Entrepreneurial Appetite
Entrepreneurial Appetite
From Black Travel to Black Philanthropy: Cultivating Future Leaders at HBCUs with Anita Jarman
Embark on an inspiring expedition with Anita Jarman, the creator of the Ji Li Project and a passionate Ph.D. student. Our conversation reveals how her global odyssey, from the bustling streets of Beijing as a student journalist to the hallowed halls of Georgetown, has illuminated the essence of cross-cultural experiences in fostering both personal and professional development. Anita's narrative is a celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit she encountered among young Africans in China and a testament to the transformative power of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in shaping leaders who bridge continents and cultures.
In this episode, we delve into the heart of student growth with the Ji Li Project's transformative journey. Witness how a simple blogging initiative blossomed into a crucial haven for students navigating academia and the workforce, especially amidst the challenges of a global pandemic. The 1890 Project takes center stage, as we honor the intellect pervading HBCU campuses, drawing inspiration from educational pioneers like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. Anita and I dissect the nuances of guiding students to celebrate their achievements through published works and the profound impact of nurturing the next generation of scholars.
As our dialogue takes a deeper turn, we explore the intersections of corporate America, government, and the entrepreneurial landscape within the education sector. I share my own experiences in the trenches of philanthropy, from raising substantial funds to dreaming big with an educational endowment aimed at empowering graduate students. We underscore the importance of community and strategic collective action in bolstering HBCUs and pay homage to the alumni whose significant contributions continue to advance these vital institutions. Join us for this enriching discussion that celebrates the brilliance of HBCU students and the dedication required to ensure their legacies thrive.
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Langston Clark :Once again, this is Langston Clark, the founder and organizer of entrepreneurial appetite, series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectuals and supporting black businesses. And today we have a very special guest, anita Jarman, who is the founder of th G-Lead Project. She is a podcaster, she is a PhD student who got her bachelor's degree from Delaware State and she's currently enrolled at Alabama State. And I also want to add that she went to Georgetown to get her master's degree in sport management. And Anita is here because of an introduction through Anastasia Jackson, who was a guest on a previous episode, but she's part of my efforts this year for the podcast have a lot of white people who have some sort Historically affiliation with Black colleges and universities and, as you all know, I've mentioned this several times I went to North Carolina A&T State University, Aggie Pride. And so as we begin, Anita, could you just start off by telling us your sheros journey, how you got to be who you are?
Anita Jarman:thank you, langston, for having me. First and foremost, this is an opportunity, I think, for both of us to amplify the work of HBCUs and the product of HBCUs, which is success. In this conversation, I hope to learn about your journey as well, so I hope we can make this a conversation.
Langston Clark :Yeah.
Anita Jarman:Because people like you have been a part of my narrative, this entire process, and that's pretty much where I want to start my she-rose journey. I love that it's Women's History Month and anger. It gives me an opportunity to share my journey. It started at HBCU, so they gave me an opportunity in 2008. I was a junior to study abroad. I was in the master's communications department. There was about 30 students that the professors selected to have an opportunity to do some journalism for the Olympics. The Olympic News Service reached out and said hey, we're recruiting student journalists and they will have an opportunity to be journalists at the Olympics in 2008 Summer Olympics. So it was an opportunity of a lifetime. I looked at it as a resume builder and I was like this is going to separate me from the rest of the graduates of my class that's coming out of MassCom departments. So I was like, let me go for it.
Anita Jarman:I was not thinking anything else than that and I had an entire life-changing experience while I was in China. I loved to travel in general, but China was never on my bucket list. It wasn't like a go-to, like I have to go here. It just wasn't, and I embraced it as that when I finally got selected to go, I didn't have an open mind. I was a spoiled American. I was like I don't like the language. Nobody speaks English, nobody looks at me weird, because there's not a lot of black people in China, truth be told. So the smell, the food, nothing was Americanized China. And it was one of those moments where I had to boss up and become a version of myself that didn't really assimilate but had to understand your surroundings. And that's what changed my entire trajectory. When I had that moment, when I allowed myself to have an open mind, when I was there and that was probably about four months into the six months that I was there, but it was a lot for me to get used to it was myself and six other Delaware State University MassCom students.
Anita Jarman:We stayed at Beijing Sport University. And the thing about China well, beijing in particular, the universities are divided by major. So if you study sports, you go to the sports university. Study different languages, you go to the language university. Study geoscience, you go to the geoscience university. So we had befriended other foreigners at these universities. So we were at the sports university. It was really cool.
Anita Jarman:We studied four hours every day reading, writing, speaking Mandarin and sports, communications. It was very intense. They don't take holidays and it was like we went all the way through the summer, winter, spring, fall just intensive learning in terms of Mandarin, but we didn't really embrace it or we didn't really understand how Mandarin is a language that articulates their culture Right, as we've adopted English from Latin and European languages and even British, and it's like it's just a version of it. But when you look at Mandarin language the Mandarin language in itself, they've had to dummy it down so that we could understand it. So they write in characters and it wasn't until I don't know what actual error happened, but they started to write using our English letters so that we can pronounce what their characters meant. So it's called. So if you see something that looks like a Chinese word, that's penian, but it's not the actual character that they learn, they read.
