Podcasts about ghanaian american

In Episode 26 of Undercurrents of Romance, Tracey Devlyn sits down with author Nana Malone to discuss her new romantic comedy, GOLD COAST DILEMMA. Caught between her family's expectations and her own dreams, Ghanaian American heiress Ofosua Addo must choose: duty or desire. In GOLD COAST DILEMMA, Nana Malone delivers a sparkling, emotional rom-com where tradition collides with forbidden love—and one daring woman fights for the life, and love, she truly wants. Love this episode? Rate it ⭐️ Thumbs Up

In Episode 26 of Undercurrents of Romance, Tracey Devlyn sits down with author Nana Malone to discuss her new romantic comedy, GOLD COAST DILEMMA. Caught between her family's expectations and her own dreams, Ghanaian American heiress Ofosua Addo must choose: duty or desire. In GOLD COAST DILEMMA, Nana Malone delivers a sparkling, emotional rom-com where tradition collides with forbidden love—and one daring woman fights for the life, and love, she truly wants. Love this episode? Rate it ⭐️ Thumbs Up

In this episode, Dr. Alex McDonald speaks with Dr. Todd Wolynn of the Trusted Messenger Program on the importance of building a trusted relationship with the physician and patient.  Guests: Alex McDonald MD, FAAFP, CAQSM is a former professional triathlete, Family and Sports Medicine physician and core faculty of the Kaiser Permanente Fontana Family Medicine Reaidency Program. His professional interests include exercise and physical activity, baccine advocacy, social media and patient communication. Dr. McDonald holds degrees from Connecticut College, the University of Vermont Larnar College of Medicine, Southern California Kaiser Permanente as well as Duke University. Dr. McDonald lives in Southern, CA with his wife, 3 children and 3 dogs. He enjoys running, riding his bike, cooking, coffee and 8pm dance parties with his kids Todd Wolynn MD, MMM is the Executive Director of the Trusted Messenger Program, a part of the public health non-profit Public Good Projects. He's been a vaccine advocate Advocate for more than 30 years, through his work as a clinical vaccine researcher, immunizing pediatrician, and immunization confidence and communication researcher.  Rob Assibey, MD, FAAFP (he/him) identifies as Ghanaian American. Dr. Assibey is the Associate Program Director at San Joaquin General Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program. He practices full spectrum family medicine with an emphasis on street medicine, addiction medicine, SNF. Dr. Assibey is the District 8 Director on the CAFP Board, and a member of the JEDI Committee. Resources: CAFP 2025-2027 Strategic Plan goals Advance Payment Reform and System Transformation Develop and diversify the family medicine workforce Champion public health, health equity, and evidence-based medicine Support member wellness and joy in medicine Public Good Project - publicgoodprojects.org Trusted Messenger Program PGP's health care professional networks, health care professional training program, and its significant health communications infrastructure form one program: the Trusted Messenger Program. The Trusted Messenger Program has no equivalent in health care and public health. It brings with it the support of national medical boards and public health associations, as well as sustainable funding from several of the largest health funders. The Trusted Messenger Program is supported by a rigorous evaluation protocol, counting among its partners and stakeholders the institutions that protect and provide the public's health. The Trusted Messenger Program offers the opportunity to strengthen our health systems and to build a bulwark against the continued erosion of trust in health information and intervention. AIMS Approach - Announce, Inquire, Mirror, and Secure Family Medicine POP! - www.familydocs.org/pop The Family Docs Podcast is hosted by Rob Assibey, MD.   The Family Docs podcast is developed, produced, and recorded by the California Academy of Family Physicians. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent or the California Academy of Family Physicians. More information at www.familydocs.org/podcast. Visit the California Academy of Family Physicians online at www.familydocs.org. Follow us on social media: Twitter - https://twitter.com/cafp_familydocs  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cafp_familydocs  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/familydocs 

Eric Adjepong is a Ghanaian-American, native New Yorker, "Top Chef" finalist, and author of the new cookbook, Ghana to the World. He talks about the unique flavors and traditions of Ghanaian cuisine, and how to make, among other dishes, the perfect jollof rice.

