Looking for a journey that will redefine your perspective? This episode is a testament to the transformative power of travel and the resilience of the human spirit as we chat with Devin Walker and Leroy Adams, who are travelers, authors, and entrepreneurs. Devin's story from Los Angeles to become a globe-trotter and now a leader of study abroad experiences for diverse college students is encapsulated in his book "Wandering Where We Belong".
Our conversation unveils the rewards of studying and traveling abroad. Devin's journey, from The University of Wisconsin Madison to South Africa, via Turkey and Greece, and back to Wisconsin uncovered the stigmas and stereotypes associated with travel and offered reflections on race and privilege.
Looking for a journey that will redefine your perspective? This episode is a testament to the transformative power of travel and the resilience of the human spirit as we chat with Devin Walker and Leroy Adams, who are travelers, authors, and entrepreneurs. Devin's story from Los Angeles to become a globe-trotter and now a leader of study abroad experiences for diverse college students is encapsulated in his book "Wandering Where We Belong".
Our conversation unveils the rewards of studying and traveling abroad. Devin's journey, from The University of Wisconsin Madison to South Africa, via Turkey and Greece, and back to Wisconsin uncovered the stigmas and stereotypes associated with travel and offered reflections on race and privilege.
And this is probably like my third or fourth interview where I've collaborated with Lee Ray Adams, the founder of the Buddy Pass Travel Brands. It is a magazine and a podcast, and one of the reasons why I started podcasting is because I got to meet people right and so for me it's less about the downloads and more about people wanting to talk about themselves and building connections.
Speaker 1:But our format typically has an author and an entrepreneur who are in a related field of talking to one another. So it's like a great opportunity to put the two of you together for this conversation, and both of you are entrepreneurs. Both of you are authors in your own way. But what's interesting is this like Devin came into my life randomly, I had a roommate in graduate school named Tony, who was a non-traditional student, so Tony's a year younger than me, but he was an undergrad. So he would hang out with me and our boy Martin Because we, the three of us, were all roommates at the time and Tony graduated Went away doing this thing and randomly, I think, he put on. Was it Craigslist or where? I don't know what it was.
Speaker 3:I was just telling somebody a story yesterday.
Speaker 1:I was telling my wife.
Speaker 3:She was walking by the lake and remember I stayed at that hostel. Yeah, I was like I used to stay.
Speaker 1:My first move to Austin I was like that's where I stayed, yeah, and so what just so happened that the new dude, this new dude from California who was living in China or career, or whatever that was coming to be under the same advisor that I had for his master's degree. We had heard about him, I just didn't know this baby was going to be the guy. It was going to be my roommate too, right?
Speaker 3:So trying to go crazy around that he goes like you want to make sure. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:It's just randomly happening that he wanted to be my roommate, so I moved to San Antonio. Years later, a mutual friend introduced me to Libor. Libor came to one of my talks about black student, black athletes.
Speaker 2:So I learned more about Libor.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. It's like y'all have the same story. It's like y'all have the light skin and dark skin first. Right Listen, same style, same sort of like ethos. You know what I mean? There are some differences in your personality, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Similar swagger.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting combination that have you two together at the same time, because I know y'all have met, y'all have talked, collabbed, we've done a bunch of shit. I've never been in the same space as the two of you at the same time. You know what I mean, and so it's just.
Speaker 3:I definitely remember how excited you were when you were telling me about Libor. Oh yeah, same bro, same bro. Yeah, you got to meet y'all, just y'all collab. Yeah, all right, babe, same, you're gonna have an easy person to work with, like follow through, you follow through, which is nice. I try. Yeah, man, it's like all right, you wanna do this? Okay, cool, I'll come up with it. Okay, but we'll get it done.
Speaker 1:And so Devin is the author of Historically Underrepresented Faculty and Students in Education Abroad Wandering when we Belong, and that's an appropriate title. And Devin is the world walker and he used to have this thing in the apartment, and maybe it was a year after. It said not all those who wander are lost, right? I love that quote. That was kind of like a thingy Love that quote. That was like that was a thing that kind of like.
Speaker 3:Martin used to call me the wanderer.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, that was a title.
Speaker 3:That's why, when I came out with this book, when it came out with that title Wandering when we Belong, you're like yo, that's it, that's the way.
Speaker 2:I've always loved that quote.
Speaker 1:So I figured we would start with Devin you talking about your journey to becoming a journeyer, right, and what was that like for you? So give us some history, give us your autobiography. I like to start with autobiographies, all right.
Speaker 3:Well, first off, when I was getting ready to that, I seen this shirt on my pop. So I was like man, let me throw this on because it relates to the story. And then you ask me like, where did I start this journey? And I remember being a kid growing up in LA and I had two brothers and we're black. Obviously, most of our family was black, our friends were black. So you hear all these negative stereotypes about it and statistics about crime, about violence and I remember those.
Speaker 1:I remember it saying one in three people will.
Speaker 3:Three black men will go to jail, and I have two brothers, so I always remember that wang on me. However, my dad would always take us camping and skiing and for whatever reason. I remember when we would get outside of the city, get outside of LA, and just the pressure of it.
Speaker 3:I remember coming back, I remember literally this thing coming back on the five freeway, coming back into the city, and I would always have this sense of confidence, like I just saw something that the rest of you didn't see. I saw something different. I saw something that I know I don't have to be here, I don't have to fall in line with everything that I see around me, like I could go to a forest. I could go to a forest or I could go skiing, and it just exposed me to other cultures, definitely because skiing was very white and that was the first time I'd be in these all white spaces and I'm like oh wow, but it was cool, people were chill, so it just exposed me. It opened my door and then from there I got a college scholarship to Wisconsin.
Speaker 1:That's on the other side of the country.
Speaker 3:I was like studying abroad in itself. From LA to Wisconsin it was helicode, heliwite and helicode and heliwite. So it's really that felt like studying abroad. And I remember being there and I'm like man, if I could literally do it here, like they say in New York, if I can make this work here, I could literally live anywhere in the world. And I had always wanted to go to Africa. I always wanted to go to West Africa. So when I got to college I was like all right, you know, I'm going to start learning English and I'm going to go to Senegal, the Cameroon and study abroad in Quebec, canada, I learned some French, came back to, I mean, came back to Wisconsin, and then the French was difficult, it was different, the chemical is different. So I'm like man, I gave up.
Speaker 3:I went to the study abroad office. I saw a little program description of Cape Town and it was beautiful on the side of the mountain and you spoke English. I'm like that's it, like I'm going to West Africa is off the list. I applied and I got denied and it was crazy because, like that semester, I only had one semester worth of housing. I stayed in the international dorm because I was just so convinced the next semester I was going abroad again and it didn't happen and I was furious. I remember going up to the office literally like every day, knock on door like did somebody drop? Like eventually like yo, how did I not get in this program? Like it's a program in Africa? It's 1.8% of us on this campus, 1.8% black, and you're going to deny me, and you're probably one of the few black students who applied.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was young when I, eventually, I was going to go to the university. I'll get there, but yeah there's no black people applying to go to bride at Wisconsin. Yeah, there's not black people to stay in the room they got.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying so.
Speaker 3:I got denied and that was that hurt. Man, I was embarrassed. I was like I refuse to come back to this campus the next semester and I just kept going up there. I'm like y'all got to find something for me. So they're well, you can go to England. It's a study center. We can control the numbers. I know I was furious and I remember I saw it. I took it one of the black girl in program nothing wrong with this per se, but she doesn't come from a mixed family, but she ended up being a white dude there was one Asian girl in program who also ended up being a white dude, which makes sense when you're from Wisconsin, like that's kind of how people are yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 3:for me. That wasn't my scenario, so I felt you know, there was a black and Asian woman on the trip. I, low key, felt like I was out there on my own you know what I'm saying and with 30 people, and I remember being mad standoff. It's like now I want to talk to people that's still unhappy about South Africa. But it turned out to probably be the best thing for me, man, because I met this dude named Nick. This white boy taught me how to backpack, took me to Turkey and Greece for spring break. He's like anybody want to go. Only one person could come with me, though.
Speaker 3:I'm like, look at this dude and he was comfortable, he had said a few things over the first month of the program to let me know like hey, not only am I comfortable with you as a black person, but I also get why he might be uncomfortable with us as white people.
