FROM THE MOREHOUSE COLLEGE OFFICE OF ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT
MAGAZINE JUNE 2019
THE MAN WHO STAYS
ON POINT
PHOTO CREDIT: ROGER S. HUMPHREY ’03
LODRIGUEZ MURRAY ’04
UNCF VICE PRESIDENT OF PUBLIC POLICY AND GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS + The Fire Next Time: Mossi Tull ’95 + Clean and Clear with Patrick Boateng ’11 and Blake Rascoe ’09
"I can talk all day about how much I love Morehouse, but if I can’t show that with my time and resources, its just that... all talk. I will always be a man of action." - Kevin T. Brown, D.P.T. ’04 "The Kevin T. Brown Scholarship Fund was started because I had mentioned it to my wife, Carmen, as one of my long-term goals. I had explained to her that the Kinesiology and Sports Science Major was the only major not represented with a scholarship, and I sincerely wanted to change that one day. She made some phone calls and started it as a birthday gift to me. I remember opening that manila envelope, and her telling me "you shouldn’t wait to change the world for others." Brothers... marry a Spelmanite.
"I can talk all day about how much I love Morehouse, but if I can’t show that with my time and resources, it’s just that... all talk. I will always be a man of action.
"The leaders we’re looking for are often found in the mirror, and I felt it necessary to give to Morehouse because Morehouse gave so much to me. Morehouse is home. I had my first job as an associate professor here. My Morehouse family were the first people to reach out when my mother passed from pancreatic cancer in 2005. It was the first place where excellence was expected of me, even when I wasn’t sure if I had it to give. My professors at the time: Dr. Claude Hutto ’94, Dr. Robert Wilson ’72, Dr. Joyce Terrell, and Ms. Jaqueline Davis were the first people to call me Doctor Brown before I had ever stepped foot in physical therapy school. And I am forever grateful for that.
"My mentors have always told me that the only way I can ever repay them is to do what they did for me for someone else. They are going to be ’paid back’ in full. Joseph Hines ’08, Dr. Andre Bell, DPT ’07, Ross D. Jordan ’19, Isaiah Wasson ’19, Brandon Anderson ’15, Lance Bennett ’17 are all doing or will do monumental things in their respective fields and my hope is that they always reach back to Morehouse to guide someone else along toward their future. I can’t have that expectation of them, if I’m not doing it myself. So, I give to Morehouse to also be an example."
"When my first scholarship recipient, Justin Vanorsby ’18, walked across that stage this past spring it was surreal experience. It was like watching my own younger brother graduate. Seeing him grow from a quiet, soft spoken kid to an articulate, confident Morehouse Man is a feeling that cannot be measured.
morehouse.getyams.com
SPIKE! CONGRAA TULATIONS
ACADEMY AWARD WINNER FOR BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY "BLACKKKLANSMAN"
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CONTENTS
Lodriguez V. Murray '04 makes a point at the Arkansas HBCU Summit as White House Initiative on HBCUs chair, Johnathan Holifield looks on
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ON POINT.
THE FIRE NEXT TIME
Lodriguez V. Murray ’04, the VP of Public Policy and Government Affairs for the UNCF, fights tirelessly alongside CEO Michael Lomax ’68 in an effort to ensure that the students of its member institutions are afforded the ability to attend their respective schools with financial support.
June
Mossi Tull ’95, the 2018 Alumnus of the Year explains why he’s fired up about Morehouse, his family, his work and the liberation of the minds of African Americans through education and financial stability.
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CALLED TO SERVE.
CLEAN AND CLEAR
Judge Chris Ward ’93 lives a life of service everyday by serving in the busiest courtroom in the Southeast. He shares his story and how changing lives from the bench was his natural progression in a life of service to others.
Learn about Ceylon, the new men’s facial cleansing system from alums Patrick Boateng ’11 and Blake Rascoe ’11. Discover how their collective career paths in government affairs and entertainment management led them to entrepreneurship.
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PHOTO CREDIT: JOSEPH S. CARLOS ’04
CONTENTS
Michael T. Sterling ’04 with his son Michael, wife Eva and daugther Marley
June 95
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ENGAGED ALUMNUS.
A LIFE LESS ORDINARY
THE FAVORITE
SPORTS IS LIFE
When Javarro Edwards ’92 sees something needs to be done or fixed, he handles it immediately. His support of his alma mater through his time, talent and treasure make him a prototypical engaged alumnus.
He was a U.S. Attorney; he ran for Mayor of Atlanta and he’s currently on Real Housewives of Atlanta. However, Michael T. Sterling’s ’04 life of service is what truly defines this proud husband and father of two. Learn more about his story.
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Professor Illya Davis ’89 is one of the most beloved educators at Morehouse College. He explains what drives him and what inspires him to try to pull the absolute best out of his students inside and outside of the classroom.
Devin Emory has been writing about sports for years, and now his app HouseSports covers all aspects of what makes sports so important and vital to the lives of millions. He shares his journey from idea to app conception and beyond.
CONTENTS
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Departments LETTERS 5 From the Editor 7 Feedback
STEADFAST, HONEST, TRUE 10 Marcus Graham Project Larry Yarrell ’03 creates more people of color in marketing and advertising one professional at a time. 12 Grammy Gold A record 8 alumni were nominated for Grammys in 2019. Morehouse celebrated them in epic fashion during a West Hollywood bash during Grammy Week. 14 Worth the Wait The 2019 Oscars will always be remembered as the year that the legendary filmmaker Spike Lee ’79 won his first and overdue Oscar.
15 Samuel L. Jackson: Not Slowing Down The 70 year old Samuel L. Jackson ’72 is showing no signs of slowing down and is more popular than ever, doing the thing he absolutely loves; making movies. 16 5 Good Minutes: Ben Cory Jones ’05 In-demand Hollywood writer, producer and showrunner Ben Cory Jones ’05 offers advice and an insight to his career success. 21 Fifth Rhodes Scholar Franck Nijimbere, a computer science and mathematics major who graduated from Morehouse College in May 2018, has been named the college’s fifth Rhodes Scholar. 31 Rod Edmond: Excellence Personified Rod Edmond ’83 was interviewied by rollingout.com about why he feels that Atlanta is the epitome of black excellence. Edmond is medical malpractice attorney with an M.D. and J.D.
61 35 New Beginnings: Inauguration 2019 A recap of Founders Weekend 2019 that featured the inauguration of President David A. Thomas as well as 31st annual A Candle in the Dark gala. 39 New Trustees for Morehouse Jim Dinkins, Allen Chan, Alan Fleischman and Verdun Perry ’94 are the newest additions to the Morehouse College Board of Trustees. 40 Massey wins NSF Award President Emeritus Dr. Walter E. Massey ’58 will receive the prestigious Vannevar Bush Award. The award honors science and technology leaders who have made substantial contributions to the welfare of the nation through public service in science, technology, and public policy.
VOWS 51 53 55 57 59 61 63
Rev. Dr. John J. Cox ’03 Dr. Kasi David ’01 Marcus Sabbs ’11 Dennis Williams ’04 Michael Sterling ’04 Jeffrey Tate ’04 Elliott Robinson ’06
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
a better future for Black men, right? How dare we want more for the young men who attend and graduate from our alma mater? How dare they even dream? Who gave them the confidence, the right, the notion that they too could want more for themselves in the first place?
PHOTO CREDIT: ZEK HARRIS ’20
THE UTTER AUDACITY TO imagine
It’s Morehouse. That amazing name that conjures thoughts of nostalgia, whimsy, curiosity, jealousy, and happiness. Morehouse -- more than a college, more than a group of men, committed to excellence and being their best selves. Morehouse -- the place that taught us so very much, and that we truly owe so much to. Morehouse is the place that I have the pleasure of working. With my daughter Sage, a future sixth generation HBCU graduate.
On a daily basis, I have the opportunity to share and promote the triumphs, accomplishments, and achievements of Morehouse graduates. On a daily basis, alumni call or email me with every idea, request, question and concern known to man. In the grand scheme of things, I love it when I field those calls and I’m able to answer those questions, or connect brothers to the right information. To be honest, it’s a calling. This issue is packed with news and notes and interviews about dozens and dozens of Morehouse Men who’ve accomplished outstanding things. I’m amazed and inspired on a daily basis by their resolve, tenacity, brilliance, wisdom, generosity and their love for their alma mater. To truly show love for your alma mater, it is our hope that Morehouse graduates give back in three ways, with their time, talent, and treasure. As we ap-
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proach the end of the fiscal year, and start a new reunion cycle, it is imperative that we remind ourselves how we got to where we are in the first place. We must always remember to tithe to Morehouse. Always. It can be as simple as donating your class year amount, and over time, moving the decimal point and adding zeroes to the end of that monthly gift. Far too often, those who look to invest in our institution, are shocked when they learn how few alumni give back. Now more than ever, we owe it to ourselves to do for ourselves and give, encourage others to give, and do so consistently. We are more than enough, and our alma mater is most definitely worth it. This beautiful idea, this dream that is Morehouse, can only continue with your sustained support. Please visit morehouse.getyams.com or giving.morehouse.edu to make a gift today.
Joe Carlos, III ’04
Editor In Chief Associate Director of Alumni Engagement
The QB podcast is your one-stop hub for discussion of the highest-profile position in team sports: The Quarterback. Hosted by elite QB coach, Quincy Avery, and co-host, Brian Fitch, the podcast will have candid, insightful conversations with past, present and rising QB stars, talking about the position, their journey, and their off-the-field struggles and triumphs. Not strictly for football fans, the show will explore the QB Mindset, those qualities of leadership, resilience and poise under pressure that produce excellence, on and off the field. The podcast is produced by Avery, Fitch and Emmy-Winning producer/director, Amani Martin.
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FEEDBACK CREATORS
Greetings Bro Carlos Hope this correspondence finds you well. As I perused through the impressive feature of alumni involved in the arts in your "Creators" article, I want to share with you this list of other Morehouse Men who are also working members in the entertainment industry who weren’t listed (myself included) Mark "MV" Oliphant ’91 (actor/voiceover artist/Life Member MCNAA) http://MVOliphant.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ActorMvOliphant/ IG: @MVTheActor Twitter: @MVOliphant LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mvoliphant/ Thom Scott II ’91 (actor/acting coach) Website: http://www.thomscott2.com/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thom.i.scott IG: @thomscottii Twitter: @THOMSCOTTII LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thom-scott-ii20158b55/ N. Kozmo Miller ’95 (voiceover artist & theatre actor) Website: http://GetKozmo.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nkozmomiller LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6404779555109826561/ Twitter: @GetKozmo Jamal Ahmad ’98 (radio personality WCLK) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jahmad Website: http://WCLK.com IG: @WCLK Twitter: @jamalahmad Alfeo Dixon ’94 (cinematographer) Website: http://www.alfeo.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alfeo IG: @cinediver Twitter: @Alfeo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alfeo/ George Folkes ’78 (theatre actor/vocalist) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/george.folkes M.V. Oliphant ’91 Atlanta No disrespect to these brothers but when did we start highlighting nongraduates @wearemorehouse? If we do this then there are plenty of brothers that didn’t finish that we could highlight like @marclamonthill and @killermike but is this the new expectation? Berkley Thomas ’09 Baltimore Incredible work on the latest issue! Awesome to see our brothers making moves. Two more to share Dominic ’TickTock’ Bazile ’00 and San Diego’s own Amon ’Amonrah’ Cunningham. 7 WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019
Lemar Slater ’98 San Diego, CA THANK YOU for WE ARE MOREHOUSE monthly. Although I am not your target demographic (class of 1959) I hope to be around to read it for many more months. So you understand why it is such a breath of fresh air for me: When I graduated (1959) the college did not permit me to claim Drama as a major, so I graduated with more credit hours in my minor than in my major. Although Morehouse men have been doing outstanding work in the arts for many decades, the college has NEVER adequately acknowledged (for example) Louis Peterson, Ray McIver, or J.P. Cochran-- each of whom would have been bragged about if they had achieved what they achieved in a field/discipline that fits the college’s image/stereotype. Similarly, there are people in creative disciplines with which I am less familiar (such as visual artist Lloyd McNeill). When I retired from the University of Connecticut (Dramatic Arts and Africana Studies) and returned to Atlanta (ten years ago) the College website did not list Drama as an possible major. I complained repeatedly and now the college admits that the major exists. Both Sam Jackson and Bill Nunn are former students of mine, and I am proud of the recognition the college has given them, BUT... While I am extremely happy to read and know about the outstanding young men you have brought to my attention, I remain concerned that (to the best of my knowledge) nobody seems to remember (for instance) that a Morehouse playwright had a Broadway hit that became a major motion picture a few years BEFORE A Raisin In The Sun. THANK YOU FOR YOUR EFFORT TO CHANGE THINGS. Visit www.Afrocentrictheatre.com Carlton W. Molette, Ph.D. ’59 Atlanta Greetings! Thank you for Issue #8 of the We Are Morehouse series! I appreciate your highlighting the arts. In fact, I plan to share this edition with audiences at workshops I will be doing August 8-14 for high school and college aged students in San Pedro Sula, El Progreso, and Roatan in Honduras. This will round out my presentation perfectly. I know that highlighting African Americans in classical music may not be as interesting or appealing as more popular music styles. However, if you ever want to highlight alumni in that area, I would be happy to help identify some alumni who are performers and composers. Thanks, again! David Morrow, Ph.D. ’80 Atlanta
. . . & W E L L- G RO O M E D
Well-read, spoken, traveled, dressed, balanced, & now we add, well-groomed. Intended to alleviate dr y, itchy scalp while keeping hair healthy & moisturized. Exper tly made by a Board-Cer tiied Dermatologist, Spelman College c /o ‘96.
L I V S O.C O M
The work of Derek Fordjour ’01.
WEAREMOREHOUSE.com
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STEADFAST, HONEST, TRUE NEWS & VIEWS FROM ALUMNI
MARKETING CHANGE Larry Yarrell ’03’s Marcus Graham Project works to create opportunities for more people of color in the marketing and advertising industry It’s a routine summer day in Dallas to most. To these select few of creative cultural enthusiasts, it’s a day of celebration and reflection. Nearly 300 of the advertising and marketing industries most energized minorities and advocates of diversity filled the Dallas Museum of Art to partake in the Marcus Graham Project’s 6th Annual awards gala and fundraiser, Lavender Hill. WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019 10
STEADFAST, HONEST, TRUE: NEWS & VIEWS
Inspired by the role of Eddie Murphy in the movie "Boomerang," the Marcus Graham Project’s mission is to invest in the exposure, training, and mentorship of the next generation of creative talent. Last year’s gala introduced the non-profit’s 10-year anniversary and was celebrated in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. "We were concerned about our ability to top last year’s festivities as there are very few venues that rival the symbolism of the African American Museum, but I’d say we outdid ourselves this year," says cofounder and COO, Larry Yarrell ’03. The 2018 gala featured recording artist, Olu Bliss and the Dallas African Dance Ensemble. Guests wore their Sunday best in Afropolitan attire and celebrated diaspora culture. The Marcus Graham Project honored some of their mission affiliates like Fossil Group, the Tracy Locke Ad Agency, and program alumni who continue propel the organization forward. One of the Marcus Graham Project’s flagship programs is the iCR8 Bootcamp, which gives participants the opportunity to gain experience and exposure in the ad industry and work with Fortune 100 companies. Alumni are placed in jobs at several of the top ad agencies and brands around the globe. The Marcus Graham Project currently hosts summer bootcamp in Dallas and smaller workshops in cities across the country, including Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami and New York. "This has truly been a decade of difference for us! The industry community is looking to the likes of MGP to usher in the next decade of colorful leadership and we’re up to the challenge." says Yarrell.
CAPTIONS (Clockwise from right) 1. Larry Yarrell '03 and his wife Randi 2. Marcus Graham Project award 3. Gregory Kersh '05 and his wife Jullian 4. Several well wishers attended Lavender Hill 5. Some of the outstanding entertainment at Lavender Hill 6. Brandon Smith and his fiancee Desireh 7. Marcus Graham Project 2018 Brass Award winner, Rosa Linda Sanchez 8. The step and repeat was a popular photo opp spot 9. Marcus Graham Project co-founders Larry Yarrell '03 and Lincoln Steffens 10. The Dallas Museum of Art
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R
GRAA MMY GOLD In a record-breaking year, seven Morehouse College alumni received Grammy nominations, and four won Grammy Gold.
IWhen the nominations were announced in December, alums Khalil ’DJ Khalil’ Abdul-Rahman ’96, Kameron Covert, Kennard Garrett ’01, Nathaniel Irvin, III ’02, Charles Joseph ’02, P.J. Morton ’03, and Steve Pamon ’91 all created, produced, or contributed to work that was nominated. In February, before the Grammy Awards, a special celebration was held at Los Angeles’ Blind Dragon to honor the success of Morehouse alumni who received Grammy nominations. It was the first such event of its kind. All nominated alumni attended, and spoke individually before a packed house. The alumni recognition was organized thanks to the efforts of Kennard Garrett ’01, Justin Henderson ’02, and Brandon Nowden ’02. The alumni worked in conjunction with Morehouse College Board Trustee Stan Williams ’85 and the Office of Alumni Engagement. The celebration was generously sponsored by Nicholas Buford Crews ’05 and Gregory Plummer ’04 of CREWS. On Grammy night, Morton, Garrett, Corvet and Pamon all won awards. It was a historic night for Morehouse that showed the diversity and talent of alumni in their respective areas of the arts, and their pursuit of excellence "in all things that we do.” Morton, a solo artist and keyboardist for the pop band Maroon 5, had received three Grammy nominations. His self-released album “Gumbo Unplugged (Live),” an acoustic remake of his Grammy-nominated 2017 album "Gumbo," was nominated for best R&B album. His song “First Began” was nominated for Best R&B Performance and his collaboration “How Deep Is Your Love” was a contender for Best Traditional R&B Performance. Garrett, a music producer, and Corvet, a singer/songwriter, were first-time Grammy nominees. The Grammy nomination— and win —left them reeling with excitement about a song that they collaborated on inside Morehouse’s Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in 2015. The song “Don’t Make Me Wait,” featuring rock icon, Sting, and reggae superstar, Shaggy, was included on the much-anticipated album recorded by the unlikely duo “44/876,” and the project is up for Best Reggae Album of the Year. Released under A&B/Interscope, “Don’t Make Me Wait” debuted in the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Reggae Digital Sales chart earlier this year. It was performed live at last year’s Grammy’s and at Super Bowl LII’s tailgate show before the Sting and Shaggy took the song on the road, singing it on late night talk shows and morning news programs. “I used to sit and dream about being at the Grammy’s and having my music played, and then I watched it happen,” Garrett said, recalling the song’s debut last year. He was floored to hear that the album is now a Grammy contender. “I feel honored to be a part of this project. This is an exciting time to have a song on an album nomi-
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R nated for a Grammy.” Garrett mentors young composers/producers and teaches music production and recording sciences at Morehouse College. He is credited as a musician, composer, arranger, or producer on more than a dozen albums since he graduated from Morehouse. He worked with The Pussycat Dolls, Case, Jesse McCartney, Scarface, Drake, J. Cole and Sean Garrett over the year. Corvet, a recording artist, has toured with Sting and Shaggy promoting the album. He recently released his latest project, “Early Riser.” As a songwriter, Corvet also has written for Freddie Jackson, Angie Stone, Case, Avery Sunshine and international pop artist Mr. Probz. As a performer, Kameron has traveled the world opening for the likes of: Adele, Marsha Ambrosius, Bilal, Dwele, Tamia, Robert Glasper, TY Dolla $ign, and others. “It’s a dream come true to have your first nomination be connected to two legends who have already seen what it looks like to be nominated and to win a Grammy,” Corvet said. “This is a blessing. Working with Sting and Shaggy allows me to be who I am and not be defined by a genre.” Grammy night brought more accolades to Morehouse alum Pamon, the Chief Operating Officer of Parkwood Entertainment. Pamon had two groups who were nominated for Grammys, The Carters (Beyonce and Jay-Z) and the duo Chloe X Halle who visited Morehouse in November. The Carters won Best Urban Contemporary Album for ’Everything is Love’. Other Morehouse Men who received Grammy nominations include: super producers Irvin and Joseph, who were nominated for Album of the Year for Janelle Monae’s “Dirty Computer,” and producer Abdul-Rahman, who was nominated for Rap Album of the Year for his work on Nipsey Hussle’s “Victory Lap.”
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WORTH THE WAIT AFTER SIX NOMINATIONS, FILMMAKER SPIKE LEE ’79 WINS AN OSCAR FOR BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY FOR HIS LATEST FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN"
The filmmaker of his generation, Spike Lee ’79 won his long-awaited and long-overdue Oscar at the 2019 Academy Award show. Lee’s win for Best Adapted Screenplay was fitting in a sense, given that his first nomination, in 1990 was in the same category, for the classic “Do The Right Thing.” Lee’s Oscar win was for his 2018 smash hit “BlacKkKlansman” which garnered serious praise from film critics around the world, as well as six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. The night, was clearly Lee’s, and the world was treated to a moment that couldn’t have been scripted any better, when fellow Morehouse Man Samuel L. Jackson ’72, read Lee’s name as the winner. Before Jackson read Lee’s name, he shouted “’Da HOUSE!!!’.” Lee leaped from his seat, and received well wishes all the way to the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, where he gave an impassioned and beautiful acceptance speech. Lee’s win, and the amazingly positive reaction from the audience, who gave him a standing ovation, will forever be one of the most memorable moments in Oscar’s history. Moreover, his film, “BlacKkKlansman,” starring Morehouse Man John David Washington ’06, provided a portrait of a time, not too dissimilar from life today, and Lee’s penchant for a social justice themed message hit the right chord with Oscar voters, critics and at the box office. Lee’s win was more than worth the wait, and absolutely right on time. WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019 14
Samuel L. Jackson ’72 featured on the cover of Esquire Magazine Samuel L. Jackson ’72 is having an amazing 2019. He was the lead in “Glass,” which topped the box office for many weeks after its release, he graced the cover of the March 2019 issue of Esquire Magazine, starred in “Captain Marvel,” was interviewed about his prolific career by Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes, and was the presenter at the 61st Academy Awards when fellow Morehouse Man and his dear friend Spike Lee ’79 won his OSCAR for Best Adapted Screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman.” And that was just in Quarter 1. With over 120 films in over 40 years, Jackson has surpassed the moniker “legend” and is now also known as an icon for his outstanding performances, his amazing wit on-screen and via social media and in interviews, and his sartorial superiority. With the advent of social media, Jackson has not skipped a beat in any way, and posts regularly on Twitter and Instagram, discussing a variety of topics ranging from world affairs to his favorite films to opinions about professional sporting events and games. Jackson’s Esquire Magazine interview covered a range of topics including his career, recent releases, the future of film, his need to act in multiple films every year, his work ethic, what led him to the industry as well as what drives his passion to act. Please read the interview here. Samuel L. Jackson '72
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5
GOOD MINUTES:
BEN CORY JONES ’05
Writer, showrunner, creator, executive producer, lecturer, subject matter expert Ben Jones ’05 is in high demand in Hollywood. Fresh off of the success of his two seasons as the lead writer of HBO’s smash hit “Insecure,” Jones successfully shepherded the breakout BET hit “Boomerang,” which was an adaptation of the cult classic 1992 film, brought to the small screen. Season one was so successful in fact, that it was recently greenlit for a second season. WAMM: How do you know what to say ’yes’ or ’no’ to? BCJ: "When making a decision on what to work on, you have to make sure that it’s something that you’ll like or be passionate about. My latest projects have taken nine months, and that’s a considerable amount of time. To say ’yes’, the project or opportunity has to be something that you believe in." WAMM: What’s the best advice that you would give a person aspiring to start out in the business? BCJ: "Write. Learn to write. No matter what, I can always get work, because I can write. I met a young alum who recently moved to LA, and wanted to act, and he asked me what he should do first, and I told him, learn to write. If you can write, you can always get a job. Write." WAMM: What is something that you learned about the way the industry has changed since you got started? BCJ: "When I was first starting out, someone asked me was I afraid of being pigeonholed into being a writer who only writes ’black.’ At the time, that may have been a concern, but now it’s not. Whenever anything black comes up, they call me first. I wrote on season two of ’Underground,’ then ’Insecure,’ and now ’Boomerang.’ I love writing black stories. I embrace it. That’s who I am, and that’s what I’m about. And now, right now, Hollywood is realizing the importance of diversity in that writer’s room, and black stories are being told and sold." WAMM: You’ve had an extremely successful run and all before the age of 35, what’s next? BCJ: "There’s much that I can’t share, but in the next year, I’ll be adapting E. Lynn Harris’s first three novels for a miniseries for HBO, and ’Stepsisters,’ the film that I executive produced for Netflix, is becoming a series for Netflix."