I met Michael Bervell through a mutual acquaintance some two months ago. Since then he and I have talked a few times and found that we have many interests in common.   Michael grew up near Seattle where he stayed through high school. He then went across the country to study at Harvard. He received a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy. He then returned to Seattle and began working at Microsoft where he held some pretty intense and interesting jobs he will tell us about.   At a young age and then in college Michael's entrepreneurial spirit was present and flourished. His story about all that he has done as an entrepreneur is quite impressive. Today he is back at Harvard working toward getting his Master's degree in Business.   Michael has developed a keen interest in digital accessibility and inclusion. We spend time discussing internet access, the various options for making inclusive websites and how to help educate more people about the need for complete inclusion.       About the Guest:   Michael Bervell is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He is currently the founder of TestParty, an industry-leading and cutting edge digital accessibility platform.   In 2007, Bervell co-founded “Hugs for” an international, student-run non-profit organization focused on using grassroots strategies to develop countries around the world. To date, "Hugs for" has fundraised over $500,000 of material and monetary donations; impacted over 300,000 youth around the world; and expanded operations to 6 countries (Tanzania, Ghana, United States, Uganda, Kenya, and Sierra Leone). Because of his work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015 (alongside Pope Francis, Dikembe Mutombo, and 7 others).   Bervell is the youngest Elected Director of the Harvard Alumni Association and was the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle. He has helped to found and lead a variety of organizations including the WednesdAI Collective (a Harvard & MIT AI incubation lab), Enchiridion Corporation (a marketing consulting company), Sigma Squared (formerly the Kairos Society), and Billion Dollar Startup Ideas (a media and innovation company). He has experience working as a Chief of Staff at Databook, Venture Fellow at Harlem Capital, Portfolio Development Manager at Microsoft's Venture Fund, Program Manager at Microsoft, and Software Engineer at Twitter.   His various efforts have earned him recognition as a Samvid Scholar (2022), Warnick Fellow (2021), Jonathan Hart Prize Winner (2019), GE-Lloyd Trotter Scholar (2018), World Internet Conference Wuzhen Scholar (2017), Walter C. Klein Scholar (2017), United Health Foundation Scholar (2016), Deutsche Bank Rise Into Success Scholar (2016), Blacks at Microsoft Scholar (2016), Three Dot Dash Global Teen Leader (2015), Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholar (2015), National Achievement Scholar (2015), Coca-cola Scholar (2015), Elks Scholar (2015), AXA Achievement Community Scholar (2015), Build-a-bear Workshop Huggable Hero (2014), and more.   Ways to connect with Michael:   Personal Website: https://www.michaelbervell.com/ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbervell/ Company Website: https://www.testparty.ai/ Company LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/testparty/     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello, everyone. I am Michael Hinkson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. Our guest today is Michael Bervell, who is a Ghanaian American angel investor. He is a published author, and he is also an entrepreneur and a scholar by any standards. And if he wants to brag about all that and all the the different kinds of accolades and awards he's gotten, he's welcome to do that. And I will just take a nap. No, I won't. I won't take a nap. I'll listen to him. I've read it all, but I'll listen to it again. Michael, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Michael Bervell ** 01:58 Thanks so much for having me. It's a great name. You have too, both the podcast and your own name, another Mike.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 You know, I think it's a great name. People have asked me, why I say Michael, and do I prefer Michael to Mike? And as I tell people, it took a master's degree in 10 years, a master's degree in physics in 10 years, to figure this out. But I used to always say Mike Kingston on the phone, and people always said Mr. Kingston. And I couldn't figure out, why are they saying Kingston when it's Kingston, and I introduced myself as Mike Kingston. And finally, one day, it hit me in the head. They're getting the mike the K part with the Kingston, and they're calling it Kingston. If I start saying Michael hingson, will that change it? I started saying Michael hingson, and immediately everybody got it right. They said Mr. Hingson or Michael, or whatever. I don't really care, Mike or Michael is fine, but the last name is hingson, so there.   Michael Bervell ** 02:50 It's so funny. Yeah, I'm glad no one's calling you Mr. Links and or something like, yeah, yell and adding it. They   Michael Hingson ** 02:55 do. They do. Sometimes do Hingston, which isn't right, yeah, which shows you sometimes how well people listen. But you know, what   03:03 do you do? Exactly, exactly? Tell   Michael Hingson ** 03:07 us a little bit, if you would, about the early Michael bervell Growing up in and where, and all that sort of stuff. And you know, then we can get into all sorts of fun stuff, because I know you've been very interested in accessibility and disabilities and all that, we'll get to that. But tell me about you growing up. Yeah. I mean,   Michael Bervell ** 03:24 for me home, home for me was in Seattle, and I actually lived and went to school in a place that was about 30 minutes apart. So my parents would drop me off at school in the morning. I go through the day, meet all my friends, and then come back home. They would pick me up, take me back home in the evening. So I had a lot of time in the day after school, you know, school ends at two, and my parents picked up a five to do all this other stuff. So I used to always be part of every student, student club. I did every sports team, you know, I was in high school, you know, on the captain of all these, all these teams and such. And of course, I would go home and my parents picked me up. And in that in that in between time, I spent a lot of time in the library, so I probably every day in middle and high school, spent three hours a day at the library, just in that in between time, waiting for your parents, waiting for my parents. So that for me, was a lot of time that I just used to incubate projects. I taught myself how to code and took some CS classes when I was, you know, in high school at the library, I became friends with all the librarians and joined the student library advisory board when I was in eighth grade at the library, and did a bunch of other things. But I think probably the most impactful library project that I had was actually a nonprofit that my family and I started, and it was memory of my grandmother, who born in Ghana. She used to always go back there in the winter times, because, you know, it's cold in Seattle, warm in West Africa in the winter   Michael Hingson ** 04:48 as well. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 04:49 yeah, it was super warm there. I mean, it's always, you know, 80 plus degrees, wow. Yeah, it's lovely. And so she would always go home. And whenever she went back to Ghana. She would, you know, come into our bedroom and tip doe at night and go into the bed and take a teddy bear or take some of her old school supplies. And whenever she visited, she would give that to kids in hospitals and schools and North pages. So, you know, when she, when we, when she passed away, we ended up going back to Ghana for her funeral. And, you know, all the burial ceremonies, and there were just so many people from the community there expressing their love for her and what she had done. And we realized that, you know, while it was small for us, you know, as a six year old or sixth grade kid, her taking a teddy bear had such a big impact, and it had these ripple effects that went far beyond her, so that that was, like one of my biggest projects I did at, you know, in sixth grade and beyond. It's an organization, a nonprofit called hugs for Ghana, which we've been running for the last 15 years, 15 plus years, and now is operating in six different countries. And we do the same thing. We get teddy bears and school supplies and all these things, and pick them up and hand deliver them to kids in developing countries. But that, for me, was one of my most fundamental parts of my childhood. When you ask me, you know, was it like as a child? I can't separate my growing up from, you know, those long drives to school, that time at the library and eventually the nonprofit made in honor of my grandmother,   Michael Hingson ** 06:10 and giving back,   Michael Bervell ** 06:13 yeah, and giving back exactly how   Michael Hingson ** 06:16 I talked fairly recently on this podcast to someone who formed. Her name is Wendy Steele. She formed an organization called Impact 100 and impact 100 is really primarily an organization of women, although in Australia, there are men who are part of it. But basically what Wendy realized along the way was that, in fact, people are always looking for, what can they do? And at the same time, they don't have a lot of time. So with impact 100 she said, and the way the organization works, the only thing that she requires that anyone who joins the organization must do is donate a check for $1,000 that's it. If you don't want to do any work, that's great. If you want to be part of it and all that. It's fine. If the organization is primarily composed of volunteers. I think they have now like 73 or 77 chapters in mostly in the United States, but they're also when Australia and a couple of other countries, and they have given out in the 20 years since the organization was formed, all told, close to $148 million what they do is they take the money that comes in, and they for every $100,000 that a Chapter raises, they give a $100,000 grant to someone no administrative costs, unless those are donated on top of the $1,000 so all the money goes back to the community. I think the first grant they ever gave was to a dental clinic to help with low income people and so on. But it's a fascinating organization, as I said, it's called Impact 100 and she started it because as a child, she was very much involved in giving back, and for a while she she didn't. And then it started again when her father passed away, and she realized how many people from the community supported her and the rest of her family because they didn't have the tools or the resources to do it all alone. Yeah, so I'm not surprised that you have the story of giving back and that you continue to do that, which is really pretty cool.   Michael Bervell ** 08:36 Well, I think I actually heard a statistic that I think they tried to track how early childhood development, or just early adulthood, affected later adulthood. I think one of the findings was that people who volunteered when they were in middle and high school or significantly more likely to volunteer later in life than those who never did. And so there is a certain level of kind of you know, how you experience the world in your early ages and your early days affects your potential to want to make a change, especially as it relates to giving back or giving time or money or whatever effort, whatever it might be, I think is a really interesting concept. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 09:14 it makes sort of perfect sense, because as you're growing up and you're forming your life, if you see that you're doing things like giving back or being involved in supporting other people, and that is a very positive thing, it makes sense that you would want to continue that in some way.   Michael Bervell ** 09:33 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it reminds me also of just like habits. You know, you build your habits over time, and it starts from super young ages not to say that you can't change habits. There's a bunch of research about the science of habit change and how to break a habit loop, and Charles Duhigg is a great author in that space, but it's also just really interesting just to think through that. But yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:54 and habits can be hard to break, or they can be easy if you're really committed. Into doing it. But I know a lot of people say it, it's fairly challenging to change or break a habit.   Michael Bervell ** 10:06 Exactly, yeah, exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 10:09 Unfortunately, sometimes it's all too easy to make a habit. But anyway, there you go. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 10:14 my one of my it's, it's funny, because after you know one of my habits I made when I was in high school that, to my mom's chagrin, was I used to always love just doing work on my bed. The positive thing about the habit was I was always comfortable. The negative thing is I would sometimes fall asleep. So many times I mid paper, you know, mid take home exam, fall asleep. I have to wake up and scramble to finish. But that doesn't show me a faster writer. If anything   Michael Hingson ** 10:41 I remember, when I was in graduate school at UC Irvine, I had an office of my own, and I was in it one day, and I was looking at some material. Fortunately, I was able to get most of the physics texts in Braille, so I was studying one, and the next thing I knew, I woke up and my finger was on the page, and I had just fallen asleep, and my finger for reading braille, was right where I left off. Always thought that was funny,   Michael Bervell ** 11:14 yeah, just a just a quick, just a quick pause. You just pause for a second, even   Michael Hingson ** 11:18 though it was about 45 minutes, but whatever. But my figure didn't move.   Michael Bervell ** 11:24 You really focused, you know, just That's it. That's it.   Michael Hingson ** 11:27 The advantage of Braille, exactly. But, you know, I do think that it's great to have those kinds of habits, and I really wish more people would learn the value of giving back and sharing, because it will come back to benefit you so many times over.   Michael Bervell ** 11:48 Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's even what influences me, like now and even throughout, you know, post high school, like when I went into college, I knew I wanted to be in some sort of service and giving back type of industry, but I didn't really know what that was, right, like, I didn't want to do want to do philanthropy full time, because I found it difficult, right? Like, I found it hard to have to go back to investors, and I found it difficult to sometimes sell the vision. And my question was, is there a way to make this more sustainable? And so I spent a lot of my time in school and college just learning about social impact, which, at the time was just coming up, like a lot of those impact investment funds, impact bonds, the idea that you can tie finance to impact, and you can have carbon offsets that people buy and sell, that has some sort of social good, that you can somehow transact. All these kind of new and interesting ideas were coming around, and it started, it just got me interested, right? It's, you know, can I make a habit of creating an impact, but also habits somehow work within, you know, this capitalist system that the world operates in. It's something I've been wrestling with, you know, even in all my my future business and kind of current business, work and practices.   Michael Hingson ** 12:58 What do you do when you propose an idea or have a thought, and you discuss with people and they object to it. How do you handle objections?   Michael Bervell ** 13:05 Yeah, I mean, I think, I think for me, I'm always interested in the root cause, right? I think I'm one who tries to understand first before trying to persuade. So I could give you an example, I think very early in my, very early my college career, I realized that my parents would be able to pay for college for me. That was the youngest of three. And, you know, they'd use a lot of their savings on my siblings, about the who ended up going to med school, which is very expensive, yeah, college, which was also very expensive. And being immigrants from Ghana, of course, they hadn't saved up an infinite amount of money. So my mom sat me down and told me, Hey, you have to pay your own tuition. And so, you know, the person I had to convince to kind of help me here was actually funny enough, restaurants are in Harvard Square, and the reason why is I decided to make a business that did restaurant consulting. So I went door to door, and I would ask people and like, hey, you know, do you need 20 Harvard students to come and help you understand how you can get more foot traffic in the door. You know, sell more pizzas or sell more burritos. I think I heard 20 or 30 knows. And finally, one woman said, Well, you know, if, if, if, if you think that you can do it, then, you know, show me. Show me the numbers, right? And that was, that was really interesting. And so I think it realized, you know, when I when she initially said, No, I said, Well, why not? She said, I just don't know if you can do it. And when I said, Oh, we can actually show you the proof, she's like, Okay, well, then if you can run a pilot and show me the proof, then I'll do it. And so understanding the why, I think, is more important than getting the rejection and, you know, getting the setback. But that's try to, that's how I try to deal with it.   Michael Hingson ** 14:38 One of the things that I learned fairly early on, when I was put in a position of starting to sell for a living, actually, in Cambridge, working for Kurzweil Computer Products and taking a Dale Carnegie sales course was stay away from asking closed ended or. Yes, no questions. And so most of the time, I wouldn't say, you know, can we do this? Or would you do this? I would say, I'd like to hear your thoughts about or we've got this idea, tell me what you think, and doing other things to get people to talk. And when I started using that in my career, it was easy to get people to talk because they they want to talk. Or, as I like to say, people love to teach, and most of the time, if you establish a relationship with people and they know you're listening, they're welcome, or they're willing to give you wisdom. And so there are so many examples I have of asking open ended questions like that, or I went into a sales meeting with one of my employees, and there were a bunch of people there, and I said, Tell me to the first person I talked with, tell me why we're here. And it totally caught him off guard. Of course. The other thing is that they didn't realize that the sales manager who was coming, that the the guy who had set up the appointment was was told to bring his manager, and they didn't realize that the sales manager was blind, which also was a great addition to help. But again, I didn't ask, so you want to take backup system, but rather tell me why we're here. Tell me what you're looking for. Why are you looking for that? What do you want it to be? And I actually realized by the time I went around the room that our product wasn't going to work, but we still did the PowerPoint presentation. And then I said, if case you haven't figured it out, our system won't work, and here's why, but here's what will work. And that eventually led to a much larger order, as it turns out, because they called back later and they said, We got another project, and we're not even putting it out for bid. Just tell us what we pay you, and we'll order it. And it's it's all about. The objections are really mostly, I think, from people who maybe have some concerns that you didn't learn about because you didn't ask an open ended up or the right question, which is something that only comes with time.   Michael Bervell ** 17:15 Yeah. I mean, I think it also sounds very similar to like, what journalists are are trained to do, like a great journalist. And I took a journalism class a few years ago, maybe five years ago, with Joe Abramson, who was one of the first female executive, executive editors of the New York Times. And this was kind of her exact lesson. Is that everyone has some story to teach, some wisdom to share, and the difficulty, or really the challenge on you as an interlocutor, as a journalist, as someone whose job it is to uncover the story, is to ask the right questions, yeah, to allow that person the space to teach.   Michael Hingson ** 17:51 And if you and if you don't know the right questions, you ask something open ended, enough that maybe you'll get to it.   Michael Bervell ** 17:57 Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then the flip side, right, because there's, of course, you can't put all the burden on the person, no, right? You have to be an active listener. You have to listen to know, and then you have to prod and even say something like, Tell me more. Yeah, exactly right. Questions like, Tell me more, her second favorite question was, and then what happened? Yeah, right. Those are two such simple things, you know? And then what? Yeah. And it's just such an opening to really evolve and to grow.   Michael Hingson ** 18:23 And if they really think you're listening and that you want to know and understand, people will talk to you exactly which is, which is really what it's about. Well, so you did all of your so you went to high school in Seattle, correct? Yeah. And, and then what did you do?   Michael Bervell ** 18:43 Yeah. So High School in Seattle Graduated, went off to Boston for college, where, you know, of course, had to figure out a way to pay for school. And that was my first, I guess, for profit business. Was this restaurant consulting company. And of course, like I said, everything I want to do in my in my life, was focused on social impact. So the impacts there was that we only hired students to work for us who needed to pay tuition. There was this program called federal work study where, if you get trade, you have to, you know, work as part of a federal mandate for some amount of hours per week, and that was the book study requirement. And for the most part, students would do on campus jobs that would pay 10, $15 an hour to do this work study. Well, I'd spent up this consulting business as a sophomore that I then ran for all three years, and on an hourly basis, we were making significantly more than that, right? So I was able to go find students who traditionally had been working their whole life, right? Harvard has such a, you know, vast background of individuals. I knew, people who were homeless, people who were billionaires and everyone in between, who ended up coming to the school and so to find people who you know had been working 40 hours a week since they were in middle school, and give them a job where they could work less and actually have more free time to invest in their community or invest back into developing new skills, was, for me, super, super impactful. On the surface, it was a restaurant. A consulting business, but behind the scenes, what we were doing with our staffing and with our culture was was around that social impact. So I stayed out in in Cambridge for for four years, studied philosophy. I got a minor in computer science, and eventually went off to Microsoft back in in Seattle, where I eventually then, you know, was product manager and was a venture capital investor, and met a bunch of really phenomenal and interesting people who were pushing technology forward.   Michael Hingson ** 20:27 Now, why Harvard, which is all the way across the country?   Michael Bervell ** 20:33 Yeah, I mean, well, I think I love traveling. I loved, I loved, you know, being out and about, and I think growing up as the youngest of three, and also as the child of African immigrants, they'd always told me, you know, we moved here for you, like we moved 3000 miles away to a country where you don't speak the language, where you don't know anybody for you. And what they meant for that is, you know, we want you to really thrive. And even you know, now I'm at the age when my parents had first moved right to the US, and I can't imagine moving to a country where I don't know the language, don't know the people, and don't know a soul for my potential future children. And their children, that's what they did, and they invested a lot of time and energy and effort into me. And they always told me, you want you to be really successful. And so I remember when I was when I was in middle school, my sister got into Harvard, which was unheard of, right? No one in our high school had gone to Harvard in the past, especially not for, you know, a black family in a primarily white neighborhood, for one of us to go to Harvard was was a big deal. And so I knew that, you know, at the very least, for my parents, for my sister, for my family, I wanted to kind of match up to that   Michael Hingson ** 21:43 well, and it certainly sounds like you've, you've done a lot of that. Oh, here's a an off the wall question, having been around Cambridge and worked in Cambridge and all that is cheapo records still in Harvard Square.   Michael Bervell ** 21:57 Oh, man. You know what's so funny, I got a record player. I got a record player last semester, and I don't remember if cheaper records, that's the one that's like, I think I've is that the one that's in like, the actual, like, it's by, like, Kendall, take by Kendall, Kendall Square.   Michael Hingson ** 22:15 No, I thought it was in Harvard Square. Okay,   Michael Bervell ** 22:19 I think, I think it still exists. If I'm not mistaken, I think it still exists. I think I got a lot, got a lot of records from cheapo over the years record stores in Cambridge. And because I got a record player as a gift, I've been, I've been collecting a lot more,   Michael Hingson ** 22:31 ah, yeah, um, I've gotten a lot of records from cheapo and over the years. And of course, not so much now, since I'm out here. But next time I get back to mass, I'll have to go check,   Michael Bervell ** 22:43 oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We can do a cheapo records hanging how tactile It is, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 22:52 There used to be one in New York that I would go to. They were more expensive as New York tends to be colony records, and they're not there anymore, which is sort of sad, but cheapo. Cheap just seemed to be one of those places that people liked. I don't want to say it was like a cult, although it sort of is all the dedicated people to to real vinyl, but I hope it's still   Michael Bervell ** 23:16 there. Is it? It's a chain of record stores, or is it just,   Michael Hingson ** 23:18 no, I think it's a one. Oh, yeah. If there's more than one, I'm not aware of it, I'd   Michael Bervell ** 23:23 probably say I'm 80% certain it still exists. Well there,   Michael Hingson ** 23:27 yeah, so have to come back to mass. And yeah, I'll have to go to cheaper records and Legal Seafood.   Michael Bervell ** 23:32 Oh yeah, Legal Seafood. That was, yeah, I love Legal Seafood musical all the time with my roommates from college. And, yeah, we used to order the crab cakes and eat lobster rolls. It's a great time.   Michael Hingson ** 23:44 Yeah, and then their little chocolate desserts, which are great yeah, and the chowder. Oh, well, yeah, yep, gotta, gotta get back to mass. Okay. Now whoever   Michael Bervell ** 23:53 you're listening is probably getting hungry. Well, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 23:57 as as they should, you know, you know why they call it Legal Seafood. I actually don't know nothing is frozen. It's all fresh. It's legal. Oh, I love that. I love that, at least that's what I was told. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Well, so you, you went to college and went then back to Seattle and worked for Microsoft and so on. So clearly, you're also interested in the whole idea of investing and the whole life of being an entrepreneur in various ways. And so you brought entrepreneurialism to everything that you did.   