Speaker 2:He let you know, he let me know he was so like hell of a shit, you know what.
Speaker 3:I'm saying, and he was smart, listening to some black jazz music. So I'm like, okay, he was from Oklahoma, so we had a little different brain. So I'm like, cool, rocked with him, and that was my first backpacking trip, man, and that changed my life. And then from there I was just backpacking two to three days here, two to three days there, eventually made it back to Wisconsin, applied to go to South Africa again. My senior year Made it finally Definitely the only black person, at least from Wisconsin, and that trip I'm so glad I did it, because there's so many things that I do as an international education right now to get black students abroad that I learned not to do from that experience.
Speaker 3:Like what Exactly? First and foremost, I'm going to the meeting and I'm saying this is still in Wisconsin. They got a white dude, you know, giving us the cultural context. You go to a couple of meetings, of course. What are they on? What's the first meeting? They'll be on Safety Always. So now, as a black person, you were the white person telling me how to go, be safe and come to your black people. Yeah, so you fall in line to these certain areas.
Speaker 3:I'm like y'all want to ride a bike? I'm going to bike to campus. I see where we live. It's like two miles. It's like perfect biking, yeah. He looked at me and said if you ride a bike to campus every single day, there's no way you'll make it at least one month. Your bike will get stolen. I'm like, okay, I'm going to get it. Okay, yeah, maybe I'm going to ride a bike.
Speaker 3:I was disappointed, it's not what I had thought. I'm like, okay, you know, I get it Next meeting. I'm like yo man, it's like after, you know, before, I bought my flight, I'm going to fly to Egypt. So I want to make my way, I want to backpack my way to up through Africa. And he looked at me and he started laughing. Like what do you mean? See, you think you can make it from Cape Town all the way up to Egypt, to Cairo. I'm like other people have done it. Yeah, I'm like there's. Yeah. I'm asking you like what do you think about it? I wasn't, you know, I didn't have a network of travelers Like I do now.
Speaker 3:This is the guy, he's the door for me and he convinced me not to do it. He convinced me that I wouldn't be able to make it and it wouldn't be safe. So those two things were hella formative in terms of he didn't really realize. Not only did he negatively impact my experience, but he also, when I got there, I'm looking at people who look like me, like they're a problem in their own country, like they were cr he taught me to look at myself and I'm like, yeah, that's a criminal, yeah, yeah. And so that had a huge impact. And so when we let our first program start in 2014 and we had this big buff white dude in there and he's going over the safety thing and he's doing all this stuff windows dah, dah, dah, dah. He's making the local people seem so dangerous and I had to stand up and I'm looking at his body language and they're wearing it.
Speaker 3:And I'm like how many of y'all have heard discourse like this before?
Speaker 1:They're like all of them when?
Speaker 3:How. That's how they talk about my community. They start finding, you know, I created space for them to talk and then I'm like, okay, so how do we take what he's saying and apply it to the space based on you know, applications and stereotypes and stigmas and crime. What does crime look like in Houston? So it allows us to have the same conversation. You know what I'm saying, but in a less problematic way, right? So I always tell students and from that, when people come in and do those things, I say we need to talk about being smart over safety, because if we could talk about being smart, we don't have to dehumanize people.
Speaker 3:That's the long answer, so it's a good answer.
Speaker 2:Thank you, bro. So many things in that. So, first of all, one of the things I wanted to point out is when you're talking about the motivation or the desire to travel and where that came from, I love, love, love that you started with, or my pops issues, take us on camping trips and fishing trips. Because a lot of times, man especially now that more black people are having access to travel opportunities, there's still, even though we have access to travel opportunities as a community, there's still a huge part of our community that's not traveling, not even going outdoors, not even going outdoors. And one of the things you know my team and I have talked about is how do we encourage people just to take a trip outside, to get started right, build up to a passport, build up to an international trip, recognizing that not everybody is going to, just one day hop on a plane and go to Ghana? You know it's like. How do you help build up to that? So I love that you acknowledge that part first.
Speaker 3:And if you, if you haven't learned to appreciate the green belt in the backyard of. Austin or appreciated other natural things within your own environment, or museums or little stuff. When you go, Brian, you ain't gonna go. How the hell you gonna appreciate their natural geography or their museums or those things? If you don't do them, you're gonna go out there and look just as bewildered and not actually be able to embrace it, because you've never embraced it where you're at yeah, and I see that too with people.
Speaker 3:They're going somewhere, thinking they're about to get something brand new, some that's just going to shock them into loving the space. It's like no you, you have to go find out these things and explore, and you need to develop the desire to explore, hopefully locally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because a lot of it manages. What you're experiencing or you're seeing is it's. I mean, you go to Paris to see the Apple Tower, so, oh my God, just the Apple Tower. But you have to recognize like the Apple Tower is special because it's connected to a French culture. That's why it's special. And the same way that if you go here, if you go to shit Statue of Liberty, right, it's connected to American culture and to US culture, but we are so in tune with that culture. We see the, we see the sessions, oh and all that's our culture. And so until you have learned to appreciate and respect and acknowledge why your own culture and cultural artifacts are so special, you're only going to these places just to check a box. You're not really understanding why is this so special to the community, to the culture? Not even. And then the next part of it is like have you been talked to the local people to understand how then that is interpreted in their culture, you know, and not just as some tourist platform, if you will. The second part to what you were saying, bro man.
Speaker 2:I studied in Taiwan and what was crazy was I was one of two black people, one of two black students. And then after that, you all know, I went to the Peace Corps. The conversation around Taiwan, in terms of how it was described and how it was talked about, was very different than the conversations and the descriptions that I received when I went to Ethiopia in the Peace Corps. Even back home, having my family say, oh, taiwan, they can't even put it on the map. Oh, taiwan, okay. Chinese people okay.
Speaker 2:I mean we're scared. I mean don't travel. I mean we're scared that you're going to go away over there. But fine, ethiopia. And then you get there and you talk about the orientation that you receive when you go to study abroad or you go to a program like the Peace Corps. One of the things the black volunteers we realized, like day three in our orientation, was that you had white Peace Corps directors, trainers, educating us on safety in a black country. And at some point we got up and said, well, everything you're describing that's for you, that's for you, that's for you. We don't feel that way in this country. As a matter of fact, you're making us feel bad about the very people we're trying to connect with. And so what I, what you realize is, even in study of broad programs. The way that we talk about African countries or black countries that I'm at and studying abroad in black countries is very different than how we talk about European countries.
Speaker 3:Man, you don't know the hoops and hurdles I'm gonna start with. Dr Moore had to fight and then since myself, I've had to battle to get programs in Africa. I have all. I think there might be one program, but think about the entire the university. As of last year, I think all the programs in Africa cease to exist. Maybe, besides one nutrition program in South Africa, or there might be one in Botswana, there's a nutrition program. I think that bounces. I have three on the continent. I'm one person at the university and now I'm about to leave. You know what I'm saying. They're probably gonna go with you and those programs two of the three that I've run to the continent, or actually one that I've been developing more recently are all my own. God. I didn't have nothing to do with the university. I ran it completely outside because just more hoops, more hurdles.
Speaker 3:And then, unfortunately, when the pandemic ended and we were trying to get people back on, we were trying to run our program in South Africa and they really, really tried to push us away for it. I told them we go to countries of color, we're centering our students. What do you have I explored? Maybe Korea? They're like no, what about Germany? They literally that's where they tried to land me and I just couldn't help but to think about the irony of like you're so afraid to allow me to go to the global, south, third world country, wherever I want to do my programs in Africa, they'd be like it'll be safer to send them to Germany, a group full of black and brown students. There's nothing wrong with Germany in and of itself, but that's not the destination that my students are signing up for. That's not the experience they want to have. Why would you want to go somewhere and feel the same way in your body you feel here? Yeah, so it is difficult. There's more barriers and challenges, I think, to developing those programs and then certain bureaucratic policies. Like I don't want to get into too many bureaucratic policies, it can be difficult.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm saying and it replicates. They think they're going to diversify global education by getting more black and brown kids on the same trip they already have to Europe. 33% of the study abroad students go to three countries. One third of all study abroad students go to one of three countries. And you think you can't divert, you don't diversify, that you have to start over and send some other kids into other programs, and that's what we've been able to do at UT and that's partly why we make them so big is to put it in people's space. That narrative you're suggesting is not true, and if we have to take 80 kids abroad to prove it to you, then we'll do that, just so you can't say it's not that they don't want to go abroad, it's that you've never thought about their experiences within international education, so you want to tag them on to existing programs instead of building out programs that are focused on that. It ain't that hard. It's like any other form of equity you send out what you are trying to lift up.
