Welcome everyone on a much better Friday and I've a couple of announcements one is cell phones off please second wait for the microphone during the question and answer period the other thing you need to know is that handsome gentlemen there is from channel 17 and eventually you'll be able to watch the whole lecture again now our EE Board is usually extremely brilliant and right on the money but this time we've made a little mistake if you notice on Friday April 6th it says we're gonna have coffee however the lecture is in the sanctuary uh-uh no coffee allowed the coffee will therefore be on the previous Friday on March 23rd yeah the 23rd so the other thing I have to tell you is remember that we are planning a trip on May 9th and sign up two weeks yes the 23rd up to we the trip to Berry is in May and the sign-up sheet is in the back and the other thing I want to remind you all of is that every week Peter our genius here tapes the lectures and the questions that you ask and the answers which is why you got to have a microphone and he makes copies and they are available to borrow you need to go back and sign up take the CD go home play it then bring it back we have CDs going back to 2007 so and they're all arranged by either the whoever gave the lecture or the date so it is a wonderful benefit and of course because I'm standing here before you we would like a volunteer to carry on that work and Kathy has done it for many years and she's an expert at it would be happy to train you but she's ready to retire so we hope that that benefit will continue and now Beth will introduce our speaker very happy today to welcome Paul you know Paul earned his bachelor's in philosophy and his master's in education from Boston College he also holds a master's from the Harvard Graduate School of Education for the past five years he's been the assistant principal at the Frederick Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington he also is a partner in a local consulting firm that helps organizations achieve greater proficiency culturally and just this week Paul began a new position in a different place and so we're very fortunate that he's with us still today he is now the senior advisor for strategic diversity assessment and research at the University of Vermont and if you've been following the news you know that diversity issues are front and center at UVM as they have been in the community and in the nation so it's a great pleasure that we welcome Paul youn thank you very much Beth it is an honor to be here and I do want to just acknowledge first and foremost that having been at UVM now for the past five days I think I might have caught a little bit of a cold and so my voice today is particularly baritone and I hope that actually that is good especially for those of you who choose to listen to this again at another time my mother has joked with me throughout my life that I should become a radio personality and so again I hope that my voice is accessible I also want to make sure with Peter's help that everybody here in this room can hear me so if there is a time where you feel like we need to turn up the volume or if you can't hear me for whatever reason please just let us know I think a simple hand-in-arm gesture would be sufficient or again trying to get one of our attentions as well so as Beth said it is again great to be actually back here in South Burlington as I drove down Dorset Street just a few minutes ago and past the Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School I was thinking about how much has changed just over the past seven days at least for me it is great to be back here to do this Beth and I actually met just a few months ago in South Burlington when I was moderating a discussion on the yearly kind of reading of Frederick Douglass's what is the Fourth of July to the American Negro and that was a great event that I encourage you in the future if you have the opportunity to access that either here in South Burlington or at any number of the other readings across the state I think at the moment there are approximately 40 or 50 plus readings that are done over the course of usually in July but in other places as well and so again I hope that you have the opportunity to access that so thank you very much so I'm going to try here to have a conversation with all of you what I've been asked to do is to try to talk a little bit about the issue of race but before we get into this issue I do want to just first start by saying again how grateful I am I want to actually invoke and really remember a couple of very important people to me when I was an undergraduate at Boston College I had the opportunity to take a class titled the history and development of racism in the United States of America at the time the class was taught by two men named Horace and Paul Horace at the time was approximately 72 years old and had been teaching the course for over 20 consecutive years 50 consecutive semesters it was an amazing commitment to the work Horace and Paul also happened to be white men and what they taught me and what they literally taught thousands of undergraduates throughout the time that they taught this course was the history and development of racism in the United States of America all of the work that I have done over the course of my life frankly can be largely attributed to those two men I have done a lot of learning about my own history I've done a lot of learning about other people's histories as well and what I'm going to try to do today is to synthesize some of that for you in this again presentation but I know that like many of you here we've all gotten to this point in large part to those people who have made indelible marks on our lives and I just want to again remember them for that of course also recently passed away and that was something that obviously hit me quite hard but hopefully in work like this I hope to carry on his