Michael Bervell ** 24:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that was my first job at Microsoft. I was, you know, managing what's called Windows IoT. So we were putting software on everything that wasn't a phone or a laptop. So think, you know, smart screens in airports, or screens in Times Square, or, you know, the type of software that your Amazon Echo, you know, maybe not Amazon in particular. But what that would run on that was working on IoT all these. They called it headless devices, yeah, devices with no screens. And that was my team for a little bit. I worked there for about year and a half. It was phenomenal. You know, we were managing multiple billions of dollars in revenue, and there was only, you know, 4050 people on my team. So you do the math, we're all managing hundreds, 10s to hundreds of millions of dollars in our products. And while I loved it, I realized that my my true passion was in was in meeting people, talking to people, and giving them the resources to succeed, versus giving them the actual technology itself. I loved being able to connect an engineer, you know, with the right supplier to work on a hard problem that could then be built for Microsoft to eventually get to a customer. And that sort of connection role, connector role is kind of the role of a venture capitalist. Yeah, right. You're connecting your limited partners who have invested in this fund to entrepreneurs who are trying to build some sort of idea from the ground up. And, you know, once you invest in the entrepreneur, then connecting the entrepreneur to mentors, to advisors, to potential employees, to potential customers. And so there's this value in being someone who's a listener, a journalist, right, like we had been talking about someone who has a habit of trying to make a broader impact. And it kind of all aligned with what I had been building up until that point. So I worked at M 12, it's Microsoft's venture capital fund, and invested in in a bunch of companies from Kahoot, which is like an education startup, to obviously open AI was a Microsoft investment as well, to other things like that. And so it was cool, because, you know, the fund was, was really, we had the mandate of just find cool companies, and because we were Microsoft, we could reach out to any founder and have a conversation. So it was, it really was a few years of just intense and deep learning and thoughtfulness that I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade for anything. What got   Michael Hingson ** 26:58 you started in the whole arena of thinking about and then being involved with digital accessibility, because we've talked about that a lot. I know that's a passion. So how did you get started down that road?   Michael Bervell ** 27:11 Yeah, I mean, it came partially through working at Microsoft, right? I mean, as I was at Microsoft, Satya Nadella, who was the CEO, he was making big, big investments into digital accessibility, primarily because his son, now, his late son, had cerebral palsy, and a lot of the technology at Microsoft, his son couldn't use, and so he had this kind of mission and vision to want to make more accessible technologies. But my first exposure to it even before then, like I said, in college, I had to work all these, all these jobs to pay tuition, and I built my own business, but one of the clients we consulted for was a large search engine. I'm sure you can imagine which one it was, and it wasn't Microsoft, and that were search engine. I helped them devise their ability strategy.   Michael Hingson ** 27:56 You mean the G word, something like that? Yeah.   Michael Bervell ** 28:00 Yeah. Duck, duck, go, yeah. No, that's it. Yeah, exactly. And so it was really cool to work with them and to see like at scale, at 200,000 employee scale, at 1000 product scale, how do you create systems and guardrails such that accessibility, in this case, digital accessibility, will be something that that actually ends up happening. Ends up happening. And so that was my first exposure to it. And then again at Microsoft. And then finally, a third time, while I was in business school, you know, working on various projects with friends. And one friend told me, you know, all I did at work this week was have to fix accessibility bugs because my company got sued. And that was and just all those moments combined with the idea that I wanted to impact the deep empathy that comes through learning and knowing and understanding people's backgrounds and histories, all of it came to a head with what I now work on at test party.   Michael Hingson ** 28:57 So now, how long has test party been around? And we'll get to that up. But, but how long have you had that?   Michael Bervell ** 29:03 Yeah, we started. We started about a year ago. Okay, so it's pretty recent,   Michael Hingson ** 29:07 so yeah, definitely want to get to that. But, so the whole issue of accessibility, of course, is a is a thing that most people don't tend to know a lot about. So so let's start this way. Why should people worry about making products and places like websites accessible? And I know websites, in a lot of ways, are a lot easier than going off and making physical products accessible, especially if they're already out, because redesign is a very expensive thing to do, and is not something that a lot of people are going to do, whereas, when you're dealing with websites, it's all about coding, and it's a lot easier. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 29:48 yeah. I mean, I think, I think fundamentally, it comes down to, you know, a set of core beliefs. And I think we could all agree, and I think we would all believe that, like everyone has the right to. You a decent, fulfilling and enjoyable life. I think regardless of where you fall on, you know, belief spectrums or anything, that's something that we all fundamentally believe. You know, you should live well. You should try to live a good life. It's what people talked about in writing for years. And I think when you think of the good life in today's terms, in the 21st century, it's almost inseparable from a life that also engages with technology, whether it's cell phones or computers or whatever it might be, technology has become so fundamental into how we live that it now has also become part of how we live well and how we live a good life. And I'll give you a clear example, right? Let's suppose you really believe that voting is part of living the good life. There is a time, 100 years ago, you know, you didn't need to really have a car. You could get a rehearsing buggy. Maybe you could even walk to a voting station and cast your vote in today's world, especially, let's suppose a COVID world, and even a post COVID world, computers, technology, websites, are fundamental in living that good life, if that's your belief system. And you can play this game with any belief that you have, and once you extrapolate into what does it take for you to do that thing in the best way possible? It almost inevitably, inevitably, you know, engages with technology. Yeah, so why do I think having accessible websites are important? Well, it's because pretty much 195 people has a disability of some sort, and so to live the good life, they have to engage technology. And if that technology is not working for them for whatever reason, then that needs to be fixed. That needs to be changed. And of course, there's the guardrails of laws, you know, ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, EAA European Accessibility Act and others that try to mandate this. And of course, there's the goodwill of companies who try to do this proactively. I think Apple is a really good example, and Microsoft as well. But fundamentally, the question is, you know, what is a good life? How do you enable people to live that? And I think through technology, people should be able to live a better life, and should not have any barriers to access.   Michael Hingson ** 32:02 The thing is, though, take apple, for example. For the longest time, Apple wouldn't do anything about making their products accessible. Steve Jobs, jobs basically told people to pound sand when they said, iTunes, you wasn't even accessible, much less the iPod and the iPhone and the Mac. And it wasn't until two things happened that they changed really. One was target.com target had been sued because they wouldn't make their website accessible, and eventually too many things went against target in the courtroom, where they finally said, Okay, we'll settle and make this work. When they settled, it cost them $8 million to settle, whereas if they had just fixed it up front, the estimate is that it would have been about $40,000 in time and person hours, but because of where the lawsuit was filed and so on, it was $8 million to settle the case. And so that was one thing, and the other was it had been made very clear that Apple was the next company on the target list because they weren't doing anything to make their product successful. Well, Apple suddenly said, Okay, we'll take care of it. We will deal with it. And I think they had already started, but they and so as not to get sued, they said, We will do it. Well, probably the first thing that happened was the iPhone 3g well, maybe it wasn't the three, it was earlier, but the iPhone became accessible. The iPod became accessible. Pretty much all of them, iTunes, you the Mac. So by 2009 last when I got my iPhone 3g Apple was well known for making their products accessible, and they did it in a very clever way. It was accessible right from the outset. You didn't have to buy other stuff to make their products work. No need to buy a new screen reader or any of those kinds of things. So they spread the cost over every product that they sold, whoever bought it, so anyone who buys an iPhone can invoke accessibility today, which, which was cool, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 34:09 yeah. And I think through Apple, I mean, I think the initial argument I made for why is it import to make websites accessible was an ethical argument, right? I think in Apple's case, they, they probably did the business case analysis and understood this actually does make economic sense. And I think what you see today is there is even more economic sense because of the expanding market size. Right? Think the aging population that will develop some sort of disability or impairment, right? That's really growing larger, right? Think about, you know, individuals who may have what people call temporary disabilities that are not permanent, but last for some period of time, whether it's, you know, nine months, 10 months, two years, three years, and those types of things. So I think there is, there's also a business case for it. I think that's what Apple as a case study has shown. What you bring up, though, is, does it matter? Does it really matter? Like, why companies start doing this, right? And I think that's a question, you know, to grapple with. You know, if Apple did it out of the goodness of their heart versus because they didn't want to get sued, but the downstream effects are the same, you know, does that matter? And, you know, question, Do the ends justify the means? In this case, the ends are good, at least just by the start, perhaps, but sure that interesting question so, but I do think that they have done really good work   Michael Hingson ** 35:27 well. And you and you brought up something which, you know we talked about, which is that you talked about one company that dealt with some of because they got sued. And litigation is all around us. Unfortunately, we're a very litigious society and in our world today. So so like with accessibe, that that I work with, and work for that company, and a lot of what I do, some people have said, well, accessibe shouldn't always use the idea that, well, if you don't make your website accessible, you're going to get sued. That's a bad marketing decision, and I think there are limits, but the reality is that there are lawyers who are out there who still haven't been muzzled yet, who will file 5060, 100 complaints just to and they get a blind person to sign off and say, Yeah, we support this, because they'll get paid something for it. But they're not looking to make the companies deal with accessibility. They just want to earn money, 10,015 $20,000 per company. But the reality is, part of the market is educating people that litigation is a possibility because of the fact that the internet is a place of business under the Americans with Disabilities Act.   Michael Bervell ** 36:54 Yeah, exactly. I think when you think of like, you know, what is the purpose of litigation? Again, I, as a philosophy guy, I always think back to first principles, and it really is a deterrent, right? Obviously, no one wants to get sued. And, of course, no one wants to pay damages, punitive or reparative. And so in this case, these are all examples of punitive damages that people are paying for not having done the right thing. Right? In in, in the best case, you do the right thing to begin with. But I think it's, you know, the consequence of not doing the right thing. I think, of course, there's the question of you described, kind of these lawyers, or what people call as kind of the trolls who are just kind of suing and, you know, reaping the benefits from this. And I think it's an unfortunate side effect. I do wish that there was a world where these trolls wouldn't even need to exist, because things are working perfectly, right, well,   Michael Hingson ** 37:45 and the reality is that it goes back far earlier than the internet. I mean, there are places, there are people who would drive around and make people in wheelchairs who might find the smallest by violation wasn't even necessarily a legitimate violation, and they would sue and so and so. It isn't anything new that is just with the internet. Yeah, it's been going on for years. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 38:11 those are the drive by lawsuits. I remember I heard about those, and I think it's, this is the digital equivalent of that,   Michael Hingson ** 38:16 right? Yeah, right. And it is an issue, and it is something that that needs to be dealt with, but you also talk about doing the right thing, and that's really the better reason for doing it. If you do, you really want to exclude up to 20% of your potential business by not making your website accessible. Or better yet, if you make your website inclusive for all, what is going to happen when somebody comes to your website looking for a product and then they buy it because they were able to are they going to come back to that website? Are they going to go looking elsewhere? And there are so many studies like Nielsen did studies, and others have done studies that show absolutely people appreciate brand loyalty, and when they feel that they're they're valued and included, they're going to stick with that company.   Michael Bervell ** 39:12 Yeah? But even with that said, right, there's so this conflict of we all logically know it's the right thing to do, there's business purpose for doing it, and yet people don't do it. Yeah, 97% of the internet is still not accessible, if you look at this correct right? And so our hypothesis release, what we take, and what I take as a business is that sometimes, if it's too hard to do the right thing, people won't do the right thing, but that's what they want to do. And so how do you make it easier to do the right thing? And that's hopefully what, what we're what we're hoping to change in the industry, is just making it easier and also letting people know that this is an issue. One   Michael Hingson ** 39:48 of the one of the criticisms, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. A lot of people   Michael Bervell ** 39:52 don't, don't do the right thing, because just don't know that there is a right thing to do. You know   Michael Hingson ** 39:56 right well. And one of the criticisms I've heard over the. Years, especially dealing with the products like accessibe is, well, the problem is, you just slap this AI thing on their site, you're not teaching them anything, and that's not a good thing. And with manual coders, they're going to teach people. Well, that's not true either, but, but this whole argument of, well, you just put it on there, and then you go away, which isn't true, but again, that's one of the criticisms that I've heard any number of times, and that you're not really educating people about accessibility. You're not really educating them much about it. And the answer is, look, the company that wants to do business came to you in the first place. So they obviously knew they had to do something.   Michael Bervell ** 40:44 Yeah, yeah. And I think when I think through it, it's like, how do you make sure that the downstream effects of whatever you do is just positive and beneficial, right? And the ideal, as we all agree, I think, would be just to build it right the first time. Whether it's physical buildings, build a building right the first time. Or, if it's websites, build the website correctly the first time. Whatever helps people to get to that stage and that level of thinking and habits I think are, are ideal   Michael Hingson ** 41:13 coming from your background and so on. You know now that there are two basic ways that people can work to make websites accessible. One is the traditional way where you have someone who goes in and codes in the access and puts it right on the website. And now, over the past several years, the other way that has come into existence is the whole concept of using as accessibe does AI and although AI won't necessarily do everything that needs to be done, it will do most of what needs to be done, and maybe everything, depending on how complex the website is. But what do you think about the whole fact that now AI has entered into the accessibility world and people are using it?   Michael Bervell ** 42:02 Yeah, I think AI is interesting. And I think AI is a tool. I think it's it's a tool that's been developed, obviously, over a long history, right? Like the first artificial intelligent computers were in the 60s and 70s, being able to predict things, and of course, you heard of AlphaGo and computers that could pay chess and all these different things. So I think we'll definitely be surprised by what AI can do as a tool, right? And the question is, it will be, you know, the panacea, the thing to cure it all. Well, we all love for that to be the case. Who knows? You know, if it'll be AI, maybe functionally, AI could do that. But in terms of compute power, you know, it won't be able to until we have quantum computing or something right, in which case maybe it'll leapfrog this whole type of technology, and maybe web page will be obsolete in a decade, and then this whole idea of even needing to use AI to fix web pages will be replaced something else, like, like Be My Eyes, or something like that. That's even more advanced. But I think, as I see it, it's a tool that can be used to make it easier. And whether it's ease of use in terms of physical effort, ease of cost, in terms of bringing down costs to you know, to make a website compliant or a digital asset compliant, or just ease of understanding, right? Someone can explain to you what these really complicated rules mean, and so you can actually think about it from day one. So I think AI as a tool can lead to ease, which can then furthermore lead to hopefully more accessible products.   Michael Hingson ** 43:30 Well, the first time I ran into real AI was working with Ray Kurzweil back in the late 70s. He developed a machine that would read print out loud to blind people. But one of the things that was unique about them, well, vinyl, whether it's totally unique, but certainly was unique for blind people and for most of us, was the fact that the more the machine read, the better the reading got. It actually learned, and it learned how to to understand and analyze its confidence. And so it would get better the more that it read. Chris. The only problem with that is, back in those days, the software was on a cassette that went into a player that was part of a Data General, Nova two. And so it had to learn all over again every time you rebooted the machine and loaded the program. But that's okay. It learned based on on what you were reading, but it really dramatically got better the more you read. And I think that today, the reality is that a lot of people really need to. And I would say this is true of manual coders. And I know a few who have adopted this, they'll use accessibe to do what it can do, and then they, in turn, then go and address the issues that access a B's widget doesn't do. And for me, my. My learning that lesson actually goes back to the mid 1980s when I couldn't get a job, and I started my own company selling computer aided design systems to architects. And a lot of architects would come in and say, well, we can't buy your system. Yeah, great. It works, but if we use it, we'll develop our drawings in a fraction of the time, and we can't charge what we did, because now we're not spending as much time, and I said you're missing the whole point. You change your model. You're not charging for your time. You're charging for your expertise. You don't need to charge less. And what you do is then you go off and you get more projects, but you can also do more for each individual customer that you bring in. We had access to a system that was a one of the early PC based three dimensional solid metal modeling CAD systems, so people could come into our office, or anybody who bought the product could could invite their customers in, and they could do actual walk throughs and fly throughs of buildings. They had light sources or Windows to look out. You could even see what was going on outside. It wasn't renderings. You actually saw everything right on the computer. Those are so many things that revolutionize the industry. Now, of course, CAD is everywhere as it should be, and the reality is that that I think that any manual programmer who is programming a website could use accessibe to do a lot of the work, and then an accessibe also has some tools using a product called Access flow, where they can analyze and even tell you exactly what you need to do with the things that aren't accessible, and then you can do it, but you can use accessibe to do most of the stuff, and it continuously monitors it's a scalability issue, and you don't get any scalability with manual coding at all. So again, it's the whole, as you point out, the whole tool of artificial intelligence really can make a big difference in what we're doing to create accessibility on in the internet and in so many other ways as we go forward.   Michael Bervell ** 47:06 Yeah, and already we're running right up on time with a minute or two left. But I think even fundamentally, what you're what you're describing, back to first principles is, is, if we make it easier, either in time or in effort or in understanding, to make things accessible. Will people do it right? Whether you're using, you know, an access to be or whether you're using another tool, there's this question, How will it help? And will it help? And I think in evaluating any tool, and really I can apply in so many cases, that's the core question task.   Michael Hingson ** 47:37 Since we started late, it's up to you, but time wise, we're fine. It's up to you, but I realize that we want to end fairly soon here, but I think you're right, and that gets back to the whole education issue. People really need to learn and understand the value of accessibility, why it's a good thing, and it's kind of hard to argue with losing 20% of your business because your website's not accessible. And accessible, and the reputation that you gain by not doing it can go beyond that 20% when people tell their own friends about the issues they're facing. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it goes the other way. You make it accessible, and you get all sorts of accolades. That's going to help too. But it is a conversation that we need to have, and it's part of the whole big conversation about disabilities. In general, we don't really see disabilities as much in the conversation. When we hear about people talking and discussing diversity, they talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, so on, but they don't talk about disabilities, and disabilities tend to be left out of the conversation for the most part, which is extremely unfortunate. Why do you think that is?   Michael Bervell ** 48:46 Yeah, I think, I think it comes down to, I'm not, I'm not sure why it is. I'm not sure. But I think even though I'm not sure why it is, I do know what I hope. And I think what I hope is for, you know, a world where every, every part of society reflects what it's made up of, right? So you look and it's representative of of all the constituents, people with disabilities, people of different genders and races and and so on and so forth, so, so I think that's what I hope for. I think it's difficult, right? It's difficult based on the systems that have been made people's biases and more to get there, but I do think, I do think that's ultimately the hope. But I   Michael Hingson ** 49:30 think that a lot of it comes down to fear people. Fear people with disabilities. I think that the whole fear factor, and even with race or gender or sexual orientation, so on, some of the comments, if you listen to them, all they're doing is promoting fear which which doesn't help at all. But in the case of disabilities, oh my gosh, I could become blind or paralyzed in a second, and that fear is something that we really don't tend to you. Do nearly as much about as we should. Now I know you and I earlier talked about fear, and the reality is that that we can learn to control fear. I would never tell people don't be afraid. No such thing as not being afraid, but you can certainly learn to control fear so that you can use it again as a very powerful tool to guide you and help you, and that's what the best aspects of fear are all about. I think, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 50:26 I totally agree. I totally agree. Well, speaking of fear, I would be afraid of what might go I'm a president for Section G, which is one of the sections here, HBS, and we have to go select our Class Day speaker. So I'd be afraid if I, if I missed too much of the well, if they,   Michael Hingson ** 50:43 if they want to hire a speaker, I'm just saying I know Mike was, I was like, Man, I wish I had met you, like, back when you're doing our, our, like alumni and friend speakers. On the other hand, we can certainly talk about next year, and I would love to do that. Well, I want to really thank you for being here. I think we'll just have to have another discussion about all of this in the future. But I really appreciate you being here a lot and chatting very, very frequently, and you're going to go off and play drums later too, right? Oh, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 51:11 it's a busy I'm in my, you know, Shirley retirement era, you know, yeah, right. Go back into, back into the workforce.   Michael Hingson ** 51:19 So, real quick, though, you wrote a book. What's it called?   Michael Bervell ** 51:23 It's called unlocking unicorns. I'll send you a copy of the book, and so you can put in the show notes and everything else. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 51:29 that would be great. And if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 51:34 but just my name, Michael purvell, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, B, E, R, V, E, L, l.com, contact my website. Is there? My bio, and this podcast will be there eventually   Michael Hingson ** 51:46 as well it will, and you'll get all the info. Well, thanks very much, and I want to thank you all for listening. Really appreciate you listening to us today. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email me at Michael, h, i, m, I, C, H, A, E, L, C, we spell our names the same. H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www dot Michael hingson, H, I N, G, s, o, n.com/podcast, and would love to to hear your thoughts. Love it. If you would give us a five star review wherever you're listening. If you know anyone else who ought to be a guest, please introduce us. We're always looking for it. And I would also say if anybody needs a speaker, it is what I've been doing ever since September 11, and I'm always looking for speaking opportunities. So please reach out and let's see if we can chat and and one of these days, maybe we'll get Michael to bring us up to Harvard we can go visit the coupe. But thanks so much for listening, everyone. Thanks once more for thanks. Once more Michael, for being here. Thanks.   Michael Hingson ** 52:52 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