Speaker 1:I want to ask about your. I want to go backwards in time Because I I'm from like, like we grew up in the same research culture, like we were training in the same research culture. So a lot of what we were training and had to deal with, your black identity, the development, of your identity. So talk about how your identity evolved studying abroad, but then also talk about how you curate an experience excuse me, for black students in particular that allows their, their black identity to evolve in an abroad space?
Speaker 3:That's a question I'm trying to think about how deep back I want to go. I mean, I'm clearly a Nick, my mom is white, my positive black.
Speaker 1:So I think, the yearning for figuring out what does it mean to?
Speaker 3:be black in this country and where does my ancestry lie? That's always what pulled me to West Africa and I remember taking World History class in sixth grade and finally knowing that we got a unit on Africa and they did Europe the first 11 weeks. And I'm like I had asked the teacher early and he's like, yeah, africa is the next session. So every week it's adding.
Speaker 3:I'm like oh, get cool, we're going to get seven weeks after, eight weeks after and after 11 weeks it's like next week's Africa Cool. I remember I literally wore a collared shirt that Monday, wow, and the lesson ended Friday and it was so disheartening.
Speaker 1:You know what?
Speaker 3:I'm saying Wow. And then it was like, at that same exact time. I literally remember that same exact Friday after class, I was out on the yard and the PE coach was making me model serving tennis, right, and I'm like I was athletic, I could play any of the sports, but I pooped. I played football and I played baseball. I didn't really play tennis, but he just assumed because I was black and I was good at all the rest of stuff. I'm like, yeah, definitely get up there and show him how to. So I'm like, all right, cool, I did it, good enough, but it was. I'm like damn.
Speaker 3:I was really excited about history class and I got disappointed. It was almost like my identity didn't matter in there. It's PE, I didn't. That's not where I excelled in that particular unit. In tennis, however, I was positioned as a leader, and so then it's like man, how does that weigh on young kids in the sixth grade? You're validated, validated, validated for your athletic prowess, but you're invalidated in the classroom and you wonder why so many of us grow up like wanting to focus on sport, right? So that was part of my experience, I think, being young and also connected to it. Yeah, being mixed like this search, this yearning for something.
Speaker 3:So I'll say a couple of two stories. I had that when you asked your question. I was like I gotta tell you two stories. So when I was in South Africa the first time I took a, I was going to do a round Botswana trip. So it started by taking an 18 hour bus from Cape Town to or maybe it's a train to Johannesburg. We got to Johannesburg and we're in the bus station. I remember some people came up to us. They were like oh, where are you going? We're like oh, we're going to take this bus to Zambia. They were like okay, cool, don't leave this bus station. We're like what? They pointed some kids out there.
Speaker 3:They're like you see that they wait for guys around here to leave and I'm like I'm thinking, okay, and I'm looking and I'm like, okay, definitely, in Johannesburg I feel my skin color a lot more than I did in Cape Town, of course, and I'm traveling with a white dude. So now I'm starting to people oh oh, I was kind of like I didn't think I'm white, I can't make shit, I'll bang up out of this subway or whatever bus station. I'm not tripping.
Speaker 3:But we listened and the bus was late. You know I have to get 12 hours, so we had the bus stop for 12 hours bus station. And then we get on a 26 hour bus from Johannesburg, through Zimbabwe, to Lusaka, zambia. And on this bus I'm by far outside this white dude. I'm traveling with the light skin person. Right, because now this region of the country is, you know, it's black. Right, and I'm in the country of the continent, right, because I'm going through three countries. So on this bus we're talking and rapping and talking to different people around me, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Speaker 3:And it's the dude next to me or behind me. I think he was like this and he's like yo. It says something about me being white and I'm like no, I'm not white. He looked at me down my face. He's like you are white and you know, growing up in this culture, I'm starting to want to get defensive.
Speaker 1:I'm like hold on hold on, hold on hold on.
Speaker 3:Especially as a light. You know, as a mixed person, that's something I've always had to validate growing up. You know what I'm saying. So I was about to get into that space and he's like look, show me your forearm. And he pulls out my forearm. And he tells other white boys to pull out his forearm, and he pulls out his forearm. He's like you are like him. Look, you are not like me. I'm black, you are like white. And he's like and you're American. And I just sat back and didn't say nothing and I was tight and I'm just.
Speaker 3:But it forced me to reflect. I'm like what does race mean in this particular context, in this region of the world? What else do I represent outside of whiteness? Right now, I'm traveling with a white dude. I'm probably the only person not from one of these two or three countries that we're traveling to. How did I get here? How's my passport allowed me to get here, right? So I'm reflecting on that stuff we get up to. We're about to transition into Zambia and I didn't have no cash, so we go up there. You know we're trying to get low visas. You know, as American, you just used to get whatever visa.
Speaker 3:You just show up, we ain't tripping. We show up there and they're like $100. I'm like $100. You're wild and we're at the you know the border. So there's other. Now you know, there's other nationalities, there's other people at the border. And then we see some English people and they're like we're like the English one was like $40. You're trying to get over on me $100. And then the dude, the officer, he literally came from behind his desk. He says I'm trying to get over on you, me Zambian man trying to get over you as American.
Speaker 3:He said you know how much your passports cost us. I mean, your visas cost us Zambians. I'm lying. He's like $100 in Zambian. You know how long it takes people to make that money. I'm just sitting there. He's like so we charge. What other people charge us? Mm-hmm, he's like so there, most people's visas is this. You all have one, the most expensive visas. Yeah, so imagine if it's hard for you right now. Imagine how hard it is for us to be there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, then, I'm reflecting on the conversation from a man over here, the politics around visa fees, the politics around race, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:That's a whole shh, not a conversation, but it it shaped me and I'm like, damn, how does this system of global white supremacy punish me and invalidate me and oppress me at home and then somehow privilege me abroad? And that's an uncomfortable thing to grapple with, to think about, to wrestle with, and I also think me as a light-skinned person, specifically something I have to grapple with because I'm not always red as black in all countries. Right, my man, javier, he's generally always red as black and he's also always, oftentimes, red as African. So his experience sometimes traveling, he gets red as an African, so he gets treated a certain way, and why I get red as an American, so I get treated a certain way. So even race and color and nationally, all these things when you're abroad globally, you really have to nuance and think deeply about, which is why I think it's such an incredibly powerful experience for a young black person to have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's that dynamic man is so interesting because I often will talk to people and travelers about like as black travelers. And actually a couple weeks ago I was interviewed, special representative Desiree Smith from the Department of State and I said it's the same question. She's life-saving woman, black, life-saving woman. I said what's interesting about black travelers is we have our issues with America and we carry those with us even when we leave.
Speaker 2:But then we come up against the privilege that it is to be an American traveler. So on the one hand we're fed up, but on the other hand it's like oh shit, I can flash that blue passport and get an English teaching job in China before Nigerian with the green passport is an easy, easy right. Or other countries are rolling out that red carpet for us when we flash that blue passport. But then when that privilege is challenged in the way that we challenge white privilege here in the US we attempt to challenge white privilege in the US we then lose our goddamn. How dare you charge me, I realize, in Vietnam and I was buying a visa. It's like $25.
Speaker 3:$25 bro, I am about that one too.
Speaker 2:It was a white dude in front of me, white American dude in front of me. He lit up when they asked him for $25. How dare you charge me to come into your country? And, bro, all I did was go back. Do you understand what our country did to these people and how much they did? And then I had to also have to learn that part. It's like, oh damn, y'all gotta pay three, four times as much to get in America if you're lucky to get in, and so, like you know it's. I find that dynamic so and I'm really interested to see how that continues to inform the attitude of black travelers as we continue to travel and more of us get out there into the world and come up against these sort of challenges to our American identity, to our American privilege, which sometimes we don't even recognize we have until we leave the country. But it is real and they're fortunate to sit back and reflect on your status as not a black person but an American in the world.