DeVaughn Swanson ’11 elected to NBLSA Board of Directors The decades long tradition of Morehouse graduates holding leadership positions in the National Black Law Students Association continued recently with the election of DeVaughn Swanson ’14 to the NBLSA Board of Directors. Historically, several Morehouse graduates have served in a variety of leadership positions in the venerable nationwide organization, "formed to articulate and promote the needs and goals of black law students and effectuates change in the legal community." Swanson is in his second year of studies at the University of Georgia School of Law. He earned an M.T.S. at Duke University’s Duke Divinity School. After graduating cum laude with a degree in political science, Swanson was a business analyst for InfoSys and an executive fellow at Chick Fil-A Corporate. Last year, he was a summer judicial clerk with the Georgia Supreme Court. WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019 16
Winfield Murray ’98 appointed Deputy Chief of Staff Winfield Murray ’98, was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Murray is a sixth generation Atlantan, a graduate of Howard University School of Law, where he earned his Juris Doctrate, and the George Washington University Law School, where he earned his Master of Laws degree. Murray is an adjunct professor at Morehouse where he leads
instruction that explores and dissects the principles and structural parts of the U.S. Constitution as they relate to the institutions of the federal government. Murray co-directs the Morehouse College Moot Court Team in a simulated court proceeding before a pseudo-United States Supreme Court including drafting legal memoranda and oral argument. He has been serving as Associate General Counsel in the Atlanta office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. At HUD, he negotiated the largest settlement under the Fair Housing Act in Region IV within the last two decades. Prior to HUD, he served as Assistant City Attorney for the City of Atlanta and as an attorney in the office of the Solicitor for the U.S. Department of Labor. • For more information on Winfield Murray, please visit: https://bit. ly/2LBSHKV
Blake Stoner ’17 earns Columbia Masters Degree Blake Stoner ’17, recently earned a Master of Science degree in Strategic Communication from Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Stoner is the chief storyteller at Vingle, a social vlog focused on highlighting life in American from various angles. While at Columbia, he interned at Regency Manning Consulting Firm and was the Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Atlanta’s Goodie Nation.
Rhom Erskine ’99 named Global Diversity & Inclusion Lead Rhom Erskine ’99 was named the Global Diversity & Inclusion Lead in the Aeronautics Division at Lockheed Martin
set capable of creating inclusive culture while selling the practical application and value to business stakeholders.
Erskine is a consultative senior leader with nearly 20 years of experience in large (Fortune #5), mid-size, and small business environments, building and implementing enterprise-wide programs, and leading teams across multiple locations.
Throughout his career, Erskine has worked in executive levels at McKesson and Harland Clarke. He graduated from Morehouse with a degree in Psychology and later earned an MBA from Clark Atlanta University.
He possesses strong line-ofbusiness experience to compliment award-winning D&I expertise, creating a unique skill
Erskine has served on the Board of Directors for the Atlanta chapter of National Black MBA, the Clark Atlanta University School of Business Board of Advisors and the Board of Directors of Zoo Atlanta.
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• For more information on Rhom Erskine, please visit: https://bit.ly/2ojilKQ
George Bandy ’91, wins Greenbuild Leadership Award The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) named George Bandy ’91, Chief Sustainability Officer of Mohawk NA, as one of its 2018 Leadership Awards recipients. The Greenbuild Leadership Award is an annual recognition of the outstanding individuals and organizations at the forefront of the green building movement. Bandy leads Mohawk’s sustainability efforts by identifying opportunities to position environmental, economic and socially responsible solutions for both the flooring manufacturer and its customers across various brands and business units. Bandy also serves as vice president of commercial marketing, leading brand strategy, product positioning and marketing initiatives for the Mohawk Group and Durkan brands. In addition to his duties at Mohawk, George is the former Chairman of the Board at the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). George is a highly sought-after presenter on key topics such as the business of sustainability, biophilc design, social sustainability, circular economy, greening the supply chain, health and wellness in the built environment, and innovative smart design.
CDR Dewon Chaney ’98 takes command of U.S. Navy Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron Three U.S. Navy Commander Dewon Chaney, took command of Helicopter Sea Combat Three on Nov. 8, 2018, at a ceremony at San Diego’s Naval Air Station North Island. CDR Chaney, enlisted in the Navy in 1993 and was selected to attend the Broadened Opportunity for Officer Selection and Training (BOOST) program following basic training. He reported to NAS Pensacola for flight training and was designated a Naval Aviator in July 2000. CDR Chaney has served in HC-3, HC-5, HSC25, and commanded HSC-23. He has held billets working with Naval Personnel Command and the Secretary of Defense and served as a Flag Aide and the Mini Boss aboard USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. He has deployed multiple times and has served in Operation Enduring Freedom and Counter Piracy Operations in the Gulf of Aden. He has accumulated over 2000 flight hours in various aircraft to include the CH-46D and H-60S.
Marques Zak ’05 wins distinguished alumni award from Cornell Marques Zak ’05 won the Wilbur Parker Distinguished Alumni Award from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. The award recognizes African-American alumni who demonstrate outstanding professional achievement and commitment to their community and who embody Johnson’s shared values of mutual respect, collaboration, integrity and trust, pride and accountability, professionalism, and investment in self. Zak, is the finance director for Frito-Lay North America, serves as board chair for Tomorrow’s Leaders NYC, serves on the steering committee of the Alvin Ailey Young Patrons Circle, and is on the Johnson Young Alumni Board. Zak received an MBA in finance from Johnson. WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019 18
Donnie Bell ’03 named Deputy Chief Medical Officer for NYC Health + Hospitals Dr. Bell is a summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate with a bachelor’s degree in biology. He subsequently completed his medical school training at Harvard Medical School, followed by a radiology residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He completed his Neuroendovascular fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and was a visiting fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Bell is currently the Director of Neuroendovascular Interventional Radiology at NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County and is an assistant professor of Radiology at SUNY Downstate. He has been instrumental in leading the system-wide planning and preparation for the newly developed certification process for New York State Department of Health’s Stroke Center designation. As Deputy CMO for the NYC Health + Hospitals system, Dr. Bell will support the CMO office in its oversight of credentialing, medical education, development and implementation of clinical service plans, growth initiatives, and quality agendas. He will continue in his role as director of neuroendovacular IR at NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County.
Randall Jackson ’00 joins Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher Randall Jackson ’00 has joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher, LLP as a partner in the Litigation Department and the White-Collar Defense and Compliance, Investigations & Enforcement Practice Groups. Jackson focuses on government and internal investigations, white collar criminal defense, complex civil litigation and regulatory compliance. A former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jackson is recognized as one of the leading trial lawyers to come out of government service in recent years. Jackson has served as lead or co-lead attorney in over 20 federal trials, including some of the longest and most complicated over the past several years. He has also briefed and argued numerous appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals, and has been instrumental in negotiating favorable resolutions of regulatory matters involving the U.S. Department of Justice, the New York Attorney General’s Office, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and other agencies. Named a “Rising Star” by the New York Law Journal (2017) and Law360 (2017), Jackson has been cited in a variety of publications, including Forbes, as a force in the courtroom. He was awarded the U.S. Department of Justice’s Distinguished Service Award in 2011 and the John Marshall Award in 2014 for his work as a prosecutor on the Times Square Bomber and Madoff cases, respectively.
Ken Thurston ’72 elected Mayor of Lauderhill, FL Ken Thurston ’72, was elected Mayor of Lauderhill, FL. after running unopposed. Mayor Thurston served several terms as a city commissioner in Lauderhill. Thurston has enjoyed a successful career in realtor, and has invested his time in being active in the Lauderhill community. He’s served on the Broward League of Cities (City Representative), the Florida League of Cities, the Broward Black Elected Officials, the Community Gardening Committee of South Florida, the Broward County Water Advisory Board and the Broward County Tourism Development Council (TDC).
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STEADFAST, HONEST, TRUE: NEWS & VIEWS
Mark Jefferson ’91 is Harvard Law School’s Asst. Dean for Community Engagement and Equity Mark Jefferson ’91, has been appointed assistant dean for Community Engagement and Equity at Harvard Law School. Jefferson previously served HLS as director of Community Engagement and Equity and was promoted to assistant dean effective October 2018. Prior to joining HLS in 2017, he was the assistant director of admissions at the University of Michigan Law School. Jefferson will continue to work within the Dean of Students Office on issues ranging from academic advising to peer mentorship development. He creates and supports innovative programming that fosters community engagement and develops student leadership skills. He worked as a lawyer at the law firm of Thelen LLP in New York and at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. He has worked in education as director of alumni support at St. Ignatius Loyola Academy in Baltimore and as the founding dean of students and language arts teacher at the Seed Public Charter School in Washington.
S. Lee Merritt ’05 featured in Texas Monthly Magazine’s Power Issue Outspoken Dallas-based Attorney S. Lee Merritt ’05 was featured in Texas Monthly Magazine’s Power Issue for his tireless work in seeking accountability from law enforcement. The interview focuses on the rise of Merritt’s national profile as well as the importance of his work, such that Texas Monthly Magazine considers him "a modern-day Johnnie Cochran: a controversial, relentless activist intent on changing police culture and holding officers accountable for their actions."
Rupert Byrdsong ’91 named to EBONY Power 100 List Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rupert Byrdsong ’91 was named a “Disruptor” on the 2018 EBONY Magazine “Power 100” list. At the age of 48, Byrdsong was the first African American judge to have an unlimited civil trials assignment at the Chatsworth Courthouse. At the age of 49, he was the first African-American judge assigned to Complex Civil Litigation. He mentors numerous college students, law school students and lawyers of color in addition to speaking about implicit bias in the legal profession. EBONY Magazine has honored the heroes of the Black Community for over 70 years. The Ebony Power 100 celebrates this list of inspiring African Americans.
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FRANCK NJIEMBERE ’16 IS MOREHOUSE COLLEGE’S FIFTH
RHODES SCHOLAR We Are Morehouse Monthly|Page 12
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STEADFAST, HONEST, TRUE: NEWS & VIEWS
Franck Nijimbere ’18, a computer science and mathematics major has been named as Morehouse’s fifth Rhodes Scholar. Nijimbere will join the International Rhodes Scholar class at Oxford University in October 2019 representing his home country of Burundi. The prestigious honor makes Morehouse the top producer of Rhodes Scholars among Historically Black Colleges and Universities. “It’s a great honor to be part of such a circle of leaders and intellectuals,” said Nijimbere, whose Morehouse education was funded by a generous donation from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. “This opportunity wouldn’t have been possible without the people who have molded me into the person I am today: my parents, my family, my educators, my friends, and my mentors. I truly stand on the shoulders of giants.” Nijimbere is Morehouse’s second consecutive computer science and mathematics major to rise to the ranks of a Rhodes Scholar. In 2016, Prince Abudu, who also received degrees in math and computer science, was named as an International Rhodes Scholar representing his home country of Zimbabwe. Morehouse President David A. Thomas said the Rhodes Scholar recognition is an international endorsement of the academic excellence of Morehouse students and the quality of instruction offered in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at the College. It places Morehouse among the best liberal arts colleges in the country, he said.
forward to congratulating him and the men of Morehouse who will follow in his footsteps,” Thomas said. Nijimbere graduated from Morehouse College summa cum laude with a 3.86 grade point average. He was inducted into the Beta Kappa Chi and Phi Beta Kappa honor societies for his academic achievements. He also gained work experience as an engineering and technology intern at Google and Goldman Sachs. He later decided to defer graduate school for a year to work as a software engineer at Microsoft. This fall, the Rhodes Scholar will return to the classroom to pursue a doctorate in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning at Oxford University. A letter from Rhodes Trust congratulates him for his accomplishments: “You have been chosen as a Rhodes Scholar because your Committee saw in you someone who has the talent, desire, and potential to make a difference for good in the world. … It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the global community of Rhodes Scholars.” Morehouse College was the first Historically Black College (HBCU) to produce an African American Rhodes Scholar, Nima Warfield, named in 1994. The other Morehouse Rhodes Scholars were: Christopher Elders, 2002, Oluwabusayo “Tope’” Folarin, 2004, and Prince Abudu, 2016.
“I am proud of our fifth Rhodes Scholar, and I look
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STEADFAST, HONEST, TRUE: NEWS & VIEWS William ’DJ Willy Wow’ March ’98 created an innovative MLK tribute that went viral
William “DJ Willy Wow” March ’98 recently released "MLK That Way" with pioneering rapper Chuck D. "MLK That Way" is a powerful and educational way to teach youth about the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ’48. "MLK That Way" is available on iTunes, and is currently playing on YouTube and SiriusXM radio.
Wesley Thomas ’01 serving third term on Washington DC Board of Dentistry Dr. Wesley Thomas, ’01 was sworn in to a third term on the District of Columbia’s Board of Dentistry by the mayor of Washington, D.C. He will serve as the board’s Vice Chairperson.
Travis Randle ’12, elected to the Howard University Board of Trustees Travis Randle ’12, a second-year Howard University Law School student, was recently elected to the Howard University Board of Trustees as the Graduate Student representative. While a student at Morehouse, served as the Morehouse College Student Government Association president from 2010-12, winning election as a sophomore and re-election during his junior year. Among his responsibilities as SGA president at Morehouse, Randle served on the Morehouse Board of Trustees as well. Prior to law school, Randle worked as an account manager at the Clinton Global Initiative. He has summered at Broadcast Music, Incorporated (BMI) and at Citizens Bank. Randle earned a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago Harris School for Public Policy Studies.
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Dr. Thomas is also a Commissioner on the Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations. He is a Dental Board Licensing Examiner for the Commission on Dental Competency Assessments (CDCA) and the Council of Interstate Testing Agencies, Inc. (CITA). He is also a Fellow in the International College of Dentists. Dr. Thomas worked briefly in private practice before accepting his current position as a General Dentist for the U.S. Department of Defense at The Pentagon. He is also a military officer in the District of Columbia Army National Guard. Dr. Thomas is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Morehouse College and received his D.M.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine.
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W. Kelvin Walker ’84 elected first African American CEO of the Dallas Citizens Council The Dallas Citizens Council, a powerful group of 150 business leaders, has picked W. Kelvin Walker ’84, the managing director of a Dallas private equity firm as its new Chief Executive Officer. Walker has been active in Dallas’ business and civic circles, serving on the boards of Methodist Health System and YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas. In 2015, he launched the Dallas office of RLJ Equity Partners, the private equity arm of Robert L. Johnson’s business empire. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television, sold it for $3 billion and formed his own company bearing his initials. Before joining RLJ, Walker worked for 16 years at a private equity firm -- 21st Century Group -- co-founded by former Dallas City Manager John Ware.
Justin Henderson ’02 named brand ambassador Mega producer, tech enthusiast and Grammy Award-winning music producer Justin Henderson was recently named the official brand ambassador for LumaTouch, and he represented the brand at the recent NAB Show in Las Vegas. The NAB Show is the world’s largest convention for broadcast professionals in media, entertainment and technology. LumaTouch creates powerful professional mobile video editing apps. LumaTouch will soon release LumaFusion, a powerful multi-track video editor for iOS used by mobile journalists, filmmakers and professional video producers to tell compelling video stories. Most recently, Henderson and fellow Grammy winner Kennard Garrett ’01, produced the ’PREACH’ remix for John Legend. 25 WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019
Walker earned his M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
John E. Armstrong, Jr. ’96 named new CEO of 100 Black Men of America 100 Black Men of America, Inc., announced the appointment of John E. Armstrong, Jr. ’96 as Chief Executive Officer. The appointment is an exciting start to the year in which the organization is positioned to deliver greater mentoring and empowerment opportunities to youth and more community outreach through both longstanding and new partnerships. Armstrong is a seasoned leader with a proven record of success in multiple nonprofit organizations, including fund development and global program delivery. In his most recent role as Executive Director at the American Diabetes Association, Armstrong oversaw fundraising, operations, program development, board governance and strategic direction for the states of Alabama and Georgia. He spent 17 years with the YMCA, working at local associations and the national headquarters. During his tenure with the YMCA John established collaborative partnerships with housing authorities, hospitals, colleges and universities. Armstrong raised over $30M to support capital projects, programs and annual support for YMCA’s in the United States, Mexico, South Africa, China and Brazil.
Darryl Person ’85 named Pastor of Chicago’s Ebenezer Baptist Church Chicago’s historic Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church is pleased to announce the election of the Rev. Darryl N. Person ’85 as its ninth pastor. The 116-year-old church is located at 4501 S. Vincennes Ave., in Chicago’s Bronzeville community. Person, whose family has maintained membership at Ebenezer for five generations, preached his inaugural sermon on Sunday, March 3. Prior to assuming the pastorate at Ebenezer, Person, 55, served as the Assistant Pastor at Metropolitan Community Church, where he focused on the needs of youth and young adults.
Jason Dirden ’02 lights up ’American Soul’ Tuesdays on BET Jason Dirden is on fire. With a preternatural cool, he lights up nearly every scene he’s in in BET’s smash hit “American Soul.” An accomplished actor of stage and screen, Dirden has garnered attention for his starring role as Gerald Aims. Dirden’s performance in the series has garnered serious attention and rave reviews, which by now should be no surprise. The Houston native has turned heads as a fan favorite in his role as Basie Skanks on OWN’s “Greenleaf,” and is enjoying similar success with ’American Soul’. Tune in and set your DVR for Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EST to watch Jason on BET’s “American Soul,” which tells the story of Don Cornelius making Soul Train a household name and a roaring success.
Person is also a decorated member of the U.S. Navy for 20 years, where he served as a Navy Chaplain rising to the rank Lieutenant Commander before retiring in 2009. During his tour of duty, he managed the delivery of pastoral care for some 2,300 military personnel aboard three Navy warships. His commendations include the Navy & Marine Corps Commendation Medal, Kuwait Liberation Medal, National Defense Medal, NATO Service Medal and the Combat Action Ribbon Person holds master’s degrees from Emory University Candler School Theology, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, Governors State University, and Roosevelt University. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and the International Council of Community Churches. WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019 26
Shaun King ’01 wins Social Media award from BET
Maurice Cooper ’01 promoted to new C Suite post at Wingstop
Shaun King ’01recently won a Social Movement Award at the 2019 BET Social Awards Journalist, author and social justice activist Shaun King ’02 recently won the Social Movement Award at the 2019 BET Social Awards.
Wingstop Inc. announced that Maurice Cooper ’01 has been appointed to the newly created role of Executive Vice President, Chief Growth & Experience Officer, effective immediately.
The Social Movement Award " salutes the activists who stay woke and continue to fight injustice." King’s unrelenting and dogged pursuit of justice and bringing people to justice has brought him international acclaim and praise. His Instagram (999,100 followers) and Twitter (1,100,000 followers) posts are a revelatory look into social justice on a daily basis. Follow Shaun King on Instagram and Twitter at @shaunking.
"I’d like to create a map of placesthat still use plastic straws."
CLARK JONES ’05, stand up comedian, writer and actor.
Cooper will maintain the responsibilities he held previously as Chief Marketing Officer, while also overseeing the end-to-end guest experience. Additionally, he will lead the Company’s revenue-driving initiatives, which include the national scale of delivery, and digital innovation. Cooper will continue to report to Charlie Morrison, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer.
Marcus Glover’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa named Property of the Year
’Marcus Glover ’97, President and Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa was named the 2018 Property of the Year at the 2018 Global Gaming Awards in Las Vegas. Glover has been in charge of Borgata for a little over year, having been selected to run the property in summer 2017. He has designed and developed several properties from the ground up in new jurisdictions and has held leadership roles in project management, government relations and labor relations.
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“Since June 2018, Maurice has served as Wingstop’s Chief Marketing Officer, leading our growth strategy transformation by introducing a national advertising platform to expand brand awareness and accelerate transactions. He has done an exceptional job of sharpening our definition of the Wingstop brand and helping us to expand to new audiences,” says Charlie Morrison. “This expanded role will leverage his broad expertise in marketing, guest experience design, and innovation, further positioning Wingstop for future growth on our path to becoming a top 10 global restaurant brand.”
"My dream is to run for the United States Congress."
BAKARI SELLERS ’05, attorney and CNN Political Analyst at the March on Washington Film Festival at New York University when asked about his future plans. April 4th, 2019.
over 60 companies. Judge, who has a Ph.D., is currently Co-Founder & Partner of TechSquare Labs and Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Pindrop. Pindrop’s technology protect some of the largest enterprises in the world and has total funding of over $100 million from top venture firms. TechSquare Labs is a company building studio and venture fund based in Atlanta. Colbert and Judge are graduates of the Atlanta University Center’s Dual Degree Engineering Program.
Jason Blake ’00 promoted to Senior VP, Customer Mgmt and Channel Strategy at PepsiCo Jason Blake ’00, experienced executive was promoted Senior Vice President of Customer Management and Channel Strategy at PepsiCo. In this role, Blake is responsible for management of PepsiCo’s largest customer relationships, including Target and Costco, channel strategy for national grocery business and capturing new growth in e-commerce and warehouse. Blake was previously the Region Vice President - Frito Lay North America, where he was general manager and sales leader of Southeast Region of Frito Lay, responsible for $2.2 billion in revenue and 4,500 team members across 9 states. He’s worked for PepsiCo since 2007. Blake earned his M.B.A. from the Columbia Business School and is a member of the 2018 class of Leadership Atlanta.
Ted Colbert ’96 and Paul Judge ’99 honored at ITSMF Awards The ITSMF Technology Achievement Awards pay tribute to industry leaders who have made extraordinary (broadly recognized in the technology industry) contributions to the advancement of technology while simultaneously demonstrating proactive leadership in advancing diversity. Theodore “Ted” Colbert, III ’96 was presented with the Digital Innovator Award, and Paul Judge, Ph.D. ’99 was presented with the Beacon Award. Ted Colbert, III ’96, is the chief information officer (CIO) and senior vice president of Information Technology & Data Analytics at The Boeing Company. In this role, he oversees all aspects of information technology, information security, data and analytics for the world’s largest aerospace company. He also supports the growth of Boeing’s business through IT- and analytics-related revenue generating programs. Paul Judge’99 is a technology entrepreneur and investor. He has cofounded three companies that were acquired and has invested in
Robert Lewis ’01 opens Lobbying firm in DC Robert Lewis Jr.’01 has left the American Council of Life Insurers, where he was a vice president, to start his own firm, the Van Aucker Group. Lewis is also a former lobbyist for the Financial Services Institute and plans to lobby for clients on financial services issues, sometimes in partnership with the Eris Group. The firm is named after the Rochester, N.Y., housing complex in which Lewis grew up. "When deciding on a name for the firm, I was looking for something that would speak to the determination and hard work this new venture would take to be successful," he mentioned. "The Van Aucker Group was the perfect name. Very few of us made it out of that neighborhood, let alone made it to Washington DC to start their own firm."