legacy of this important work so as I said again this is my name and title I think it's really important to acknowledge that I really do believe that my purpose in life is to passionately pursue justice to make the world a more equitable place I've been doing that as Beth said as primarily a school leader a school-based leader for the past gosh about 12 years now and I'm really excited about becoming a catamount and doing that work at UVM as well somebody over the past a couple of days has shared with me that Vermont is such a small community that there is no such thing as six degrees a separation here I've already learned over the past 15 or 20 minutes all of the different connections that I already have with some of you for example my realtor is very good friends with somebody in this room and I'm sure that there are other ones as well so let's start by just talking a little bit about this whole notion of race because to be very honest it's something that unfortunately I think in my opinion at least few people in this country have actually sat down to think or talk about it's easy enough to go to the dictionary to figure out what the definition of race is but there is this paradox that we in this country struggle with on the one hand right race doesn't exist to some people and on the other there are these very real outcomes for people who are classified as belonging to or not belonging to a certain race so how do we come to grips with this paradox how do we struggle with this seemingly in coherent I suppose way of dealing or understanding this world so the topic of today today's lecture here is really what's race got to do with it this is a question that we not only hear every single day on vpr or on CNN or written in newspaper articles but through social media there are people across not only our country but across the world who are grappling with this question and on the face of it it seems so simple what is race and yet for many centuries now it has confounded us and again what I'll try to at least illuminate is how it has impacted us here in this country as well so before we get there I do want to take a quick step back and talk a little bit about our approach at least and by I mean our the work that I do through the consultancy that I work with you probably recognize this man what I want to start to talk a little bit about is this whole notion of intellectual quotient and about this idea that we as human beings right have something inside of our brains that allow us to make sense of the world in an intellectual way I think for many years we've regarded this as one of the best ways for us to make sense of the world in which we live I think what we've started to do as human beings is better understand that that's not frankly good enough there are other ways to interact with the world and there are other ways to understand it that have re on just again that of the mind there's a whole body of research right now that has been developed over the course of the past few decades that has started to talk about this whole notion of emotional quotient or your emotional intelligence I think all of us can understand what that is I know for example that sometimes if you celebrate Thanksgiving in a very American traditional way and family members maybe from other parts of the country come together after having been apart for a while you have to learn how to make sure that you break bread with that person in an appropriate way there is this emotional intelligence that goes into those interactions that allow you to have a great meal and a good time with family so the intellectual part we know is important it gets us to a certain place we're also learning that there is an importance to the emotional side of how we interact with and how we again understand the world and what we at CQ strategies talk a lot about is also our cultural quotient it's figuring out right how we can relate to people who might have different cultural beliefs about any number of different things and how all three of these things right the intellectual the emotional and the cultural piece come together to help us better understand and interact with the world our plan for today I hope will be relatively straightforward what we're doing right now is just going through a brief introduction next what I'll try to do is engage you in a very short activity on a work called bias and to actually experience that to a small degree right here and now with one another we'll talk about again race it's historical origins as well as some of the impacts of it on our country today we'll start to talk and this is going to be towards the tail end of this particular lecture about isms about the ideologies that have impacted us in different ways and at the end of course we'll have a quick or excuse me a not a quick we'll have a question-and-answer period for all of you as well so what I'd like to invite you to do right now is there's a short video clip that I'm going to show typically I show it twice because sometimes people just need that but I'll ask you after we watch together once if again that second go-through is necessary but what I'd like you to do again is just to obviously watch the clip for the moment and just follow the directions that are in it does the team in white make the answer is 13 but did you see the moonwalking does anybody need to see that a second time no okay if if if you're open to it would you mind just sharing if you saw the moonwalking bear the first time the second time yes okay what's interesting about videos like that is that it truly is easy to miss something that you're not looking for I'm sure you've come across this before when maybe you've made the decision to purchase an appliance or a car or something along those lines right you start to see that type of car everywhere after you've made the decision I'm definitely gonna buy that Subaru outback this year something