Speaker 3:And there's power in that. Owning that privilege which I also think you know, I think for so many of us who have been, have these overarching words that are dehumanizing and belittling, like minority right, like underprivileged, underrepresented, marginalized, all these limiting words, and you're used to that, you're not used to the term privilege and having to address and situate yourself. There's power in that. I'm like, not your privilege. Now sit with the privileges you have, think about them and use them responsibly. Yes, use them responsibly, right. And I feel like when people are forced at least black students when they're forced to grapple with that privilege, that it does. It gives them space to grow right, it gives them opportunities for enlightenment and it enforces them.
Speaker 3:I think, when they come back here to start really seeing opportunities in a way that maybe before they might have more clearly identified barriers, because this is like racism, is like anything else. If I focus on it, if I focus on it, if I focus on it, if I focus on it, if I focus on it, that's all I can see, yeah, but if I focus on everything else around it and opportunities to deal with people and all these different things, and it I kind of eventually can put in this proper context. It's real. It's real, I feel, you feel it every day. But it doesn't have to control the way you see the world and if it does, you're only going to see really the barriers. And that's why I think that privilege when they come back and like no on that the fact that you've traveled the world, the fact that you've seen more than most Americans ever were, like, leverage that and see the opportunities that you could take advantage of and hopefully I generally just believe in black people.
Speaker 2:So the social responsibility aspect I almost feel like is built into our culture. I just do one time see my backpack with all the patches on it and he was like, oh, nobody can bullshit you. It's like what you mean. He was like he broke down a concept of like what bullshit means? Like obviously just feeding people a bunch of crap or misinformation. But it was like, bro, look at your backpack. You've been to all these places. Tell me who in the US could then inform you or try to educate you on some shit, or pull a wool over your head or tell you that your people came from slaves, right, or?
Speaker 2:tell you that your, your, history started with slavery.
Speaker 2:No one's really able to bullshit you you've seen too much so, in the same way, when you experience too much, as well, it's on the same way, like you say, with black students, which is why I love the work that you're doing. I love the work that you know, I hope me Alice is doing with black outside as well, when our kids have an opportunity to get exposed to different elements, different environments, different cultures, different people, different experiences, and then they come back. It makes me remember that this one of our interviews with a black Canadian woman her husband took a year off with her two boys when they were six and eight, and before her boys left, one of them, actually one of them, came home crying one day, was like, hey, mom, uh, students were picking on me in school. No one wanted to be my friend, crying tears, you know, crying his eyes out. They took off 12, 12 months.
Speaker 2:They traveled around 27 countries. He came back, came back home, they, they got back. He went back to school, came back home that day and I was how school. He was like, oh, mom, kids are still kind of mean, you know. No one wanted to talk to me. She said, well, you're not crying, how do you feel? He said, oh, that's okay, it was cool, I got friends and friends. So she was like her sons are no longer bothered by whatever idea of blackness, that white people are predominantly. White cultures hold up them in the same way that most black people who travel and gone and experience some things. They've seen a different type of history or culture, etc. You're seldomly been bothered by whatever racial tropes or behaviors you may experience, and if you do it experience them you're able to compartmentalize them in a way that doesn't affect how you're moving in the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean what you're saying. I remember before I started traveling, I literally thought anti-black racism was the worst and most oppressive thing that anyone could ever experience and I'm like, why does this have to happen to us? And then I started traveling. I'm like yo, she's fucked up around the world. Yeah, there's so many different layers to oppression around the world. Now is anti-blackness a global thing and you can generally find in most countries and sectors, yes, but there's so many other forms of oppression and, of course, one of the things you see the most is gender oppression, right, religious oppression and persecution. So that also allowed me to see myself and other people a little bit more and I was like, oh, everything ain't just against you and your people like, like allowed me to see damn, although this is against you, what are some of the privileges you have about being American? How do you utilize those?
Speaker 3:but you said some of I want to go back to the you can't tell me nothing piece and I have two kind of stories related. One is a little girl and Sutton's daughter. He's taking her to China and South Africa and she keeps asking him like that, when we gonna go back to China? And she said it multiple times at her school. So you hear other parents like slow back girl talking about when she gonna go back to China. Right, and she was in class and the teacher said something, asked a question about penguins, what content? Or where penguins located. She raised her hand.
Speaker 3:African teachers like no wrong. She's like no, they're in Africa, I've seen that. And teachers like huh, she's like I was in Cape Town and there's Africans, I mean, there's African penguins to teach another. Oh, looks it up and I doubt she's right and has to bow down to a seven year old girl in class. You know I'm saying exactly, bro, and that is power, that is harm. What does that do for that young girl's confidence to be able to shut her teacher down? Yeah, I've seen something you ain't seen. And then on the other side of that there's another. She's a grown woman now. Her name is La Shanika. She came right.
Speaker 1:I didn't know if Dr Moore was bullshitting about that story and her girl's name. Yeah, no, if he was made he was making that up as part of not I had no idea.
Speaker 3:So La Shanika is from Dallas. Dr Moore does a great job of telling her story and he tells the first part of her story about like little me, la Shanika, dallas, sitting on the Great Wall of China, reflecting and maybe writing to her mom like how did I get here right? And now that I am at what, what does this mean next for me? And then, literally the next summer, she's climbing the great. She's climbing Table Mountain. So in two summers, great Wall of China. So for her right, just blowing her mind.
Speaker 1:So I was on the South.
Speaker 3:Africa trip and I've caught up with her and kept up with her professional journey and I was talking to her a couple years ago and she's like oh, definitely you.
Speaker 3:She's like you won't believe how, you know, these experiences have impacted my career trajectory and I'm like tell me, like that's exactly what I'm trying to figure out, right, how does this stuff, can we leverage this stuff, does it work? And she's like so look, there's all these different job promotion and opportunities in my job. There's one in Rhode Island and I was. You know, I applied for it and so much of what I leaned on was the fact that I knew I could confidently make the transition to Rhode Island because I had done it in other parts of the world. I lived in South Africa and since they're opening up this new branch, they needed new people.
Speaker 3:And she made the case like yo, I'm the person who can go do that for you. She said. She killed it so much so that when they open the next branch in another state, they looked at her like you are the person with the skill set, adapt the rules, who to adapt to other culture, knows how to treat new cultures with respect, obviously knows how to like, be humble and reflect upon who she is and her own values, to learn and accept other people's values. Right, so she said she did that again, so much so that now she got promoted to such a high level. She was in a board meeting and she's like yo, she came out, hella, unconfident, like it's all middle aged white men, like that's the demographic in the room is middle aged, old white men, so she's like it was whatever in the meeting space.
Speaker 3:She's like people with respect for in the meeting space, but outside, you know, in the hallways, you know everyone is drinking their coffee and they're talking about she's like Devin, I promise you not. They are talking about golfing, they're talking about investing and they're talking about their children. And she's like I had no entry points. She was like. So after about two days I realized I'm only talking to one or two different people. I couldn't get into the conversations, I didn't have any access point, so she was like and then eventually something prompted me to say something about China. She's like Devin.
Speaker 3:When I said that I went to China, you will be surprised. Four heads turned and immediately the circle surrounded me. She's like one of the other guys have been in China, but everybody else hadn't. They immediately started asking me questions and now I became the ambassador. I became the one who's empowered. I have the knowledge that these old white men don't have and she said Devin. It completely changed everything about how I showed up in that space, because now I had some capital right and other people. Once they realized that about her, they're coming up talking to all the places she's been. I've never been there, I'd like to go there, and now she just got completely reframed in the space. So, and I think that's what's so powerful, I think both parts of that story why Dr Moore tells the story of, like little Alashanika on the hill?
Speaker 3:because that's when he would tell that story that's still all he knew of her, this girl whose mind got blown and expanded and she thought so much more for herself, right. And then the latter end of that is like look how she's been able to navigate these professional spaces because of that and the capital and the confidence and self-efficacy she's been able to hold on to, because of those experience. Enough for damn sure for me most of my 20s, like my authentic confidence, came from the fact that I knew I had seen stuff that most other people hadn't.