Langston Clark :Mandarin.
Anita Jarman:The thing is the characters are literally depictions of what that word is, so it's very practical. It's not all of the conjugated verbs like how we have in English. So until I was able to really understand the culture of where I was, then I started to say, okay, this is the opportunity of a lifetime for real. This isn't just some academic pursuit, this isn't some professional resume enhancer. I had to have an open mind and what really triggered it was the friends that we had at different universities while we were in Beijing were from all parts of the world and there were a lot of Africans. And it was like hold up, y'all are here learning the language, same age as I, am, 21 years old, and you're actually starting businesses here. They had import export trade routes to their home countries and they're connected back in the country. And I'm saying here like we are hustling backwards, we're going to school for four years getting them dead, and you've got foreigners that are going to other countries studying abroad and starting businesses. We've got to change the script.
Anita Jarman:So that's what started the GLE project. I wanted to promote entrepreneurship or HBCUs, but do it abroad. The original mission was just that. It has evolved since then, but it's kept the same theme of just exposing our students to opportunities, whether they be global or right in our own backyard, and it's interesting because it's kind of like my journey took me backwards as opposed to starting with the foundational principles of like how laws and legislatures fund our HBCU programs. It was here's why we need to fund programs, so that we can have more moments to expose our students to study abroad programs, so I was getting the experience before the actual structure, and it'll be 10 years in September that we celebrate the GLE project.
Anita Jarman:And it's interesting because we're now finally looking at the ship. It's built. You know what I'm saying. We've been building the ship since 2014,. But it's been a beautiful journey. But I have to say my journey did start with Delaware State. We're studying abroad. I'm, Georgetown sent me back for a two week stint in Shanghai and in Beijing. That trip was crazy. We can get into it, but I just wanted to tell you how the journey started.
Langston Clark :Yeah, it's interesting. We have similar experiences. Yours is way more in depth than mine. So at A&T I was an education major and I wasn't a teaching fellow, because I was only for the state people who came from the state of North Carolina. But they figured out another way to give people who are out of state students an opportunity to have these expansive experiences, and so I was an education scholar and so I had the opportunity to go to Puerto Rico and Brazil.
Langston Clark :And my computer does a little thumbs up. It's actually and I'm going to say this for the people who are going to watch on YouTube I just found out about this recently, so forgive me for this aside so Zoom has integrated AI technology that makes content more accessible. So when I do a thumbs up, what happens is a random thumbs up comes up. Well, that's for people who have hearing impairment. It helps them translate a little bit better when I'm saying things like that. So, even though it may seem distracting, I left it on because I have a background in special education. So I just want to make sure things are accessible.
Langston Clark :So, anyways, back to A&T. So I got to go to Puerto Rico for 10 days nowhere near six months, but we learned about, and Puerto Rico is America, but it's culturally different from the mainland. It's almost like a parallel universe in some ways. So we learned about different schooling institutions in Puerto Rico Department of Defense Schools, regular public schools, things like that. But I also had a chance to go to Brazil and we went to Brazil for like two weeks, I think it was right after the semester, so it was around May, and that was a different cultural type of experience.
Langston Clark :Now we didn't go to a university, we went to basically what I think of as a freedom school, and so it was a school in the hood. It was in the what is the name for what they call the barrio or the shanty town, I can't remember, but anyways it was like the poor black part of Brazil, sao Paulo, and like these black folks in the community hold their money together and start a school where people could learn or trade, or learn reading, writing, literacy, all of those types of things, and so not the same experience. But I do want to point out the importance and sometimes like we don't think that HBCUs give people a global or diverse experience, when in reality there are ways that that happens that don't always get recognized in the same way that, like PWYs, talk about, or used to talk about, diversity and inclusion, but they don't really do a good job of it to begin with.
Anita Jarman:Absolutely. Now when you say a free school, I have to ask what does that mean?
Langston Clark :So a freedom school is, when you think about like what the Black Panthers were trying to do, have an alternative to like the mainstream school school that taught you from the perspective of like black liberation and things like that, and so it was really rooted in the uplift of the community and not necessarily the interests of people who are external to that community.
Anita Jarman:Got it Okay.
Langston Clark :Thank you, yeah, I appreciate the question, and so tell us a little bit more about like what the evolution of GLEE project been Like. What's different from 2014 as you go into 2024 and you mentioned that it's become more than what you originally thought it would be and what has that expansion become?
Anita Jarman:It's really been driven by the students and this is why, even in my very darkest moments of being a founder, being a leader, being an educator, my students have been the reason why I kept going and I'm not saying that just to be cliche. They are a constant reminder of why I wake up in the morning, what my purpose is. And when you think about a student body, just think about students in a classroom on a given day. That's 30 students each session and if I have about four or five class a day, that's 150 souls that I interact with every day and that's 150 different problems and, for me, 150 different solutions. So when I'm thinking about the shifts that have happened with the GLEE project, yes, the industrial revolution happened. Internet of things, ubiquitous technology that was a part of GLEE and I was really excited about this inception because I said, when I was at Delaware State and I was writing and getting published by the Olympic New Service, even though I was reporting on martial arts sports, that I just learned, like the day of, I wanted to know where my work was. So here I graduate, I have a portfolio of content. I don't know where that stuff is in the stratosphere somewhere, but it's like that's something that I would love to brag on or use in my resume or pitch work. But I didn't have it and I initially did the GLEE project.
