Building an Entrepreneur

I humbly accepted the offer to be the Keynote speaker of the 2010 University of Washington Advisers conference. The room had over 150 counselors from across the state of Washington. Many which had the opportunity to read through The Only Black Student. Several requested that I come and speak with their students as well as work with faculty and staff at their school’s.

There is a great sense of Validation that comes from having Advisers tell you that your work is “filling a void” but at the same time also can be overwhelming. Although entrepreneurship is my passion it is something I must scale and make sure that I do not go overboard with. I do after all have the 9-5 gig

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I can attest to this as an employee as well as an employer. One rule of thumb is make your Boss’s job  as effortless as possible. The less they have to do the better. With that mentality in your mind you will be surprised how quickly things progress for you. I wish I did more of it to be honest.

This video has NOTHING to do with my normal discussion of entrepreneurship, technology and education. It is simply one of the most amazing animal interactions I have ever watched. Its eight minutes long and starts a little slow but well worth the time.

100 percent of first senior class at all male, all African-American Englewood academy is accepted to universities

It truly is attainable for all!

This story must be advertiesed to as many students as you know! Success for any student is possible. Simply looking at what is often considered the worst case scenario plays in when dealing with young Black men. Urban prep is a charter school that enrolls ALL students in one of Chicago’s dilapidated communities.

The secret is not much of a secret and matches much of what our parents echo over the years, hard work and studying pays off. How much harder the students at this school study in comparison to students at other public schools? 170,000 minutes longer over the span of four years.

At last count, the 107 seniors gained acceptance to a total of 72 different colleges, including Northwestern University, Morehouse College, Howard University, Rutgers University and University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Alexander was accepted to DePaul University.

I am excited to see the next phase for students and now that they have been accepted will they all go? It will be exciting to see the path these students take over the next 4-5 years.

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The Only Black Student is now on Amazon’s Kindle and it is doing pretty good in sales.

I now have over 1,000 fans on my Facebook fan page

http://www.lclark.edu/

Enrollment: 1,921
Student/faculty ratio: 12:1

The first person I drove by at Lewis & Clark while looking for parking was the exact image I had in my head, long hair and Sandals. I have always heard about the liberal environment at Lewis & Clark and I could feel it as I walked around the campus.

The workshop itself was rather diverse, students from several different backgrounds ethnically and culturally. I did my normal scan for African American Male students and was again met with frustration. Although there were Black male students they were fellow Ethiopians which I see at schools across the country, first generation African students seem to be doing well. However, African American Black men have pretty much all but disappeared from the schools I have visited.

Students were engaged and during times the conversation got heated! We discussed “Walking in late” a section in my book that goes over the feeling of walking in late into a course as a student of color. This didn’t sit too well with a few white students during the discussion as one of them was very vocal about her views on race and felt that I was attacking her as a white student. After the emotions settled students started a very powerful cross cultural conversation that seemed to help get out some much needed emotion and feelings toward race. I was excited to see Staff and Faculty in the workshop sharing their thoughts and opinions with students and also giving me Kudos on my facilitation abilities.

After the workshop I had dinner with a few of the selected students from the workshop and we discussed everything from my book to dating. Very relaxed atmosphere that allowed me to learn more about these students and the smaller culture fostered at a smaller environment. The students explained that if they wanted they could have close relationships with their instructors.