'Have a seat in my chair..'Today we're at the braiding salon with Ghanaian American playwright Jocelyn Bioh, creator of the Tony Award-winning Broadway play,  Jaja's African Hair Braiding.We chat with her about braiding salon culture, and the different kinds of people she portrays in the play. We explore the African American-African immigrant dynamics that can happen at braiding salons, we talk immigrant life,  audiences that maybe don't get it, and the practice of Black playwrights holding "Black out" nights at the theatre.

In this heartfelt episode, I sit down with Andrea A. Osei, a remarkable Ghanaian American woman whose journey of loss has transformed her life and career. Andrea is a pharmacist turned bridal designer whose stunning work has graced pages of The New York Times, BRIDES, Teen Vogue, BET, and more. Known for her modern, heritage-inspired gowns, Andrea's pieces tell stories of resilience, family, and fresh beginnings. Today, she opens up about her grief journey and how she managed to find success while processing profound loss.Through her story, Andrea offers insights into how grief affects daily life, relationships, and business, and she provides encouragement for those struggling to move forward. This conversation is a powerful reminder of how even in the most challenging times, we have the capacity to keep dreaming, creating, and winning.Key Takeaways:Navigating Daily Life in Grief: Andrea shares how grief reshaped her routine, from her work as a designer to her personal habits, and how it influenced her approach to each day.Impact on Family and Relationships: She opens up about the shifts in family dynamics and personal relationships that arose during her grieving process, revealing the beauty and complexity of connection during hard times.Finding Purpose Through Loss: Andrea's transition from pharmacist to bridal designer reflects how grief often leads us to unexpected paths. She explains how her brand, Andrea Osei BRIDE, became a tribute to her grandmother, blending modern design with cultural heritage.Advice for Women Stuck in Grief: With grace and empathy, Andrea offers advice to women who feel immobilized by loss, encouraging them to allow space for their emotions while gradually taking steps forward.Building a Business Through Healing: Despite her grief, Andrea found ways to keep her business alive and thriving. She describes how designing gowns became both a source of healing and a powerful form of self-expression.Action Steps:Embrace Small Daily Wins: When grief feels overwhelming, focus on small, achievable tasks that bring a sense of accomplishment and purpose.Lean on Your Support System: Open up to family, friends, or a grief support group. Relationships can be anchors during periods of loss.Channel Grief into Creation: Like Andrea, explore ways to turn pain into passion, whether it's through art, a hobby, or a new career path.Allow Yourself to Evolve: Embrace the changes that grief may bring to your life and identity; it's okay to evolve as you heal.Listen Now: Whether you're walking through your own season of loss or looking for inspiration to pursue your dreams, Andrea's story will touch your heart and remind you of the power of resilience.