Anita Jarman:That was a product, because we live in a blog world, a blogging world. 2008 was when we first started seed blogs. So 2014 was when social media was really tapping into that on-demand content from communities of people. So I saw that from my students and I was like we have to incorporate a tech piece to this. They have to be published. Even if we're going away for two weeks, I want them to publish something about their experience. So I must say this as well when I presented this to Delaware State in 2014, literally the year I founded GLEE President Harry Williams was there and he's now at the Thurgood Marshall Fund. He's the CEO of the Thurgood Marshall Fund. But President Williams knew about what I was doing because he knew about the Beijing trip six years prior to and he wasn't my president at Delaware State. So when I presented it to him, he was like whatever you need, let us know, my alma mater fully supported what I was doing and even to this day, when I talked to Dr Allen about what we can do with HBCUs, there's always been a support from my alma mater. I don't know about anybody else's, but I know Delaware State was integral into what we were doing and he understood the vision of why we need to publish our students' work while they're in school.
Anita Jarman:So every shift that we've had has been guided by what I know a student need is, but also the sign of the times, like we need to make sure students can access what they've done that they're proud of. That's a part of what we're doing today with the GLEE Project. So I think the greatest shift that happened was COVID, because my understanding of our mission was missing a step when we were talking about professionally developing Black students using extracurricular activities but focusing on the HBCU student. It was a step before. It was from high school to college. What is that thought process of how do I take my next step?
Anita Jarman:So when I taught high school, covid happened and that changed the student development process or the student development approach of the GLEE Project, and it's more about how we can deal with you throughout your career, as opposed to just hey, listen, judah, china, have some fun, take some pictures, publish and work, make it life-changing and keep it pushing. I want to know what you're doing 20 years from now as a seasoned journalist and you want to go back to school and get your PhD, and you need some support through an endowment that supports global communications. Before I'm saying so, the evolution has really been about the students driving a narrative and what they need as solutions. So what was your question? I want to make sure I answered it.
Langston Clark :So what's the evolution of the GLEE Project from 2014 to 2024?
Anita Jarman:So those are the reasons why. But now in 2024, the evolution has been triggered by our students and what their demands are. But in 2024, and this is how I met Anna Stasia, I'm glad that she was able to introduce us I have been building this idea. I can't even call it a project. I get excited about it. I have been building this idea for a while now and we call it the 1890 Project, so it's under the GLEE Project and it's basically highlighting the genius on every HBCU campus.
Anita Jarman:This is a life lesson for myself. Whenever I have really dark moments, whatever gets me out of that moment is what my next step is typically rooted in. And so I had a really dark moment and I remember in this moment I picked the autobiography of Booker C Washington when I started reading his works even Atlanta Compromise and just reading about Dr Washington I started to understand the type of pressure our ancestors must have felt just seeking education, especially for reconstruction. So of course, his story gives us Dr Carver, of course, right. He recruits Dr Carver from Iowa State. Iowa State is a land-run institution, predominantly white. Dr Carver is the first black graduate, first black student, first black grad student, first back faculty member. He set and saw me precedent at Iowa State and when Dr Washington recruited him to Tuskegee he left everything and said yes. And he particularly said this is for the betterment of our race. So just think about in context we just got out of a civil war like the turn of the century. They're establishing Tuskegee Institute.
Anita Jarman:He brings a superstar, genius scientist down to Tuskegee to lead their agricultural department. The entire state's agricultural ecosystem is in shambles. Cotton was their number one crop, matter of fact, globally, and because you don't have any more slaves to run your plantations, the economy was shot. He revitalizes the entire agricultural ecosystem on a $1,500 budget at Tuskegee. He teaches sharecroppers how to run their farms, gives us hundreds of products with the peanuts, soybean and sweet potato, and he only has a few patents registered. He doesn't make a lot of money doing it. He literally wears this cloak of humility about his genius and how he articulates it, but he publishes it. And his modesty, dr Culver's modesty, was so apparent that he, spiritually, was connected with who he called the creator, which we know is God. It was so humble that in my mind I'm like who studied under him, who learned his power.
Anita Jarman:Yeah, that was seed planted in the next generation. So how do we capture that and create a system of advancement on our HBCU campuses? So we call it the 1890 project in honor of our segregated HBCUs, our segregated land-grant institutions. These were the institutions for colored people that were federally appointed in 1890. And we have one in 19 states. Most of the slaveholding state former slaveholding states have a land-grant, a black land-grant institution, but it's North Carolina A&T Delaware State. These are land-grant institutions. These institutions were literally mandated by the government for separating the colored people to teach them agricultural mechanical science. So let's celebrate it. There has to be a Dr Culver on every campus.
Anita Jarman:So what Anastasia has been helping me build and her team with we Night, we are collaborative with another Vanguard consulting, and what we've done is we've created lemonade from lemons.