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Purdue names John Fitzgerald Gates ’93 Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion "John Gates, an administrator in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, has been named as Purdue University’s vice provost for diversity and inclusion. "Gates also will serve as clinical professor in the Krannert School of Management. His appointment will be effective April 1, said Jay Akridge, Purdue provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity. “Dr. Gates brings an impressive record of leadership excellence to his new position,” Akridge said. “He will lead a strong team at Purdue that is focused on enhancing the experience and success of all Boilermakers, and on supporting a climate of respect and inclusion across our campus.” "Gates had served as the inaugural associate dean responsible for diversity, inclusion and engagement strategy in the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. He provided leadership in the recruitment and retention of faculty and graduate students from underrepresented minorities and guidance for diversity in curriculum development and programming. “I’m humbled and honored to be joining Purdue University with its longstanding commitment to excellence,” Gates said. “I believe that diversity is excellence expressing itself through the intersections of perspectives and lived experiences. I look forward to working with the faculty, staff and students in this shared endeavor.” "Prior to his appointment at UVA, Gates launched and led his own consulting firm, Criticality Management Consulting, where he advised corporate clients on a range of workforce issues. He also was associate dean for administration and finance at Harvard College, Harvard University, where he was responsible for budget, human resource management, strategic planning, communications and diversity. "In addition, Gates was the special assistant to the president and provost at the University of Vermont, where he focused on strategic initiatives, change management and diversity. He held a series of positions with increasing responsibility at New York University, culminating with his role as executive director of global operations. "A native of Gary, Indiana, Gates received a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College, a master’s degree from New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of London." - www.purdue.edu
Steve Fance ’07 is looking to help black farmers through the burgeoning business of Hemp farming Rollingout.com writer Maurice ’Mo’ Barnes ’89 recently interviewed Steve Fance ’07, CEO and CTO of Cultiv8 Hemp Solutions, about how the "burgeoning business of hemp cultivation may be able to save the Black farmer." Cultiv8 is encouraging minority-owned farmers to grow hemp for the company to convert into products such as biodegradable food packaging and hempcrete. Cultiv8 specializes in the growth and harvest of industrial hemp for use in biodegradable food packaging, cbd oil, biofuel, and hempcrete. Learn more about Steve Fance ’07 by clicking here and his company, Cultiv8 Hemp Solutions by visiting: https://www.cultiv8fps.com/.
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Married to Medicine LA stars physician Robert Drummond ’02 Please tune in to BravoTV on Sunday nights at 9 p.m./8 p.m. Central Time and set your DVRs to "Married to Medicine LA," starring Dr. Robert Drummond ’02 and his wife Shanique, who is a real estate property manager in Los Angeles.
New York MTA’s 145th St. Station displays the artwork of Derek Fordjour ’01
Dr. Drummond is a Phi Beta Kappa Biology grad who earned his M.D./ Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Medical Scientist Training Program. Dr. Drummond completed internship and residency in Internal Medicine at LAC+USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, and finalized his training with a postdoctoral Research Fellowship at UCLA.
"Encounter a dazzling array of pageantry and spectacle at the newly improved and re-opened 145th Street station (3) in Derek Fordjour’s “PARADE”! Line majors, dancers and drummers joyfully parade along the platforms, accompanied by crowds of people and flags. "The Harlem-based artist’s richly textured paintings of the legacy of parades through #Harlem were meticulously translated into glass and ceramic mosaic by fabricator Miotto Mosaic Art Studios Inc., providing commuters a chance to encounter a celebration of community, history, and identity in the colorful art that complements the station’s improvements and reinforces the historic fabric of the station." – MTA
Grady Brewer ’80 named SIAC Coach of Year two years in a row The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference named Morehouse College head basketball coach Grady Brewer ’80, its Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year after an impressive 20-4 record, and a second straight regular SIAC East Division title as well as the best record in the conference.
He is currently the lead clinician and director of laboratories at the Montebello Urgent Care Center with Healthcare Partners. He also serves as a physician in the California Army National Guard.
Brewer just completed his 19th season as Morehouse head coach, and he has compiled a record of 299-226. He has led Morehouse to seven 20-win seasons, seven SIAC regular season championships, a SIAC tournament championship and two NCAA tournament appearances.
"I’m not over this. The Night posse really did the entourage walk through the whole battle."
VANN NEWKIRK ’10, journalist/writer, The Atlantic, co-founder sevenscribes.com, discussing Season 8 Episode 3 of HBO’s Game of Thrones WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019 30
For Dr. Roderick Edmond, Atlanta is the epitome of Black excellence by DEJANEE CALLAHAN Rollingout.com Dr. Roderick Edmond is the distinguished founding and managing partner of Edmond Lindsay & Atkins LLP, an Atlanta law firm specializing in wrongful death and catastrophic personal injury cases. He has a bachelor’s degree in biology from Morehouse College, a medical degree from Duke University, and a Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University. Throughout his career, Edmond has successfully litigated multiple multimillion-dollar cases and won one of the largest settlements in one South Carolina county’s history. Rolling Out: What made you go from practicing medicine to practicing law? Edmond: Like many things in life, law essentially chose me. I practiced family medicine for about 12 years. I got a law degree simply to distinguish myself and to be in executive medicine. … I got a call from a friend of mine, Charles Mathis, who was a great trial lawyer and needed some help. After 18 months [of working with him], I got a call from Johnnie Cochran. I worked with Johnnie as a lawyer in his firm here in Atlanta for about 18 months. Rolling Out: When did you realize that you had a love for the city of Atlanta? Edmond: Atlanta is my home. I am a native Atlantan. All roads, wherever I went, were eventually going to lead back to Atlanta. … I’ve traveled to numerous cities throughout the nation, and Atlanta has something special. What is most special about Atlanta is that you have African Americans doing things at the highest levels in every field of human endeavor — and it is the norm, it is not the exception. Rolling Out: How does Atlanta support Black entrepreneurs? Edmond: I think it probably started back with [Alonzo] Herndon. He was a Black entrepreneur back in the 1920s and ’30s. He had barber shops, and he turned those barber shops into insurance companies. [Then, former Atlanta mayor] Maynard Jackson basically sent the message out [to] all people, Black and White, that this is a city that is about diversity and inclusion. … Atlanta chose a path of diversity, insisting that minorities get participation in all city contracts and businesses. That’s what makes Atlanta special. We built a bigger pie by including more people. Rolling Out: Culturally, what are some of the things you feel are a part of the fabric of Atlanta? Edmond: The first is the Atlanta University Center [and its] historically Black colleges. … That, [in] my opinion, [is] the deepest, richest and most powerful resource for Black folks here in Atlanta. Graduates from the Atlanta University Center have gone on to do tremendous things at the highest level globally. After that comes the church. Ebenezer Baptist Church is my home church, [and the] Rev. [Dr. Raphael] Warnock is my pastor. [Ebenezer] is the home church of Daddy King and Martin Luther King Jr. That trails into the third thing —the base of the civil rights movement. The leadership of the civil rights movement came through Atlanta from Atlanta. To learn more about Edmond, visit his website by visiting: https://www.med-malpracticeattorney.com/ attorneys.
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"Progressives, liberals have to come to grips with what is an acceptable level of their own political fragility."
GEOFF BENNETT ’02, journalist and White House Correspondent for NBC/MSNBC News, while debating over Joe Biden on NBC’s ’Meet the Press’ on Sunday, April 7, 2019.
Devon Jerome Crawford ’15 named Director of William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School Devon Jerome Crawford ’15, who recently earned a master’s degree in Religious Ethics from the University of Chicago’s School of Religion, was named as the director of the William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. The William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice is an innovative, new initiative of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) to promote excellence in the practice of social justice by supporting applied research and the use of evidence in advocacy and activism. A Birmingham native, Crawford is a Christian minister with a demonstrated history of working in the non-profit organization and non-governmental organization industry. He is skilled in grassroots organizing, religious leadership, legislative relations, fundraising, multi-religious coalition building, and nonviolent direct action. Prior to his appointment at HKS, Crawford was the site coordinator of the CDF Freedom School sponsored by Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
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Michael Summers ’09 named Global Head of Startup Accelerators, Sr. Manager at Johnson & Johnson Michael Summers ’09 was recently named the global head of Startup Accelerators and senior manager at Johnson & Johnson. Summers has worked at Johnson & Johnson for nearly six years in a variety of roles including head of the diversity marketing team, digital strategist and brand manager for LISTERINE®, digital associate brand manager HEALTHY ESSENTIALS® and Soccer United Marketing, and associate brand manager JOHNSON’S® Hair Care, Oil, Powder and Kids. A native of Jackson, Miss., Summers earned his M.B.A. from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University where he was an active member of the Management Leadership for Tomorrow program. While an undergrad, Summers founded the Morehouse Marketing Conclave. Truly a renaissance man, Summers is a DJ (formerly with Lil’ Wayne), a podcaster "Someone Will Be Offended" and "Marketing Misfits" as well as a Techpreneuer, “Trainervault, “which is a digital platform for the content of fitness influencers.
Michael Scott, Jr. ’99 wins Aldermanic re-election in Chicago’s 24th Ward Endorsed by the Chicago SunTimes and with 59.9 percent of the vote, Michael Scott, Jr. ’99 handily won re-election as Alderman for the City of Chicago’s 24th Ward.
Edwin Moses ’78 ranks #4 in UndefeatedESPN’s top HBCU athletes of all time ESPN’s Undefeated recently ranked the top 25 athletes from historically black colleges and universities and included Olympic champion hurdler Edwin Moses ’78 among those listed. Moses was ranked 4th all-time among an amazing list of exceptional individuals whose formal education and nurturing was birthed at a historically black college or university. At Morehouse, Moses was a physics major, and in 1976 earned a spot on the Olympic track team. While in the ’76 Games in Montreal, he set a world record of 47.64 in winning the 400M hurdles. For more than a decade, he didn’t lose a race in the 400M hurdles. In the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, Moses won a gold medal and went on to win 107 consecutive races before being upset in Madrid in 1987. In total, Moses had a total of 117 victories in 119 starts: a staggering feat and mixture of skill, talent, focus, dedication, preparation and hard work.
Frank Jones ’85 elected president of the Atlanta Medical Association Surgeon and wound case physician Frank Jones, M.D., MPH, F.A.C.S. has been elected president of the Atlanta Medical Association. He will serve in this role for a term of two years. The Atlanta Medical Association was founded in 1890 and is one of the largest medical societies for African American physicians and healthcare professionals in the United States.
According to the Chicago SunTimes Editorial Board: "For a freshman alderman, Michael Scott Jr. has accomplished quite a bit. He has brought more than 350 units of additional affordable housing to his ward, including housing for low-income elderly people. By pushing through zoning changes, he made possible the sale of the last piece of the ward’s old Sears & Roebuck property, setting the stage for redevelopment. He played a part in securing $2 million in renovations for the Douglass Park Library. He built a boxing ring in Franklin Park. All in all, Scott has been one of Chicago’s more engaged aldermen. He has earned your vote." Learn more about Alderman Scott at www.aldermanscott.com.
Dr. Jones is an Adjunct Professor of Surgery at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and a wound care physician at Piedmont Fayette Wound Care Center. Dr. Jones earned his M.D. at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and his MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed his surgical residency at Howard University Hospital, and his trauma/critical care fellowship at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He is a former professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine and has won several awards including: Outstanding Teacher Award in Clinical Sciences and the Morehouse School of Medicine Teacher of the Year Award.
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NEW BEGINNINGS:
FOUNDERS DAY WEEKEND 2019 FEATURED THE INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT DR. DAVID A. THOMAS On the 152nd anniversary of the founding of Morehouse College, Dr. David A. Thomas, the college’s 12th President was inaugurated in grand and celebratory style in front of a capacity crowd in the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel. He stood proudly before his family, friends, alumni, faculty, staff, students, college supporters and other well-wishers, and delivered a rousing speech entitled, "The Global Power of an Idea for 152 Years". In honor of the inauguration, Presidential Symposiums were held at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center on Friday, Feb. 15. The first symposium’s theme was "The Morehouse Idea: Opportunities, Complexities, and Challenges for the Global Black Community in the 21st Century". The symposium was moderated by attorney and CNN Political Commentator Bakari Sellers ’05, and included Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, Dean and President of the Morehouse School of Medicine, John Hope Bryant, Chairman and CEO of Bryant Group Ventures, Inc. and Operation HOPE, Inc., Dr. Tony Coles, Chairman and CEO of Yumanity Therapeutics, and Dr. Tsedal Neeley, professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. The second symposium "Fireside Chat featuring Morehouse President David A. Thomas and Dr. Henry Louis Gates," was held the following day. It featured a preview of a new documentary by Dr. Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., University Professor at Harvard University. The Founder’s Day and Inaugural concert featured soulful R&B recording artist Keeyen Martin’13 and jazz violinist Ken Ford "King of Strings". Reflections of Excellence was held on Saturday, Feb. 16 at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center’s Emma and Joe Adams Concert Hall.
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President Thomas smiles brightly as he sits in the official presidential regalia during the inauguration ceremony
President Thomas delivers his inaugural address "The Global Power of an Idea for 152 Years"
Dr. Tony Coles makes a point during one of the Presidential Symposiums
Reflections of Excellence was moderated by NBC Nightly News broadcast journalist Geoff Bennett ’02. The event featured Bennie and Candle in the Dark honorees: Bennie Achievement Award honoree Steve Pamon ’91, Chief Operating Officer of Parkwood Entertainment, Bennie Trailblazer Award honoree F. DuBois Bowman ’91, 12th Dean, University of Michigan School of Public Health, and tenured professor of biostatistics, Candle in Business Award recipient Ray Robinson, Retired President of AT&T Southern Region and Board Chair of
Dr. Henry Louis Gates and President Thomas during a Presidential Symposium
Keeyen Martin ’13 lights up the crowd during the Founders Day Concert
Citizens Trust Bank, Candle in Science and Innovation Award recipient Dr. Tony Coles, Chairman and CEO of Yumanity Therapeutics, Candle in Law and Business Award recipient Jeff Harleston, General Counsel and EVP of Business and Legal Affairs for North America, Universal Music Group and Candle in Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports and Entertainment Norm Nixon, two-time NBA World Champion and two-time NBA All-Star, accomplished businessman and humanitarian. Bakari T. Sellers ’05 moderated one of the Symposiums and provided keen insight
The 31st annual A Candle in the Dark Gala and Inaugural Ball was held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta’s Centennial Ballroom on Saturday, Feb. 16. The Gala and Inaugural Ball’s Founder’s Day sponsors were Delta Airlines and Microsoft and the Platinum Sponsors were the Chick-fil-A Foundation, WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019 36
The Reflections of Excellence Brunch featured President Thomas and honorees
Joy White, Vice President of Legal Affairs, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer & College Secretary and Camilya Robertson Associate Vice President of Strategy and Planning & Director of Title III Programs Former Board Chairman Robert C. Davidson ’67 and Julian Davidson ’07 at the Davdison House for the Reflections of Excellence Brunch
JPMorgan Chase & Co and The Coca Cola Company. Georgia-Pacific was a Gold Sponsor, and Silver Sponsors included Aaron’s Inc., Diversified Search, ICV Partners, JME Enterprises, PRM Consulting Group and UPS. Bronze Sponsors included Acuity Brands, Inc., American Airlines, AT&T, Georgia Power and Standard Operating Systems. During the Gala and Inaugural Ball, Fred Humphries ’83, VP of Corporate Philanthropy at Microsoft Corporation increased his company’s donation by a third for a grand total of $150,000 and Bennie Achievement award recipient Steve Pamon ’91 announced a gift of $91,000. The Gala and
Karmen Gary, John-Patrick Gary ’04, Arlene Gary, Wililam Gary ’67 and Patricia Gary at the VIP Reception prior to the Gala. The Garys celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at the Gala.
Inaugural Ball was hosted by actor Michele Weaver. The Afterglow was DJed by the acclaimed Brian ’DJ B-Hen’ Henry ’06. On Sunday, Feb. 17, the Inaugural Worship Service was held in the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel where the Rev. Dr. D. Darrell Griffin ’87, senior pastor of Oakdale Covenant Church in Chicago delivered the sermon. Bennie and Candle honorees assembled after Reflections of Excellence with President Thomas and moderator Geoff Bennett ’02
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The weekend ended with a beautiful performance during the annual Founders Weekend Morehouse College Glee Club concert, held at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center’s Emma and Joe Adams Concert Hall.
President Thomas and First Lady Willetta Lewis’s first dance during the Candle in the Dark Gala and Inaugural Ball
Henry M. Goodgame ’84, Vice President of External Relations and Alumni Engagement and his wife Pat
President Thomas poses with Idris Falls ’36 and Gala Patron Ronald C. Falls ’00
Rev. Dr. D. Darrell Griffith ’87 delivers the Founders Day sermon
The Morehouse College Glee Club under the direction of Dr. David A. Morrow ’80
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Four Executives Appointed to Morehouse College Board of Trustees ATLANTA— The Morehouse College Board of Trustees has four new members who will work with the College to support its growth and its mission to develop men who are committed to leadership, service, and academic excellence. The new board members are: Allen Chan, executive director of The Robertson Scholars Leadership Program; James L. “Jim” Dinkins, senior vice president of The Coca-Cola Company and President, Coca-Cola North America; Alan H. Fleischmann, chief executive officer, founder, and president of the global firm Laurel Strategies Inc.; and Verdun S. Perry, senior managing director of The Blackstone Group and the global head of Strategic Partners Fund Solutions. Dinkins joined the board in January 2019. Chan, Fleishmann, and Perry will join the board in April. James L. “Jim” Dinkins, an Atlanta native, is Senior Vice President of The Coca-Cola Company and President of Coca-Cola North America (CCNA). Dinkins joined The Coca-Cola Company in 1988. He gained diverse experience working in a variety of areas, including senior sales, marketing, operations, strategic planning, sports marketing, franchise leadership, and general management. He previously served as President of the Minute Maid Business Unit and Chief Retail Sales Officer for CCNA. Dinkins serves on the board for the Retail Industry Leaders Association. His past board involvement includes the University of Georgia National Alumni Association, the Urban Atlanta Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Peak Performance Sports & Development Foundation, and the Coca-Cola Bottler’s Sales & Service Company. Dinkins earned an M.B.A. from Emory University and a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Georgia. Allen Chan has more than 20 years of leadership experience as an advisor to entrepreneurial, educational, corporate, and consulting firms. He joined the staff of The Robertson Scholars Leadership Program in January 2010, and was later named as its Executive Director. Chan previously worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, where he conducted studies for large corporations in strategy, operations, and business process redesign. He co-founded Resource Mosaic, an Atlanta consulting, talent identification, and staffing firm in 2006, and also worked for the Notre Dame-based Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program, where he served as Executive Director. Chan is a member of the board of directors for several organizations, including the National Advisory Board of the Salvation Army, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation, Families First, and Imagine It! Children’s Museum of Atlanta, among other nonprofits. He earned an M.B.A. from Stanford University and has a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Texas A&M. Alan H. Fleischmann’s firm, Laurel Strategies, designs comprehensive global communications strategies across all levels of implementation, bringing together the disciplines of financial and corporate communications, governmental affairs, crisis management, and investor relations. Fleischmann has an extensive background in strategic communications. He is a former Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for PSB Associates and was a member of the Obama Presidential Transition Team in 2008. He was also appointed by the Obama Administration to serve on the Board of Advisors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the International Trade Advisory Commission, and the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. Fleischmann is a member of the Global Philanthropists Circle, founded by David Rockefeller and his daughter, Peggy Dulany. He is an advisory director of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Hall, a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a board member of the Atlantic Council, the Eisenhower Fellowships, and the Robert F. Kennedy Leadership Council. He has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins and two bachelor’s degrees from American University. Verdun S. Perry ’94 is a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone and the Global Head of Strategic Partners Fund Solutions, Blackstone’s dedicated secondary fund manager, with over $25 billion of assets under management. Strategic Partners has been one of the market’s most prolific investors, having completed over 1,100 transactions focused on the purchase of private equity limited partnership interests and co-investments in leveraged buyout, real estate, venture capital, and infrastructure assets. Perry joined Strategic Partners when it was founded in 2000 and sits on the investment committee for each of Strategic Partners’ funds. Prior to joining Strategic Partners, Perry worked in the strategic investments group at Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon, and Eckhardt Inc. and in the Investment Banking Division at Morgan Stanley & Co. He serves on the boards of The Blackstone Charitable Foundation, Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, and the Apollo Theatre. Perry is also a member of the Advisory Board for the National Black MBA Association, and he serves on the Leadership Council for the East Harlem Tutorial Program. Perry earned a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was a Robert Toigo Foundation Fellow. 39 WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019
President Emeritus received NSF Vannevar Bush Award "Today, the National Science Board (NSB) announced that Walter E. Massey ’58 will receive its prestigious Vannevar Bush Award. The award honors science and technology leaders who have made substantial contributions to the welfare of the nation through public service in science, technology, and public policy. "Massey, chairman of Giant Magellan Telescope Organization and president emeritus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and of Morehouse College, is being recognized for his truly exceptional lifelong leadership in science and technology. The range of institutions he has led with distinction is astonishing -- from physics, to public policy, to public and private boards, to college president. "Walter Massey’s breadth of contributions and remarkable leadership in science, technology, and education are unparalleled,” said Kent Fuchs, chair of the NSB’s Committee on Honorary Awards. “Walter has dedicated his life to serving our citizens. Through his training in mathematics and physics, and his determined and extraordinary leadership, he has narrowed the gap between science and society with an immeasurable and lasting impact on our nation.” "Two overarching principles have inspired Massey’s notable career -- that science and technology are necessary to sustain the nation’s quality of life and the standard of living of its citizens; and that the general public’s understanding of science and technology is a critical component of a democratic society. Guided by these principles for more than half a century, Massey has worked to strengthen applied research capacity and science education in the United States and to increase the representation of minorities and women in science and technology. "Massey’s wealth of experience includes executive leadership roles at Brown University, the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California, Morehouse College, the National Science Foundation as director, and a host of influential boards and commissions. Perhaps most importantly, he has served as an exemplar to young people, illustrating what can be accomplished through intense dedication and hard work. "In addition to Massey’s significant role in science and technology, he has worked to improve student access to the arts and to highlight the important role they play in fostering student creativity and achievement. He is particularly interested in the intersections between the arts and sciences and how exposure to both prepares students for future success and contributes to a more creative and dynamic society. "Further illustrating his dedication to both the arts and sciences, Massey is the only individual to serve as both President and Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and as Chair of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD). He is also the only individual to have received both the Enrico Fermi Award for Science and Technology from the Chicago Historical Society and the Public Humanities Award from Illinois Humanities. “Knowing so many of the previous Vannevar Bush awardees, and all that they have accomplished, I feel so honored to be included in their company, said Massey.” “Having served on the NSB and as NSF director I fully recognize the significance of this award and I will accept with a great deal of pride and humility.” "The Board will present Massey with the Vannevar Bush Award on May 14 at the National Science Foundation Annual Awards Ceremony held in Washington, D.C. "The Board established the award in 1980 in memory of Vannevar Bush, who served as a science advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, helped to establish federal funding for science and engineering as a national priority during peacetime, and was behind the creation of the National Science Foundation. Past award recipients include: Norman Augustine (Lockheed Martin), James Duderstadt (University of Michigan), Leon Lederman (Fermilab), Shirley Ann Jackson (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), David Packard (Hewlett-Packard Company), Robert Birgeneau (University of California, Berkeley), Rita Rossi Colwell (University of Maryland College Park), and last year, Jane Lubchenco (University of Oregon)." - The National Science Foundation WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019 40
Medicine and the Makers
Roderic Pettigrew ’72 is training a new hybrid specialty—half physician, half engineer.