Speaker 2:So I could always hold that to myself yeah, yeah yeah, I knew I still had something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've seen some shit. You ain't seen it. I could tell you about it, though, and it gave me confidence. It gave me a unique thing space or ways being out. You could walk in any room and start a conversation based at this point. Yeah, it's. Yeah, I mean, you know, you recognize names from certain regions of the world, especially, specifically, people who work in the service industry. I was talking to this lady. I like that. She's like that you pronounce the correct. I'm like yes, was that Vietnamese? And just her world lit up. You know what I'm saying. She's an entry level immigrant worker. Yeah, so somebody to recognize her cultural identity up, you know understand how to pronounce them. Little bit. Talk about the different cities. I've been there. You know what I'm saying. I could just tell she was mind-opening.
Speaker 3:For me that's another layer of the work. Right Like I have to reintroduce you to black people.
Speaker 3:Immigrants in this country need to be reintroduced to black people and my dad told me that when I left the house every day, he said when you leave this house, you don't only represent yourself, you represent this family, you represent the entire black race, and I understand what that meant for him. I could always tell the way he engaged and met people. He was like I'm gonna show you how I am and you gonna learn about black people from me. And so I felt like that too. With traveling, I've always felt like I get to not only be an ambassador about this region of the world, but I get to be an ambassador for black America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, and that speaks to sort of like the responsibility I feel that black travelers have today, whether we like it or not. I think we bear that responsibility because we have much more access and opportunity than our previous generations do, especially if they go to Africa.
Speaker 3:Especially if they go to Africa. Bro, the way you tell your narrative you need to think about Don't just come back, tell the stories. Yeah, and I work them through that. I give them prompts. Talk about a challenging moment. I give them all these challenges the last day, Talk about a time when you couldn't do this. Talk about when this is that and they tell their story and they're going through it and they're getting out.
Speaker 3:I'm like, okay what skill did you develop from figuring that out? Right, what did you learn? That's the story you tell, the way you frame and tell the story, the skills that you develop, what you learn, what you accomplish, is gonna reframe that area in one way as to where, if you told all challenges, then people are just like, yeah, you just reifying the larger international area about this region.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love that I love that you do that practice. But again, that gives them the language then to really describe and create that narrative around what Africa is to them and what those experiences have meant to them as individuals. And so that responsibility is twofold. On the one hand, there is an educational piece. Right, you talk about being a South African. It's like no, you white or you white.
Speaker 1:There's an education piece that's like no bro.
Speaker 2:I'm black American and this is why I look this way, and there are more black Americans like that. And then, on the flip side, it's like when you come back home, you have to do the work to educate our community on what? Because we still hold very destructive, harmful narratives about African people and the African continent. And the same with the African people who probably never left the continent or have never been to the black American.
Speaker 3:That's the most about us as well. Yeah, that's really both sides right.
Speaker 2:Definitely ideas that flow around, but that opportunity today, with our generation and generations to come, exists to address some of those narratives and dispel some of those narratives and really further pushed them away. I'm like, okay, now what does a healthy, productive, connected relationship look like between black Americans and Africans? That's what we're trying to figure out.
Speaker 3:That's what the world walkers trying to lean into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you can see some of that today, where more of us are going to African countries right to visit, to learn about our ancestry. Every damn December it's like, oh, return to Ghana, right? More of us, man, do you mind if black folk I've met over this last year because I've been on all these travel conferences, who not only just traveled to Africa but on land in Africa, because we've seen where it's like why you were parents and what's crazy, bro and I know it's not gonna be an off topic, but what's crazy is to go to African countries and stay out of Airbnb or wherever, right, and you learn that it's not owned, it's like most of it is owned, it's like an entire a French person right Trying to spend your money in African-owned establishments that fit your, especially as a travel.
Speaker 3:If you're a travel influencer, you're teaching other people then you have to make sure that they are getting the experience that they're paying. So trying to find that building that hotel, that. Airbnb that meets their standards but is owned by an African person. Most times you do see it, but oh, this one's owned by an African person.
Speaker 2:And then you start to learn more and they're like oh yeah, they're married to a yeah an entire personal French person and it's like all right, that's still better, but it's like damn, and it's just. These are the same people that have told us don't go there. It's war-stricken, it's poverty, there's no economic opportunities.
Speaker 2:It's all of the dangers, all of the narratives that we've been in, they went and opened, but they are going through there buying land and acquiring resources and things like that. So now for me, I'm so excited and encouraged to see black American people are saying, oh, there are business opportunities over there. That's why, yeah, I love what you're doing, because you talk about global business and global business opportunities. What will it do for our kids who have traveled there and have seen things that you know what? I can take my business to Africa, I can go and buy land in South Africa and Ghana. What have you?
Speaker 2:Not only are they doing that, but I was just starting to clip on this there about a dude talking about how his family, him and they live in Kenya, I think it is, and they have land, they bought a house and then they went and built a school that's serving local villages, you know. So it's like we're going over there with those mindsets not to just own property and land and resources, but we're trying to figure out how do we support the local communities and local village people and then the African people while we're over here and the way that I think most European people are not. You're just thinking about it.
Speaker 3:It's a resource, yeah, and that's what we have to be careful about too, because we can't also run away from our Americanness, yeah, and our own cultural values that are so deeply interesting to us that we don't see them. So, for example, I met Mr Ghana. He won the Mr Ghana Fitness Competition in 2020. So we just called him Mr Ghana, and it was so dope. When I went back and took the guys this year, I actually had the opportunity to go and watch him compete in the Mr Ghana competition. Oh my God, it was so hype. It wasn't a huge event you know what I'm saying but it was just so dope to be at a local event and I knew somebody. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know I felt like I'm back home. I turned it up. We got to do it like a huge battle with one of these other dudes his friends.
Speaker 3:Yeah screaming as loud, as it was just a lot of fun. But to backtrack when I met them and then I obviously brought you know when I came back to shit I worked with them and did a workout on the beach oh my God, that was, though. We do a workout on the beach, with Cape Coast Castle, where a lot of folks were stolen out of, is literally a hundred yards behind us, so it's in the background. So I wanted to do this workout on the beach so that we could redefine it on our bodies on the same exact plot of land that we were stolen off of Right and redefine the space and their bodies out there. They brought the homies out. A lot of them are weight lifters, there's like five of them, some drums, and we're doing the most basic workouts, the most basic workouts, but outside in the sun, on the sand. It was an incredible workout, but you know all this fancy, crazy stuff you do at the stage.
Speaker 3:It was like nah, it was like yeah, yeah, yeah, and you just working, doing little, different little things, squat, competition, push-up, competition. Man, we were done at the end, but it was so beautiful to have that experience on that same plot of land so we could redefine it Right, but either way. So when I'm shopping with him, you know him, his brother, our other boy out there Cappuccino, shout out to my boy Cappuccino shop. We're so business minded here and we're trying. I'm like man, y'all can do this, and I'm like y'all. I'm like dog, you, mr Gunn. I'm like y'all, right by the beach. I'm like here's, you could line this shit up. I'm like there's these tour companies.
Speaker 3:I'm like, oh, when the different tour guides come through, you know, see who does groups with women. I'm like dog. Look at John Women, even if they only don't want to work out in the sun, they will sign up for this workout class for y'all, I promise you. And I'm trying to get them, to brand them, mr Gunn, all this stuff, and they're kind of like I could see how the first time they were just kind of slow, with the just super jumping on it, even though I'm like laying out these business opportunities. That in my mind that's clear as day. That's easy bread. And one of the things he said to me is like I gotta talk with all my people my brother before I get back to you about any of the ideas. It was a very collective thing. I'm Mr Gunn, yes, but my brother also works out and we're kind of in the together, in the homies. So before you do anything with Mr Gunn, let me check in with my team and like is the group, is the community thing?
Speaker 3:And so that always stood out to me. I thought that was dope, sorry. I remember when I end up the next year, when we ended up working with them, I wouldn't give him the money, even though he brought all his boys out. I'm like yo, you did beat that up how you see fit, but I definitely gave him enough to put everybody on. But even in that I noticed how much I wanted to create these business deals and for them they're like I get you, but my life is not about business deals.
Speaker 3:You might see me as less economically secure than you, and I am Still. It's not all about money. I'm not waking up trying to figure out how do I make more money and the peace behind that mess we are. I am, yeah, you know what I'm saying. I'm over there, like we are, and so like we also have to check that shit and acknowledge that or we become the new colonizer, just with a similar skin tone. And yet we might do things a little bit better. But the Chinese are doing things better than the Europeans and the Americans right now.
