Part III | Rooted Deeper, Not Redirected

My journey to the OG, the Original Ground, did not reshape my leadership philosophy.

It validated it. I didn’t return with a new framework or a revised sense of purpose. I came back more deeply connected to the one that has been guiding me for over a decade. What started out as a description of my transformation journey became a prescription for my leadership development and coaching approach. The tagline on my business card and slogan on my merch, Rooted-Resisting-Revolutionary, are more than words, they are ways. They are requirements for the type of leadership needed to advance justice and collective healing we all deserve.

Being on Alkebulan/African soil did not send me searching for direction in the way I initially hoped it would. It validated that I'm already on the path I am meant to be on. A path led by my heart and shaped by my truth. One that has never promised ease and comfort but has always led me toward radical meaning and continued (r)evolution.

The OG did not ask me to abandon who I am but invited me to truly understand why I cannot. Why I WILL NOT.

There have been dark and difficult moments, periods of uncertainty that tested my resolve, seasons that asked whether I would water down my truth to survive. But I hold a light that was passed down to me. A torch lit by those who came before me, people who risked everything so that truth could travel forward through time. Through me.

Risk has always been an integral component to being revolutionary. I accept it.

My duty is not to seek comfort; it is to carry the light. To illuminate the path for those coming behind me, just as it was diligently lit for me. It is an assignment I take seriously and with humility because my trials, however painful, are not comparable to the unimaginable violence endured by those stolen from their land, forced across the Transatlantic, and exploited through generations of free labor and sanctioned terror. My discomfort is not their trauma. My struggle is not their captivity. And that knowing does not silence me. It does quite the opposite.

It is my duty to speak truth to power and to infuse factual history where erasure thrives. I will always center pride where shame has been manufactured.

My people have always taken nothing and made something. We have always been alchemists. We have always been innovators under constraint, visionaries under violence, creators under impossible conditions. We have always been the blueprint.

To be silent in the face of this truth would not be neutrality, it would be siding with my oppressor. It would be complicity in constructs that keep us mentally caged. I cannot be complacent nor quiet trapped by the myths that limit our imagination or require us to forget in order to function. Liberation is not inherited automatically, it is practiced, proclaimed, protected and then passed from one generation to the next. And I intend to keep passing it forward.

Rooted Deeper, Not Redirected.

From tagline to tee shirts and keynotes, to my approach for living, learning, and leading... #RootedResistingRevolutionary #HowItStarted and #HowItsGrowing

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