Growing up in the Deep South, Roderic Pettigrew remembers making his first bow from the limb of a chinaberry tree and a strip of rubber from a bike inner tube. His career in medicine has been marked with a similar curiosity about how things work, leading to a master’s in engineering and a Ph.D. in applied radiation physics in addition to his M.D. Pettigrew is a member of both the National Academies of Medicine and Engineering, in part because of his research and inventions in magnetic resonance imaging. He also served as the founding director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. But his latest project is to bring his own cross-disciplinary experience to a new generation. As executive dean of the new Engineering Medicine (EnMed) joint program at Texas A&M Colleges of Engineering and Medicine and Houston Methodist Hospital, Pettigrew will help students earn degrees in engineering and medicine within a blended four-year graduate program. A mind immersed in both the physical and life sciences, says Pettigrew, can provide expertise the twenty-first century desperately needs—the realm of the “physicianeer.” Q: How is EnMed different from a traditional medical school? A: Our students will earn two degrees in four years. But EnMed is much more than that. We are training people to be intellectually and conceptually fluent in multiple languages across the whole landscape of science. The idea is that our graduates will have an integrated engineering and medicine mindset, with the tools to find and solve big problems.
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Q: What kind of problems? A: Here’s a good example. We don’t have a vaccine for HIV, a virus that’s been around since the 1980s. But what if you bring teams together from very different fields and ask them to come up with an integrated approach to mobilizing and controlling the immune system? Recently the NIH had a workshop focusing on this question for the first time and brought together the bioengineering and vaccinology communities. Or what if you wanted to send flu vaccines in the mail that people could apply themselves? There are teams working on projects like that. A materials science engineer, a biologist and a vaccinologist produced a vaccine embedded in microneedles so tiny that they don’t cause pain. It is about the size of a dime and you place it on the skin. Microneedles penetrate the dermis and deliver a form of this vaccine that doesn’t require refrigeration. Now imagine if we trained students to do that kind of integrated-discipline thinking from the start. They would be uniquely suited to build the next generation of discoveries. That is the goal of EnMed. Q: Are there any unusual requirements in EnMed? A: We want these students to solve problems and to be invention-minded. To anchor that in a practical way, we ask all our students to invent something transformational during their time here. It’s not a hollow requirement, something that you toss out there to students and say, “Have at it!” The curriculum will be designed to train them in this unusual skillset and guide them through the inventing process. Q: Are there things you wish you had learned at the outset of your career? A: I wish I had gotten an earlier understanding of even more scientific fields. The concepts of different disciplines really help you sort though problems, because the cross-talk is synergistic. As a simple example, the body is often described biologically and physiologically on the scale of an organ. But it is full of tiny mechanical, fluid mechanical and electromechanical systems—levers, circuits, electrochemical, physical and shear stress gradients. These systems even occur at the molecular and cellular levels and are integral to genetic expression, which guides how we develop and function. These basic biological systems are actually easier to understand if you have the context of engineering. So that’s really what we’re trying to do—create a person with a new type of mindset to work at those intersections. Roderic I. Pettigrew, PhD, MD, serves as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Engineering Health (EnHealth) and executive dean for the Engineering Medicine (EnMed) program at Texas A&M University, in partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital. Dr. Pettigrew also holds the endowed Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry. EnHealth is the nation’s first comprehensive educational program to fully integrate engineering into all health-related disciplines. EnMed is the nation’s first four-year, fully-integrated engineering and medical education curriculum leading to both a MD and master’s degree in engineering. An internationally recognized leader in biomedical imaging and bioengineering, Dr. Pettigrew served as the first director for the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at National Institutes of Health (NIH). Prior to his appointment at the NIH, he joined Emory University School of Medicine as a professor of radiology and Georgia Institute of Technology as a professor of bioengineering. Dr. Pettigrew is well-known for pioneering four-dimensional imaging of the cardiovascular system using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In addition to his numerous achievements, he is an elected member to both the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering. After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Morehouse College as a Merrill Scholar, Dr. Pettigrew attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he earned his Master of Science degree in nuclear science and engineering. Dr. Pettigrew received his PhD in radiation physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and attained his medical doctorate from Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami.
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Bolton’s sweet treats keep customers happy
By Jeffrey Cullen-Dean The Newnan Times-Herald
It all started with sweet potato pie. “My grandmother, who’s getting up there in age, she’s the only one who knew my great-great-grandmother’s recipe,” said Jeremy Bolton ’98, owner of Bolton’s Bakery. “So she taught me one Thanksgiving, and from then on I made sweet potato pie. I would make them, and I’d give them to people. I never thought anything of it.” Traci Bolton, Jeremy’s wife, gave one of the sweet potato pies to a coworker. One day, the coworker asked Traci if Jeremy would bake her wedding cake. “He did his pies, and one of my coworkers was getting married,” Traci said. “I don’t know why she figured he could make a cake. But I told her, ’I’ll ask him when I get home.’” “And me being crazy, I didn’t say, ’No, don’t do it.’ I looked up a recipe and baked it,” Jeremy said. “From that cake, people started calling for more – all because they tasted that cake.” The Boltons said they didn’t expect that response. “It was a very basic cake. It was surprising to me that I got the response that we got because it was just a vanilla cake,” Jeremy said. “From there, I started looking up more recipes and learning things aside from sweet potato pie. We’ve taught ourselves how to bake everything else.”
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Jeremy said he never thought he’d be a baker. He has a finance degree and previously worked in sales. Traci had a 20-year career nursing in a rehab center. Their baking operation was based in their home for the first three years. While baking cakes from their home, Jeremy said he had a hard time realizing that he was making it as a baker. “As time goes on, you start looking at the things you’ve done and it’s like, ’Wait a minute, maybe there’s something here,’” he said. As more orders came in, Jeremy said he started imagining how his own bakery would look. “I started thinking this could be a real possibility when I started thinking about how I wanted this to be,” he said as he gestured to the store on East Broad Street in downtown Newnan. The Boltons said they wanted their bakery to be in a smaller town with a historic downtown area and their bakery would have a range of products. “We wanted to do everything,” he said. “We didn’t want to be just a cupcake shop or just a custom cake or wedding cake shop. We wanted it to be a neighborhood bakery where you could get anything.” “He kept telling me he wanted a bakery, and I was saying, ’Okay,’” Traci said. “Our son graduated from West Georgia Tech and when we left the ceremony at the Carnegie, we turned around and came down this street. He said, ’Hold on, pull in there. There’s a ’For Rent’ sign in the window.’” Traci said she couldn’t see into the building and had doubts because of its condition. “I literally called the guy from the sidewalk,” Jeremy
said. “I said, ’What are you thinking? There’s no way we can make this into anything,” Traci said. The next thing she knew, Jeremy announced he was opening the bakery. The Boltons live in College Park and commute to Newnan to operate their store, but Jeremy said, “We basically live here…. We just happen to sleep in College Park.” He said one of the highlights of owning and operating the bakery is being able to play a role within the customers’ lives. “You get to be a part of the all of the households. We get to be a part of these holidays because we’re on the table. How cool is that?” Jeremy said. “It’s bigger than just simply being a cake or a pie. The fact that I can make a cake and it can be the moment you find out if you’re having a boy or a girl, how special is that?” According to Jeremy, several weeks ago a woman came into Bolton’s Bakery and almost started crying while ordering at the register. She told him her mother was dying from brain cancer and she wanted to bring her some comfort food. “You’re talking about comforting someone in their final hours. I take pride in that, and I take it very seriously that we’re allowed to be a part of those moments, and that people come to see us with things like that,” Jeremy said. “That’s more than just a cinnamon roll.” To learn more about Bolton’s Bakery, please visit www.theboltonsbakery.com or call them at 678.673.6680. Bolton’s Bakery is located at 13 E Broad St, Newnan, GA 30263.
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PAPER chasing How one man influenced your favorite rappers’ mogul mindset By NDSmith for thesource.com
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Don’t let anyone fool you. Hip-Hop is a billion dollar business with a bunch of folk in the culture not benefiting from its prosperity. It is not only the side-way record contracts and 360 deals gone wild that have artists on the outside of various wealth-building opportunities in rap music that prevents them from caking out. It is not even the aggrandizement of balleration (excessive amount of jewelry, clothes, cars and other fly stuff) that keeps them out of those really big money conversations. It is the lack of focus on portfolio diversity and access to the real money rooms. Morehouse man and former Wall Street executive, Rashaun Williams identified a way to not only shift the Baller Mindset to a Mogul Mindset with a core program and visionary knack for investment. Who is Rashaun Williams? He is the investment unicorn that was the architect of Nas’ Queensbridge Venture Partners and the founder of the Kemet Institute. Now the founder and head honcho at the MVP All-Star Fund (Manhattan Venture Partners), he has athletes like Dwight Howard, Elton Brand, and Patrick Ewing partnering up with him. The Source Magazine linked up with this power player to tap into his secret and further explore the magic that has made rappers like Nas one of the most sought-after venture capitalist in the game. The Source: How do you explain venture capitalism to the average guy on the street corner? Rashaun Williams: So from a practical standpoint there is no difference in being a venture capitalist, then the dudes that would come around the block and drop off a whole stack of drugs to 20 different kids. And whichever is the one that brings the most money back is going to be “that guy” that continues to be invested in. Some are going to rise to the top and some are going to fizzle. So what a VC is trying to do is to identify what makes a company successful. Then they say who can I find and what business model do they have that I can invest in them early and then I can help them become successful. So a VC is really just a person that is trying to do two main things: They pick companies that they think are going to be successful and then they poke them in the way that they should go so that they can become successful. We pick and we poke. Now in order to keep picking companies, I need to raise money from people. It may be my own money. It may be some of my money and others, but people are investing their money with me because I am showing them that I have strategy to pick these companies and a technique to help these companies grow. So they look at my track record and they say ’Rashaun has picked some winners. I want to invest with Rashaun.’ The Source: We are looking at the different ways that Hip-Hop artists have been investing this year. We know that you have been very influential in creating a lane for that. Can you talk to our readers a little bit about that process? Rashaun Williams: I never go into details about specific individuals’ portfolios and what they have done. However, I do go into details about what I do for the culture, what I do with investments and how I create investors. The Source: That is interesting. Rashaun Williams: Yes, I make these guys investors (sometimes against their own will). They don’t want to be investors. They just want to be great at what they are doing. They see everyone getting money and they are like “How is Nas able to get all this money? He is not smarter than me!” And what all of them know, is that there is always someone behind the scene doing the work. There is someone behind Lebron. There is someone behind Kobe. There is somebody behind Kevin Durant. And then there is someone behind Nas, T.I. and all these other of guys. So I am out there turning guys into investors and letting them be great. I don’t need to be in the forefront. I don’t because I am just an investor and I don’t benefit from being in the forefront. I am happy to elaborate on what I have been doing for the last eight years with sports, entertainment, and tech. It is becoming more popular now but when I started doing this eight
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years ago, I couldn’t even convince these guys to put money into companies. They all wanted money out. Over the last few years, people are starting to see the results of becoming investors. Now my job is easier today than it was back then. The Source: Let’s start there. What made you leave your cushy Wall Street job to engage the culture in this way? When did you get the light bulb and said: “Hey let me speak to them and redirect some of this wasteful money that they have?” How did you discourage them from buying all these gold chains and encourage them to do something for the community that they come out of? Rashaun Williams: In 2001, I started a non-profit called the Kemet Institute and its goal was to teach people in our community about financial literacy and how to invest. I was basically taking everything I was learning on Wall Street and giving it back to the community. It took me 12 years to figure out how to combine the two things: The one thing I was really good at “investment” and the other thing I was really passionate about “my own community.” I figured out how to blend the two. What I do now is serve as an active investor, but I also teach and coach others in the culture how to also invest. What I love most about that is that now the culture is shifting to the mindset of “I want to be an owner, instead of a consumer.” It has started in this generation to trickle down to the kids. Everyone wants to be the founder of a company. Everyone wants to be a VC (Venture Capitalist). This cultural shifts started with the leaders in our culture. The Source: Why do you think that is? Rashaun Williams: I attribute it to a few things making it a little easier. Look at Beats by Dre and the company getting acquired by Apple, Jessica Alba with the Honest company or 50 Cent and his Vitamin water. Also look at what we did with Queens Bridge. Our culture is a “show me” culture. You see people who are leaders in our industry and they see them making millions and billions of dollars by either found-
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ing their own company or investing in one and they want a piece of it. That’s why I left Wall Street. I wanted to focus on investing instead of advising. Most of my clients were billion dollar, white, institutional and family office clients. I wanted to not only work with them but work with my own community. I wanted to offer my community the same type of investment advice that I was offering my clients at Goldman Sachs. The Source: Why? Rashaun Williams: Because we weren’t getting that level of access to education. Just go to my Instagram and you will wonder why there aren’t 50 other Black VCs out there helping Black investors and founders learn how to invest. Not only invest, but are there no other Black VCs teaching our people how to raise money. I am working to bridge this gap between pop culture, technology and investing. That is why I left Wall Street. The Source: You are different from other entertainment execs in this space (Troy Carter, Steve Stoute) because you bring something that they lack. While they bring their entertainment knowledge to the table, you bring finance to the table. Would that be accurate? Rashaun Williams: Yes. I would not say that these guys are not as sophisticated as I am, but we all have a different approach to the same goal. I never sat down and spoken to them about their strategies, but my approach is two-fold. My first approach is education first. Everything that I do and everything I learn comes from a space of educating people. And what makes me different is that you can see this for free. You can see it in things I say in the press. You can see it on my IG. You can see it on YouTube. You can see it on my website. Most people know me because I have taught them something about investing in tech. Now, very few people have actually invested with me. So that is evidence of how I first lead with education. The Source: Are there any stories of athletes or entertainers that made you sit back and say, I got to help them? When you look at the landscape are you thinking that you have to educate them first because they are the leaders in culture? Rashaun Williams: Celebrities and Influencers are at the pinnacle of our culture/ community. There is value across the board. I have taught sixth graders and college students, but I have also taught nurses and doctors. These are all people that look like us. What we all have in common is that we were not taught financial literacy. So when you consider celebrities, of course, they get most of the attention, but the work that I have done goes far beyond athletes and entertainers. I did not look at our culture and see a particular thing and said, this thing has sparked an interest. It was more so watching other cultures make billions of dollars every year and watching how they institutionalized the process of making billions of dollars. By doing that, I noticed how we did not have that. I thought to myself, look how successful they are and how they transferred this through generations. The same way that we transfer NBA players through generations, we transfer Hip-Hop artists, R&B singers through generations. There is no coincidence that Zion Williamson is going to be the next Lebron. That thing has been worked on for decades (maybe before he was even born). That system is not only culturally celebrated but there are systems in place like the AAU, high school, colleges, scouts, they will have you carrying a basketball all around all day. That young man because cool and celebrated in our community but in other culture, other things are celebrated. I am hoping I can help our culture also celebrate finance and education. And who better to focus on that the leaders of our culture. The Source: Where do you teach? At the Kemet Institute campus? Rashaun Williams: Kemet like I said earlier Kemet is a 501 c3 non-profit. We provide services to schools and to individuals. Anyone can learn from this institute. We came up with a concept called “L.I.F.E Schools.” L.I.F.E. stands for Learning Integrating Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship and we go to schools and help them infuse financial literacy and entrepreneurship into their curriculum.
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You have to meet our culture where they are. If I want to talk about finance, I can’t go into the schools to talk straight. These young people are like “I grew up on the South-side of Chicago and I had to worry about getting home and not eating that night.” So someone sitting there talking to me about stocks and bonds is just a waste of my time. The Source: The young people you teach? Rashaun Williams: Yes. Where are all of these kids? They are in the digital media space and so I meet them there and I speak to them in a language that they speak. I also go to the schools and I look like them. You can’t be a person on the outside of the culture, trying to come in and influence. You have to meet them where they are. My first class that I taught in the Kemet Institute was on 88th and Princeton on the South-side of Chicago to a group of seven kids that were selling drugs. That is the neighborhood I grew up in and I stood out there with those young people. I taught them how finance and investments work and I spoke to them in the language that they spoke. So when you look at my social, you will see most of them are founders and investors and I am speaking to them in their language. But if you look at my Linkedin, you will see something completely different group of people and I still speak to them in their language. When I speak at Villanova, it is different from when I speak at Morehouse. Meeting them where they are, giving them what I know they need and breaking it down so that it is simple and relatable has always been my approach. The Source: Though you have worked with Nas and his QBVP, we see that you have gone against investing in entertainment companies. There are a lot of practical things. Is that a strategy? Rashaun Williams: Yes. There is no entertainment strategy when it comes to investing. Like Queensbridge Venture Partners was not a fund we set up to invest in entertainment companies. To go deeper, here is the strategy for Queens Bridge. We recognized that out of all the companies that were making money in Silicon Valley, it was the same 20 investors that was investing in them. Most people don’t notice that. But if I asked you, out of all of the Black dudes that go to the NBA, “What schools did they come from?” You could probably 10 to 20 schools that they keep coming from. They keep coming from Duke. They keep coming from North Carolina. It’s the same 20 college programs that all the key people that get drafted come from. Well in Silicon Valley it is even worst: The same 20 VCs that keep making all these unicorns. So our strategy with Queens Bridge was to invest with the winners. So we didn’t necessarily have a sector that we were focused on. We weren’t the smartest guys out there trying to find the next artificial intelligence. That wasn’t our strategy. Our strategy was to co-invest with the companies and VC firms that were making all of the winners.
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Now here is the part, that is probably most important to The Source’s readers: Why would they let us co-invest vs. anyone else? The answer to that is “the culture.” The only two groups that get access to the best companies in the world are top 20 venture capital firms and guess who else… athletes and entertainers (who mostly happen to be Black!). You can see what my incentive is in being a VC (that in addition to helping my who community). Also, if I wanted to get my own money into the best deals in the country, I have to educate, support and encourage all of these athletes and entertainers to invest, so that we can all invest together. Is that how this works when you see a celebrity with these opportunities? Often times you will see one celebrity that is an investor in a deal, but there really will be 25 of them really investing behind him. You just will never know. That’s what we are doing. We are using the influence of the Hip-Hop culture to get into the best deals. We are not trying to compete with those top 20 VCs, we are trying to get a piece of the pie. We are not going to fight over 5% of returns, we are trying to get into the 95% of returns. The Source: Reverend Run used to say that you can’t help the poor if you are one of them. Rashaun Williams: Yes, that’s one angle. We do want to make money. But I don’t even want to look at it from the making money side. We are going to make money either way. These artists and entertainers are going to make money, so no we are not solely driven by making money. What I think the bigger motivation is that we know that pop culture, our culture, is a strong contributor to these companies being worth billions of dollars. We haven’t gotten a piece of that. We want a piece of that. Would Beats by Dre be worth two billion dollars to Apple had it not been for our culture? Would Spotify not be worth 25 billion dollars had it not been for our culture? I don’t think so. All of these investors that make billions of dollars of this (and they make that every single year) less than .00001 of those billions have been people from our culture. Ultimately, what we are trying to do is get a piece of this thing that we are helping to create. The Source: Closing out: What are three things that the Hip-Hop community should know about this space? Rashaun Williams: The first thing I would say is if they are not winning in tech, it is because they have too many Urkels on their team. So their “wins” are low. (Shout out to Kanye West). What tends to happen is that people tend to get all of these deals and from all these people who are not investors, who are not experienced in this and then they keep losing money. Secondly, speaking of wins, the reason why people come to me is because they want a winning strategy. I have a long track record of 18 years of winning in this space. So I give that track record to those dudes for free. Here is how we win. For me, the reason I do it is the same reason why basketball players do clinics in their communities. They are teaching kids how to play basketball because it is easy for them (they have played basketball their whole lives). I am like a tech coach and I am helping everyone create a winning strategy. Third, you have to be a practitioner and not a reporter. Be an expert. I am not on IG passing on information that I read from someplace else, this is actually what I do for a living. These are companies that I put my own money into. This is also what I do every day. This is also the only thing that I have ever done. Those are the top three things I would want people to know.
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VOWS
John J. Cox ’03 + Lakisha M. Vining LO C AT I O N : NEW HOPE BAPTIST CHURCH NEW ORLEANS, LA D AT E :
DECEMBER 8, 2018
On a classic Crescent City December afternoon Rev. Dr. John J. Cox ’03 married Kisha at New Hope Baptist Church in New Orleans. The wedding party was completely Morehouse Men: Ulysses Burley ’05, Joshua Cox ’16, George Peters ’03, T. Mark Rainey ’05 and Hon. Randall Woodfin ’03. Other Morehouse Men among the well-wishers included Darren Armstrong ’05, L. Jared Boyd ’03, Joe Carlos ’04, Cameron Hawkins ’04, Matthew McNeil ’05 and Jason Tolliver ’04. John is the Senior Pastor of the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in the bustling Shaw area of Washington, D.C.. He earned his Doctor of Ministry from Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, and he earned his Master of Divinity degree from the Vanderbilt Divinity School. Lakisha earned her MS in Human Science from Prairie View A&M University. She is the founder of Diamonds Defined a non-profit providing personal mentorship and mental healthcare for at-risk children and their families. The couple resides in Washington with their daughters.
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VOWS
Kasi D. David ’01 + Allison Ross LO C AT I O N : THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST CLEVELAND, OH D AT E :
NOVEMBER 17, 2018
On a cold November afternoon Kasi D. David, Ph.D. ’01 married Allison Ross at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Cleveland. Several Morehouse Men were among the well-wishers including: Antoy Bell ’00, Joe Carlos ’04, Ronald Falls ’00, Marques Martin ’05, Malaki Sims ’00, Calvin Miles Smith, III ’01, Jamal Wilson and Aaron Young ’08. David, an engineer, is a Project Manager, Engine Oils at The Lubrizol Corporation in Cleveland. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate, he earned a Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Allison graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University and she is a Consumable Territories Manager at DebMed. The couple resides in Cleveland.
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VOWS
Marcus Sabbs ’11 + Brigette Wright LO C AT I O N : ARBOR ROOM AT POPP FOUNTAIN NEW ORLEANS, LA D AT E :
NOVEMBER 2, 2018
On a quintessential New Orleans fall day, Marcus M. Sabbs ’11 married Brigette Wright at a beautiful ceremony at the Arbor Room at Popp Fountain. Nine of the eleven members of the wedding party were Morehouse alums: Ryan Bates ’10, Kyle Bridgeforth ’11, Kyle George ’09, Jared Green ’09, Brandon Lawrence ’09, Harold Montgomery ’05, Ali Osman ’11, Jamel Riley ’11 andDarrell Sabbs ’03. Several Morehouse Men were among the well wishers including: Corey Coward ’00, Ray Cryer ’09, Ernest McNealy ’09, Ryan Shepard ’08 and Michael Summers ’09. Sabbs is the Managing Director at the Carter Malik Group in Atlanta. Brigette is the Vice President of Experiential and Brand Integration for GlobalHue. She earned a degree in Economics from Spelman College. The couple resides in Atlanta.