Speaker 3:Does that make them good? What they're doing in China, I mean, in Africa? I'm not so sure. So I think for those of us who do go over there, it's again it's a lot about the education, Like what do we need to unlearn before we really start learning? You know, I'm a big believer in that. Like we got to unpack some stuff, that we think about them and we think about us before we really can go over and really start learning. Because if you just tack new knowledge on a framework you already have, you're only gonna accept what fits your framework.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wanna get into some more personal stuff. Talk about being married right To a boss, huh. And the transition that you're going through and how that's shaping your identity now, yeah, and then we're gonna get into World Walker non-profit, we're gonna talk a little bit more about that and then, whatever this for-profit thing is, that's going to do the business, stuff that's going on, and then we'll get into the book.
Speaker 3:We're gonna be here for a follow-up? I suppose no. So what was the first thing you said, marry man?
Speaker 1:Marriage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so one is the beautiful things.
Speaker 1:Let's pause for a second Leroy. Do you want some more water? Yeah, okay, let me make sure this is still working. We good.
Speaker 2:Okay, you roll with that.
Speaker 3:You got to go travel, you bring your credit card.
Speaker 1:No, this is theirs. Oh, okay, I trust it. They probably ain't changing shit.
Speaker 3:So I'm gonna make some designs and make some thinking.
Speaker 1:Makes you think it's pure.
Speaker 3:Then you feel it's pure, it takes pure.
Speaker 1:You know, what I mean. It's pure All right. So then let's talk about marriage, love, transitions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man. So you know it's funny like everybody's like I don't want a boss, why? I don't know if everybody does that.
Speaker 1:It's like you know there's one thing to say you want a boss wife.
Speaker 3:And it's another thing to actually, yeah, have a boss wife, and I definitely do have a boss wife, so I'm thankful for that. You know I needed that. I was a wild boy when I got to UT. I was just, and not when I say wild boy, people in the context of like marriage, we always think, oh, you was just running around in the streets Sexually and I'm like that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm just, I was just wild boy. I was just out. I decided three in the morning. I'm walking home for 90 minutes in the middle of the night. You know, I'm walking down the train tracks, I'm doing crazy jumping stuff. I'm going to jump over this. You know just whatever I wanted to do, so now to be. You know, my wife came with a daughter, so it was a very quick maturation process. I knew what kind of man I needed to be in a family because of my own father. So very quickly, once I got into this, I'm like all the other shit is out the door. It's like I felt like I matured.
Speaker 3:Overnight we were out together when we met her, staying at your house, and that night, driving back to his house, I was telling my boy, MJ, I was like fake, hanging up cleats on the, whatever the thing is. I'm like bro, done, done, running around. I'm serious and I was, you know. We did two and a half years of distance and that week I had a party. The week after I met her, I had a party and a woman did not step into my house for two years until she moved down here. No, friend, I never heard that story. No, no, nothing. You had a party. I had a party because I already had this party scheduled for my birthday. I met her the week before my birthday, so of course, it was how the people in my house party did. After that party, another woman did not step foot into my house. That house, or my next house I lived in. I was just so focused I wasn't giving any opportunity to anything. How old were you? I've been in her since I was three.
Speaker 1:I had just turned 32.
Speaker 3:OK, just turned 32. So I was coming into the point of my PhD where I was about to transition out of there, just maturing in different ways, and I'm like, look, she going like this, I was older than her, so I'm going. No, no, she going like this, I'm older, so I'm kind of already here. But I seen her scent, said let me latch on to that scent. Yeah, I'm there and it sounded real. But yeah, there's different challenges. Like, obviously, she got offered an Ivy League job, she got offered the best public school institution in the country. This year she got offered at UT. She also got offered at UC, which we're from California, and just do everything going on with the legislature. I think it was going to be really difficult for us to leave UT, but because of the legislature, they just made it a lot easier for us. That's the reality. And so, yeah, it's tough for me because I do what.
Speaker 3:I love here, man and I have an immense amount of support and resources to do it, and I'm in community with great people Like the person I am now. I became that person here, so so many dope people I'm connected to, like my group of people. The people that motivate me and influence me are all movers and shakers, and that's going to be what's really difficult to leave here. I go back to California. No people from high school Some of them are doing really well.
Speaker 1:Some aren't, but they're great.
Speaker 3:Those are the people you know, but here the people I know are all like-minded, similarly doing similar things. I mean we all travel. It's something that's basic as that, so you don't meet three grown black men who travel all the time. So, yeah, man, I had to take a back seat.
Speaker 2:Does she travel? How important was that for you to have a partner who's critically important.
Speaker 3:I mean she's Mexican and Puerto Rican, so she grew up in and around the border. She grew up some of the time in Mexico, some of the time in the States. Either way, I always went to school in the States, in California. So her obviously already her understanding of the world was global. She had no choice. She had to cross the border. So definitely important. You know what I'm saying. I'm a like-minded, similar, open-minded person. I don't do well with people who aren't open-minded, but in terms of the relationship.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, we decided when we met. She was like all right, I'm going to get some sort of fellowship. She was still in the PhD program. We met at an AERA, at a conference she was still in the PhD program. She's like, all right, I'm going to get a fellowship and I'm going to move out there in a year. She ended up moving two years later, two and a half years later, with her daughter, my daughter, and so she did exactly what she said she was going to do. And when we talked about it early, when we met six years ago, I was like all right, you come here, you support me for a little bit, let me get my level up, then I'll follow you. And that's where we at. That's where we at right now, about to move next month.
Speaker 3:So she got a great opportunity for her and for our family ultimately to move back to California and be closer to the larger family. But it is something man as a man, you're not taught this. And you don't have very many examples in front of you people doing it.
Speaker 3:So it's like it sounds good but actually going through the process and then really giving up everything I've built here or been a part of building everything. I know, like my professional trajectory here realistically was pretty clear for me in my mind. I would have been able to get a vice president of this university and I knew so many people, I knew how to wear them. I'll navigate this and that's the kind of person I am. I get somewhere. I build good relationships. I generally do good work, People generally like me and then I'll grow. She's kind of like a phenom on its own, like a LeBron. I don't matter what team she going to, she going to excel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they going to the league.
Speaker 1:They going to the shit.
Speaker 3:You know, what I'm saying. So that's what's a bit challenging and scary right now. It's like, damn all right. So we go to a new institution. I got to really get in there and start building again, build my, you know. As for her, she comes in, she went to Harvard, she went to Berkeley, she got a PhD from Northwestern, she has all these fellowships, she has all these grants, hella Pubs it's more like who wants me? Who wants me? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:Our trajectories look a little different, but the thing that's kind of forced me into doing right now is realizing the ways in which my trajectory is actually simmering. What are the things and assets that I built that I could lean into, that I am known for and that people do respect me for, and that's something so thankful that I believed in myself and I could do this book, because now that I'm transitioning out, it's like little staples like this keeps me afoot in the academic space. Like nah, I came over here, I could do a little something here. Right, I have the work proof. Right, I've taken hella black kids abroad. Hella brown kids abroad.
Speaker 3:Hella students abroad Programs the program I have right now 12 kids, 12 black kids, doing internships in Senegal. That's like my pride, that's like my legacy. I left there. If that could be the legacy I lead to the world, you know what I'm saying. Reconnecting black Americans in West Africa through professional internships to demystify the business, insecurities and trust and building giving people professional experience with young, innovative entrepreneurs, 4 to 500 companies. Imagine what those levels of investment could look like in 10 years, five years, 20 years, because a lot of it is about relationships and trust. So really that's really what I want the world walker to do. I know I got lost there in my comment, but I've led programs here like that 12 students, small to 80 students. So it's just the dope thing about having a wife like that is. It's pushed me into this place.
Speaker 1:Let me make sure everything is good. Alright, I think that's good.
Speaker 3:So I guess, to wrap it, the thing for me about having a dope wife is, one day it was making me. It's forcing me into a new lane, but it's also like the fact that she's so stable and I know she's gonna make her. It gives me the space, for example, insurance. I get to be on her insurance and now that's a huge piece of going on entrepreneurship and figuring something out you don't expect to travel.
Speaker 3:I'm like what the hell am I supposed to do? You need insurance. So that level of partnership is dope. But you know, what I also realized is I'm like, hopefully Santa Cruz does keep her for a while. She's a hitter. She's gonna be bouncing around. You know what I'm?