Anita Jarman:I promise you I'm not trying to be like cliche when we met last year, in 2022, we met through the formal organization that I was with and we were building a beautiful project for them, for all 14 HBCUs in Alabama.
Anita Jarman:So we were doing a lot of lab work and we can get to that in terms of the money that we were able to raise through grants. But the most important piece of this was when everything fell through with that formal organization. We believed in the product so much that we continued as a collective. So now we're a part of the 1890 projects, launching and build out just as much as we were last year under a different umbrella. But what Anastasia's company is helping us do is really put the AI to everything that we're finding about HBCU research. So the GLEE is supporting all things HBCU researchers and even alumni, subject matter experts, bringing the community together, especially at our land-run institutions, to really highlight the research that's being done on our campuses and the genius that we know is brewing amongst the research projects that are being conducted on our campuses.
Langston Clark :I'm going to talk a little bit about who you were as a teacher, because I didn't know that. I didn't know you used to be a teacher. In my day job, I'm a teacher educator. One of the things that I have been charged with doing is figuring out how we get more men into teaching. One of the things that I have been thinking about is how do we build a pathway to entrepreneurship and education, because I personally don't think the years, the days where you have teachers, stay in 20 years. However, we know that most teachers like you're good if you stay five, but that's true across industries. We don't stay with the same place, the same profession, their whole lives anymore, so it's just part of where we are as a society as well, and so I'm interested to hear about your transition from the classroom to being a founder, to some of these other roles that you've had in support of historically black colleges and universities. What was that transition like?
Anita Jarman:It was a bounce back and forth because it wasn't the first time I went full time in my business. I did a few stints in corporate America and in the government and that's really where I understood the nature of the beast in terms of the people who write, who fund the grants and getting into the classroom. I have to preface it by saying this, especially as an educator, we have a door that's wide open for us to become entrepreneurs and it's premised on global learning and global education. My mantra for life has been that education is a human right, even though it's not in the Constitution, nowhere. Education or literacy it's not an American right. State constitutions do acknowledge it as a provision. That's how you get public school education and school boards and superintendents. But when you think about what COVID taught us and how immediate we responded with, how the shift happened and how we communicate and gain information, I'll put it to you like this I interviewed my students while we were shut down in quarantine.
Anita Jarman:We did Instagram live just to keep it interesting. A lot of them went on to school. They went on to go to HBCU, so I just wanted to check in with them In most of the conversations that I have and you can go on Instagram and look at my pages, listen to them, interview with those brilliant students. They found something that they wanted to learn and they found out how to teach themselves that thing A person with stocks. Another person was capitalizing on YouTube, creating a profitable YouTube channel. They taught themselves things that the classroom wasn't teaching them. So in my mind, I'm like as an educator, I'm like that's great, but if you don't have the right person teaching you, that's a little scary, because you have a very impressionable you know it's a student.
Anita Jarman:So I looked at it from the perspective of being an entrepreneur in education and I looked at it as like how we look at attorneys. You don't go to an antitrust attorney if you have a tax issue. Those are subject matter experts. Antitrust attorneys are going to get me what monopolization is all about in a given industry and they're going to give me the raw deal with that, but they're not going to sit over here and talk to me about cybersecurity law or it's the same thing with educators.
Anita Jarman:My mom was an educator for 30 years, so I asked her. I said if you could teach one subject matter or one grade for your entire career, what would you do? She said fifth grade math. She now can be, in my mind, is a fifth grade math expert, because there are millions of fifth graders throughout the world that need math tutoring. So if I can create a space for educators and they have platforms like this where you can put your curriculum together and then we're not interviewing students for, like, tutor students virtually but that's a lane, that's something.
Anita Jarman:Even if you ever bring your curriculum and sell it to a school system that has virtual learning, completely virtual learning there's a lane for entrepreneurship and education. So, going back to that classroom analogy where I have 150 students all with, let's say, 80 of them have a how do I get into college? Problem. Now I can create a business just because I already know my customer. That's marketing one on one. I know what their issues are and I also have my curriculum that I can, based on where they come from, I can make it for the county that I live in. There's so many different entrepreneurial paths that have opened up, especially with virtual learning for educators.
Anita Jarman:To your point because we're not staying in these positions. I left because there was no longevity unless I went back to school. I had two degrees in the subject matter that I was teaching, but the state wanted me to have a degree in an extra 30 credits just because I was under the department of something that I wasn't even teaching, so it deterred me from going back into the classroom. I still had a passion for students and teachers. So there's a lot that entrepreneurs in education can get their hands on and get into and kind of start the gift about how you can go beyond the classroom and still be an effective educator.
Langston Clark :So we talked about you as a founder, you as an educator, and I want to have a conversation about the language.
Langston Clark :And then your previous role. I saw that you raised some $900,000 in six months and I'm trying to figure out how you did that. And I say that because this year, as part of the podcast and I hadn't mentioned this to you but the podcast supports an endowment that I started at A&T, and so people who support on Patreon, people who support by coming to our live discussions, when they make their donations to join, I take a percentage of that and I give it to the endowment from A&T to PhD and dollar scholarship and it goes to support graduate students in the College of Education. So I'm trying to raise $40,000 in 40 days, 40 days leading up to my birthday, and so I love to get some insights with you on like how you fundraise, how you do yourself as a philanthropist, but also because to me it seems like philanthropy is a big part of that entrepreneurship and I think sometimes we miss that when we hear people's stories. So if you could talk about that a little bit, yeah, I know you can do it.