along those lines what's interesting about videos like this is that it really encouraged us to think a little bit about well what is it that we might be missing that's right in front of our eyes but it's obviously just something that we're not looking for and race is very much like this because it's in front of us at all times when I walked in the room earlier this afternoon right it was present and I walked in here as people started to look at the phenotypic characteristics that make up who I am as an individual I was again making very similar judgments as well but there is again this seeming paradox between what we're supposed to do with that information that makes race such a difficult topic in many circles at least to talk about so I want to ask you just another quick question here and I'll read this to you humans have approximately 30,000 genes on average how many genes do you think separate all members of one race from all members of another race so for example how many genes separate somebody from the white race then somebody from the Asian or black or other race and I'll just give you a couple of kind of options and if you could just raise your hands and let me know what you think you don't have to but if you would be so kind that would be helpful so how many people think that there are zero genes that again separate all members of one race from all members of another how many people think that there might be about 10 of these 30,000 genes that separate some from others how about 50 500 great we could 10 alright the fascinating thing about genomic science right now is that we have been able to as human beings figure out that there are zero there are zero characteristics traits or genes that distinguish all members of one so-called race from all members of another race what some people argue is that this is a myth that has become a part of the air that we breathe that because I look this way and perhaps you sir look that way there is something inside of our genes inside of our very genetic makeup that makes us different and yet again what we'll talk a little bit about a little bit later is that the fact that we are part of the same species is something that is lost behind a very thin layer of epidermis and the old saying right that really beneath the surface we're all the same is very very much true and that again goes all the way down to the genetic level as well so one of the things that research has shown us is that it is incredibly important for all of us to just acknowledge that there are some things that are true about the way in which we interact with the world the video that we showed you earlier was to just illustrate that sometimes if something's right there in front of you it's easy to miss it and that's okay because that is actually what has gotten us to where we are today those mental shortcuts that allow us to interact and interpret and understand the world and yet sometimes it also is a liability or as a blind spot for us and if we can acknowledge that and we can pause the research shows us that outcomes in any number of different areas become very different that's again what we're going to hope to get to as we get through the rest of this lecture today I'd like you to take another moment to just pause and think here and I used former president Obama I love this picture of him just because it shows him being very pensive and thinking very deeply about something before I hope he acts and it also has Abraham Lincoln there in the in the rear what I'm going to do is going to show you just a series of pictures and I'll ask you just a few questions to reflect on after I show you those pictures and what I'd like you to do is just to to yourselves think a little bit about what comes to mind as you see these pictures again just think to yourself what comes to mind when you see these pictures so I'd like you to think about these questions typically when we do this work we talk a lot about the importance of doing the individual work that's necessary in order to understand not only kind of the outside world but to understand oneself as well it's that inner conversation that one needs to have in order to really again begin to understand so what I'd like you to do and again invite you to do is just to think about these questions in the context of these pictures those pictures excuse me that we just looked at together how do you define race and again not how Webster's or any other right dictionary does but how do you right now given your life experience your education etc how do you define race and there won't be a quiz so don't worry about that how many races do you think there are and what are they and the third question is just like you to take a brief look around the room who do you think is similar to you biologically or genetically and it's not a trick question but just take a brief look around the room if I had the opportunity to ask each and every one of you to define the word race my assumption is that I get very different answers from many of you I assume there might be some that overlap with one another but again my assumption is that there will be many different ones my understanding is also that these lectures don't typically ask for people to kind of interact with the lecture I'm wondering if I could be bold here and maybe ask if there was a participant or two that might be open to sharing with the group what their definition of a word like race might be yes ma'am okay I'll come over to you if that's okay and maybe I'll repeat what you say if that's okay with you okay okay language is okay okay I'm not actually not familiar with it no but I'll have to look it up okay okay and what would your definition of race be then okay and what is your name and nice to meet you so and recently read a book titled homo sapiens okay so and recently read a book titled homo sapiens and she highly recommends it so if you have not heard about