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VOWS
Dennis Williams, Jr. ’04 + Erika Heard LO C AT I O N : DANFORTH CHAPEL, MOREHOUSE COLLEGE ATLANTA, GA D AT E :
OCTOBER 5, 2018
On a balmy, October afternoon Dennis Williams, Jr. ’04 married Dr. Erika Heard at a beautiful ceremony in Morehouse’s historic Danforth Chapel. Several Morehouse Men were among the well-wishers including Kendrick Cargo ’02 among others. Williams is a General Manager at Lang Construction in Tucker, GA. Erika graduated from Spelman and earned her medical doctorate at Duke University School of Medicine. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta. She is currently in practice with WellStar Medical Group Psychiatry. The couple resides in Atlanta.
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VOWS
Michael T. Sterling ’04 + Eva Marcille LO C AT I O N : SOUTHERN EXCHANGE BALLROOMS ATLANTA, GA D AT E :
OCTOBER 6, 2018
On a picture perfect, October evening Michael T. Sterling ’04 married Eva Marcille in a gorgeous ceremony at the Southern Exchange Ballrooms in Atlanta. Morehouse Men Ozzie Smith ’01 and E. Carlos Tanner ’03 were in the wedding party. Several Morehouse Men were among the well-wishers, including Monty Bell ’02, Ron Booker ’04, David Calloway ’04 Joe Carlos ’04, Robert Douglas ’03, Uriah Gilmore ’02, Daniel Graham ’02, Andre Holmes ’02, Kenneth Hooper ’04, Roger Humphrey ’03, Lance Irvin ’02, Eddie Johnson ’04, Nick Kemp ’02, Calvin McAllister ’04, Chealon Miller ’02, Bukhari Nurridin ’03, George Peters ’03, Tony Rozier ’04, Paul Rue ’04, Patrick Smith ’01, Voltaire Sterling ’02, Ashley Thomas ’03, Billy Treadwell ’04, and Larry Yarrell ’03. Sterling is an attorney and founding partner at Dreyer Sterling LLP. He earned his Juris Doctorate from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. Marcille attended Clark Atlanta University. She won Season 3 of the wildly popular television show ’America’s Next Top Model’ and has enjoyed a highly successful modeling and acting career. An entrepreneur in her own right, she is currently involved in several business ventures, including starring on the Bravo TV’s hit series ’The Real Housewives of Atlanta’ as well as designing and running the Eva Marcille Home Collection. The couple resides in Atlanta with their daughter and son.
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VOWS
Jeffrey D. Tate ’04 + Amanda Wright LO C AT I O N : JOSEPHINE BUTLER PARKS CENTER WASHINGTON, DC D AT E :
JUNE 16, 2019
On a warm late spring DC evening Jeffrey D. Tate ’04 married Amanda Wright in a loving and exciting ceremony at Josephine Butler Parks Center. Morehouse Man, Rev. Dr. John J. Cox ’03 married the happy couple. Several Morehouse Men were among the well-wishers including: Darren Armstrong ’05, Mario Ball ’05, Joe Carlos ’04, John Cox ’03, Jarrod Loadholt ’05, Kito Lord ’04, Jason Miles ’04, Jay Morgan ’05, Christian Nwachukwu ’04, Thomas Searles ’04, Randall Woodfin ’03 and Kyle Yeldell ’05. Tate is currently a NAMR Marketing Specialist at BCG. He is also a co-founder and the Marketing Manager of Washington, D.C.’s J&K Productions, LLC. Previously, he was an Advance Specialist with Obama for America and the Environmental Protection Agency. Tate and Wright own The Soalex Group, a staffing and recruiting firm, where Wright is the Business Development Director. She earned a degree in Marketing from Northern Michigan University. The couple resides in Washington, D.C.
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VOWS
Elliott Robinson ’06 + Melissa Webb LO C AT I O N : THE CEDAR ROOM CHARLESTON, SC D AT E :
MAY 25, 2019
On a sweltering late spring evening Elliott Robinson ’06 married Melissa Webb in a beautiful and moving ceremony at The Cedar Room in downtown Charleston. Morehouse Man Courtney English ’07 was in the wedding party. Several Morehouse Men were among the well-wishers, including: Nicholas Austin ’06, James Jennings ’06, Demetrius Smith ’03 and Kyle Yeldell ’05. Robinson leads Growth Equity at Bessemer Venture Partners and he’s a partner at San Francisco area based M12. He’s a member, investor and or adviser on a number of boards including: BLCK VC, Livongo, Cooler Screens, BlueVine, Cerebri AI, Trusona and Layer. Robinson earned his M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. Webb is the Senior Director of Strategy and Operations for VISA. She earned her M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her B.A. in Economics from Columbia University. The couple resides in the San Francisco area.
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We Are Morehouse Monthly|Page 20
PHOTO BY ROGER S. HUMPHREY ’03
PHOTO BY ANDREW WHITE FOR PARKWOOD ENTERTAINMENT
COVER STORY
ON POINT. In a 20-minute span of time, Lodriguez Murray ’04 has spoken to seven college presidents and two members of Congress. If I hadn’t watched it happen myself, I might not believe it, but I did. This isn’t a typical day, but when you’re the Vice President for Government Affairs for the United Negro College Fund, nothing is ever really ’ordinary’. Working closely with Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, members of Congress as well as HBCU presidents, Murray and UNCF CEO Michael Lomax ’68 secured funding for a dozen HBCUs at a critical time in their fiscal history. The story of how this former Legislative Aide, a first generation high school and college graduate, became the youngest VP in UNCF history is an interesting one, and more telling is how he’s gained the trust of DC power brokers and luminaries as diverse as Ted Kennedy to John Boehner to Valerie Jarrett, all while maintaining an impeccable reputation. Since Murray has assumed his role at the UNCF, HBCU spending (passed by Congress) has increased by over $109 million (combining FY 18 & 19).
WAMM: What’s the view from your office window? LVM: I see Georgia Avenue. The beginning of Howard University, as it stretches up Georgia Avenue and much of the new construction that’s taken place to revitalize this area steeped in African American tradition and culture. We’ve been in this building for five years. We’re part of the Shaw/Howard METRO station. WAMM: You are in a unique position, working for the United Negro College Fund, in an exciting time, working for this 75-year-old organization. While there is construction and development going up around the neighborhood that you work in, your presence at the UNCF is innovative and a groundbreaking hire. To your knowledge, how many people have held your role before? LVM: At the VP level, I’m on the second. Prior to that, there was a director role, and there were several people in that role, but in terms of Vice President of Government Affairs, I’m the second. WAMM: In the last 30 years, how many have there been? LVM: That’s a good question. The biggest name to hold the position is a guy named Bud Blakey. So, Bud, whom I did know early in my career was a gentleman who was well known and respected as the voice of legislative concerns in the HBCU community. Folks were not going to alter the Higher Education Act provisions for HBCUs without talking to Bud Blakey for two reasons. He served as a staffer for one of the education committees, and it was his time being associated with the UNCF. All the way up until his passing, he was a luminary in the community. WAMM: How does a young man from Augusta, GA, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science become a Vice President at the United Negro College Fund, just 14 years after graduating from college? LVM: Serendipity and specializing in a subject area that I have a passion for. When you have a passion, I have
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a personal belief that passions are given by God and so when you feel strongly about something, that comes from above. So, I have a passion for HBCUs, and it feels like this has been a path that was plotted out for me. I went to Upward Bound and other summer programs at Paine College in Augusta, GA a UNCF
liberating concept in and of itself. So, you take that, and you take a career where you get to focus in on something you have a passion for and really cut your teeth on it. Before I came to UNCF, I was a lobbyist at the Health and Medical Counsel of Washington, HMCW. A large part of the clientele were
Murray brings greetings at the Mayors Masked Ball in Columbus, OH
member school. Then I had the pleasure of going to Morehouse College and graduating from there, another UNCF member school, but the graduation and the paying for it were all possible because of a UNCF scholarship. I was a Toyota Scholar from the UNCF starting in the year 2000. That scholarship at the time was $10,000 a year. I was a first-generation college student and a first-generation high school graduate. And so, that leap was a tougher hurdle to cross. So, UNCF went a long way, $10,000 every year to making my education possible, and making it possible for me to be debt from college before the age of 30, which is a
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historically black health schools, the medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary medicine schools of the HBCU community. So, for eleven and a half years before I came to UNCF, I had the pleasure of representing that community, so I was doing HBCU policy before I came to the UNCF, so I’ve been preparing for the opportunity in this role for quite some time. WAMM: What was your specialty at Davidson Fine Arts School in Augusta, GA? LVM: I did a number of fine arts; drama, studio art, sketching and writing. A certain percentage of your day had to be focused on the
fine arts. WAMM: Why did you choose Morehouse? LVM: My fifth-grade teacher Barbara Pulliam, looked at me one day and said, "You look like a Morehouse Man". So, I went home that day, and it was before the internet. I picked up the encyclopedia, a second hand World Book one at that, and I read about it that night, and I decided that I was going to go to Morehouse based upon what the World Book Encyclopedia said about Morehouse. My first visit to Morehouse was with the Paine College Upward Bound, on a college tour, and I remember when I stepped off the bus, I felt something that I’d never felt before. When I was applying to college, I knew we didn’t have the funds to attend Morehouse, but I’d received full scholarships or presidential scholarships from six other institutions, but I was going to Morehouse. I was very industrious, and I would sit at my typewriter, and I would write the companies that my parents did business with, and I would write them and tell them "My name is Lodriguez Murray, and I am graduating from Davidson High School this year. My plan is to go to Morehouse College in the fall. My parents get xyz goods or services from you, and I want to know if you have a scholarship that I can apply for." From that, I was able to cobble together a number of small scholarships and grants from $250 to a few thousand dollars each. I cobbled them with a little support from Morehouse. Then part way through freshman year when the financial aid lines had gone down, I remember going to see my cluster coordinator, Ms. Jackson, and telling her that
I wanted to tell my mother for Mother’s Day that I didn’t have any more loans, and she told me to go outside and check the wall outside the office and see if there were any scholarships that I fit the profile for. And, I applied to three and I remember not thinking about it anymore and went home for the break. Before classes started, my mother called me and asked if I’d applied for a UNCF scholarship. I told her I had, and she said that I’d received a scholarship for $10,000, and I knew that amount wiped out my additional need. WAMM: This was your freshman year. How did you know to be that proactive for yourself? LVM: I knew that if I wanted something, I should work hard to do it. I didn’t have any guidance, but I knew that if I wanted something, that none of the rest of us in my family had achieved that I had to go and do something that none of us had done, so I knew I had to be industrious because I didn’t want to take money away from the family. I’m the oldest of four, and at the time there were three more siblings, and I didn’t want to take any finances or opportunities away from them. I had to go and find the money, and that’s what I did. WAMM: What all were you involved in at Morehouse? LVM: Ha. The first couple of years I was in the Otis Moss Oratorical Contest, I was director of planning and programming for the SGA, and that became Homecoming Director my sophomore year, first semester sophomore year. I was involved in New Student Orientation. My junior year, I was treasurer of the SGA and I would go to the senate meetings. I was an executive branch guy.
WAMM: Were there any other clubs or organizations that you were involved with while at Morehouse? LVM: Of note? Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Incorporated. WAMM: I recall you being a resident assistant as well though. LVM: Yes, I was a resident assistant in my last three years; two years at LLC and one at Mays. WAMM: What brought you to Washington, D.C.? LVM: While I was a student, I had very good internships, and one in the office of Georgia governor Roy Barnes. By senior year I realized that I had not done any time in Washington. I watched CSPAN and the national news and so I learned the names of the politicians from all over the nation. My senior year, I decided that after I graduated, I wanted to intern in DC. So, I contacted all of the members of congress that were representative of my areas in Georgia; the members of congress in the Atlanta area, the two U.S. Senators and the two members who represented Augusta. Only one office ever replied, and it was the office of a white republican male who represented the northern area of Augusta, and we did a phone interview and they decided from the phone interview that of the seven interns that had that summer, I was the only one who would be paid. That was extremely important because I had no means. So, I came to Washington on a wing and a prayer to intern for Congressman Charlie Norwood, a dentist from Augusta. While I was working on the internship program, I was a little bit at a disadvantage because several interns come knowing they want to work on the Hill full time. They print their resumes and take
full advantage at lunch time to network and pass them around. I didn’t know about that whole culture of Capitol Hill. I just delved fully into the work of the office and asked for more to do. And I would often write. Congressman Norwood had a policy that if you called, emailed, faxed or wrote the office, you received a response that was unique to you from him. So that involved a lot of writing from the office, and I volunteered to do some of the writing. I would stay late, and I would come in early to write. Unbeknownst to me, the Congressman and his wife would see me working late. Eventually, that summer, the Chief of Staff asked what I was going to do when the summer was over. I didn’t know, I assumed I would go home and teach. The Chief of Staff asked why I didn’t stay in Washington and work for Charlie. I responded that if the Congressman wanted me to work for him, he’d ask me himself. So, one day, I was asked to take some mail over to the Congressman’s apartment, which was nearby and he and his wife asked me to sit down, and they said "Lodriguez, we understand that if we want you to stay, we’ll have to ask you ourselves" and they did, and I accepted. They asked me to commit at least a year as a Special Assistant to the Congressman. Later in the fall, when the Congressman released the information that in 1998, he was diagnosed with the disease Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis or IPF which is a gradual hardening of the lungs. He had a lung transplant that fall, and the idea was that if I stayed, I could be his ’all the time’ aide. I went everywhere the Congressman went. I had clearance from the Speaker (Dennis Hastert) to go on the floor
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(of the House of Representatives) anytime, which was rare for a staffer. I went to every committee hearing. I sat in, and took the meetings that the Congressman had. I had a very unique perspective where I saw how he made his decisions. I saw how people presented their facts to him. I saw how he related what he was doing back to the district and the people he represented. And so, from that very unique perspective is how I learned how Washington works. And it has served me very well since then in my interactions with members of congress on behalf of the HBCU community. WAMM: Your Washington experience was basically a June and July. How daunting a task was that to be working on the Hill then so soon? How did you deal with the learning curve and when did you start to feel comfortable there? LVM: It was daunting, but it was one of a long line of daunting experiences. Coming to Morehouse and knowing you’re the first one to go to college, that’s daunting. Graduating high school and knowing you’re the first one to graduate from high school in your lineage to do that, that’s daunting. Things don’t become less daunting, but you learn how to deal with them. You learn that you can’t be overwhelmed by the moment if you want to seize the moment, so you learn how to channel those emotions the right way. Every time I get a chance to walk into the Capitol or the White House or our building here on Georgia Avenue, I feel a sense of awe that I get a chance to do what I get a chance to do for a living and I get a chance to help make life better for people who are just like I was just a few years ago. I became a vice president for an organization, thirteen years after I got my last
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scholarship from thirteen years ago. WAMM: While working for Congressman Norwood, what committees was he a member of, what positions did he champion and who did you work with as a result of that? LVM: He was on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is considered a powerful committee. 60% of the legislation that comes to the House floor comes through that committee, so they deal with healthcare, technology and all types of other matters. He was a sub-committee chairman for the full-committee, and he was also on the Education Committee. He was a sub-committee chairman there, as well. I got a chance to work with our former governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal. We went to Iraq and Afghanistan together, traveling to seven countries in nine days. I got a chance to know him very well. I got a chance to know former Speaker (of the House John) Boehner very well. There’s a funny story on one of the first days after Congressman Norwood’s lung transplant, we went to the Education Committee meeting, where Boehner was the chair, and he’s a larger than life personality. And the Congressman was using a scooter to get around and he had oxygen tanks as well. Part of my job was to coordinate all of that and to make it easy for him. And as he was making his way to the anti-room to the dais, Chairman Boehner was about to light a cigarette, and I knew that one could not light a cigarette around oxygen tanks. But here I am, at age 22, and here he is the chairman of the committee, and so as the Congressman passed by, I waited a few steps behind and I said, "Mr. Chairman, good
morning. Would you please not light your cigarette while Congressman Norwood is around?" Boehner looked at me, his eyes got really big and he darted away into his office. And all the staff that worked for him were aflutter. So, when we got back to Congressman Norwood’s office in our building, we’d received several calls from Boehner’s staff saying, "I don’t know who this new guy is that y’all have, but I think this might be his last day. He told the chairman not to light his cigarette and the chairman walked away quickly." So, they were really riding me, and I was downtrodden for the rest of the day, mostly looking down at my shoes. I went with the Congressman when he went to go vote later that afternoon. Congressman Norwood sat to the Speaker’s far left, and I sat behind him. And there, I was, just looking down at my Bostonians and I heard a voice say, ’Hey young man’, and I looked up, and it was Chairman Boehner, and so I shuffled over there on the House floor and he says ’Hey, what’s your name?’ I said ’Lodriguez Murray’, he replied ’John Boehner’. I then said, ’Nice to meet you Mr. Chairman, but I know who you are.’ He said, ’You’re the young man that asked me not to light that cigarette earlier today?’ I said ’I am.’ He said, ’Thank you. I shouldn’t have been smoking around Charlie anyway, and I wanted to let you know that I appreciate that.’ He then asked me about where I was from, and we started to talk and formed a connection that lasted all the way through his Speakership. And it goes to show you that sometimes you have to speak up and do your job, even when it’s unpopular even if other folks around you don’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Murray at a UNCF board meeting, showing congressionally passed funding increases for HBCUs
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WAMM: How long did you work for Congressman Norwood and what was your final role? LVM: My position the whole time I was there was Special Assistant, and I was there two and a half years. As a matter of fact, he kind of set up the next role. I think he knew his passing was imminent. So, what he would do was he would introduce me to other lobbyists for Georgia Power, for Coca Cola. And he had an honorary degree from the Morehouse School of Medicine, because he’d worked with Morehouse alum, class of ’54 Louis Sullivan former HHS Secretary and former Morehouse School of Medicine president on some major legislation. So, he introduced the concept of me working for that firm and once I got there, it was not soon after that he passed. As a matter of fact, for a little background, there’s an Associated Press article about how we worked. The honorary degree that he received from the Morehouse School of Medicine, when I first started, he knew I went to Morehouse, and his first words to me were "I’m a Morehouse Man too. I have an honorary degree from the Morehouse School of Medicine." He would always joke because at the time there was Sanford
Bishop, Major Owens and one moment at the elevator where the four of us were there, and only the four of us, and this white republican congressman said, "Look here, four good Morehouse Men!" And Sanford Bishop and Major Owens got off that elevator as confused as they could be.
lobbying? LVM: It was new information, so a steep learning curve. But at that point, I had watched how any number of lobbyists worked with members at such a close range being with Congressman Norwood all the time, that I understood the purpose in how they did what they did.
When I first started, he had me call the Augusta office and have his Morehouse School of Medicine degree hung equal to his Georgetown Dental degree. And the Associated Press wrote about that when he passed. When his wife read that in the story, she had his honorary degree sent to me, and we still speak regularly.
WAMM: Who were you clients at the Health and Medical Counsel of Washington? LVM: Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, Howard University Health Enterprise, Tuskegee’s Veterinary School, FAMU’s Pharmacy School, the Association of Minority Health Professions schools, the American Lung Association among others. I had about twelve clients, which represented a third of the firm.
WAMM: What was your biggest takeaway from your time working on The Hill? LVM: That the members of congress are people. You have to relate to them as people. They’re not robots. They have busy schedules, but they are people. And when you relate to them where they are, you can get the best results. WAMM: You leave The Hill and head to the Health Medical Counsel of Washington. How difficult was the learning curve when you entered the world of
WAMM: How many of those clients did you land? LVM: Most of the time it was very collaborative. But landing? When we had Talladega, I landed them. FAMU’s Pharmacy and Tuskegee’s Vet School I landed them. The challenge in that role is more the retention. We were celebrated as being one of the top firms in the city that once folks started with us, they didn’t want to leave. Our retention was at a higher percentage than almost any firm in Washington, D.C. We provided such a sound deal and competent service for clients that they didn’t want to leave.
Murray with U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) as she receives the UNCF masked award 73 WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019
WAMM: What was your career highlight at the Health and Medical Counsel of Washington? LVM: It was getting provisions included in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, that elevated the National Center on Minority Health
and Health Disparities at the NIH at the level of an Institute. At NIH, there are three levels, there are institutes, which are the highest, there’s center which is the second highest and then there are offices. So, the division of NIH that dealt with our issues; health disparities, why do African Americans die at a higher rate from diseases and conditions than their white counterparts? That portion of NIH was only at the second highest level. Getting those issues elevated to an institute level, the highest level of NIH, as well as creating offices of minority health at all six of the public health agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services. That was the largest career achievement while at HMCW, because it elevated the concerns of our people in health, equivalent to anything else that could be in health. Equivalent to heart disease, to other transmitted diseases. The concerns of our community were finally equal to the concerns of any other affected community. WAMM: What kind of work did you do with Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy? LVM: He was the chair of the Health Education Labor and Pensions committee or HELP, and all the issues of minorities in health care went through that committee. I remember the first time I met him, I took Dr. David Satcher ’63, former Surgeon General, former president of Meharry, former president of Morehouse School of Medicine. And the meeting was just like things I’d read about; he had the two dogs running around the office, brushing up against you and he’s a deeply engaged individual. He obviously knew Dr. Satcher very well, but while he didn’t have to do it, he took the time out in the meeting to ask me about myself and to learn my role in the process. He wanted
to know my thoughts on the issues. Eventually, he had a hearing on my thoughts on how these programs should be reauthorized, and this was during the period of time that he had brain cancer. He was still actively involved and helped to shepherd those activities to passage. WAMM: By the time you’d met Senator Kennedy, you’d also met well known pillars and stalwarts of Congress who write and pass law. How does it feel to be in those rooms? LVM: Being awe struck never subsides, but it can’t get in the way of the work because why you’re there is bigger than how you feel at the time. WAMM: You started on the Hill ’04 before the election and then you went to the Health and Medical Counsel of Washington in ’07 before the election. How did things change after November 2008? How did D.C. change? LVM: The way that business was done on the Hill shifted a lot because how lobbyists could do their work changed around that time period in ’07 when then Senator Obama was still in the Senate, then after the 2008 election, there was a shift because so many new Democrats were brought in, and then you have to realize or decide, how do you reconnect when all the players are different. How do you rev up? You prepare for the transition of administrations, you go meet with them, you talk to them and you provide them with background and document and document. When administrations change, you will find, it’s the busiest time in Washington, D.C. WAMM: So, the peaceful transfer of power is very busy? LVM: To be peaceful it’s busy,
because policy makers, decision makers need information and you have to gear it towards them and the doing of that is a hurried endeavor. WAMM: So, despite the changes in D.C., you were still able to navigate, and work and be successful. What do you attribute that to? LVM: The issues that I’ve had the pleasure to work on are big enough issues where I don’t think that they’re partisan. I think that the education of first-generation college students at campuses that are mission driven to improve the lives of African Americans is not a democratic ideal or a republican ideal, it’s an American ideal and it should be treated like that. I approach it that way, I present it that way, and I think that policy and decision makers respond to that. WAMM: You’ve been at the UNCF since October 2017. How has your tenure been there? LVM: I think it’s been pretty good. We’ve experienced some success. Fiscal year 2018 appropriations package saw a 12% increase in HBCU related spending. That allows our schools to be stronger and the students we serve to be in a much, much better position. That’s all due in large part because of the UNCF’s work. Included in that have been many line items that our schools really utilize to make their institutions better for the students. Knowing that those increases in my short time here, is one of the things that’s been a great success in a very short period of time. WAMM: What do you think were the main factors in helping you to achieve these increases? LVM: Bi-partisanship. It’s a willingness to not count anyone
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out in terms of working with them and partnering with them. As long as we can get our issues in front of decision makers, then we have a strong opportunity to get good outcomes and we’re always working to get our issues in front of the decision makers both in the administration and on the Hill. WAMM: The UNCF is led by our dear Morehouse brother, Dr. Michael L. Lomax ’68. How special has that been for you? What have you learned from him and what have you learned about the awesome task that he undertakes on behalf of the member institutions? LVM: I think Dr. Lomax is one of the most thoughtful individuals I’ve ever met in my career and it’s a pleasure for me to work alongside him for all the work that I do, and to have a constant interaction with him because I learn the art of thinking from him. It’s a bit sometimes like the great story, ’Who Moved My Cheese’. There are two characters there, ’Sniff’ and ’Scurry’. What I learn from him is that sometimes one must sniff, and not immediately scurry. Sniffing and not scurrying underscores the ability to think through your desired conclusion, to achieve it. WAMM: What is the major takeaway you’ve learned in your career path, since graduating 15 years ago? LVM: There’s no substitute for persistence. I think there are folks with more education than I have. There are folks who were better advantaged than I am, but you can’t put a value on how dogged or persistent or willing to stick to something a person is. Eventually a persistent person will break through. WAMM: What advice would you give your May 2004 self?