Today I talked to Esinam Bediako about here novel Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024). When Akosua, a 24-year-old grad student in New York, falls and bangs her head, she has too much drama in her life to pay attention to her headaches and exhaustion. She's just broken up with Wisdom, her boyfriend, she learns that her long-estranged Ghanian father is in New York, and she's worried that dropping so many graduate classes means that she'll lose her scholarship and work-study job in the library (where she met Daniel, her new crush). As she grapples with her Ghanian-American identity, her mother's wishes for her, her troubled relationship with the father who left when she was a child, and her coursework, Akosua's head injury worsens, and she wakes up in the hospital, forced to confront her own history, memory, dreams, and desires. Esinam Bediako is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She writes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, including awkward third-person autobiographies. A graduate of University of Southern California (M.A.T. in Secondary English), Sarah Lawrence College (M.F.A. in Fiction), and Columbia University (B.A. in English and Comparative Literature), she has worked as a high school English teacher and administrator, a textbook editor, and, during one nerve-wracking summer, a pharmacy technician. She currently writes and edits for the Spondylitis Association of America. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2024) and you can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her husband and their two sons, who create stories, videos, and other artwork with enviable speed and imagination. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today I talked to Esinam Bediako about here novel Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024). When Akosua, a 24-year-old grad student in New York, falls and bangs her head, she has too much drama in her life to pay attention to her headaches and exhaustion. She's just broken up with Wisdom, her boyfriend, she learns that her long-estranged Ghanian father is in New York, and she's worried that dropping so many graduate classes means that she'll lose her scholarship and work-study job in the library (where she met Daniel, her new crush). As she grapples with her Ghanian-American identity, her mother's wishes for her, her troubled relationship with the father who left when she was a child, and her coursework, Akosua's head injury worsens, and she wakes up in the hospital, forced to confront her own history, memory, dreams, and desires. Esinam Bediako is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She writes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, including awkward third-person autobiographies. A graduate of University of Southern California (M.A.T. in Secondary English), Sarah Lawrence College (M.F.A. in Fiction), and Columbia University (B.A. in English and Comparative Literature), she has worked as a high school English teacher and administrator, a textbook editor, and, during one nerve-wracking summer, a pharmacy technician. She currently writes and edits for the Spondylitis Association of America. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2024) and you can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her husband and their two sons, who create stories, videos, and other artwork with enviable speed and imagination. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this episode of Art Works, a conversation with Jocelyn Bioh, the brilliant and funny mind behind Jaja's African Hair Braiding, a play set in a Harlem salon that explores the lives of African immigrant women. Bioh shares how her childhood visits to New York City's hair braiding shops inspired the play and discusses the influence of current immigration debates on its themes. She also discusses the unexpected journey of Jaja's African Hair Braiding having its world premiere on Broadway and collaborating with a creative team to bring the play's unique magic to life—including its Tony Award-winning costumes and wigs.The conversation touches on Bioh's background as a first-generation Ghanaian-American, her transition from acting to writing, and how her personal experiences fuel her storytelling. From the cultural nuances within the African diaspora to the broader themes of community and belonging, Bioh explains how the specificity of her stories connects with diverse audiences and offers reflections on the power of comedy as a tool for addressing serious issues. Note: Jaja's African Hair Braiding has started it National tour.  It is running at Washington DC's  Arena Stage until October 13. It moves to Berkeley Repertory Theatre November 8, and then  Chicago Shakespeare Theater January 14, 2025.

In this episode of Art Works, a conversation with Jocelyn Bioh, the brilliant and funny mind behind Jaja's African Hair Braiding, a play set in a Harlem salon that explores the lives of African immigrant women. Bioh shares how her childhood visits to New York City's hair braiding shops inspired the play and discusses the influence of current immigration debates on its themes. She also discusses the unexpected journey of Jaja's African Hair Braiding having its world premiere on Broadway and collaborating with a creative team to bring the play's unique magic to life—including its Tony Award-winning costumes and wigs.The conversation touches on Bioh's background as a first-generation Ghanaian-American, her transition from acting to writing, and how her personal experiences fuel her storytelling. From the cultural nuances within the African diaspora to the broader themes of community and belonging, Bioh explains how the specificity of her stories connects with diverse audiences and offers reflections on the power of comedy as a tool for addressing serious issues. Note: Jaja's African Hair Braiding has started it National tour.  It is running at Washington DC's  Arena Stage until October 13. It moves to Berkeley Repertory Theatre November 8, and then  Chicago Shakespeare Theater January 14, 2025.

Is African music finally getting the global recognition it deserves? And who's going to be the next breakout star?Abdul Abdullah is a Ghanaian American culture entrepreneur and founder of Accra's AfroFutures Festival Paola Ndengue is a specialist in media and the creative industries.Mmeli Hlanze is one half of Antidote Music, a music label and artist management company based in Eswatini. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week in the guest chair I have Philomina Kane, Ghanaian-American entrepreneur and content creator. In 2017, she graduated from Princeton University and began to cement herself as a haircare YouTuber. Garnering a following of nearly 200,000 subscribers, Philomina became a guiding force, empowering Black women to embrace and care for their natural hair. After building a strong brand and loyal following, Philomina founded KIN Apparel, a brand dedicated to crafting satin lined hoodies and hats for both hair protection and comfort. In this episode she shares about:How the innovative approach of KIN Apparel caught the attention of Shark Tank landed a six-figure deal with SKIM's founding partner Emma GredeHer desire-driven approach to marketing and how leading with offering a solution to a problem has hooked her audience Reaching over $10M in revenue while continuously navigating challenges like fulfillment centers and a changing financial landscapeHighlights include: 00:00 Intro03:15 From the Bronx to Ghana07:30 Building a following on YouTube14:50 Founding KIN Apparel20:00 Transition to full-time entrepreneurship27:00 Benefits of vulnerable marketing32:00 Financial journey- grants and funding41:00 Navigating the changing financial landscape44:00 Shark Tank experience 47:00 Challenges with fulfillment centers57:00 Tips for entrepreneurs Links mentioned in this episodeKIN Apparel: https://kinapparel.org/ KIN Apparel Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kinapparel_/?hl=en LEDA Program: https://ledascholars.org/ Science of Black Hair: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Black-Hair-Comprehensive-Textured/dp/0984518428 Hello Alice: https://helloalice.com/ Black Ambition: https://blackambitionprize.com/ New Voices: https://newvoicesfoundation.org/ Click here to subscribe via RSS feed (non-iTunes feed): http://sidehustlepro.libsyn.com/rssAnnouncementsJoin our Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a community of supportive side hustlers who are all working to take our businesses to the next level, join us here: http://sidehustlepro.co/facebookGuest Social Media InfoPhilomina's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@naturallyphilo Philomina's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs3xy3wpZ-d/?img_index=1 Philomina's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@naturallyphilo_ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Movement Is Life's annual summit brings together stakeholders from diverse backgrounds to discuss healthy equity challenges and actionable solutions.  This year's theme is: "Health Equity: Solutions from Healthcare Leaders.” The summit will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, from November 14 to 15.  Movement Is Life is honored to have Joel Bervell as a plenary speaker at our upcoming 2024 annual summit. Bervell is a Ghanaian American medical student and science communicator known online as the “Medical Mythbuster.” Through viral social media content, Bervell addresses racial disparities, the hidden history of medicine, and biases in healthcare. Bervell says he appreciates Movement Is Life's emphasis on community-based programs, clinician education about health disparities, and health policy. He's excited to attend the summit and meet other like-minded people who are passionate about health equity. “By breaking that cycle of understanding that disparities exist and talking about it, we can start to reach equity,” Bervell says. Bervell speaks with Health Disparities podcast host Dr. Mary O'Connor about the 2024 Movement Is Life summit and the exciting slate of hands-on workshops and plenary speakers, including Dr. Arline Geronimus, Dr. Louis Sullivan, and Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice. Registration is now open for Movement Is Life's annual summit – find all the details at our website, and get signed up today! Never miss an episode – be sure to subscribe to The Health Disparities podcast from Movement Is Life on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ghanaian American cardiologist, cartoonist, and author Shirlene Obuobi joins Zibby to discuss her powerful, sexy, and emotionally brilliant new romance, BETWEEN FRIENDS AND LOVERS. Shirlene describes her protagonist, Josephine Boiteng, a former medical resident turned influencer who struggles with mental health, burnout, and an unrequited crush. She also delves into the novel's medical and social media elements and the themes of love, vulnerability, and personal growth—revealing that she wrote this during a challenging period in her own life and used many of her experiences as inspiration.Purchase on Bookshop: https://bit.ly/4duICwSShare, rate, & review the podcast, and follow Zibby on Instagram @zibbyowens! Now there's more! Subscribe to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books on Acast+ and get ad-free episodes. https://plus.acast.com/s/moms-dont-have-time-to-read-books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Dr. Assibey is joined by CAFP's Justice Through Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee co-chairs, Drs. Shannon Connolly and Melissa Campos to discuss how and why the committee was formed, the work being done by this committee to focus CAFP's work with the JEDI lens.  Guests: Dr. Shannon Connolly, MD, FAAFP (she/her) is the Associate Medical Director at Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties. Dr. Connolly offers Adult primary care with a focus on sexual and reproductive health, and gender-affirming care. She is Chair of CAFP's JEDI Committee, as well as Past President of the CAFP Board. Dr. Connolly also serves on the AAFP Commission on DEI in Family Medicine. Dr. Connolly identifies as Asian American, and an immigrant to the US. Melissa Campos, MD (she/her) identifies as Mexican-American. Dr. Campos is the Associate Program Director at Scripps Chula Vista Family Medicine Residency and a Physician for San Ysidro Health. She practices full spectrum family medicine, inpatient, OB, SNF, and clinic. Dr. Campos is Vice-Chair of the JEDI Committee, and Past-President of the San Diego Chapter of CAFP.. Rob Assibey, MD, FAAFP (he/him) identifies as Ghanaian American. Dr. Assibey is the Associate Program Director at San Joaquin General Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program. He practices full spectrum family medicine with an emphasis on street medicine, addiction medicine, SNF. Dr. Assibey is the District 8 Director on the CAFP Board, and a member of the JEDI Committee. Resources: Find more information about CAFP's Justice Through Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee at familydocs.org/jedi. Find more information about Family Medicine POP! (August 23-25, 2024 in Costa Mesa, CA) at www.familydocs.org/pop. Read the article by Drs. Connolly and Campos published in the California Family Physician magazine at www.familydocs.org/cfp.  CAFP's Online Education is Homeroom: https://education.familydocs.org  AAFP links EveryONE Project: https://www.aafp.org/family-physician/patient-care/the-everyone-project.html Center for Diversity and Health Equity: https://www.aafp.org/family-physician/patient-care/the-everyone-project/aafp-center-for-diversity-and-health-equity.html Neighborhood Navigator: https://www.aafp.org/family-physician/patient-care/the-everyone-project/neighborhood-navigator.html  CAFP's Committee page: https://www.familydocs.org/committees  CAFP's local chapter page: https://www.familydocs.org/chapters The Family Docs Podcast is hosted by Rob Assibey, MD.   The Family Docs podcast is developed, produced, and recorded by the California Academy of Family Physicians. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent or the California Academy of Family Physicians. More information at www.familydocs.org/podcast. Visit the California Academy of Family Physicians online at www.familydocs.org. Follow us on social media: Twitter - https://twitter.com/cafp_familydocs  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cafp_familydocs  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/familydocs   

Yasmin Angoe is the Anthony-nominated author of the critically acclaimed thriller Her Name Is Knight of the Nena Knight series. She is a first-generation Ghanaian American and, in 2020, received the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Emerging Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime. Yasmin's books were an Amazon Best Book of the Month for Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, and an Editor's Pick. Her work has received numerous recognitions, was on a billboard in Times Square, Best Of lists, and a Library Journal Starred Review. The Nena Knight series was also optioned for a television series.Her Name Is Knight has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, OprahDaily.com, POPSUGAR, Nerd Daily, the Washington Independent Review of Books, The Guardian, and other platforms. Yasmin is a proud member of several prestigious organizations, such as Crime Writers of Color, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and the Women's National Book Association. Yasmin is a former English teacher and instructional coach, and lives in South Carolina with her husband and their kids. Her latest novel is NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS. Learn more at: yasminangoe.comIntro reel, Writing Table Podcast 2024 Outro RecordingFollow the Writing Table:On Twitter/X: @writingtablepcEverywhere else: @writingtablepodcastEmail questions or tell us who you'd like us to invite to the Writing Table: writingtablepodcast@gmail.com.

