, a (mostly) crochet designer and teacher, shared with me, I talk about my experience selling crochet and knitting patterns as instant downloads on Craftsy, Crochetville, Etsy, Kollabora, and Ravelry after the interview. I’ve found that easier patterns that would appeal to general crafters are more likely to sell on Craftsy or Etsy than on Ravelry. Patterns for women’s fashion accessories or garments with an easy difficulty rating seem better tailored for the Kollabora audience. And, obviously, Crochetville is specifically for crochet patterns, but I don’t think most of their users exclusively use the Crochetville marketplace for buying patterns. I find Ravelry to be the best marketplace for “die hard” crocheters and knitters, although I don’t have experience with Patternfish. Thanks for joining us for an interview, and for sharing what you’ve learned, Ijeoma! If you enjoyed this episode The Creative Yarn Entrepreneur Show is no longer broadcasting. Episodes are available as a service to the yarn community. This episode originally aired in October, 2014. Be aware that content may be outdated. If you'd like to chat with other yarn-related business owners, join the Creative Yarn Entrepreneurs Facebook group. Support Marie's work by buying one of her books, Make Money Teaching Crochet: Launch Your Business, Increase Your Side Income, Reach More Students (Amazon | Gumroad) or Design It, Promote It, Sell It: Online Marketing for Your Crochet and Knit Patterns (Amazon | Gumroad).  

If you've been a long time listener of this podcast OR, if you've gone back in the archives and listened to every episode from the beginning, then you'll immediately recognize this name – Angela J. Holden. I am sooo thrilled... The post appeared first on .