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LVM: Persistence is the key. WAMM: What sartorial advice would you give your May 2004 self? LVM: Buy shoe trees. WAMM: How did Morehouse prepare life post-college? LVM: The old Dr. Mays quote about whatever you do, do it so well that no man living, no man dead, no man yet to be born could do it better and when they’re looking for someone, they have to look at your resume...that mindset which is more of an approach of self-confident belief in one’s work product, has served me so well. And then it’s the network of men that I’ve had the chance to get to know. I’ve had the chance to get to know some great Morehouse Men. Had I not gone to the College, it may have not ever happened. Dr. Lou Sullivan, the first Morehouse Man to ever be in a President’s cabinet, worked and worked with him hand and glove. It was a tremendous honor. Dr. David Satcher, only Morehouse Man to be the Surgeon General of the United States and the Assistant Secretary for Health at the same time...huge. Dr. Michael Lomax, president of the UNCF, and others. It’s such a big deal, in any small way to be linked to them at all, and then work with them in a substantive way, to achieve results. WAMM: Let’s switch the spotlight to you. You’re a natty dresser. Who or what are your biggest style influencers? What inspires your choices in that regard? LVM: The Duke of Windsor. Capitol Hill is a conservative place, and to a great degree Brooks Brothers. WAMM: You’ve been a generous and consistent donor to Morehouse. Why do you give to Morehouse, and why do you think
others should give to Morehouse consistently? LVM: I give to Morehouse because I know now from a unique perspective that our schools need the resources and I know that as an alum that wants to one day be a man in a position for a large gift, that I should give while moving in that direction, because if all of us gave, then our institution would be so much stronger, and I want the Morehouse for the next generation to be so much better than what it was for me. And while I do appreciate what it did for me, but for it to be stronger I have to do my part, and I can’t wait on anyone else to do their part, I have to do my part now. For Morehouse to be what we want, giving is the only way. I don’t know if we can proudly wear our shirts and write our resumes if we aren’t giving our finances to make our school better than it was when we went there. WAMM: In addition to your giving, how are you currently engaged with Morehouse College? LVM: I definitely mentor a number of men, primarily members of our Pi Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, but definitely young men who are brothers and friends of mine. I give of my time and my energy, and I help give them the advice that was not readily available to me when I was their age. WAMM: In June 2018, some decisions were made that greatly impacted a number of UNCF member schools financially. Funding was made available to 8 schools. Please fill me in about what happened there. LVM: UNCF worked hard to make sure that relief was given to a number of HBCUs that were in need and to get legislation passed in March of 2018 that provided that
Murray speaks at Bennett College after receiving recognition for Bennett’s inclusion in the federal deferment program for HBCUs
relief. The March 2018 deferment authority was passed with record speed-- in only 52 days. I have never seen anything focused on a minority population pass and become law so fast! In September 2018, we convinced Congress that $10 million was not enough. More than the original eight HBCU institutions needed relief. Thirteen actually qualified. On our recommendation, Congress doubled the funding only six months later to $20 million. So, in less than a year, Congress spent $30 million on this one HBCU relief effort that we wrote and championed. Since I’ve been in the job, HBCU spending (passed by Congress) has been increased by over $109
million (combining FY 18 & 19). Just this week, the House of Representatives is voting on possible additional increases, again based on the recommendations we made. I’m just so ecstatic that a number of institutions will be stronger for their student’s sake, and I’m proud to have played a small part in that. WAMM: And what was that small part? LVM: Listening to the concerns of our member schools, drafting the legislation and making the pitch to the Congress and the administration that was successful and allowed the multi-million-dollar deal to be included in legislation. And working hand in glove with Dr. Lomax to do it.
amount that was appropriated for the 8 schools? LVM: It will be $10,000,000 for each of the next six fiscal years. WAMM: And is this unprecedented? LVM: There is no precedent. This was groundbreaking. WAMM: What is your favorite place to eat in Washington? LVM: The Senate Dirksen Buffet. WAMM: What does Lodriguez Murray do to unwind or relax? LVM: Go to church and pray for the things I can’t change for myself.
WAMM: And what was the total
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THE FIRE NEXT TIME 79 WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019
Inspired by the greats, 2018 Alumnus of the year, Mossi Tull ’95 brings his genuine and fiery enthusiasm to everything he does personally, professionally and in the name of Morehouse. Read part one of his interview and learn about what makes him tick.
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Mossi Tull is an experience. Literally, an experience. As we decided on the date and time of our interview, Tull made it abundantly clear that regardless of the date and time of the conversation, we would dine at a black owned establishment. In Atlanta, that doesn’t seem like a difficult task, but after some thinking, we arrived on Paschal’s. Given its history and place of prominence in the story of Atlanta, it made sense that a back-dining room discussion over two plates of that famous food, was in order. Tull was elected as the 2018 Alumnus of the Year by the Morehouse College National Alumni Association. We discussed his love for his alma mater, his career, his penchant for helping others as well as the myriad of things that he feels that Morehouse and Morehouse Men can do to change the world so that it can truly be a better place.
MT: One of the great things about Morehouse is that you have black folks from all over the country. You get a guy from New York City, a guy from Houston, a guy from Chicago, a guy from Los Angeles, a guy from Arizona. I knew a brother, Dana Ammons from Omaha, NE…totally different.” WAMM: What are you reading right now? MT: “I’m reading Mayor Hatcher’s autobiography. Dennis Hatcher, mayor of Detroit. He grew up in a very working class environment, outside of Detroit in a rural area. He worked for judge Damon Keith, the great Damon Keith, and it’s phenomenal to seei how a guy comes up the ranks, and also, he’s about two years older than my father. It’s always wonderful to read books about your parents contemporaries. He talks about when John Kennedy was killed, he’s been married to the same woman for fifty years. He started off as a school teacher, and then somebody recommended him to go to law school. So he kind of stumbled into the law. And these are the types of interesting things you learn.” I prefer political biographies as a rule. Growing up, my mother was at home with us and she said “When we go into the library you can take
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home as many books as you could carry.” So growing up, my parents talked a lot about black history and current events. There are four of us. I’m the COO of Jackson and Tull; I came out of Morehouse in ’95. My sister, Nzinga Tull, is from Spelman in class of ’97 and she studied math at Spelman and ME at Georgia Tech. She works with Jackson and Tull as a Senior Systems engineer. My brother Kimathi is Morehouse class of 2000; he was math at Morehouse and EE at Georgia Tech He’s a Chief Engineer with Jackson and Tull. And the youngest one, Hatshepsitu, she came out of Spelman in 2003. Hatshepsitu is a Sr. Manager of Administration with Jackson and Tull. She also has an advanced degree in Applied Math and teaches on the collegiate level. WAMM: Were you a finance major at Morehouse? MT: I was a finance major. It’s funny, what drew me to Morehouse. I have three protean heroes in my life, not in this order: Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Martin Luther King and Maynard Jackson. And two of the three went to Morehouse, and I was really interested in the dual degree program(engineering), but after my not so positive grade in Calculus 2, I had to be intellectually honest with myself my sophomore year. I switched to Finance, and wrote my father a really long
letter apologizing for embarrassing him. He came home and told my mother, “We have a wonderful son.” It ended up being real helpful from a business standpoint. My father is a civil engineer by training. In my family, on my mother’s side for several generations they went to Southern and Tuskegee. I have a grandfather that came out of Southern in ’35, his mother came out of Straight University, which was the precursor to Dillard, in 1906. And my grandfather’s wife graduated from Tuskegee in 1937 and his father in-law came out of Tuskegee in 1904. On my father’s side, I have a great grandfather who graduated from Hampton in 1909 and his wife graduated from Virginia Normal, or Virginia State University in 1912, and we have her college degree on our wall, and her mother and grandmother were slaves. So, in my family, education has been paramount. Going to Morehouse, I realized how breathtakingly fortunate I was. I never worried about the job thing. WAMM: Where’d you go to high school in DC? MT: I went to Banneker Senior High School. WAMM: Banneker? You’re from Northwest? MT: No, I grew up in Hillcrest off of
Branch Avenue, but it was an academic high school and they let me in. They didn’t have a football team, so I was second string doubles in tennis. We practiced on the same court that the Howard University tennis team did. WAMM: So, May ’95…what happened after graduation? MT: Well, that’s interesting. I was on the four and a half year plan. I graduated in December of ’95 and walked in May of ’96. So, I took my final from J Dub on a Wednesday, I packed everything up. My roommate at the time was Dana Johnson, and he drove with me to DC. I drove the U-Haul, and he drove my Jeep. And we unpacked the stuff in my parents’ basement that Sunday. Took the U-Haul back on Sunday as well, and later that night drove my
roommate to the airport and went to the office at noon on Monday, and didn’t stop. No breaks. People think you work for your parents, and it’s like an R&B video, but it’s really not. You work. I started off working as my Dad’s personal assistant, and doing finance and accounting. We had offices in Kenya and Uganda from 1998-2000. I even lived in Albuquerque from ’06 to ’07, managing our office there. I can eat green chilli on anything. WAMM: I recruited Albuquerque for Morehouse. MT: It’s the land of enchantment. WAMM: There aren’t a lot of us. I was there for a week, and I met and recruited four black men who were
willing to apply to Morehouse. MT: They’ve got an NAACP chapter. The interesting thing is that we’re everywhere. WAMM: Other than that year in Albuquerque, you’ve pretty much been in DC since you finished Morehouse College? MT: That’s right. WAMM: So, you mentioned that you love political biographies. What’s your favorite and why? MT: My favorite political biography of all-time is ’Up From Slavery’ by Booker T. Washington. Because you see an African American male who was able to come through some horrific experiences through slavery and educate himself, work in his community, but he never left his community. There’s a
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great phrase that Dr. King would say whenever he would receive an accolade, “the mountaintop is wonderful, but the valley calls me.” If you look at a guy like Booker T. Washington, coming out of slavery, graduated from Hampton in 1876 and starting Tuskegee in 1881. It is incredible. I have more stuff in my shed now than he had when he showed up at Tuskegee in 1881. And literally 18 years later, in 1900,
once in his academic career, and that he never saw Booker T. Washington deliver a speech.
Tuskegee was fully electrified and one of the largest colleges in the South. Booker Washington along with George Washington Carver created agricultural extension in the deep south, some thirty-five years removed from bondage! It is incredible! Booker Washington was negotiating with Julius Rosenwald, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. He even helped Morehouse College at a critical time in the early 1900’s.
was 10 (Hester), and they escaped into Fort Monroe in Hampton, VA. They weren’t free, but called “contraband of war.” They were property of the Union Army, and became laundresses. They washed uniforms and clothes for Union soldiers. They later gained their full freedom at the end of the Civil War. On December 5, 1882, Mary Reed bought 2 acres of land for $150 cash on Fulton St. in Hampton, VA. Now my great, great, great grandmother, Mary Reed, was born in 1838. She was illiterate. So we still have that property that is owned by my father. That makes me a sixth generation land own-
Jim Henry, class of ’61, told me once that Dr. Benjamin Mays once told him he had only two regrets in his life: one, that he received a ’B’
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To me it is an example of what we can do in a modern context. I have a great grandmother who graduated from Virginia State in 1912. Her mother and grandmother escaped from a plantation near Williamsburg,VA in 1863. Her grandmother was 25 (Mary Reed), her daughter
er. We have that deed, in cursive handwriting, where they wrote it all out and then it has a line with an ’X’, and it’s right at my desk, and I look at it every day. Now that’s not an alternative fact, it’s heroic. And she is of the same virtual generation of Booker T. Washington. In fact, when Washington would come back to Hampton, he would go by my triple great grandmother’s house that she bought in 1882, and talk to her. That’s my connection to Washington, it’s heroic. That’s my connection to all of this. We have to instill these stories in our children. Even my son will sometimes say, “Daddy, so slavery…it really happened?” I say “Yeah buddy, it really did.” We have to share these stories with them not to scare them, but so that they’ll learn to be proud of their history. Rev. Jackson says “Pre-text without context is subtext.” And in many instances, we don’t have a context. Rev. Jackson also says, “Don’t say, I don’t want my kids to fight the same battles that I did. You never want to prepare your children not to fight. You want to prepare your children with better armaments to fight the oppressors because the giants keep coming.” So that’s why Booker T. Washington is so important to me, and that’s why I love ’Up From Slavery’. I read it every year, and every time I read it, I get something different from it. WAMM: You were back in DC, in December of ’95. When did you start getting involved in the DC alumni chapter? MT: You know it’s funny, I would go to meetings, but I went sporadically. Even if you are younger, you look at our contemporaries from PWIs, they’re always involved in some kind of way. They’re conditioned to be involved. We have a tradition in our community when we attend some type of religious institution,
whether it’s the church or the mosque, of tithing. What we have to do is we have to turn it around to our institution. We all went to somebody’s church in Compton, Detroit, Chicago, Ohio, somewhere you went to somebody’s church. Don’t lie to me. You have that in you. Whether you want to do it (tithe to your HBCU), is a totally different point, but we do understand that culture of giving back. It’s in us. So what we have to do with all of our HBCUs, at its base, they are our institutions. Either you value our institutions or you don’t. What’s so amazing is that just small amounts have exponential impacts on our lives. Nobody asks everyone to give $500 a month. What we want to do is to get guys to give $200 and $400 to give a little more. So what ends up happening is that we have more of a groundswell. The technology has democratized a lot, so that once you get those guys plugged in, you can do it. What was so interesting is that I’d bought two suits from Britches in 1998. I was at home and I got a call from a young Morehouse student asking for money. He called me on a landline and the guy asked me, “Can you give $600 to Morehouse?” I love my father and mother, but at the time I wasn’t making much money, so I said, “Well, that’s a bit much, but I think I can do $300.” He said “Well do you think you can do $400?” And I’m sitting there, and I look over at the two suits I’d just bought from Britches, and I thought, ’this is obscene, I’m negotiating on giving money to Morehouse. Brother, I’ll give the $600.’
My ministry is to encourage guys to do it. I tell guys all the time, ’we’ve got to give money’. What happened your junior year, or somebody lost your transcript, that has nothing to do with anything. What we need to do is that we need to help our institutions reflexively. I have never seen somebody tell as Girl Scout, “I don’t want any cookies! Stay out of my face!” No, we give her $20 or $50 because we value what the young lady is doing and the process by which she’s doing it and learning. That’s how we have to be able to support Morehouse, and that’s how I come at guys to do it. It’s our institution, either you value it, or you don’t. WAMM: What’s the response when you come at guys and preach the need to give, what keeps you going in the face of resistance? MT: What keeps me going man is that, and I’m not in the same solar system as him, but it’s the same thing that kept Booker T. Washington going when he showed up in Tuskegee, AL in 1881. It’s the same thing that inspired Benjamin Mays when we were on our back in 1940. It’s the same thing that when Dr. Mays started early admissions because he was being creative, he wasn’t cooking the books. Mordecai Johnson, Morehouse class of 1911, did the same thing at Howard in the mid 1940’s with returning WWII veterans. One of the students was the future New York Mayor David Dinkins. It’s being innovative because you just don’t know where these students are coming from. Morehouse is a phenomenal institution. Rev. Jackson was speaking at Howard one time and he said, “I believe in gravy, but gravy must have a meat base, less it just be greasy water.” Every Morehouse Man, the meat base of his life is Morehouse. If he’s intellectual-
ly honest with himself…what he learned, the processes, the interaction with folks, everything. It all happened at Morehouse. The greatest trip I’ve ever been on, I was a finance major but I was a history minor and my two best professors at Morehouse were Dr. Marcellus Barksdale and Dr. Giles Connelly. The best trip I ever took in my life other than my honeymoon with my bride to Egypt in 2009, was a trip that we took in the spring of 1995, with the Morehouse Scholars Program. It was a program where people, who were interested in getting Masters and PhDs in the Humanities. There were 35 of us, sophomores through seniors that visited all of the Humanities programs at the Ivy League schools. Seith Mann, the great filmmaker, was my seatmate on the Scholars Program trip. That’s when he first did a tour of NYU. Now, he’s directed ’The Breaks,’ ’The Wire,’ episodes of ’Homeland’, ’Grey’s Anatomy’ and all of those type of shows. What the trip taught me was that it exposed even more of the diversity of our own classmates. During the whole trip, we exchanged ideas. WAMM: Where else were you considering attending? MT: I would’ve gone to Hampton like my Dad, Grandfather, Great Grandfather. Morehouse had and has continued to have an exponential impact on my life. I have all kinds of friends from the class of 1995. Stacy Spann, after he graduated, he went to Wall Street, then got a Master’s in Public Policy. For the last seven years he has been the head of Housing and Opportunities Commission for Montgomery County, MD.. DeVetus Jones was on Wall Street, then
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he decided to do entrepreneurial things, and now he’s a real estate investor in California and Georgia. My roommate Chuck Smith is the head of compliance for Prudential. David Wilson is an emergency Medical Doctor in Florida. David Wall Rice is a tenured professor as well as Associate Provost, both at Morehouse College. Dana Johnson a businessman and musician. Dewayne Martin an educator in Atlanta, GA. Eric Wilson a banker with Citizens Trust Bank. Agai Jones was in the Peace Corps and has led a life of fostering international development. Nathaniel Smith created the Partnership for Southern Equity. Last but not least, my good friend Shakir Stewart was a Sr. V.P. of Island Def Jam before his untimely passing;. I miss him. Curtis Valentine ’00 started the Prince George’s Community College to Morehouse pipeline. When you see a great idea, you can’t see anything wrong with it. These are brothers who come from a Community College with credits, are fo-
Annual homecoming fellowship with Charles Fischer, III ’97 and Telley S. Madina
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cused, are motivated and who want to be part of the brotherhood. Why would anyone turn that down? This is an innovative way to increase the student body like Mays did with the early entrance program at Morehouse in the mid 1940’s! It’s the same thing that Mordecai Johnson’11 did at Howard in the mid 40’s with returning WW II vets.. I met my wife at Morehouse Glee Club concert in 2004. My father, Julius Coles’64, was there with his wife Mrs. Coles and their daughter Carmen. I asked Carmen where she was from, and she said ’Vienna’, meaning Northern Virginia, and I said, ’I didn’t know they had Negroes in Austria.’ But I got her phone number. It worked! I got married in 2009, by a Morehouse Man, Rev. George Walker’91. And so, we have my son Mossi, Jr. who will Morehouse Class of 2032 and then Malaika Kamala, Spelman’2035 after Sen. Kamala Harris. I call our son Mossi, Jr. ’Dutch’ because he acts like Ernest
“Dutch” Morial, the first black Mayor of New Orleans. We inculcate them because it’s our culture and they need to know about it. Frank Mankiewicz was Robert Kennedy’s press secretary in 1968 and he wrote a one of the most profound passages I’ve ever read in his autobiography. Bobby Kennedy was on a plane in 1968 and there were four reporters peppering him with questions. So one of them asks, ’Senator Kennedy, what do you think about the death penalty?’ and Bobby says ’Well I’m against it in all cases.’ And the reporter says, ’Well you weren’t that way when you were Attorney General.’ And Bobby says, ’Well, you’re right.’ She said, ’Well what made you change your mind?’. He said ’I was in favor of the death penalty until I read Camus’. He was talking about Albert Camus, the French philosopher. What Mankiewicz then said was ’Most people form the majority of their beliefs and ideas at a very young age, and they live off of those meager intellectual earnings
for the rest of their life. Very rarely can you change and evolve. That’s what Bobby Kennedy meant to so many people’. When I read that passage, I believed that that example of introspection and evolution was something I experienced on a regular basis at Morehouse College. My father and his partner started Jackson and Tull (www. jnt.com) in 1974 in the basement of a two story office building. Dad was teaching at Howard University full time and working at Jackson and Tull in the evenings and on the weekends. He grew a civil engineering firm in the late 1970s into a full service technology firm today with offices throughout the country. My mother was extremely supportive of all of his efforts and wonderful and nurturing role model to my siblings and me. What Morehouse allowed me to do was to see people being different and to try to grow and to be a better person. That makes us a better community, and in this environment, makes us a better country. Again, other institutions have their place, but what Morehouse College gives is the same thing that I want for my son and for my daughter. In reading Rev. Howard Thurman to try to get a better understanding of life, he just opens up to more questions, that’s how deep he is. Thurman is so deep, man. Thurman once said "Religion is yeasty, it’s effervescent, but every time the mind tries to constrain it, it changes. Therefore the only way you get to religion is by contagion, like the measles or the mumps." That kind of idea just keeps coming out of Morehouse, and he’s Class of 1923. WAMM: You won Alumnus of the Year in 2018. Your alumni chapter won Chapter of the Year in 2018. How do you think your example of sup-
port, loyalty, for love of institution will affect others? MT: Well, I think that it will show my contemporaries, or a little bit older or younger, that just being involved on a regular basis can have a tremendous impact. My wife and I give to Morehouse every month. We view not like a bill but as part of our tithe. We also are big fundraisers for the DC chapter. The Morehouse College DC Alumni Association’s biggest fundraiser is Mossi with his children Mossi, Jr. and our annual Malaika Kamala Spring concert. Our company does a sizeable size ad, my kept up the Living Legends efforts wife and I give an ad, my parents on an annual basis. give an ad, and I’m on a couple of non-profit boards who give ads. Then there are unplanned gifts. OfThis interview will continue in the ten when you come to DC Chapter July 2019 issue of We Are meetings, a current student will be Morehouse Magazine. there and need assistance we all pass that hat and get it done. But then I am also thrilled to be associated with Dr. B.K. Edmond’86, who was the visionary and mastermind behind the September 2016 Living Legends Fundraiser for Morehouse College in Washington DC.. Dr. Edmond has
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Called to serve Judge Chris Ward ’93 works tirelessly to make justice more than an idea in Atlanta
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Judge Chris Ward is running behind. He’s given a defendant a chance to compose himself and re-enter the courtroom in a far more respectful manner. The defendant took the opportunity to do so, and an agreement was reached that was amenable to all parties involved. While witnessing this from a surprisingly comfortable wooden bench in Judge Ward’s courtroom, I marveled at his ease and calm from his position of prominence and importance. A few minutes into our conversation about his career trajectory, it was clear to me why he was so assured; he’s been on this path for years. The morning that he spoke to me, he’d seen 120 cases. Judge Ward handles more cases than any other courtroom in the Southeast.
