Thriving is a skill. Everyone is born with a unique set of gifts—natural abilities that you didn’t have to intentionally develop. Skills, on the other hand, require meaningful effort and time commitment. Experiencing joy is a skill. Being able to perceive the beauty of life at any given time is a skill. Being an activist is a pillar of my identity, but not because it is the right thing to do. Instead, living an anti-racist lifestyle and doing DEI work has opened me to experience more joy and witness more beauty than I previously believed possible.

My work is focused on helping reframe how people think about emotions such that they become tools and not deterrents. I exemplify how vulnerability is more a gift to yourself than to anyone else. And, I teach people how to empathize in a way that inspires actions. I deliver speeches, facilitate workshops, and provide mentorship upon request.

This isn’t about being “woke”. Becoming an activist wasn’t intentional or even desired initially. In June of 2020, I gave a presentation to my manager and a few co-workers about my experience digesting the racially-charged headlines of Summer 2020, George Floyd’s story in particular. By August of that year, no less than 3000 people had voluntarily watched my presentation. And while it was rewarding to know that countless strangers were benefitting from my efforts, the real benefit was in how this work revolutionized my relationships. My mother and father are both Black and from segregated Arkansas. My wife’s parents are white and from California. We have two sons—one with my brown skin and brown eyes and one with her white skin and her father’s blue eyes. The conversations I’ve had and perspectives I’ve been exposed to through my activism have improve my ability to show up as an employee, as a husband, as a father.

Organizations are made of people. Oftentimes, the people charged with deciding and enacting diversity-focused initiatives don’t truly understand the diverse experiences they aim to improve, as evident by the familiar experience of being disappointed by your employer’s annual anti-bias training or by the number of companies eliminating DEI jobs. It is impossible to be truly inclusive and equitable towards diversity in any given form until you’ve learned something about it that you truly appreciate. I teach that differences should be a reason to engage, a reason to be curious, as opposed to being justification to avoid to or to ignore.