Send us a Text Message.Embarking on a new venture can be both daunting and exhilarating, but what does it take to leap across continents and dive into the entrepreneurial waters of Ghana? Join us as Rush Asare, founder of Akkadian Limited, shares his riveting journey from the United States to the heart of Accra, where he established a beacon for the diaspora aiming to build homes in their motherland. From the intricate web of legalities in Ghanaian business to establishing a bedrock of trust in international real estate, Rush's narrative is nothing short of a masterclass in resilience and innovation.When fate throws a mentor into your path, the trajectory of your life can veer into unexpected, yet prosperous, territories. Such was the case for me, as a chance encounter in the gym spiraled into a whirlwind of mentorship and personal development. Analyzing the pivotal shifts from corporate fidelity to wealth creation, Rush and I pull back the curtain on the strategies that safeguard an entrepreneur's journey – touching upon the vitality of a clear vision, a financial cushion, and the fortitude to prioritize family security over business whims.Finally, no entrepreneurial saga is complete without the trials and triumphs of growth and diversification. As we weave through Rush's multifaceted world – from pineapple farms to YouTube content creation – we celebrate the tenacity required to not only start small but to also embrace a myriad of investment avenues. With lessons on the delicate dance of quality versus speed in construction, and a peek into the potential of technology to streamline operations, this episode is a treasure trove for anyone looking to infuse their business ventures with a dose of Ghanaian grit and wisdom.Support the Show.Watch the video episode of this on YouTube - https://linktr.ee/konnectedminds

If you've ever wondered, ‘But what can I do? – please listen to this episode. Dr. Stella Safo, a Harvard-educated, Ghanaian-American physician, provides us all with her wisdom, experience and ...

A first-gen Ghanaian-American, Dometi Pongo guards the intersection of pop culture and social justice. During this conversation, he and Emily talk about how he blended Chess Club and Hip Hop. Plus, you'll hear his hack for getting honest dialogue in the superficial “red carpet” world.

Learn the impact of cultural and language immersion while living abroad, and how soccer can open doors while traveling. _____________________________ Subscribe to The Maverick Show's “Monday Minute” Newsletter where I personally send you an email with 3 short items of value (all personal recommendations) to start each week that you can consume in under 60 seconds: www.TheMaverickShow.com/Newsletter _____________________________  Akua Sencherey starts off talking about her parents' background growing up in Ghana and immigrating to the U.S..  She then talks about her experience growing up in Houston and navigating her Ghanaian-American identity and the milieu of Blackness in the U.S. as a first generation African immigrant.  Akua reflects on her first trip back to Ghana as a kid, the role of sports in her life, and how her interest in travel developed.  She then opens up about the transitionary  moment in her life when she quit her job to travel the world.  Akua talks about her experience living in Cusco, Peru and eventually getting a job with Remote Year.  She also reflects on the impact of cultural and language immersion while living abroad.  Akua then talks about some of her travel experiences, from Morocco to South Africa, and how she loves to travel the world for women's soccer.  Matt and Akua reflect on the importance of paying attention to the narratives of marginalized groups, being aware of our own government's foreign policy, and always separating people from their governments.  FULL SHOW NOTES INCLUDING DIRECT LINKS TO EVERYTHING DISCUSSED ARE AVAILABLE HERE ____________________________________ Subscribe to The Maverick Show's “Monday Minute” Newsletter and get a super-short email from me to start each week with 3 personal recommendations that you can consume in under 1 minute. See My Top 10 Apps For Digital Nomads See My Top 10 Books For Digital Nomads See My 7 Keys For Building A Location-Independent Business (Even In A Space That Is Not Traditionally Virtual) Watch My Video Training on Stylish Minimalist Packing so you can join #TeamCarryOn  See The Travel Gear I Use And Recommend See How I Produce The Maverick Show Podcast (The Equipment, Services And Vendors I Use) Follow The Maverick Show on Instagram ENJOYING THE SHOW? Please Leave a Rating and Review.  It really helps the show and I read each one personally.  You Can Buy Me a Coffee. Espressos help me produce significantly better podcast episodes!  :)  

At this week's Round Table, Emmanuel, Hannah, and Heba conversed with a remarkable young leader, Chelsea Osei. Chelsea, a Ghanaian American high school senior based in Illinois and a member of Citizen University's Youth Collaboratory brings with her a wealth of experiences and insights that inspire and enlighten. Throughout her academic journey, Chelsea has distinguished herself as a passionate advocate for equity and inclusion. As a founding board member of her school's Student Equity Action Committee and the founder of AP Advisory, she has tirelessly championed the cause of fairness and justice within her educational community. But Chelsea's activism extends far beyond the walls of her school. Engaging with platforms such as Civics Unplugged and her local Board of Education, she has found her voice and her purpose in effecting positive change on a broader scale. Thanks to her participation in Citizen University's Youth Collaboratory, Chelsea's vision for change has grown stronger: inspired by the resilience and creativity of activists and artists during the pandemic, she is embarking on a power project aimed at elevating young artists who shine a light on societal conflicts and educating others on these vital issues. At the heart of Chelsea's work lies a deep commitment to community organizing and civic education. Her experiences on the Board of Education and her advocacy for educational equity and diversity, equity, and inclusion have shaped her understanding of the power of collective action and informed her approach to grassroots activism. Join us as we delve into Chelsea's journey as a young activist, exploring the challenges she has faced, the victories she has achieved, and the lessons she has learned along the way. Together, we'll uncover the transformative potential of youth leadership and the importance of fostering inclusive spaces where all voices are heard and valued. Thank you for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nextgenpolitics/message

Ghanaian-American artist Amaarae brought her ‘Fountain Baby' tour to Chicago's House of Blues on Thursday, March 21. Vocalo mornings host Bekoe was in attendance, and said the performance felt like a movie; the packed crowd (and the bartenders) were dancing all night long, with a diverse array of fans from all over the city. She performed fan favorites from the album including “Co-Star” and “Angels In Tibet,” leaving the audience mesmerized. Amaarae's Fountain Baby tour continues through April 2 with upcoming shows in Philadelphia; Silver Spring, Maryland; Atlanta; Houston and Los Angeles. Find more information at www.amaarae.world. This segment was edited and produced by Bekoe. It aired on 91.1 FM during Mornings With Bekoe on Monday, March 25. Keep up with Amaarae on Instagram @amaarae.

Many diaspora Africans are choosing to return to the continent. These ‘repats' - as they're often known - are keen to seize new opportunities. But they also return to give back - building businesses, families and fulfilling lives on the continent. In this episode, three repats tell us how and why they moved to Ghana, Cape Verde and Cote d'Ivoire.Joli Moniz left New York for Cape Verde to set up a tourism business called A Vontade Tours. She helps other repats settle into their new life.Paola Ndengue is originally from Cameroon though she spent most of her life in France. She runs a popular newsletter on media and the creative industries in Africa called Africa Digest. Abdul Abdullah is a Ghanaian American cultural entrepreneur and founder of the AfroFutures Festival, a music and culture festival based in Accra. He grew up in the Bronx but now does business in Ghana. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“It's a diverse world. Companies sell products to consumers that are very diverse. Their teams and technical talent should reflect the communities that they sell products to.” – Dr. Isaac Yao Addae Dr. Isaac Addae is a man with many hats – first-generation Ghanaian American, computer engineer, strategist, business professor, entrepreneur, investor, and author of “Black Boy Fly: Embracing My Ancestry, Blackness, and Purpose in the African Diaspora.”  Isaac also served as the Treasurer for Freddie O'Connell's mayoral campaign, and now has agreed to wear yet another hat as the “Small and Minority Business Engagement Liaison” for Nashville. Listen in as Isaac shares how he came to Nashville, why he will always spend a significant amount of time as an educator, how navigating two worlds as a Ghanaian American became his superpower, and why we should all care about diversity, equity, inclusion and justice in the workforce.  Also learn why Isaac's new role will be one of his biggest challenges yet, and about how some of the plans being put into motion in the Mayor's Office are likely to move the needle for small and minority-owned businesses.  Isaac also makes a unique, compelling case for how Nashville can adjust the lens that the rest of the world views Nashville through and emerge as an increasingly ascendant tech hub.

Jeffrey Blount is the award-winning author of four novels, including Almost Snow White, Hating Heidi Foster, The Emancipation of Evan Walls, and Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way. He is also an Emmy award-winning television director and a 2016 inductee to the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. During a 34-year career at NBC News, Jeffrey directed a decade of Meet The Press, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and major special events. He is the first African American to direct The Today Show. He was a contributor for HuffPost and has been published in The Washington Post, The Grio.com and other publications, commenting on issues of race, social justice, and writing. Interviewer Fati D. Ashley is a Ghanaian-American literary and visual artist who resides in Florida. She holds a Master of Arts in English (Rhetoric and Composition) from the University of North Florida. Her poem “Cape Coast” was performed in Echoes of Us, a series of curated monologues, directed by Tony Award nominee Michele Shay in 2022. She is the Editor-in-Chief for The Banyan Review, a 2023 Best of the Net nominee, and a 2023 Fellow of The Craft Institute, "a non-profit organization dedicated to curating culturally inclusive ecosystems throughout the world of arts and entertainment..." Ashley consults and facilitates workshops for Authors Roundtable of North Florida and teaches creative writing at Jacksonville Arts and Music School.  READ Check out Jeffrey's work from the library: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=%22jeffrey+blount%22&te=  THE LIBRARY RECOMMENDS More books about finding yourself and your community: The Gone Dead, by Chanelle Benz The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers --- Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates  Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: jplpromotions@coj.net 

A new SPANDAU20 mixtape is here to bless your ears!