WAMM: So please tell me how this all started? CW: I was appointed by Mayor Reed in 2012. I’ve faced two election cycles. Each election, I’ve generated the highest percentage of affirmative votes for retention, of all the judges in this courthouse. We run every four years on a non-retention or retention ballot, Missouri ballot. The Missouri ballot is the recommended way that traffic court judges should be elected according to the American Bar Association. Non-partisan, retention votes every four years. It’s basically a lifetime appointment as long as you do your job in basically the largest court in the Southeast region. I came here in 2012. I was eventually assigned to the DUI division, where the DUI cases that I inherited were eight years old. Five thousand cases in January 2013 dating back to 2005, and more cases and new cases coming in each week. So I inherited backlog of 5 to 8,000 cases that were 8 years old. I came up with the effective case management program, whereby the oldest DUI case is two to six months old. Effective case management implementation, fine tuning. We were the most effective unit in this courthouse before I moved to the Failure to Appear warrant division. I was elected Chief Judge of this courthouse in 2015, having been here since 2012. I was elected as Chief Judge by my peers in 2015, which was the shortest time any judge had ever been here from appointment to election to election by the other nine judges as Chief Judge. We increased the case clearance rate making this court one of the most effective in the nation in regards to case clearance in regards to what we take in to what we dispose. We had high employee morale, we were able to get pay increases to most of the folk in the building. I came here with the desire to be the best judge down here. I’ve had an impact on not only the DUI vision, but the courthouse as a whole. Prior to coming to the court, I was in-house counsel at Georgia Power Company, handling imminent domain, tax and corporate security, environmental law issues. I was the first male African American attorney in the 129 years that it was headquartered here in Atlanta. I was there at Georgia Power for about five years, and during that time, I was a pro-bono juvenile court judge in Fulton County. Prior to Georgia Power, I was in the Fulton County D.A.’s office. I moved up to the rank of Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney. While there, I had the opportunity to try homicides, gun and gang offenses, high level narcotics, worked with ATF, the U.S. Attorney’s office, was the supervisor in the illegal firearms unit, served in Paul Howard’s office, was a community prosecutor, and I had a focus on reducing instances of crime working closely with businesses and community organizations in Zone 3, and it was the most effective unit we had at that time. Prior to the D.A.’s office, I was at the Public Defender’s office from 1998 to 2000. I started my career there as a Public Defender, representing kids, juvenile delinquents in the juvenile courts system. So, 1998-2000 PD’s office, 2000-07 DA’s office, 2007-12 Georgia Power, 2008-09 Juvenile Court, 2012 to now, been here in the municipal court. WAMM: To be only only 25 years out of school, and to have a 20 year legal career is a big deal. Now, you’re
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an Atlanta native, tell me more about your life before you were a lawyer. CW: I’m a graduate of North Fulton High School (now North Atlanta). I went from there to Morehouse and then the University of Miami Law School. North Fulton High School was a real small school with 800 students. I graduated in 1989, and in 1992, they closed Northside High School and North Fulton and renamed them North Atlanta High School. Think about this, I left North Fulton with 800 students, going from there to another small school in Morehouse. My experience there was cool in a close environment, then I go down to the University of Miami for Law School, and I’m in a class with 150 students, shocked, with a whole lot to deal with. I was fortunate to be in small schools. WAMM: Why did you choose to attend Morehouse? CW: My Dad had several good friends who attended Morehouse. Albert Davis, Dr. E.B. Williams, Scott Williams, he’s my frat brother. My Dad went to Florida A&M, and he went to Florida A&M because the state of Alabama wouldn’t allow him to go to a state of Alabama school like Bama or Auburn. The state paid for him to go there. Dad went to Pharmacy school there, and then came to Atlanta. The Citizens Trust Bank building, which is right across from where Beaudry Ford was, my dad’s pharmacy was in that building. So, growing up, I knew Dr. Davis, I knew E.B. Williams and growing up, my Dad was always saying ’you’re going to Florida A&M’, and E.B., Dr. Williams and Dr. Davis always talked up Morehouse. My Dad was always saying otherwise, and I went down there for my sister’s graduation, she’s six years older than me, and I was like, ’naw I’m not coming down here.’ To me, the jewels of Morehouse, I saw, in its
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alumni. I had no reason to leave Atlanta. My Dad’s friends that I grew up admiring, they inspired me. I applied to Morehouse and Florida A&M, and I got into Morehouse. Marrying my wife is the best decision I ever made, and attending Morehouse is second. WAMM: So you met your wife while you were in school? CW: Yes. Her freshman year. We were both born and raised here in Atlanta, and we had the same friends, but we had never met each other. Basically the setup was this, I went to Sutton Middle School, and there were guys like Rodney Williams, Jonathan Winfrey, Trenton Meredith, those guys went to Sutton with me. Sutton was a direct feeder to North Atlanta, but after Sutton, they went to Benjamin E. Mays, where Meka was. They knew her from there, they knew me, and by the time we all ended up at Morehouse. So, I’d finished my freshman year, and they were going into their freshman year at a freshman party at Douglas Commons. I saw Meka at a party, and I asked Jonathan Winfrey and Rodney Williams, "Who is that?". He said, "That’s Meka. That’s Trent’s girlfriend." And I said, "So?". So they broke up months later, and Jonathan Winfrey introduced us, and we’ve been together ever since, going into my junior year. We’ve been together 28 years, married 20 years. Went to law school together. Got married less than a year after law school. Meka is In-House at Home Depot and she’s been practicing law for a long time too. WAMM: What was your most rewarding part of your experience at the University of Miami Law School? CW: I looked at Miami as a means to an end, to get my law degree, and to come back and practice in my
hometown. I think one of the most rewarding experiences was going down there and having the ability to compete with kids from other schools and realizing how much I was prepared by Morehouse not only academically, but the things I got from Morehouse. I was better equipped for the bumpy roads at Miami, and I could realize and reflect on how I had been strengthened in my years at Morehouse for when I really had challenges down there. The Morehouse experience prepared me to endure anything Miami threw my way. But the fact that I had my support system, my wife, there with me, we both went through the rigors of a law school education. That support was really the most rewarding experience; having somebody there that was in the fight with me. Understanding that we were about to be building something together. WAMM: Given your career progression and trajectory, the most compelling and obvious thing to me is that you seem to possess an overwhelming sense of responsibility as it pertains to improving things in Atlanta. Was there a cathartic event that happened that inspired you to this life of service? CW: I think Gandhi said it, and I’m paraphrasing, "the best way to find yourself is to love yourself in service". And if you’re serving people, you’re helping others and you’re contributing. Not to the bottom line, but to the maintenance of society by improving other’s lives. The biggest struggle I had at Georgia Power after having eight, nine years as service as a public defender and as an Assistant DA was that I felt that I was working on the bottom line, and not for the betterment of my community. I left the public defender’s office
because I felt I could be of more service to my community serving as a prosecutor, having discretion, as opposed to sending folk away or warehousing folk. I was the type of prosecutor who would go back into the cell with the Mama, the son and the attorney and I’d be like, "Look, we’ve got you on video tape, we’ve got you on audio. We can go to trial and you can get 15 years, or you can take this deal and get 7 right now." I wanted to exercise that discretion and help folk and better my community which is why I left the public defender’s office and went to the district attorney’s office. I wanted to advance in my career, so I went to Georgia Power. I struggled because I was not in the community. I was not doing what I loved, which was serving. I had the opportunity to serve as a community juvenile court judge, and I continued to apply for judgeships until this opportunity came. I honed my ability to serve, and to strategically develop programs and to implement them successfully, through the opportunities I got from a Morehouse Man, Paul Howard. When I came here, no other judge wanted to handle DUIs, I said ’give it to me. I can make it work’. So I used those skills to make the system better, and in doing that, it’s easy, particularly when you love something, it’s not taxing on you. Serving is something that I’m serious about and my driver is knowing that if you can make someone’s life better, why not? My driver is contributing to the fullest to help somebody. You know that art rendering where there are three levels, where there are folk on three levels, but on each level you have folk pulling each other up? I first saw that at Morehouse, when I started back in ’89. It’s incumbent upon me to give back and to try to make a way that’s achievable for folk that’s
coming behind us. To the extent I can, I try to be of assistance to anybody that needs some help. This is all about helping folk, and paying it forward. WAMM: Please tell me about the significance of Clarence Cooper. CW: Clarence Cooper started off in this court. He was told by the governor at the time that the only way he would become a judge was if he was elected, so he ran and won. He was the first African American superior court judge elected in Fulton County. He was also appointed to the Court of Appeals. Then Jimmy Carter appointed him to the federal bench at the Richard Russell Building. Judge Cooper is a trailblazer and a mentor of mine. WAMM: If a student at Morehouse says ’hey, I want to be a judge’. What would you suggest he does to prepare? What general advice would you give them on that path to a career in law? CW: A lot of reading and a lot of writing. Clear concise writing. Try to put yourself on each side of an issue to develop critical, unbiased thinking and understand that you can’t delegate excellence. No one can do that for you. Anything that you do over a period of time, if you put your time in on the front end, it will work out in the end. Tap into your resources and understand that the folk that you are in school with will be there for years to come, not just a 30 year homecoming. Tap into the network that’s rich at Morehouse. Treat people well. You’ll need them and they’ll need you. WAMM: What is a career highlight and a life highlight? CW: A career highlight is first being appointed a judge. Not knowing what to expect. When I was appointed a juvenile court judge, I was able to make a
difference in the lives of young black men. There was a time when those kids would walk into the courtroom and they would tap the deputy and ask, ’Is this for real?’ because they couldn’t believe that a young looking black man could be the judge. I benefitted from being at the right place at the right time. My career was greatly influenced by Morehouse Men; Tom Sampson, Woody Sampson, Mr. Howard, A.M. Davis, E.B. Williams and all of the guys that I’ve had a chance to meet since that time. I think my biggest career highlight was that time I was sworn in as a pro-bono judge because of what I was able to experience afterwards. A personal highlight is looking back over the years and know that I’ve been with the same young lady for 29 years, side by side. Spelman graduate, former judge, attorney, stand alone woman. The fact that we have stood the test of time and continue to do so each and every day, I don’t have a more notable highlight than my wife. I’m a simple man. I’m big on loyalty and family and I wouldn’t have that if I didn’t have her.
Judge Chris Ward and his wife Judge Meka Ward
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Blake Rascoe ’11 (left) and Patrick Boateng ’11 (right) are working to create better skin care solutions for men of color
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Clean & Clear Blake Rascoe ’11 and Patrick Boateng ’11 saw a need, and created a skin care line for men of color called Ceylon. The unlikely duo came from very different career paths (Entertainment industry and Government work) to collaborate on a product that will change how men see themselves.
WAMM: What inspired Ceylon? PB & BR "We created Ceylon as a response to our personal struggles as men of color finding skincare products that were appropriate for us." WAMM: What is your ultimate goal in this industry? PB & BR "We want to bridge the gap between people of color and better dermatological health." WAMM: How much of your personal style has influenced the direction of Ceylon? PB & BR "Ceylon’s aesthetic is entirely influenced by our personal style. We’ve always been interested in brands that focus on delivering core functionality while maintaining a simple, no-nonsense visual approach and we like to think that Ceylon reflects that mindset in the way it presents itself to the world." WAMM: Describe your career trajectory and your life trajectory since you graduated from Morehouse? BR: "After graduating Morehouse I decided to try my hand at the entertainment business first as an agent at WME Entertainment before moving on to TV production with Bunim Murray and Mark Burnett. Eventually, I followed my interest in music management to a role as day-to-day manager for John Legend." PB: "After Morehouse, I did joint Master’s degrees at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Design School before joining the Department of State, working in Southern China. These were all great opportunities that allowed me to meet so many people from all walks of life and do a lot of traveling, which helped broaden my perspective and provide a better sense of who I was and could be."
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WAMM: What is something that you know now, that you’d wished you’d known as a student? PB & BR: "Even if you can’t understand someone else’s motivations for the things they do or say, it’s important to empathize with that fact that they too are trying to find their own path in this world." WAMM: What’s been your largest obstacle with launching your business? PB & BR: "Our largest obstacle has definitely been managing funds. When you’re in the consumer business, you need to account for the fact that it takes a lot of money to both develop and build the actual product that you’re bringing to market. At the same time, it’s an important obstacle to face because it pushes you to maximize what you have, which can yield some really surprising and impressive results for the business." WAMM: What is success? How do you know that you’re successful? PB & BR: "Success is when you feel you’ve accomplished what you set out to do. However, the closer you move along that path, your vision and perspective change and that sense of accomplishment always stays up ahead of you." WAMM: How important are the lessons of failure? How can those lessons be applied to your future plans? PB & BR: "Learning from failure is critical for future success. However, looking forward, failure can only teach you under two conditions: The first is that you have forgiven yourself for whatever happened, accepting that the end result might not have been in your control. "The second is that you have to be willing to closely examine your failure and think about how you might do things differently if a similar situation comes around in the future." WAMM: Who is your hero and why? PB & BR: "Virgil Abloh. Virgil is someone who has been able to leverage his training as a designer (architect) and his vision to create a massive impact on culture. He’s given us the opportunity to re-examine what it means to be an "expert" or have "experience", showing that, in fact, what matters is determination to leverage what you have to build something that matters." WAMM: Why is it important for alumni to give back and reach back? PB & BR: "The Morehouse family is incredible and will follow you and support you for the rest of your life, no matter where you are on Earth. When alumni give back and reach back, they strengthen Morehouse’s ability to make an impact on the world through the men the school produces." WAMM: In ten years, Ceylon will be...? PB & BR: "An influential brand with a global presence as well as an important step on the path to equitable healthcare outcomes for people of color."
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Establish your recurring gift TODAY to support Morehouse’s future for Paul ’Tripp’ Rue, III, Class of 2036 GIVING.MOREHOUSE.EDU
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Javarro Edwards ’92
ACTIVELY ENGAGED ALU 95 WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019
UMNUS
J
avarro Edwards ’92 is a renaissance man. Not only is he the founder and CEO of JME Group, LLC where he runs a series of airport concessions at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, he’s also an NCAA Division I football official with the Pac-12 Conference. Edwards is also the president of the Atlanta chapter of the Morehouse College National Alumni Association, and an avid supporter of Morehouse athletics and a thoughtful, consistent and generous Morehouse donor. A devoted father and husband, avid golfer, and the lead sponsor for this year’s reunion golf tournmanent Edwards has selflessly set a high bar for what being an active and engaged alumni looks like.
WAMM: How do you find the time to do all of the things that you do, and still do them all well? JE: "Prioritize my goals set my routine and execute my action plan." WAMM: What about the way you grew up, influences how you live your life today? JE: "Only child surrounded with the love of my parents and my extended family. My dad showed me what manhood looks like and my mother showed mehow to express it with compassion and confidence." WAMM: You’re an official in the PAC-12. How did all of this happen, and what started you down this path? JE: "I wanted to be part of the game without being in the game, Mr. Felix Bell introduced me to Marshall Little of Capital City Officials Association in 2000 and the rest is history. Along the way I have stood on the shoulders of great men and will be the shoulders to help the next young black official to come up." WAMM: What’s the proper balance of ambition and fulfillment? JE: "I feel that scale is determined individually, for me it has to be yoked and weighted differently depending on the circumstance. My ambition is driven to help others only fulfilled by the completion of that task." WAMM: What is your favorite part of parenting? JE: "Being the light that shines on the path to help guide my child’s walk."
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WAMM: What if your vision for the Atlanta Chapter of the Morehouse College National Alumni Association? JE: "Continue to work together in true brotherhood so that no matter who sits in the seat the mission of taking a man of Morehouse to becoming a Morehouse Man is always at the forefront." WAMM: Why is it so important for brothers to give back and be involved? JE: " Without alumni engagement, the college and it’s mission cannot be sustained." WAMM: What’s your ultimate goal in officiating? JE: "Help the next young black official get to the next level, oh yeah work the national championship." WAMM: How do you define success? JE: "Leaving the space I have occupied better than it was while I was here. Live your best life!!!!" WAMM: What’s the best round of golf you’ve ever played in your life? JE: "I haven’t yet, the best is yet to come!!!"
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Attorney Michael T. Sterling juggles a legal career, a beautiful young family and a starring role on one of the most watched television programs in the world. He’s driven by the need to live a life in service to others, and he’s just getting started.
Hundreds of feet above Atlanta’s bustling Peachtree Street, at the comfortable comfines of the 191 Club, Michael Sterling is excited. The day of our conversation, he was days away from marrying his wife, Eva Marcille at a lavish, fairytale affair just a block away, and while we were talking, he got the news that he’d been officially admitted to the Georgia Bar. A graduate of Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Sterling practiced law in Illinois for Sibley Austin out of law school before becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago (think Sacker and Connerty on ’Billions’). The day of our conversation, he got the news that he was officially admitted in Georgia, which meant that his new law firm, Dreyer Sterling LLP, could officially take flight. In addition to the meteoric rise and success of his legal career, Sterling’s wife, Eva, is an entrepreneur, supermodel and actress who stars on the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Sterling spoke to me about his life, career, family, and the importance of living a life of consequence.
WAMM: Why do you love Beaumont? MS: Home. It’s my hometown. Anyone who feels that you’ve done even remotely well in life, you have to look back at how you got there at least in some respects, and think about the people that helped you get there, and most those people for me, are from Beaumont. It feels like there’s a city that supports me. Even, living in Atlanta, I hear from people from Beaumont all the time, and they’re proud of me and happy for me. So you can’t help but love the foundation. Beaumont gave me my confidence, my sense of self worth, my sense of belonging. My debate teacher persuaded me to practice law. All the things that I am, at least the good parts, it’s because of Beaumont. A state representative from Morehouse convinced me that Morehouse was the place that I need to be.
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WAMM: You were invited back to speak at your high school for commencement, right? MS: My high school closed, but I was chosen by the administrators and the teachers to speak. I was the first student body president of Ozen High School. It became a school in 1997, so it started with freshmen and sophomores, so we were always the upperclassmen. So, I was sophomore class president, then junior class president and then student body president. WAMM: Al Price, Class of 1950, impressed upon you the need to consider Morehouse, and you were smart enough to listen, yes? MS: Let me tell you what Al Price did, Joe. When I was a senior in high school, Al Price brought me and three of my friends, Ronald Booker, who’s also a Morehouse Man and two others to homecoming. He
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dropped us off on-campus and told us to go explore campus. Anybody who understands what Morehouse’s homecoming weekend is like can appreciate that. Four high school seniors or juniors from Beaumont, TX who get dropped off on Morehouse’s campus...we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. We met TJ (Dr. Thomas Jones ’00), and he took us around to meet people. We hadn’t even met him before that day. It was black excellence on full display. Doctors and lawyers in the same place, and beautiful women everywhere, camaraderie, and it was love. I’d never seen anything like it. That’s Morehouse though. The other day, I helped a student who had a legal issue, and I walked him through it. After we were done, and I’d helped him out, he asked me, ’How much do I owe you?’. I told him, "You don’t owe me anything. But in fifteen years, when a Morehouse students needs help, remember what I did for you and pay it forward." That’s the example that TJ set, that Mr. Price set, and that’s how I approach things. WAMM: What were the highlights of your four years at Morehouse? MS: Well, I lost every election at Morehouse. Every one. I lost everything I ran for, but you know, my poll numbers were much better at Spelman! But seriously, speaking at NSO my sophomore, junior and senior
special because you’re welcoming in your peers. People still come to me to this day and tell me that they recall what I told their freshman class. Pledging was special for me. I pledged Kappa, Pi chapter. Making friendships that have lasted. It wasn’t just frat brothers, but having a unique, special bond that’s lasted the last sixteen years. Tobe Johnson, having him for Thesis and Seminar prepared me for law school more than I thought it would. Tobe always wanted you to go back to the text, and that is basically what lawyers do all the time; citing case law, understanding case law. He always wanted you to go back and make your case based on what the text said; do your research. And that is basically what being a lawyer is. When writing motions and briefs, you’re looking at what the precedents are, and making a persuasive case that the law is on your side because of precedent. Tobe prepared me for law school. Morehouse itself is a highlight. All of these remote relationships that exist because of Morehouse are so rewarding. It’s hard to describe. It’s just special place. If you do Morehouse right, you leave with a bunch of friends and lifelong relationships. I pull on my Morehouse resources far more often than I do my other alma mater. And I know, for the most part, if this guy went to Morehouse, this guy is worth his salt. The
I tell Morehouse students all the time, for all intents and purposes, you are a man. You’re 18 years old, so you cannot rely on the justification or the excuse, "I was just in college and I didn’t understand". You are becoming who are. If you are shady, people are going to remember that. Everywhere you turn in life, people are going to remember that. You can’t forget it." WAMM: After Morehouse, you went to Texas Southern’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law. You returned home to Texas. How was Houston? What was that transition like? MS: I loved it. I’m double HBCU. I’m all the way maroon. I went to Texas Southern because it was one of the few places or the only place that gave me a scholarship. And my mom told me, ’after Morehouse, you’re going to take a scholarship.’. I went to Texas Southern with clinched teeth." WAMM: Why did you have clinched teeth? MS: Because I thought it was a lesser than school. I thought I should be at Tulane or Washington University, but I knew I hadn’t done what I was supposed to do all the way at Morehouse. I’d done enough to do okay at Morehouse, but I shoud’ve done better. I wasn’t necessarily ready to go back home, but it turned out to be the best decision I could’ve ever made. I had tough professors, man. I had professors that made you hand write your briefs. They didn’t want you to type anything,
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they didn’t want a brief you’d printed off of the internet or anywhere else. Two professors, Professor Douglass and Professor Walker, Criminal Law and Contract Law, which by coincidence, I amjured both of their classes. They were the hardest, but I responded well to that. I responded well to that discipline. They used old school tactics, but they worked. For me it worked. I went in class, with my handwritten briefs, everytime. And it’s interesting because I’ve I’d have been at disciplined at Morehouse as I was at Texas Southern, I never would’ve ended up at Texas Southern. I had this moment with my mom, when I got to Texas Southern. My mom was helping me transition, and she and my dad were putting gas in my car, and they were talking about some things and I hadn’t been on top of getting transitioned as I should have. And my mom is getting more and more upset as she’s talking to me, and she points to my car and I had my Kappa tags and my Kappa cane , and she says, "And that..." like only a black mom can, "...that is over with! It is time to focus! That is over with." And that day, I took the tags off the car, put the cane in the trunk, and never took it back out. That moment gave me a new sense of focus. I was like, here you are, you’ve wanted to be a lawyer your whole life, and you’re on the verge of making that dream come true, and if you want to make this happen, you’ve got to go work for it. You can ask anyone I went to law school with, totally unprompted, they’ll tell you, "the only thing I remember about Mike is that he was the first one in the library, and the last one out, everyday."