Anita Jarman:I know you can raise $40,000 for your endowment. I'm hoping for 80, just double it.
Langston Clark :Me too, put it out there.
Anita Jarman:This is for an outstanding cause and I think that a lot of people don't appreciate, especially when you're talking about the grad school journey. So thank you for that and thank you for being under your alma mater. That's legacy. But Alabama was an interesting fundraise and it was surely grants and legislative connections. So Alabama is the most HBCUs in the nation with 14. And that's including a few community colleges. So there was already appropriated funds which most states have for HBCUs, especially since they have land grant institutions which are federally and state governed. So there's probably a provision for every state that aligns with the public HBCUs in their states. That's where you should start If you're thinking about how you can better HBCUs, particularly because North Carolina ANT is a public state institution. I can't even think off the top of my head I don't know if Central was public or private. You all have a few Probably.
Anita Jarman:It's like 11 HBCUs in North.
Langston Clark :Carolina.
Anita Jarman:So it goes back to know your customer KYC. I was able to talk to the president out the gate Just offer relationships of the parent, and this helped me understand what the president's issues were. Here I am on the ground with the students, I know what their issues are, but the president's issues were there was a lot of legislative involvement. So we knew as an organization we needed to tap into what state provided funding was or wasn't doing for all of the collective. Hbcus didn't go as planned, but when we represented the collective as opposed to just one HBCU, that's when we started to get the heads turning. North Carolina has 11, 12, something of the sort.
Anita Jarman:If you're thinking about the betterment of HBCUs and you have connections with your state legislator, whether it's on a local level or the state level or the federal level, represent the collective of two or three HBCUs under an initiative. It could be just to support their research at the graduate level, it could be for agricultural related, it could be for education related, but just say these three or four HBCUs. I've talked to their presidents or their provost, or even their faculty or even their students, and I've learned that there's an issue about graduating black educators into public school districts, within their districts, after they graduate, where these are. And I'm coming to you as a collective voice of all of these different schools in different places throughout the state and I'm telling you as a federal legislator or state legislator there's a provision in the constitution or there's an amendment for education that I think we can get some more money for, and this is where their government affairs team comes in and becomes that voice. So you don't start lobbying for these schools, but you start as a philanthropist, you start to put forth those issues that you know systemically we've suffered from.
Anita Jarman:So research is always number one. Their education right now is suffering. Diversity, equity, inclusion, ridiculousness, all over the place. But that's an opportunity for HBCUs to say come on home, we're recruiting. So even if it's at a recruitment level that you can become a solution to the collective's issue. That's where you can start bringing some grant dollars, right, because one thing that people want to know is who you know and who you got back at you. So it's one thing if I say I'm going to represent my alma mater, oh, that's sweet. My alma mater loves you. That's great, that's good. I'm not knocking at it all.
Anita Jarman:But if I have, all of the land grant institutions in one place and I'm saying we're representing their research and agriculture, not their faculty, not their new building or advocating for new facilities. We're literally just representing the agricultural related research of all land grant institutions and we're going statewide, federally, to present this information where there's this reason why their underfunding is creating barriers to them advancing solutions in the black community. Whatever it is, the collective voice is where that money starts to hit. It starts to hit different because it says you have support from different places throughout the state and you're addressing an issue that can be ignored. It's an issue not just with one institution.
Langston Clark :Yeah. So I think about this interesting so I'll share the approach that we use to start the endowment. So the endowment is a collective effort between myself, dr Tyrell Morton, who is at University Illinois, chicago, and future Dr Brittany Patrick, who is a candidate at University of Maryland, and the three of us all went to A&T for undergrad, which is why it's called from A&T to PhD. I was an education major from jump. The two of them became education folks through their academic journey. But because we all have this relationship to education in some way, we decided to start the endowment as like sort of a representation of our relationship with one another, but just the commonality in our experience going from A&T to PhD.
Langston Clark :So before the endowment started, there was a group meet was started and the group meets from A&T to PhD. So we have over a hundred people who are Somewhere in their PhD journey. We have full professors, we have first-year master students who see themselves getting their PhDs Right, and so that's sort of like how we start to build community around the shared experience, the shared identity we have as alum of A&T or current students at A&T because, excuse me, some people like might have went to Chapel Hill for undergrad but are getting their PhD engineering, from A&T. So they're still going from A&T, but they're not alumni. You see what I'm saying.
Langston Clark :So it's a nice mix of people with different experiences, different majors, different folk I and things like that and so I think of it as Constellation philanthropy, where it's not just one person Leveraging their business acumen right, like I'm not Mackenzie Scott, like I wasn't that, I was at Amazon day one, so it's not my personal fortune, but collectively from those hundred fifteen people who are in that group me I mean, I get all 40, but if I can get all 40,000, but if I can get 20 of them to give $200, that's a huge chunk of it and then ask people that they know and people that they know, and so, similar to what you suggested, I think what I've been trying to do is build community around an Ideal for philanthropy that buys into the approach based upon a specific and very unique experience shared experience that all of us have.