Embark on an inspiring journey with the remarkable Kirstie Fleur, a Ghanaian-American beacon of creativity and advocacy. Our conversation explores her multi-disciplinary artistry that finds expression in all her life's pursuits, from her brave transition from the American Air Force to fashion's forefront, to her passionate embodiment of social entrepreneurship with her brand, Freedom Fleur. Kirstie's story is one of resilience and transformation, illustrating the potency of fashion as a vehicle for change and the profound impact of her 'Soul Health' approach on advocating for justice and empowering women founders. As we unravel the threads of Kirstie's multifaceted identity, we traverse the sacred terrain of 'soul health' and self-discovery. Kirstie opens up about the necessity of internal work, especially for women who often balance various roles and societal pressures. She illuminates the path to finding one's essence, emphasizing the importance of solitude in nurturing well-being and inspiring creativity. The dialogue offers a blueprint for listeners to pursue their desires and articulate their goals while harmoniously blending the many facets of their lives.In the fluid dance of solitude and social impact, Kirstie's Freedom Fleur brand emerges as a symbol of luxury with a conscience—fashion that fosters freedom and fairness. We delve into the intricacies of ethical sourcing and the human connections that fortify her brand's foundation. And in a melodic twist, Kirstie's foray into music as a form of creative activism offers a resonant close to our episode. Her Spotify playlist, a curated collection of freedom and justice, awaits in the show notes, inviting you to experience the rhythms that drive her mission. Join us, and let Kirstie's narrative awaken your own aspirations for change.Everything Kirstie - https://kirstiefleur.comKirstie's Socials - https://www.facebook.com/kirstie.f.horton (FB) and https://www.instagram.com/kirstiefleur/ (IG)Support the showNEWSLETTER, stay in the loop and subscribe to our newsletterLISTEN ON Apple and Spotify FOLLOW US ON Instagram and FacebookSUPPORT this work so that we can keep it free. Become a MONTHLY SUPPORTER

On this episode, embark on a captivating journey into entrepreneurship with Ms. Marilyn Adibu as she engages in a rich, insightful conversation with host, Dr. Ibe-Lamberts. Marilyn, a healthcare consultant turned creator of the M.Y.A.A Bridal Party Collection, shares the intricate threads of her Ghanaian-American background that have woven into her entrepreneurial journey. Join them as they unveil the cultural experiences and values that have inspired her path, painting a vivid picture of resilience, discipline, and taking a courageous leap of faith. This episode is a celebration of cultural inspiration and the entrepreneurial spirit. That and more! Learn more about M.Y.A.A Bridal Party Collection below: Website: https://www.myaasbridal.com/  Wedding Planners: Click here Check out more on our website at www.blacktransnational.com

On this episode of the Friends in Beauty podcast I welcome Maude Okrah Huntern to the Friends in Beauty guest chair. Maude is an entrepreneur who is passionate about bringing solutions to underserved markets. She has over 12 years of experience working in strategy with startups and Fortune 500 companies. She is the Founder and CEO of BBR (Black Beauty Roster).     Black Beauty Roster is a digital DE&I platform that connects the TV, Film & Editorial world with hairstylists and makeup artists trained in textured hair and darker complexions while also increasing education around textured hair and darker complexions to the industry at large. BBR has worked with industry leading companies like Warner Bros Discovery, Walt Disney, Amazon Studios, L'Oreal, NYFW, IMG and more. She has been featured in Forbes, Inc, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Allure,and Insider. She is also the owner of Beauty Expense - an app that helps creatives manage their expenses and business.    She received the Women's Ceiling Crashers award from AT&T. Maude has been appointed Commissioner for DC's Commission on Fashion Arts and Beauty and also is a member of the Textured Hair Coalition. Maude is Ghanaian American and originally from Boston, MA. She is an alumnus of Emerson College.   Enjoy this episode!!   Leave us a 5 star review and share this episode with a friend or 2 or 3. info@friendsinbeauty.com ENROLLMENT OPEN - TRAILBLAZERS CLUB MEMBERSHIP https://bit.ly/FIBTrailblazersClub   ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS OF THE PODCAST https://www.friendsinbeauty.com/advertise   ENROLL IN D.I.Y PODCASTER COURSE TODAY:  bit.ly/DIYPodcasterCourse   JOIN PATREON TO SUPPORT THE FRIENDS IN BEAUTY PODCAST https://www.patreon.com/friendsinbeauty   FRIENDS IN BEAUTY FACEBOOK COMMUNITY www.facebook.com/groups/friendsinbeauty   FOLLOW FRIENDS IN BEAUTY ON IG  www.instagram.com/friendsinbeauty   SUBSCRIBE TO YOUTUBE CHANNEL bit.ly/FIBTube Additional Resources:   -https://www.amazon.com/shop/akuarobinson   -Skillshare - Use this link for 2 months free of the premium plan: https://skl.sh/30t352q   -Shop Mented Cosmetics - https://www.mentedcosmetics.com/?rfsn=1290937.f2481  Use Code “AKUAROBINSON” for 10% of your purchase  Announcements:   We're on Apple Podcasts - www.bit.ly/FIBPodItunes!   Join our Facebook community…   If  you're looking for a community of like minded, ambitious, and supportive #FriendsinBeauty  all working to leave our mark on the beauty industry, join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/friendsinbeauty Join the Friends in Beauty Mailing List: www.bit.ly/FIBTribe Social Media Info: Black Beauty Roster (Instagram) - @blackbeautyroster Black Beauty Roster (Website) - www.blackbeautyroster.com Friends in Beauty (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) - @friendsinbeauty Friends in Beauty (YouTube) - Friends in Beauty  Akua Robinson (Instagram,Twitter) - @akuarobinson AkuaRobinson (Facebook) - Akua Robinson MUA Akua Robinson (Website) - www.akuarobinson.com

In this episode, we embark on an illuminating journey through creating a lucrative career alongside academic medicine. Tune in as Kemi and Dr. Shirlene Obuobi share their personal experiences, challenge the boundaries of conventional thinking and debunk the myth that hobbies and passions should remain separate from one's professional identity. Dr. Shirlene Obuobi is a Ghanaian-American physician, cartoonist, and author who was raised in various locations, including Chicago, Illinois, Hot Springs, Arkansas, and The Woodlands, Texas. When she is not tending to patients in the hospital, and even sometimes while doing so, she indulges in the art of comic creation, crafting stories on her mobile device, and doting on her trio of feline companions. Her current residence is in Chicago, where she is in the final stages of her cardiology fellowship. Tune in as they discuss:Navigating the perception of creative work and its value in academic medicineHow they deal with the pressures, demands, and expectations that came with growing successSetting and maintaining boundaries as your visibility increases How it feels when proximity is more important than authenticity in relationships the power of defying stereotypes as Black women in academic medicineLoved this convo? Please go find Dr. Obuobi on Twitter @shirleneobuobi, on Instagram @shirlywhirlmd to show her some love and don't forget to explore her monthly column featured in the Washington Post!And if you'd like to learn more foundational career navigation concepts for women of color in academic medicine and public health, sign up for our KD Coaching Foundations Series: www.kemidoll.com/foundations.

Adrian talks to Molly Jensen, the Chief Executive Officer of Afripods, a free pan-African podcast hosting platform building the largest library of African audio stories on the planet, based in Nairobi, Kenya. With the ability to categorize in over 50 languages and with content from over 30 countries including that from individual podcasters, radio stations and media houses, Afripods is the home for African podcasting across the continent and within the Diaspora. As a Ghanaian-American born in New York, Molly is extremely excited to help digitize African stories and wants to see African creators take up as much space as possible while creating avenues to help them get paid for their work. She has over ten years of experience across people management, sales, marketing and technology. She has spoken at Podcast Movement, Africa Podcast Day, Africa Media Festival, BBC Media Leaders conferences, and Advertising Week Africa as well as most recently featured in Forbes, The Guardian, Reuters, JamLab Africa, Podcast Sessions and Apple Podcasts. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mR3qNhuC8LA  In this podcast we discuss: - What is Afripods  -How Afripods appeals to African Podcasters -Why Africa needs an Afripods to bridge the gap for creators  -Building The African Podcast Landscape -The appetite for businesses for advertising on African podcasts -How African Podcasters are making money without sponsorship and ads -Afripods Business Model -The Future of African Podcasting and Creator -All About Molly!  Afripods Website: https://afripods.africa/ Connect with Molly on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollyjensen/ Build your own community with Skool: https://thesoundofaccra.com/skool Download Menufinder Africa App: https://www.menufinderafrica.com/   Our Socials YouTube: https://youtube.com/thesoundofaccrapodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesoundofaccra/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thesoundofaccra  Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesoundofaccra Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/thesoundofaccra Linkedin: https://gh.linkedin.com/company/the-sound-of-accra Our Website: https://thesoundofaccra.com Sponsor a podcast series or segment https://thesoundofaccra.com/sponsorship/  Learn how to start, launch and monetise a podcast and acquire your first 1000 listeners: https://atozpodcasting.com   Register your interest for our private community for entrepreneurs and creatives https://thesoundofaccra.com/community/  Leave us feedback https://thesoundofaccra.com/feedback/  Leave us a review https://ratethispodcast.com/thesoundofaccra    Listen to more episodes below  https://thesoundofaccrapodcast.podbean.com/    All our other links  https://linktr.ee/thesoundofaccrapod 

Nana Mensah, a Ghanaian-American writer, director, producer, and actress, joins the podcast to discuss her Broadway debut in "Jaja's African Hair Braiding". She discusses her Ghanaian-American heritage, shares her experience of playing the role of Aminata, the community's response, and the importance of bringing a story about the Black immigrant experience to Broadway. Edited by Justin Payne Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's it like when everyone at home speaks a language you don't understand? That's the story of Claudia, a Ghanaian American who grew up not speaking her home language —her ‘Mother Tongue'. But everybody else did, including her own siblings. The effects were real: disconnect, frustration, shame, and at some point a full on identity crisis. We also ask other people in the diaspora if they speak their home languages, and Hana contends with her own kids' lack of fluency, and what it means.

Chef Eric Adjepong was a finalist on season 16 of Bravo's Top Chef and a contestant on season 17 of Top Chef All-Stars, where he earned consistent acclaim from judges and popularity among viewers. As a first-generation Ghanaian-American born and raised in New York City, Eric sources the flavors and influences in his cooking from many of the West African dishes he grew up eating. He is passionate about introducing diners to West African cuisine and the impact its diaspora has had on South American, Latin American, Caribbean, and American food, all in his elegant, artfully plated style. On this episode we talk about Eric's new children's book, Sankofa: A Culinary Story of Resilience and Belonging. We also talk about is forthcoming cookbook, as well as what it was like to compete on Top Chef. What a great conversation.Also on the show, Aliza and Matt continue to preview the exciting fall cookbook season, including early thoughts on new releases from Klancy Miller, Molly Baz, Nancy Silverton, Erika Council, Cheap Old Houses, Andrew Friedman, and Leah Koenig.MORE FROM ERIC ADJEPONG: ReachTV Orders ‘Cultural Eats' Starring Chef Eric Adjepong, From Chris Paul's Production Company [Variety]Sankofa [Official]

Welcome to Cozying Up with The Clear Cut where we get up close and personal with women that inspire us! Today we're cozying up with Abena Boamah Acheampong, M.Ed, a Ghanaian American creative entrepreneur, mental health advocate, and founder + CEO of Hanahana Beauty. Today we discuss increasing accessibility, sustainability, and transparency in the beauty industry.

Theodora Biney-Amissah is a first-generation Ghanaian-American, a community and women's public health and impact professional, a birthworker-entrepreneur and family caregiver.  Theodora is deeply committed to helping pregnant, birthing, and postpartum women and people and their families navigate reproductive and maternal health care, particularly postpartum healing and recovery with doula support, community care and education.In this episode, Theodora discusses growing up in a large family of many cousins, and learning lessons in childhood about caring for people in community… being called a doula years before she actually became one… after college, her experiences working in public health and working with midwives… volunteering in women's shelters… practicing self-care by taking time to pause… setting boundaries for herself in her different roles… her experiences of being a family caregiver at various times in her life… gaps in community and national maternal healthcare… learning many things from her grandmother, who was an entrepreneur, as is her mother… encouraging community members to discuss health concerns and issues… her role in getting people to think about what they want for themselves regarding their maternal health journeys, and what they don't want… the importance for us to believe that we are all unique and have gifts to share in the world. Saa Yare Boah Doula Care LLC (USA)

Heather goes to Los Angeles, California to find out what the Recording Academy's new “Best African Music Performance” category in the Grammy Awards means for Africa and America. She speaks with 3x Grammy nominee, Ghanaian-American musician and activist Rocky Dawuni. Sierra Leonean singer, rapper LuWiz dies in car crash. KiSwahili Day was celebrated all throughout East Africa on Friday, July 7th.