I organized a few cases, I put binders together, I would just look at his case files, and find things to do. By the end of the first week, he was paying me. It wasn’t much, but he was paying me. He started taking me to court and to trial with special permission. I knew though that working for Norm, I’d learn things, and I’d handled what was necessary during the school year, by being in the top 5% of my class. I knew the job opportunities were coming. Because while at Harvard everybody gets recruited, at Texas Southern, you have to be in the top 5% to get recruited by the biggest law firms in America. I knew that by the fall, in the OCI office, I was going to be on every firm’s list; a black man, in the top 5% at Texas Southern University, and I knew I was going to be a good interviewer because I was a Morehouse guy! So I knew I was going to knock the interviews out. I was being flown all over the country to interview with the top firms; Akin Gump, Sidney Austin, Carter Ledyard and Milburn on Wall Street, at Gardier Sewell...you name the large firm, I was interviewing. Firms were cutting deals with each other to get me to there. After that, I no longer felt like a disappointment, because all of the Harvard, University of Chicago, Yale and all of the others from the top ranked law schools were interviewing at the same big law firms. Sterling was the Executive Director of the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency
WAMM: We have far more pre-law and political science majors than we do lawyers. When we were in school, you were either going to Wall Street, you were going to be a doctor or you were going to be a lawyer. You’d go to Wharton, HLS, Stanford, Yale, NYU, Booth or Kellogg. That was the standard that we informally set for each other. And if you didn’t do that, we figured you’d failed. MS: When I was at Morehouse, and decided to go to TSU, it felt like I’d failed. When they asked me, where are you going to law school, and everyone’s talking about Harvard and Yale, and I felt like I was a disappointment. WAMM: When did you feel you weren’t a disappointment? MS: After my first year at Texas Southern. WAMM: What did you do that summer? MS: I went to work for a criminal defense lawyer, in Houston named Norm Silverman. He told me I could come work for a week. He told me, "Mike, I don’t have any jobs for you to do specifically, but you can come hang around the office, and make yourself useful. I’m not going to pay you anything, but if you end up doing something, we can work something out." I showed up every morning at 8 o’clock, and I figured out things to do.
I proved to myself that if I put forth my full effort, I could compete with everybody. WAMM: You lost every election at Morehouse, but you then became National Chair of the National Black Law Students Association. How does that happen? MS: My first year of law school, I was in the NBLSA. We went to the national convention. It was a great event, I met several students and attorneys from all over. There are
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eight elected officials on the national board, and there are appointed positions that the national chair has, and I applied for one of those positions and got it. I was the National Career Development Director. So I helped to bring attention to the talent of black lawyers. Which was strategic as well because I was able to interact with law firms, and get them to recruit. So, when I was on the board, I told my buddy, I was going to run for national chair. So several other people decided they were going to run as well. I started calling Morehouse and Spelman people who were at law schools throughout the country, and I asked
Association is an outstanding organization, and I look forward to welcoming you all to Atlanta and I hope it’s with Michael Sterling as your National Chair".
One of the former national chairs is Charles Ogletree, and he invited me to participate in a lecture and panel at Harvard. It was an incredible experience.
So, I still had to give a speech. And the speech is a big part of the convention and the vote. So, I did what we as Morehouse Men do. I worked on that speech, and perfected it, and the time for the speech came, I remember seeing a student from Georgetown who was supporting another candidate and she was sitting in the front row with a pencil in her hand. Her mouth started opening during the speech, and she dropped the
I don’t run for BLSA chair, if I don’t go to Texas Southern. And I was the president of every Black Law Students Association in the country, including the Ivy League schools, and I did it from Texas Southern.
Sterling and his wife Eva
them for their support and asked them to be a delegate. We put on. The convention was going to be in Atlanta, which was perfect because my mentor at the time was a guy named State Senator Kasim Reed. So, I asked then Senator Reed, who had been the campaign manager for Mayor Shirley Franklin, if he would ask the Mayor if she would endorse me as I was running for National Chair of NBLSA, and we were bringing the convention to Atlanta. Kasim, got Shirley Franklin to endorse me. I was able to post her statement that read "The National Black Law Students
pencil when I was done. I’ll never forget the look of defeat on her face. My speech forced a split in the Georgetown vote. It was a good experience for some reasons, but it helped me realize that I didn’t want to run a professional organization. The goals of a professional organization are very different than the goals of public service, and I wanted to have a life in public service. I wanted to do more in the community, and others were more interested in some of the more trivial things in my mind.
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WAMM: So after TSU, you get the big job at Sidley Austin in Chicago, and at some point you left and went to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago. How did that happen? MS: I had more pride when Obama won the Iowa Caucus, I had more pride than when he wont the presidency. I remember being on the green line and walking down Madison Avenue, and I worked at the law firm where he met Michelle and started his career. And I knew that day, that I was going to make the transition from corporate lawyer to public service. I was at Sidley Austin for a little over two years. WAMM: What was one striking thing that you learned from working at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago? MS: The incredible power of prosecutors. Everyday you have the discretion to make decisions about another person’s life. It was amazing. If you’re doing it right, you’re trying to mete out justice in a way that’s fair and uphold the principles of the law, and I was fortunate to have a US Attorney who would listen to even the lowest of us in the office, but he talked to everybody and listened, and it certainly felt that at the time I was doing God’s work. When I worked on cases related to child exploitation and locked people up who were exploiting children, or who were using the internet to create child pornography, you felt like you were doing God’s work. Most of the time there is no black and white, it’s gray. You can make so many arguments about the law,
but there’s some mix. Some prosecutors are good, and some defense lawyers are good and some are bad on both sides. There’s no all good and all bad. WAMM: How did you make it back to Atlanta? MS:Kasim Reed was on Meet the Press with David Gregory. I texted him and said, I caught you on MTP, and I thought you did a pretty good job. So, Kasim calls me, and he never calls, he usually texts. So, he calls me, and he says ’tell me what you thought’. So, we talked throught it, and he says ’I want you to think about coming to Atlanta as my senior adviser’. I really was loving being a U.S. Attorney. I was thinking, ’politicians say things all the time’, so I didn’t take it too seriously, but I knew that if he was serious about it, he would follow up with me and make sure it happens. About six months later, he calls me on a Thursday night, when I’m out with other federal prosecutors, and he calls me. And he says, ’Mike, I want you to come to Atlanta and be my senior adviser’. I was thinking, something must’ve just happened. I flew to Atlanta two weeks later, we talked and met, and he offered me the job on the spot. I spoke to the US Attorney, Pat Fitzgerald, and he said, "I don’t want to lose you, but I don’t want you to take the conservative route, and these opportunities don’t come up often." I asked if I could start in Atlanta after making two years at the US Attorney’s office. On the two weeks between jobs, I went to Texas and helped one of my best friends on a case. I was supposed to be on vacation, and I did a pro hoc vice to try the case. I get to Atlanta, and I tell him that I’m in town, and that I’ll see him on Monday, and he asks me to come to Woodruff Park. I asked him should I wear anything specific, and he says to just come to the police mobile command unit. I get there, and it’s Occupy Atlanta. And they tell me the situation and look
at me and ask, you were a federal prosecutor, what should we do? So, I was immediately thrust into the deep end and says ’let’s learn how to swim’. I hadn’t even been in Atlanta for twelve hours. I missed homecoming and all of tailgate dealing with Occupy Atlanta. I think the mayor knew it was Morehouse Homecoming, but he was prone to sending messages. He didn’t tell me directly, but he made it clear that this is the price of leadership. This is what unique 29 year old leaders do, they miss tailgate, and make personal sacrifices to address the city’s needs. I missed homecoming ’11 because I was starting the job, and I missed homecoming ’12 because the Mayor said ’we have to go to Florida to campaign for President Obama’. Again, that was the price of leadership. WAMM: You go from the Mayor’s office to the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency in 2016... MS: I advised the Mayor for three years, and there were federal corruption investigations into the AWDA. So the Mayor wanted me to run it on an interim basis, and they knew that I would make things run correctly. I changed things like a guy getting paid $2500 a month for cutting grass, and there was no grass. I cut that out. It got to the point that I just didn’t pay invoices. I froze spending until I looked at it. Some people thought it was the right move, and some people were upset because they were waiting on their checks, but it was what was necessary to clean that agency up.
The AWDA was a grind. The expectation wasn’t that I would just stop corruption, but that I would also turn it around and make it a viable agency that would serve its purpose of finding people jobs to better their lives. The Mayor made a surprise announcement to appointment me, and said that I’d graciously accepted like in ’Coming to America’. I was there for two and a half years and then I decided I was going to run for Mayor of Atlanta. WAMM: Why did you want to become Atlanta’s mayor? MS: I did my research, and I saw that the political landscape was fractured. Again, I’d done my research and I knew that there was usually going to be a candidate that would be elevated as ’the one’. If there wasn’t one, there’d be two. What I saw developing Sterling announced his candidacy for Mayor of Atlanta in 2016.
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was six and seven of those candidates. I thought, that Atlanta was about to have six or seven candidates who all look like and sound like each other. They’d all been on city council for eight to ten years, and it was a bunch of politicians. It was same old same old. If there was ever an opportunity for a unique candidate to surprise some folks, I felt it could be me; former federal prosecutor, advised the mayor at the highest level and turned around the city’s most corrupt agency. I’d done some good things and I knew the issues and I’d demonstrated my capacity for leading. I had access to the analytics that showed me that I looked like what Atlanta was looking like, younger. I figured if I could win over the young people in a populist fashion, that the headwinds would blow in a favorable direction and I could win. I was wrong. My calculus on the big field, and me being able to stand out was off. I got drowned out more than I could stand out. I’m not bombastic, and I knew the issues, but there were far more popular figures with more money in the bank who could communicate more regularly than I could. I thought I could stand out. WIth so many voices, it was hard to hear mine. With nine people running, it became harder to stand out.
I kept waiting for that moment, that one viral moment where people see. When you start hoping for that in politics, you’ve lost. I was working hard and knocking on doors and you just try different strategies. I got taken by some political consultants, being a first time candidate who didn’t know better. I had raised some money, and they came and pillored me. It was a learning experience, so I enjoyed it. You know, Facebook reminds you of what you were doing a year ago today, so this time last year, I was running for Mayor, and I get a constant reminder of it, but those are good memories. During the election was one when I got the call to represent the DA in Mississippi. When you run for office, you don’t make any money, so I had to try cases to earn a living. I was living off of the earnings that I’d saved prior to running. When you personally spend money that others give you to run for office, it’s illegal, and I wasn’t doing that. I figured I was losing anyway, so I figured I could use the win and some money. A couple of weekends when I was going to Mississippi, Eva would lead them out to knock on doors. She would take them out to knock on doors when I was in Mississippi. She’d fly from California to do that. She made the notes, seeing if anyone
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wanted a yard sign. I ended up winning the case, which was great from my spirit. I needed that win. I kept my promise too. They asked me if it didn’t look like I wasn’t going to win, who would I support. I explained that if I get two weeks out and there’s no prospect of winning, I would step away. I looked at my numbers and realized that there was no current path to victory, and I dropped out of the race and supported my Morehouse brother, Ceasar Mitchell. So, while helping Ceasar, I spoke to some of our Morehouse brothers and we talked over a series of things, and I told them that if they’d supported me and given me $2,000,000, I’d have run away with that election. And they agreed. A little late, but they agreed. My total was was $246,000, just short of $250,000. And I was raising money in a very hostile environment. I enjoyed the experience and wouldn’t take it back. When it didn’t work out, I knew I would go back to my first love, practicing law. I was trying to figure out if I’d go to a big law firm, to become a prosecutor, I was trying to figure it out. While I was trying to figure things out, I got a call from Russell
Simmons to represent him. So, I thought to myself, I want to do this, and take on the cases that I actually want to try, and have the control. My friend David Dreyer called me, and he said, ’I’m at a law firm now, but I’m thinking of leaving. We ought to consider partnering together.’ A few conversations later, we started our own law firm, and we’ve been rocking ever since. WAMM: Why do you love being a lawyer? MS: I see the parralels between law and running for public office; its advocacy on a more individual scale. If I’m running for office, you’re saying I want to represent you. It’s the same thing you do as a lawyer. I see the parallels in it, it’s just a more narrowly defined set of problems and you get paid better for it. Law is my first love because you get to advocate for people, and help people. There is no better feeling than somebody facing the biggest obstacle or issue in their life, and their business is at stake, their financial well being and is their freedom at stake and out of all the people that they can have represent them, they’re saying, ’this is the guy’. That’s why it’s my first love. I think about what it means to be someone’s lawyer. I represent you. I’m your counselor. I love that. I love being a voice for other people. I always feel that thrill of doing things on behalf of other people.
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The
Favorite Illya Davis ’89, Morehouse College professor of Philosophy and African American Studies engages students on a personal level and makes lasting connections so much so that the student body voted him the 2018-19 Professor of the Year. Learn about his sartorial splendor, what inspires his work and why he does what he does for his students.
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I
’m late to meet Illya Davis. I’m walking from my office through campus on what’s called ’Old Lee Street’, which is situated between one of the eastern boundaries of Morehouse College and one of the furthermost western boundary of Clark Atlanta University. As I make my way up the stairs past Sale Hall, I was looking for Professor Davis. We were to meet in front of Graves Hall so that I could speak to him about the interview for this piece, and take his picture. The stage for commencment was being erected, just a few hundred yards east of Graves Hall, and new sod was being laid on the campus green when there he was, standing stentorian in a tan plaid linen suit, a purple gingham shirt and a purple bow tie. Classic Illya Davis on a Friday in May. Davis can be seen holding court outside of Wheeler Hall where his office is located, or on the benches outside of the seemingly all too comfortable space outside the Morehouse College bookstore. He challenges students from all of the schools in the Atlanta University Center, because they all take his courses. He’s a favorite on the lecture circuit too, speaking to prospective students, guest lecturing at colleges and universities throughout the country and providing his opinion on CNN and NPR among other news outlets. Davis, a native of Atlanta, earned a bachelors of arts degree in Philosophy from Morehouse in 1989. While at Morehouse, he was a member of the famed Morehouse College Glee Club, and traveled throughout extensively with his ’brothers in song’. Davis earned a Masters of Theological Studies with a focus on Religion and Religious Studies from the Harvard Divinity School and studied the Philosophy of Religion at The University of Chicago. In addition to his work at Morehouse, Davis taught at Clark Atlanta University, where he was the chapter adviser to the Beta Psi chapter of his beloved Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Incorporated as well as the Associate Director of the Clark Atlanta University Honors Program. While it’s become rather common to see him in conversation with students, it seems to stand out, because the practice, by and large seems so rare. He holds court in the most classic of senses with students of all walks of life, and remembers important things about them, imploring them to think and dig deeper for answers to life’s most difficult questions, whether in the classroom, or on-campus on the benches outside of the bookstore. His method has not only made him memorable, but beloved, and he has woven himself into the essential fabric of what is right, and what is working well at Morehouse, in the sense that he has taken it upon himself to know his students and have them give him their best. It’s no wonder why the students voted him Professor of the Year.
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WAMM: You were awarded Professor of the Year by the students at this year’s Lux Awards. In addition to how does that make you feel, why do you think students hold you in such high regard? ID: It is humbling and overwhelming that I was awarded this superlative by our students. To be sure, this gesture by the students is the highest honor I could receive as a professor. I take the life of the mind and the care of the self to be essential to what animates my being and gives meaning to my life. When I am engaged in conversation with students, I am making myself available to redacting my own perspectives as well as assisting them as they interrogate their own preconceptions and suppositions. To a degree, this honor acknowledges that the teacher/student engagement beyond the classroom is instrumental in cultivating both a continuous and thoroughgoing commitment to a creative education of the student, as well as a gift to the professor who cares for them. WAMM: Who inspires you? ID: My mother is, and has always been my greatest inspiration. She is the most humane and introspective human I have ever known. WAMM: What is something that a mentor taught you or showed you, that over time you’ve worked into your routine? ID: One must be committed to the promulgation and extension of the freedoms, integrity and care of others as oneself, if not to a greater degree, then at least as much. It is not enough to merely assert the virtues of being human, but one must perform the duties associated with what we owe one another as ethical beings who care for the welfare of our sisters and brothers. WAMM: What was the last compelling book, essay or paper that you’ve read? ID: “Collective Choice and Social Welfare,” by Amarya Sen. WAMM: With so many options and such stiff competition and opportunities elsewhere, why should students choose to attend Morehouse in 2019? ID: Morehouse is a complex network of personalities and dispositions that come together to form an equally complex and nurturing brotherhood. Our students are given opportunities for self-discovery without sophomoric conflations of complying with social conformity to sameness. African American male human agents are here, at least in part, because Morehouse affords them the occasion to wrestle with competing notions of how to cultivate their humanity in light of the diverse oppressions that assail them. This refinement of oneself is essential to any views of what a Morehouse man may become or is. Here we do this work together, not perfectly, but lissomely and ideally with care. WAMM: As a person who works with Morehouse students everyday, how do the students of today, differ from your time on the yard? ID: The extant students have come to Morehouse with stronger academic resumes, but I do not believe they demonstrate our practical wisdom and sincere appreciation for the gift of our historical past. WAMM: You’re celebrating your 30th class reunion, in what way can your classmates and contemporaries make a profound and lasting impact on the lives of the current students? ID: It will be ideal for my classmates to make available their intellectual and practical gifts. To be sure, we are desirous of ALL the financial dispensation that MUST be contributed by my mates—consistently and perennially. But, we must maintain our brotherhood through both financial and existential engagement. Our students have much to learn from the graduates of the class of 1989 who are now professors, lawyers, judges, physicians, musicians, painters, poets, novelists, humanitarians, etc. It takes works and financial support; it’s not an either/or. WAMM: How far will the Raiders go this year? ID: SUPERBOWL, baby! WAMM: How many bowties do you own, and what’s your favorite one and why? ID: I have approximately 70 bowties. The one I am wearing for this article is my favorite. WAMM: Illya Davis will be remembered as... ID:. . . as someone who cared, loved and submitted himself to the betterment of the lives of humanity.
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Devin Emory ’12, Co-Founder of the app HOUSESports and Program Coordinator of the Morehouse College Journalism and Sports Program
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A
native of Memphis and a graduate of the heralded Medill School of Journalism, Devin Emory ’12 is imbued in sports. He’s the Program Coordinator for the Journalism and Sports Program at Morehouse, and the co-founder of the app HOUSESports, which began while he was still a student at Morehouse.
He cut his teeth while covering the Atlanta University Center sports scene in college, and has taken an idea that started in a dream, and made it a reality. Before you read further, please pick up your phone, select the App Store or Google Play, and download HOUSESports. WAMM: How was HOUSESports born? DE: I am originally from Memphis, TN and majored in African American Studies with a minor in Journalism & Sports. The name Housesports came to me in a dream during my sophomore year of college. By the end of my junior year in the spring of 2011, we wrote the constitution and were approved by Student Life to be an officially chartered club on campus. HOUSEsports was the AUC’s sports media source and placed content on social and housesports.org from 2011-2013. During that era, we were also dubbed the student club for the Journalism & Sports Program on campus. We had a student-ran publication with about 22 staffers from the AUC that provided practical journalism experience to students aspiring to be in the field professionally. HOUSEsports provided game stories and post-game interviews for Morehouse, CAU, and Spelman athletics at the time, hosted video game competitions, and put on pep rallies and barbecues for sports teams in the AUC. Prior to my graduation in 2012, ESPN sponsored HOUSEsports Weekend on campus April 12-14, 2012 bringing ESPN personalities J. A. Adande and Jemele Hill to Morehouse. NYT columnist Bill Rhoden and Morehouse alumnus Edwin Moses were also highlighted at Morehouse during the sports conference that weekend. My classmate and now business partner John Smith, ’13 and I were both recognized with the Spike Lee Student Sports Journalists of the Year award for our contributions to the program during HOUSEsports Weekend 2012. After graduating, we started an internet-based sports talk radio program at housesportsradio.com completing over 150 shows from 2012-14. I also posted podcasts on iTunes under "HOUSEsports Radio" during that time. In 2016, we filed for HOUSEsports, LLC in the state of Georgia. By summer 2017 we had finished developing a mobile site for housesports.com, but we held off launching the platform until we had apps for iOs and android completed to be able to compete with social giants of today and to get push notification capabilities. After finishing my master’s program at Medill (Northwestern), I came back to the A and got a job in the Journalism & Sports Program at our alma mater. On March 9, 2019, Housesports launched our apps to the App Store and Google Play Console. Housesports is the home of sports conversation and debate; a sports social network. We are a platform for fan expression in real-time and the Home of No Bandwagoning. To my knowledge (and I’m pretty certain), the student org is no longer active on campus and has been dormant for the last 5 years or so. Current students on campus today have no idea about "HOUSEsports: The Atlanta University Center’s sports media source." The brand Housesports is now completely separate and non-affiliated from all Morehouse dealings besides 2 of the 5 team members of the company being Morehouse alums.
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Our current ecosystem at www.housesports.com houses Nation boards for each NFL, MLB, NHL, NCAAF (Div-1A), NCAAM (Div-1A), NCAAB (Div-1A) teams. This summer, we will be opening WNBA and MLS nations as well on the platform. We are free and accessible for fans to sign-up now. We’d like to spread the word about www.housesports.com to all alumni, all sports fans, and all demographics. Sports has proven to bring people together in society from all walks of life and our platform aims to be a heaven for people to express sports-related commentary whenever desired. Also, be on the lookout for Housesports Happy Hour if you’re in Atlanta this summer. We are scheduled for our first event at Taco Mac - Holcomb Bridge on June 29th, 2019 at 4:30 p.m. Housesports will be giving out merch and buying sports fans a free beer who download the app or invite a friend. WAMM: Who are your favorite sports teams and why? DE: I’m a Memphis Tigers basketball fan, Tennessee Vols football fan, Redskins fan, Lakers fan, Atlanta Braves fan, and newly cemented Atlanta United fan. WAMM: In three years, HOUSESports will be...? DE: In three years, Housesports will be more widely known as the sports social network and still viewed as a black-owned and operated company serving all lovers of sports globally. WAMM: How do you find the time in the day to fulfill all of your interests? DE: There is no secret to the grind. You can’t cheat the process. I am frequently burning the mid-
night oil, staying up late hours facilitating meetings and working on deliverables. It’s the same 24 hours that we are all allotted, but for things that drive you, God has a way of willing you to the finish line if you’re committed to the goal or task at hand. I’ve found that to be true for me in this journey. No excuses, just get it done. WAMM: When did you first fall in love with reporting sports and who have you looked up to the most in the field? DE: Growing up in grade school I looked up to Ahmad Rashad on the NBA on NBC. He had the
personality and rapport with athletes like MJ that I always wanted to emulate. My senior year of high school, I really got my feet wet with reporting as a sports anchor on our school news broadcast. WAMM: What do you hope your students will know by the time they finish the program here at Morehouse? DE: In my capacity in the Journalism and Sports Program, we hope to continue to groom the next
generation of sports reporters and journalists. It is expected that our current students excel in graduate studies and continue to propel our program’s reputation and growing tradition of producing top talent in the field. WAMM: Who are your favorite teams and why? DE: I’m a Lakers fan and a Memphis Tigers basketball fan.
WAMM: What is your dream for the branding and marketing of Morehouse’s athletic teams? DE: Morehouse has the potential of being a black Stanford or Duke in athletics, especially nestled
in the hotbed of Atlanta. We can recruit and attract top talent from our community, but my dream is that we improve our athletic program’s resources and increase our reach and exposure with more nationally televised games. The winning is sure to follow if we trust and fund that formula. I believe athletics can be a cash cow for institutional funding if the college can get on board with an aggressive strategy for enhancing athletics.
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WE ARE MOREHOUSE JUNE 2019 Volume 2, Number 1 EDITOR IN CHIEF Joe Carlos, III ’04 Associate Director of Alumni Engagement CONTRIBUTING EDITOR D. Aileen Dodd Interim Executive Director, Office of Strategic Communications 2019© Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storageor retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. WE ARE MOREHOUSE, is published monthly by the Morehouse College Office of External Relations and Alumni Engagement and the Morehouse College Office of Strategic Communications Henry M. Goodgame, Jr. ’84 Vice President Office of External Relations and Alumni Engagement Morehouse College 830 Westview Dr., SW Atlanta, GA 30314-3773 Phone: 470.639.0925 www.wearemorehouse.com Letters, comments and suggestions: joseph.carlos@morehouse.edu
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