Speaker 1:saying there's already people like shit she turned down a pen.
Speaker 3:Right, she is going to be getting recruited. So my strategy of, oh, I'll go into an institution and work my way up, yeah, shit ain't gonna work. I was like when I literally look at the five to 10 year vision, the way I move professionally but our family I'm like that's not gonna work. I'm gonna keep getting stagnated. I'm gonna get stagnated and stagnated. You know what I'm saying? I've been doing all this dope baller ass shit with all these dope baller ass dudes and I've been stagnated. That ain't gonna be good for the relationship. Straight up, I ain't gonna be feeling confident.
Speaker 1:She's gonna be looking at you like where are you at?
Speaker 3:So I'd rather have that now. You know, I'd rather have her looking at me now like are you sure about that? And I'm like, yeah, and she's been giving me the support I need, Cause I know I can build it and I also am trying to make sense of like all right, if that is my wife, I should have a product that speaks to the needs of some of the people I'd be meeting through her, cause I already the network. Her network is crazy, so that's part of me.
Speaker 1:That's my little story.
Speaker 3:It's been a healthy push in the right direction. Discomfort, but I also have the support I need to kind of push through.
Speaker 2:I think, man, all of us could speak to that, because we all got women who, just like you know wife has built a whole fucking farm, and you know what I mean Like just from scratch. It's crazy, you know, and I feel like you know, we all have women in our lives that are on a boss level. Remember when she wanted to do anything she wanted to do? And so for me, when we got into a relationship early on, I told her, damn, it was difficult to be an entrepreneur and balance a relationship, because when I decided to get into entrepreneurship, I had a trajectory, and nowhere a part of that trajectory was a relationship, because I came out of a long, you know battle and I was ready to just focus on my goals, and so I made financial sacrifices in order to pursue entrepreneurship out of the job.
Speaker 2:You know, I scaled back on some things. Now I'm in a relationship. It's great in the early months I want to take you out and do things. I don't have that capital and now I've gone to a place where, okay, I'm going to propose to this woman on this day and one of the things we did in Mingsinosis we will meet every Saturday, every last Saturday of the month to go over our finances. We ain't going to be able to launch this after that date now, after that date.
Speaker 3:Oh shit, you have to edit that out. That's going to be a happy time, but we will have those conversations.
Speaker 2:We'll go over our financial goals, talk about where we're at, where we're trying to pay down things of that nature, and so the last couple of months I've taken some financial hits. You know, vending business has a lot of repairs. My tenant was struggling to pay, so a lot of things. So I had to pick up a couple of part-time gigs, some that I started this week, and a part of me doing that was and I told her this last night I sat down with her I said, listen, one of the things I've learned over the last couple of months in businesses no one is going to invest in you if your personal finances aren't where they need to be.
Speaker 2:There's no way I can go to investors or banks and say, hey, I need this for the blog Because they're going to ask about your personal finances. So, on the one hand, I need to get bring in some more income until the magazine kicks off, to make sure my personal finances are intact, but also to make sure that I'm meeting my financial goals, because if you're ascending.
Speaker 2:She every day and week she'll come and say, oh, I paid off this credit card and I'm like shit, I'm kind of behind on my shit and I'm feeling a certain type of way Because as a man, I don't want to go into a marriage in the same way that she doesn't want to bring her financial that's a lot of times, when we start fucking up, we start losing confidence.
Speaker 3:And then the best way to get it back is by hurting the woman, cheating on her. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Or like not telling her like hey, I made some, I had some financial hits and I also made some poor financial decision over the last couple of months. I don't want to keep that from you. I'm going to be 100% real with you.
Speaker 3:But here's my six month plan. I've got these two jobs and by the end of this year.
Speaker 2:Your boy is trying to be debt free for me and for us. But because of the type of woman she is, boss, ambitious, is bought into supporting me along the way to monitor. I felt that pressure to like. All right, bro, like you know, you're building something but, my God, you got to do what you got to do. So you're a spare free time. Go ahead and get those part-time gigs so that you can meet your woman where she's ascending to.
Speaker 3:So I'll probably. Larger plan so falls in line with the larger. I mean, I've been thinking about that too. I literally jotted out like what are the projects that I'm going to work on? What world walk are they Can I get? My goal is to get $5,000, $20,000 projects, $5,000, $10,000 projects, and that'll be enough To me. It would be a good start to get things moving. Yeah, and in basing it in projects, helps me envision what this next year is going to look like, because it could be so overwhelming this whole process. Even figuring out like what am.
Speaker 3:I actually doing? What am I actually selling in? Is the same thing I'm selling now the same thing I want to be selling in 10 years from now or with that product evolve, or is it? One product introduces people to the next product. That's kind of what I'm right now.
Speaker 2:It takes time for those things to evolve, which is why it's great that you have a partner who's like I see you and I see you right too, because we get all the time. The last thing a woman wants is a dude who's just not going to do anything Like I. Was listening to Jasmine Sullivan's album yesterday with my girl and there was her. You know the album where she had different women come on and tell their tales, their stories, and there was Wonka Give, which sister it was. But she talked about I can't date no broke nigga. And the way she was sharing it wasn't attacking men, she was saying there's men out here who are literally getting money or busting their ass to get money.
Speaker 2:So why am I going to be with a dude who's not busting his ass trying to get money? You know what I mean. So what if she dated a bus driver? I think so. I think so. You know it's a good question, but it's a fair question, bro. It's a fair question. But I tell my girl like yeah, I'm Door Dash, I do this and she's still with me. You know, I'm up on the vending machine repairing and shit. It's not sexy work, you know, but I'm grinding. It's allowing you to meet your vision.
Speaker 3:It's allowing you to meet yourself Period.
Speaker 2:There's growth in that right. There's growth in that scrub, breaking that grind work and you just can't jump to the front of the line and expect you know success and results. Like there are people before me, before us that went through that grind work and I think women that respect and appreciate that a bit more. It's like it ain't always going to be peaches and cream and rainbows and sunshines.
Speaker 3:So if I got a partner that's willing to grind it out and do what he got to do, and it's layered too, because you could go for this two jobs that just came out of my office at UT. You could go get either one of those jobs right now, but either one of those two jobs would take you off the vision of the body password.
Speaker 3:So that's what I'm thinking about right now. People have been sending me hello jobs and I'm like there's a job right now. The hiring manager, the vice chancellor at the University of California, San Diego, she hit me like this right, I don't think I'm going to apply for it. I've turned. I've not applied for so many jobs over the last month. I've applied to a couple. I've applied to a couple that allowed me to reach my long-term strategic vision, but some of them I'm like man, it'll take you off, and I'm like sounds good, We'll look good. We'll definitely give me more money in my next year, In four years, I'm going to look up and I'm going to be used to that money and I'm going to be in the same space Because right now.
Speaker 1:I got used to the money I made.
Speaker 3:Right now my goal is to make the amount of money I made this year, my life goal. I bought a house two years ago. I'm like, oh, you just get, you just normalize it, so you really better on, just do what you love to do.
Speaker 2:And then, because if you do that, if you take the money, and then four years you look up and you're still in that, then it's a different conversation with your woman. She's like, well, but you said you wanted to do this, you know, and I didn't force you to give up on this. You made a decision, but I fell in love with the man that wanted to do this, like what happened there.
Speaker 3:And when I was even talking about your piece today, I mean it's just nice to have a product right. It just allows you. Literally the last month since I decided I was leaving, my mind is moving in so many different ways. It was not working as an employee.
Speaker 1:You just see things different.
Speaker 3:You see markets different. You see partnerships different. You see connections, leverage, negotiations and my mind has just been growing and I'm like, oh, I'm becoming a better version of myself because I'm being stretched in different ways that I wasn't ultimately being stretched as an employee and now you know it's like your life. You know I have a 16 year old job. I'm like I gotta be at the end of the day Like I'm so thankful my wife will make good money for the rest of our life. I'm very confident in that.
Speaker 3:But you know, you still gotta be able to provide. And I'm just gonna be like, oh, my wife makes a lot of dollars, cool, you know, you still gotta figure it out. But again, man, it's like I could take a sexy job. You could take a sexy job, but no, your that job is sexy because it helps you meet your strategic vision. The door dash is sexy, the fixing machine is sexy because of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one last thing before we go. I don't want to disrespect your, your efforts here. I think I misspoke. You are the editor One of the editors of this book. I'm sure that you're also an author of at least one of the chapters.