“If you're branching into the U.K. market post Brexit, it's going to be a nightmare and I don't say that to dissuade you, just to remind you that what I did was very specific.” - Lydia-Renee Darling In this episode we discuss: Pandemic panic! Grad panic!  What are the main differences and similarities for multi-hyphenates in the NYC and West End markets? How do you plant your feet when branching into new markets? What happens when you girl-boss too hard? Breaking out of the scarcity mindset. How does multi-hyphenating contribute to cultural preservation? The American Dream The concept of Ann Bogart's Satz Lydia-Renee Darling is an actor-producer and founder with a BFA in Musical Theatre from Webster Conservatory of Theatre Arts and an MA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. As a biracial, second-generation Ghanaian-American, Lydia aims to explore identity, belonging and mental health within heightened worlds and uses live immersive theatre with digital interactive elements to enhance audience impact.  #rememberadam, a Zoom short produced, written and acted by Lydia in response to the Kenosha shootings in her home state, was chosen for the Lift Off Sessions festival, First Time Filmmaker Festival and Andromeda Film Festival. A portion of her play, The Thin Gray Line, has been seen at Bob Carter's Actors' Rep and she performed in her short play, Twenty-Five and Other Things, at The Pleasance in the Dear Black People Festival in July 2021.  Lydia is the Founder of Oh! (My Gosh) Creative Co., an international DEI audience development and co production company. A systemic lack of access to visibility and guidance in the entertainment industry has resulted in fewer BIPOC professionals, making fewer and fewer BIPOC want to enter the industry… and so the cycle repeats. OMG breaks this vicious cycle of underrepresentation. At Oh! (My Gosh) Creative Co., Lydia produces entertainment featuring marginalized creatives both onstage and backstage and specializes in reaching audiences that reflect the diverse faces of those casts. She most recently served as Associate Producer and Head of Marketing for the UK tour of Vitamin D. Lydia has been part of multiple accelerators for Oh! (My Gosh) Creative Co., which won a first place grant at Do It Now Now's Black and Good: Build Hustle Grow 2.0. The first of its kind on DEI in entertainment, OMG will launch their virtual publication in January 2024. This is possible due to grant support from Do it Now Now and residency at Somerset House Trust, plus the input, support and mentorship of Rachel at Brick London, Nikita at Local Champions CIC, Louis at 7PK and the ECHO Young Entrepreneurship Accelerator. This is a much-needed publication by underrepresented creatives, for underrepresented creatives. Even if you're not underrepresented in the industry, we'll have stellar tools, takeaways and studies for allies. Originally from Madison, Wisconsin, Lydia now splits her time between Chicago and as a commonwealth citizen in London. To keep up with Lydia and Oh! (My Gosh) Creative Co., find her here: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lydiareneedarling/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lydia-renee-darling/  Website: https://www.lydiareneedarling.com Oh! (My Gosh) Creative Co. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ohmygoshcreative.co/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oh-my-gosh-creative-co/ Website: https://www.ohmygoshcreative.co  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Season 3 of Techsetters features our favorite moments from the Techsetters LIVE! Summer Series, hosted by Kode With Klossy alumni Etasha Donthi and Maria Herne. This episode of the season features Crystal Sai, Executive Director, Chief of Staff for Global Online at The Estée Lauder Companies. She shares about overcoming stereotypes as a Ghanaian-American, finding her home in the beauty industry, and how she fell in love with data. 

Wongel Zelalem reports on Ghanaian American inventor Thomas O. Mensah exposes how the British designed the education system of Africa. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/africandiasporanews/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/africandiasporanews/support

5.30.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Debt ceiling agreement fallout; Texas passes Crown Act; Juneteenth inclusion drama The recent debt ceiling deal agreement will change access to social programs and start student loan repayments sooner than expected. We'll examine how this agreement will impact black and brown Americans at higher rates and what lawmakers are doing to address these concerns. The Debt Ceiling agreement is causing a stir among Democrats and Republicans. With GOP members not happy about the debt ceiling agreement. We'll show you what some GOP hard-liners criticizing the bill said ahead of Tuesday afternoon's House Rules Committee vote. Over the weekend, the 11-year-old boy shot by police in Mississippi spoke out for the first time about his ordeal and how he felt after getting shot. We will show you what he had to say. And an update on Ralph Yarl, who was shot by a racist white man for an address mix-up. A viral video of a white woman harassing two black men over a parking mistake has made the rounds on social media. We'll have more on this story and how incidents like this contribute to racial tensions in our communities. And in our marketplace segment, we'll speak with Cocoa Asante, a company founded in 2018 by Ella Livingston, a Ghanaian-American who made it her mission to provide chocolate of the best quality using cacao from her home country Ghana.  Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, I speak again with Ghanaian-American independent curator and art tastemaker Larry Ossei-Mensah. We talk about his practice of feeding his projects, his work with Art Noir, and his other interests like travel, reading, and flying his kite. Larry shares the importance of rest to reconnect as a way of staying tapped in and being in service with the artists he works with. He talks about the importance of artists being in dialogue with each other and trying to help validate what they do. We also talk about;his work as an angel investor investing in startups. The importance of rest and just being human Life will happen but it's really how you respond to it that mattersCreativity as a spiritual endeavor Taking stock of your workSpirituality as a way of moving with intention and engaging your purposeIdentifying the things that make you happy and fulfilled You can connect with Larry at https://www.instagram.com/larryosseimensah/?hl=en

In this episode, you will listen to Kwame, who lives abroad in Sierra Leone! Kwame talks about his first experience abroad as a teenager living in Ghana and how that made him feel closer to his roots as a Ghanaian-American. He also discusses moving with his family to Ethiopia, and why he feels affirmed and free living in Sierra Leone. Lastly, Kwame gives tips on how foreigners/expats can utilize their privilege to create positive change. Hope you enjoy! If you like what you hear, please subscribe/leave a review on Apple Podcasts, follow me on Spotify, and any of your favorite streaming platforms.

Submissions for the Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award are being accepted through March 31. Named for the late, pioneering African American crime fiction author Eleanor Taylor Bland, the $2000 award is intended to support the recipient in crime fiction writing and career development activities. The winner may choose to use the grant for activities that include workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses, and research activities required for completion of their work. You do not have to be a member of Sisters in Crime to submit your materials for consideration.This month we're going to revisit some conversations with previous winners of the award as well as people who have served as judges.https://www.sistersincrime.org/page/eleanortaylorbland******Yasmin Angoe is the Anthony-nominated author of the critically acclaimed thrillers Her Name Is Knight and They Come At Knight of the Nena Knight series. She is a first-generation Ghanaian American and, in 2020, was the recipient of the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Emerging Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime.Yasmin's books were an Amazon Best Book of the Month for Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, and an Editor's Pick. Her work has received numerous recognitions, was on a billboard in Times Square, Best Of lists, and a Library Journal Starred Review. Her Name Is Knight has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, OprahDaily.com, POPSUGAR, Nerd Daily, the Washington Independent Review of Books, The Guardian, and other platforms.The Nena Knight series has been optioned for TV series and is currently in development.Yasmin is a proud member of several prestigious organizations, such as Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Crime Writers of Color, International Thriller Writers, and the Women's National Book Association. Yasmin is an educator, and she and her blended family of six live in South Carolina.Twitter @yasawriterInstagram author_yasWebsite  www.yasminangoe.com******Sisters in Crime was founded in 1986 to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. Through advocacy, programming and leadership, SinC empowers and supports all crime writers regardless of genre or place on their career trajectory.www.SistersinCrime.orgInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sincnational/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SINCnationalFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sistersincrimeThe SinC Writers' Podcast is produced by Julian Crocamo https://www.juliancrocamo.com/

Welcome back everyone for another episode of turning chickens and breaking dishes. The las episode before the holiday season, my guest today was a finalist on season 16 of bravo top chef and a contestant on season 17 of top chef all starts. A first-generation Ghanaian American, born and raised in NYC you can see him on the show Alex vs America where he hosts the show, where chefs from all over the country try to take down amazing Alex Guarnaschelli, he has 3 degrees culinary and for some reason he is a New York knicks believer @davidegmartinschef @DavidePod www.davidegmartins.com

We speak with John Hulede, founder of the Hulede Collegiate Golf Scholarship, about his experience in creating a scholarship and designing a unique NIL deal for scholarship winners. If you would like to contribute to the 2023 scholarship fund, you can visit bold.org.John was a D1 golfer from Towson University and is a first-generation Ghanaian-American. John created the scholarship to help minority golfers succeed on the collegiate level.We also discuss Chrissy's experience at Tally Ho. We discuss Lake Erie Storm wide receiver Peyton Brown. Chrissy proposes a deal between Brown and Waldameer Park. Penn State soccer's team captain, Peter Mangione, and how Opendorse is creating profiles for student-athletes before they are enrolled on the platform.Our News and Facts segment covers the launch of Opper, Philadelphia Councilmember Isaiah Thomas' introduction of the Philly NIL Youth Protection Act, the formation of the Friends of the Heights and Irish United collectives, and the clarification of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association's handbook's guidelines related to NIL.Our NIL Mathlete segment covers Jordan Turner's partnership with Devery Cash of Keller Williams to raise funds for The Road Home.We hear from Nillie Athlete Jalon Sheffield and Jayden Smith from the Icon 1901 Collective. You can also connect with Jayden on Twitter and Instagram. We discuss Makenna Marisa's NIL deal with Primanti Brothers and the Crimson and Cream Collective's autograph signing with the Oklahoma women's softball team.To learn more about our Nillie platform, visit nillie.io or email contact@victreefi.com. To learn more about our Framework platform, visit victreefi.com. 

Yasmin Angoe is the Anthony-nominated and first generation Ghanaian American author of the critically acclaimed Her Name Is Knight and the second of the series, They Come At Knight. She is the recipient of the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award from Sisters in Crime. Reviews of her work can be found in the New York Times, Kirkus, and Publisher's Weekly, to name a few, and was listed as Amazon's “Best Book of the Month” and “Editor's Pick.” They have also appeared in outlets such as Oprah Daily, PopSugar, Women's World, and The Guardian.

Knight falls on the Crew Reviews as Yasmin Angoe returns with her latest novel, THEY COME AT KNIGHT. It's another fascinating and entertaining hour with Yasmin as she details the inspiration behind her outstanding follow-up to last year's HER NAME IS KNIGHT, reveals the challenges and anxiety that come with an encore performance, and gives us another wonderful impression of her budding legend of a mother. Yasmin Angoe's THEY COME AT KNIGHT is the heart-pounding second installment in the Nena Knight series about an intrepid female assassin who will stop at nothing to protect her family. "A lethal tale of an all-but-superhero whose author promises that ‘in this story, there are no heroes.'” For elite assassin Nena Knight, eliminating dangerous players on the world stage is part of the job. The Tribe, a powerful business syndicate in Africa, ensures that she has those opportunities. But for Nena, the Tribe is more than just her employer; it's an organization that supports the African people—until it turns on itself. As Nena embarks on a new mission, a violent siege by a paramilitary group throws the Tribe into chaos, and mysterious acts of violence plague the Tribe's territories. As the attacks escalate, Nena suspects a different kind of enemy at play: someone on the inside, determined to undermine the Tribe's leaders. As this new threat closes in on her own family, Nena enlists a team to root out the danger. But as she gets closer to the truth, she will have to risk everything to protect the future she holds dear—even if it means facing off with an enemy she never expected. Yasmin Angoe is the debut author of the bestselling and award-winning thriller HER NAME IS KNIGHT. She is a first-generation Ghanaian American and has worked in education for nearly twenty years as a middle and high school teacher and instructional coach. Currently, Yasmin works as a developmental editor and sensitivity reader for publishers and authors. Yasmin received the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Emerging Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime, of which she is a member. She is also a proud member of numerous crime, mystery, and thriller writing groups and organizations like Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. _____________________________ Don't forget to subscribe to The Crew Reviews, hit the "like" button, and leave a comment. And if you want to learn more about the guys from The Crew or see additional author interviews, visit us at http://www.thecrewreviews.com Follow us on social media Twitter | https://twitter.com/CREWbookreviews Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/thecrewreviews Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/thecrewreviews/ #YasminAngoe #TheyComeAtKnight #TheCrewReviews

Michael Bervell is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, and author. His debut book “Unlocking Unicorns” was an Amazon best-selling new release that investigates the founders, philosophies, and strategies for building a unicorn company in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In 2007, Bervell co-founded “Hugs for” an international, student-run non-profit organization focused on using grassroots strategies to develop countries around the world. To date, "Hugs for" has fundraised over $500,000 of material and monetary donations and impacted over 300,000 youths around the world. Because of his work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015. Bervell is the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle and a former board member of the Harvard Alumni Association (which he joined when he was 19). He also helped start Sigma Squared in the US (formerly the Kairos Society). He has experience working as a Venture Fellow at Harlem Capital, a Portfolio manager at Microsoft's Venture Fund, a Program Manager at Microsoft, and as a Software Engineer at Twitter, and has helped to found and lead a variety of organizations including the Enchiridion Corporation, a marketing consulting company, and Billion Dollar Startup Ideas, a media and innovation company. Read the show notes here: https://arcbound.com/podcasts/  Links: Homepage: Arcbound.com Services/Work with Us: https://arcbound.com/work-with-us/ About: https://arcbound.com/about/ Founders Corner: https://arcbound.com/category/founders-corner/ Connect: https://arcbound.com/connect/