Anita Jarman:No, that's brilliant and it speaks to what we do best as black people. What we do best is HBCUs and that's build our own community, and reconstruction tells us this. Don't a reconstruction error. Alabama state was literally founded as a private institution for black people to educate themselves. They said we want this for us, that's it. So if you want to call this segregation, call it what you want. This is why we established ourselves. Later they became a public institution, but it's premise was to educate us. We need to protect ourselves.
Anita Jarman:So if anybody understands community building is us, I think, as entrepreneurs in community building, especially philanthropy. First, I'll say this people underestimate how Rigid you have to be to be a philanthropist. It is not rainbows and cookies like oh, I want to help save the world in world hunger, bringing peace and all it know. You're literally selling a belief of a new world or a new Environment to people who may not agree with you, people who can't see the vision as best as you can. People don't understand a problem that you have as an actual problem because it don't impact them, if you like.
Anita Jarman:Philanthropy in this country was rooted in what you just said. People that had a lot of money Mackenzie for foundation, bill Gates, bill and Melinda Gates, all of these different foundations were because somebody wanted to pay it for after the fact, when we were talking about philanthropists, especially black philanthropists. We're not doing this after the fact. We're really doing it because we know our ancestors were trying to make this easier for us so that we can build a community that educates us or supports us or Advances us. So the world of philanthropy in itself is Extremely difficult. It's not like any other startup. You start up. You say, hey, I just need some seed funding so I can build my prototype. And then it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna sell some t-shirts with the brand on it because, oh, I'm gonna give away some just so I can put my Peril out there. But I need people to buy the sweatshirts because that's my product. That's not philanthropy. Philanthropy is, like I said, selling in an entire vision to Whomever.
Anita Jarman:You need to support what you're trying to do and you have to be cautious about who's supporting you. Right, like that's the lesson that I learned last year and that's why I called them the former organization. It was a great experience, but the people that Managed above my head what I was doing and all that I was able to do. They did not have good intent. And when you are attached to your livelihood is attached to it just as much as your programs are attached to it.
Anita Jarman:You have to be extremely cautious about who your investors are or who your parent organization is. Who supports your foundation with the annual Gift of forty thousand dollars and it's like a guess I owe them a seat at the table. No, you have to protect your village. Whatever you are building your endowment to your student programs, you have to protect it at all costs, because people will manipulate the fact that that you're a charitable cause. Oh, but I give the excuse you also take from them as well. So, at the end of the day, philanthropy and this economy, this capitalistic you have to be a rigid person like you have to be able to think beyond Just telling somebody what you're doing and create a funnel for it. You will burn yourself out telling people what your mission is and not generating any revenue to go support that mission. So it's a challenge. I.
Langston Clark :Had a conversation with my homeboy during COVID and we were just we had, of course, we had to be outside. So we're outside at this place in San Antonio, called the pearl, having lunch and I think I was finishing up house of cards from Netflix and, if you remember, in season one of house of cards, the husband who's played by Kevin Spacey is Senator and the wife played by Robin, what is her name? I can't remember it, but anyways, the wife, right, claire is her name. In the show Claire runs the nonprofit, but Kevin Spacey's character is the senator and we had this conversation about, basically, that's how, like wealthy white folks do it and how they play gender roles at the highest levels of capitalism. The husband is the one who is Running industry and the wife is the one who's running philanthropy and these two things go hand in hand.
Langston Clark :And don't think that the philanthropic stuff is less powerful than the corporate stuff, because it's not. It's not and they're interesting. Dynamics and how these things play out in the history of HBCs are interesting in that, like my favorite photo of Booker T Washington, it's him, it's Carnegie, I think it's these other robber bearing captains of industry at the time and he's in the center. You know a photo I'm talking about. I do, okay, and it's like I'm surprised they even took the picture with him standing in the middle. You know what I mean. So I think about the history of philanthropy and how it relates to HBCUs and things like that, and the way we've had to navigate those situations in the past and some ways even into the future maybe.
Anita Jarman:Yeah, he knew I don't always agree, we can't ask him. But when I really learned about what Booker T Washington was doing down there, I can't agree with every method that he did and I know this is why WVD boy always and I to be whales. You can't just teach us industrialization. You have to teach us creative and analytical thinking, like we not just laborers but he knew outputs.
Anita Jarman:If I teach them a skilled labor then these big corporations is a pipeline, workforce development pipeline, that's it. He lobbied the state legislature to get that 1500 for Dr Carver and that money was supposed to go to A&M because that was the land grant institution Alabama. A&m was the 1890 for Alabama, but that money was rewrote it to ski, because to ski he was already doing Agricultural related activity. It was a private school, it wasn't even a public school. Yeah, thumbs up. So it's one of those things where I wouldn't always agree like now as an adult and as like an educator and understanding the business of research and HBCUs. I wouldn't agree with how he did, what he did and who he invited to. Because if you look at the writings as well, dr Carver was under so much stress. Now Auburn is the predominantly white land grant institution. They were getting 15,000 for their federal appropriations from the USDA. Yeah, 1500, 15,000, that don't even add up to do the type of work that he was trying to do. But Booker T Washington was the one bringing everybody down there to show off his great Scientists and it's like you put pressure on his anointing at the same time. So it's definitely a hand-in-hand business that black entrepreneurs, especially black philanthropists, need to be aware of. But we also have technology that brings communities and we can create our own community. Is what I'm saying. Yeah, a group me created the community for you.