Speaker 3:Give us just a three of them.
Speaker 1:Give us the rundown of the book, the history of the book and what this book provides People who are interested in creating experiences for students and themselves as faculty staff administrators, who want to study abroad or at least study abroad programs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm glad that you brought it back to this because it allows me to shout out most importantly, like my two co editors, Linda Lyons and Seneca Vlaat, and so I'm going to tell you about the book through how I got to know them.
Speaker 3:So during COVID, I was watching this video you might have seen it. You're just playing around on Instagram, whatever and his little kid shooting black kids shooting baskets in his driveway and I think they had like a Jeep or something like semi SUV and there's a cop car way down the street and so there's this camera like capturing the scene of this kid in his driveway and he sees the cop car way down the streets and ducks behind his own car in his driveway, wait till it passes and then, when it's passing, you know how you would do when you're you sneak in front of the car so that the cop wouldn't see him. He's in his driveway and it killed me. It almost made me want to cry. I'm just watching, I just kept replaying and I'm like it reminds all the traumas I experienced from LAPD growing up and the way I feel now, like all of us feel. You know what I'm saying, what I experienced most of us have experienced like that. They're doing that to a 12 year old and it was just frustrating.
Speaker 3:So I wrote this blog post really just free, right by why it's so important for black kids to experience life outside of America and wrote it kind of edited it down and eventually submitted. It got accepted by diverse issues and crime for a diverse something like platform and it got a little picked up, a little bit. Not crazy, but this lady Linda she read it had the people reached out to me on LinkedIn. I started building my network like that. You know, the little small op-eds for the network is crazy Literally. I honestly think so much of my professional networks in contacts came off that one so met her chopping up vibing.
Speaker 3:She actually knows my sister who works in my brother's wife. She lives in Atlanta because they're at Kennesaw State, so then that brought us obviously a lot closer together. She's like I got to introduce you to the name Seneca, get on the phone with Seneca. Another brother locked up and immediately I think she went to like hey, we should write an article or something about you know all black people doing stuff in you know international education and like kind of taking an element of the approach I took for the op-ed. He's like, hey, why don't we do a book and why don't we position Devin as the lead editor of the book? Man, this would be great for you, man. I'm like I'll book. You should talk about it. Say no, come on, man, the three of us writes, writes Dr Lyons, and she's like yeah they're both going up for four.
Speaker 3:So they're like yo man, this, we need something too, but we'll position you as the main guy. Like you can handle a lot of the stuff, but we won't go. You know, and that, honestly, was such a dope team and obviously it's a project that took a couple years, yeah, but I mean COVID was 2020. It came out in 2022. So it didn't take too long. Um, but just the teamwork, the camaraderie, you know different ones of us picking up at different times, taking different ones, taking the lead at different times that's what was so dope and like I don't think I would have had the confidence in myself to push through with the book. So they helped give me that confidence and that, as well as running that program of 80 people to the UAE, those two experiences gave me the confidence at this point. Whatever project, I know I said my mind on it, you can get it. So they were incredible. In a meeting, I was also working on another chapter project at the same time, for another book, with two dope colleagues and we're writing it.
Speaker 3:And one of the struggles that me and my co-editors on that chapter were writing about is that we she was a black woman and he was a gay white man and we we wanted to talk a little bit more about ourselves in how we're approaching this paper and why we're approaching it.
Speaker 3:You know, we were like our positionality matters and the editors were a little like yeah, you have a little spot in the beginning of the book where you say your piece and we're like so don't use your word count for them. We're like, ah, this is a different kind of piece that we need, you know. So I was struggling with that book. Let's just say that the co-authors that I was writing the chapter with were incredible, but there's elements of, like, the critique and the edits, a lot of the stuff I felt like was getting taken out of, like the authenticity of what I really wanted to say as a lands.
Speaker 3:That book came out and they changed the name of it and when it eventually came out, the name of it was a house where we all belong. And it's just funny how we in our book and Mindy, I Promise, we came up with the name of our book before they changed theirs was wandering where we belonged, and it's just two different approaches to space and to authorship and ownership of the space. We, as black folks, still wondering where do we belong in this right, but other people, because they invite an inclusive group and it was a very diverse group of authors, but a house where we all belong, who gets to determine?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 3:You get to determine it's a house where we all belong because you invite a certain author.
Speaker 3:So to me there was a slight and I respect those editors of that book a lot, to be honest. Both of them have put me on in different spaces, but I always think there's always a racial, knowledge based element to everything. So for me, when I was writing, when we were writing this, we were trying to feel like what is our angle? When he was like write a book, I'm like what the hell is it? I'm already writing a book about social justice. So it was like what's going to be different than our book? That's what I was trying to struggle with. And I'm like man, it would be nice if I didn't have to like prove why my positionality is so important. That's the thought I came up with. It would be nice if I didn't have to actually run this by any way. Person. So that's it. That's the angle.
Speaker 3:Like what about if we write a book about innovations in a national education from our perspective, from people of color's perspective? Right, because social justice, all those terms, equity, dei, all that stuff gets eaten up and realistically taken over by white women. And I thought a lot of them are doing good work, a lot of them are doing great work, but it's like alright, if I put out a book about social justice, it's still white dominated. Like how do I create space for us? Like I want to go here with some authors of color, some black people, some Asian people, some Latino people, some indigenous people. What do they think about education in mind? Because it's an extremely linked to colonialism. So if we're not having and unpacking that somewhere in the conversation, then what are we really doing?
Speaker 3:So that was the angle we took to the book. Reached out to a lot of different people. We have a lot of incredible dope authors, some super established authors in the field that I was like, oh my god, they came in my book right. Like Dr Cantrellas, right. Like that meant a lot for me. Dr Tasha Willis she was like a mentor of mine too.
Speaker 1:And some of these people you've been like, oh, they're a mentor of mine. They're like, damn, am I?
Speaker 3:But it's the little stuff they do when they see you, when they give you a minute here, two minutes here, five minutes here, that you're like that was actually so much game that I would consider you a mentor. You blessed me. So there's some people like that who came into the book that I was like.
Speaker 1:Oh, I made it. They're in my book.
Speaker 3:And then also some grad students, you know some younger folks. Then I'm like oh, let's put all these people in community together and some you know some newer, you know recently, I would say established educators or people in the field. So it was a nice mix of people and a lot of people from UT. I say like I will hold Dr Moore, ddc and UT down for that. Like we did a lot of dope work here in the last 10 years in terms of global education, I do think it was somewhat revolutionary. So I wanted to make sure that the book was almost like a. I almost felt like I had the vision before it happened. Right With what they're doing right now at the legislature and banning diversity, it could almost be like what we accomplished the last 10 years didn't exist, but I'm glad I captured it. You know what I'm saying, because so many times they'll tell our story for us and then again, literally three years later black kids don't want to go abroad when we had a whole culture for 10 years.
Speaker 3:Take hundreds of kids abroad and have the largest programs every year More black students than any other program. I take more black students abroad than you have on your program Any students. I got 50 on mine. You have 12 students on yours total. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:I got 50 black, you got 12 students and you want to tell me black kids don't want to go abroad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you see what they're doing these things. And again in five years you'll look up no black kids. Yeah, it's like, ah, now, maybe at least it captured it. And my wife she told me she's like you know, you need to capture what you did there because people will tell their story for you. So I'm happy with that, that we captured some of that stuff. And then I also got a chapter in here. So Alicia has a chapter. She was a GSF Dr Moreno National Doctor she was. She worked with DDC Global. Alvin Logan, dr Logan. You got a chapter in here about taking some indigenous and black players on an indigenous heritage seeking trip to the South Pacific. And me and MJ in here he helped me co-writer a chapter around student athletes and their study abroad experiences. So we have this chapter in here my black male student athletes and their study abroad experiences or service learning experiences.
Speaker 3:So yeah man, I appreciate you having the opportunity to do this. This is actually really the first time I've actually kind of got to sit up here and talk about this in that way, so I still appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, appreciate you coming on, you coming through, no of course that's dope. And then last three days. It's a morning.