Anita Jarman:You know, they don't have to go out and say I'm gonna serve all HPC researchers or PhDs. It's literally. I have the past, those who have already graduated. I have the mission, which is for those in the future. And now I have your attention because I have numbers, I have a community and it's all in a virtual platform. So I know that there's a need here, as opposed to going and making a billion dollars and then starting your endowment after the fact. But you also, like I said, you just looking at that house of cards ever. So you know there's politics involved. Especially when it comes to education, there's always want to be politics involved. My PhD journey is. I know what my dissertation is going to be about, since I'm only like In semester number two, but it's what happens to the systemic underfunding of our HBCU, especially the public schools, and what I'm learning about the private ones as well, even though some of the private institutions had white founders, they did. Some of them exploited us like they would make us sing Negro spirituals when they came to the school.
Anita Jarman:There's historic record of them exploiting black people. But also, in the name of philanthropy, we want to educate this underprivileged, served less than human race, but in the same breath go ahead and shuck and jive for us and sing the spiritual for us, so you can get this money to keep your programs running. And it's kind of the same issue I have with a lot of the pomp and circumstance that we do with our HBCUs. We celebrate the experience. Who really don't know the struggle?
Anita Jarman:We don't know that some of those buildings haven't been renovated since the 60s and our students are coming back from a semester and there's mold in their bathrooms, right, but we celebrate in a band and we got our letters on, but we have the worst alumni giving rates because our alumni aren't graduating into Well-paying jobs. It takes us a lot longer to get into our mid-career, senior level positions, so they don't have enough disposable income to give back to the institution. There's so many different ways that the legislative piece plays. The political piece plays into why the conditions of our HBCUs are what they are, but we also, like I said, we have geniuses on our campuses and the black community that we really need to tap into in advance.
Anita Jarman:Your endowment is a fresh business development perspective that I believe a lot of alumni need to adopt, and the fact that you're doing it. Endowments can have their own nuanced mission or STEM or whatever, but you provide a very fresh business development perspective for the HBCU world. We know the PWIs love endowments. Yeah, harvard's endowments like one point, something is ridiculous, but it finds hundreds of academic programs. So thank you. Thank you for giving us another way to support our alma mater.
Langston Clark :Yeah, and so as you think about your next steps actually, no, let me ask this question. This is an important question to ask about and it goes back to First. Thank you for what you just said. I want to ask why the choice to go from HBCU to PWI to HBCU, and what has that experience been like for you at Alabama State? I believe it was where you're getting your doctor.
Anita Jarman:Yeah, I went from those states to Georgetown right after, so that's like a shared experience. And then years later I'm getting my PhD at Alabama State. So I'll just start with Georgetown. Georgetown was in my backyard and it was like a dream school for me growing up, just because of the basketball department. That's a whole other whole, another lifetime. But I always wanted to go to Georgetown, finally got in a program. It was a sports management program. I thought I was going to become an agent. I learned more about the way that sports globally unifies us, so I wanted to focus on the student at the development of the student athlete with my capstone and I went back to China and did two weeks with Nike and that men's basketball team there and that turned into a whole international PR moment because the men's team got into a fight with the China team.
Anita Jarman:It was provoked by the china team and joe biden, who was the vice president at the time, was there the night before. So it was like a whole, like security Issue and I mean it taught me PR in real times that I was a PR major at those things. How sports is such a global language that brings people together but also is a representation of country pride and it was a whole experience for me. So joe biden was cool, I learned a lot. But the difference was the administrative process and I had to say hbc, just haven't figured it out. We still have five hour lines to do financial aid processing at the beginning of the semester. Still have to figure it out. But shout out to we night because I know they're troubleshooting that issue. That's right.
Anita Jarman:And they're innovating how we do treat our customers, which are hbc students. So georgetown was just that for that, but also the network I was as an alum. Immediately, I was recruited in so many different types of groups. I'm still an alumni investment group right now. I'm not an accredited investor not yet I will be obviously one day but I'm now in an investment club where I'm learning about startup companies and I've been in that club since I graduated in 2011. I'm just learning. That's what georgetown.
Anita Jarman:I was afforded the opportunity to really kind of brag on about georgetown, but it's nothing because hbc you. So I'm glad I'm getting my phd here. This wasn't the first program I applied to. I did apply to other pwis and I'm glad I didn't get accepted because I wouldn't have been supported, I wouldn't be in this part of my journey, number one, and this part of my journey was essential. After what I went through last year in Alabama. It was essential for me to get my phd now, because now I saw the best and worst of hbc use. I saw the politicians and the lobbyists that were dismantling the same issues or solutions that we were trying to put together for student development and I said we got to study this a little bit better. So where I am now is perfect for what I'm doing and what I'm building with the geely project.
Langston Clark :Two last questions. Tell us about your podcast, because I'm a fan. I'm a podcast, or in a fan of podcasts. So tell us a little bit about the podcast, and then the last question will be what books are you reading or have you read that have inspired your journey?
Anita Jarman:Yeah,so the the , so sso tJi JI i Li iLi JPRO podcast is students and elected officials. Those are my target interviewees, but also the community that we need to support both entities. So a lot of entrepreneurs, therapists, people who support students and people who help us understand politics a little bit better, and I do it so that my students can understand everything about life that they need to know. The ofe lthei j J J J in school was pretty much the mission of the GLEEPRO podcast. I'm going to be doing a lot more 1890 podcasting related Like.
Anita Jarman:Last week I interviewed the biology club at Delaware State University which is a Langmuir institution, and these it was four young women blew my mind with how I hate to say it, but how nerdy genius they were. It was like they were telling me about breast cancer, some breast cancer research they were doing, and the way the terminology was just flowing. I thought I was talking to a seasoned like doctor, like it was phenomenal. And I'm like these girls, these young women, studied during a pandemic. They're literally getting their own track to get their PhDs in the next four years. They're already vested in what they're doing. They're not just researching, they're researching in different areas, like one was Parkinson's disease, one was DNA testing, the other two were for breast cancer. Everything was black related. So they already see themselves as solutions in the community and this is why we need endowments such as yours to support them so they can continue at HBCU PhD programs, because that's what brings in the dollars for us.
Anita Jarman:So at the end of the day, the podcast is essentially amplifying the voice of both our researchers, our students. Also our elected officials. The elected officials piece came into play. It wasn't originally in the podcast mission but it came into play because a lot of my students were voted for the first time In my county. I love local elections more than I do the federal ones, but your voice can really be heard.
Langston Clark :Absolutely.
Anita Jarman:And so I wanted my students to know where all these signs were, all these people that you see. How do you pick somebody at the polls the first time voting? Do you do your research or do you just go about how many times you saw their name on a sign somewhere, or what's catchy, or what's marketable? So the podcast really just spoke truth to who was running for which election, and that became like a good moment for the evolution of the podcast. So I'll leave it at that. I don't know how podcast are you? You kind of take some time from me and you try to revamp it. We're in that phase right now. So, like I said, it'll be a lot more 1890 related moving forward. But thank you for asking. I appreciate that.
Langston Clark :Yeah, and what books? Yeah, let's talk about those books.
Anita Jarman:Okay, I have both of them right here and I have to put these on because I'm not just studying them but they're, you know, my markers out of them. But they really have opened my eyes as an educator and then I'm going to show you the educator one and then the other one opened my eyes to just how weird our worlds are about to get with AI. Yeah, but if we understand the underlying premise of what AI is, it's going to make it a whole lot easier. So the first one is a teaching white supremacy. Okay, this book is about the author. He.
Anita Jarman:I think it was like 30 something thousand textbooks, American textbooks, that he went through to understand what the narrative was when teaching about American history, and the title will tell you what he found. White supremacy was intertwined in everything, every law, every articulation. He goes into how, even in the North, he believes that. He posits that white supremacy started in Massachusetts and all of these Harvard presidents those first Harvard presidents were racist. He's one of the people who were writing our textbook and he goes into Benjamin Franklin. He thought that we weren't even humans. Honestly, President Lincoln, he doubled down on how much he didn't see us as equal or he couldn't see us voting along with white people, Like.
Anita Jarman:I haven't finished it, but this is like a rubric for me to understand timeline-wise how we were depicted. He even goes into how a lot of authors of these textbooks said that we were happy as slaves. We had healthcare and we had food and clothing, and that's how we were depicted in textbooks colorfully. So this book and then my AI book, putting ourselves back into the equation basically this is helping us understand how, before we have become to really embrace AI, the world of neuroscience and the world of quantum physics and neuroscience were totally separate. We're about it as sciences, which they are, they never married. But when you start to understand what AI does for us in terms of creating the world that we're subconsciously living it uses pattern recognition to build upon that it's really tapping into our neurology composition. Like I can't say the word correctly, I'm sorry Neurologic.
Langston Clark :Is it neurologic logic?
Anita Jarman:Yes, yes, so when these worlds come together, we pretty much get the underlying parts of AI. I haven't gotten all the way through the book, but it's helping me shape what I'm doing with the 1890 project Real quick for the people who are listening so they didn't see you.
Langston Clark :Hold it up. Stay the name of the book.
Anita Jarman:Putting ourselves back into the equation and teaching white supremacy.
Langston Clark :Anita, thank you for joining us. I appreciate you taking the time to be here and I wish you much success on your journey as a philanthropist, as an educator and as a scholar. And real quick, where can people go to find you to support your work?
Anita Jarman:Sure, thank you again for having me. I appreciate you amplifying HBCU advocacy. So thejeliprojectorg T-H-E-J-I-L-I-Projectorg 1890projectcom is where you can learn more about what we're doing with HBCUs, and you can definitely follow me on LinkedIn, Anita Jarman JRMAN. I'm posting as much as I can, but when I do post, it's always about how education is in human rights. So thank you again.
Langston Clark :Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.