it or read it before she highly recommends that you do so and one thing that she was talking a little bit about was this whole notion that there is this one race right that which is called homo sapiens and over the course of time there were other species you might have heard about them before the Neanderthals or others that really died off and homo sapiens right the people that we the race I should say excuse me that we belong to is the one that is here right now okay well that is a very helpful definition of race my assumption is though again that for those of you who might not have read a book like homo sapiens that there are other again definitions that might come to mind right that there if you go to our census documents for example there are different boxes that one will check if you belong to a certain race or don't belong to a certain race and that is typically again how race is understood to be defined you belong to something because of some reasons and again the commonality of being a homo sapien is and was talking about is something that again is not either prioritized or acknowledged in that particular way the second question is also an interesting one because and right and the author posits that there is right now at least in our regard this one race of homo sapiens again I think that the common prevailing thought is that there are many and again how can one not think that given all of the different ways right that other human beings around the world look I don't look like this individual how can we right be very similar biologically or genetically that's just impossible right he's much better looking than I am he's in much better shape than I am I I wish I had hair like that there's a lot that right seemingly separates us so how again could we be part of the same race but again I think the common kind of prevailing thought is that there are many races a lot of them right being very easy to describe or understand based on again this or again this and the last question was again just to similarly get you to think a little bit about what it is about each of us here in this room that is either similar or different one thing that I'll touch upon now that I hope to come back to a little bit later is the reality that there is very little that separates us as human beings we might have different cultural values a different language that we speak different ways of doing certain things but the reality is that we as human beings have very little that separates us something has happened over the course of centuries that has made us think very differently about one another and it's had some very real impacts on especially in our country one particular group of people so just to start to acknowledge some of the history here the English word for race turns up for the first time in a poem by William Dunbar in the year 1508 for those of you who might be history buffs you might remember that it is around this time that people from England were starting to explore the African continent in ways that had not been done for a long time the people with the lightest pigment or skin tone in the world were starting to interact more and more with some of the people with the darkest pigment in the world and the English were frankly astonished they were dumbfounded by the difference they just observed in African people in general their dress was different if they had dress right their manners or mannerisms were different their obviously skin tone was very different than theirs religion what religion at least according to the English systems of government were different etc etc etc so they started to try to just make sense of how this was possible how could we look the way that we look how could we do things the way that we do things and how could they look the way that they look and how could they do things the way they do things what I want to also acknowledge is that notions of whiteness and notions of blackness had been well defined in the English language for some time before that word was used in that poem in 1508 and to be honest we know this and we know this well today because it is still something that we I think can understand very much today there was this cultural understanding of whiteness as being pure as being clean as being angelic if you look at the use of again white in iconography and religion and other places get we know that right today there's a reason that in my home we use a white linen for our Thanksgiving dinner table or our Christmas dinner table right there's something about it that connotes pureness or clean this or something again that is divine on the other hand and again this is before the English started to interact more and more with people from Africa there was this cultural understanding about blackness and again these things have continued and obviously are part of our culture today as well the understanding about blackness was that it was somehow right the opposite of white it was immoral right black is associated with dirty right or even demonic and so as the English right from what I understand started to interact more and more with people in Africa they started to think about well what could we use to start to describe this for us this seems so different than what we are you can start to see how as these races started to be defined as being that of the quote unquote white race and another group of people being part of the quote unquote black race how some of these cultural understandings of these two words started to be attributed to other people and there is amazing literature out there that talks about all of the different ideas that went into why right some people had darker skin than others I was born and raised Catholic I was talking to somebody about that earlier today and you know I remember very clearly right reading the Bible and learning all about again all of the things that are in that particular holy book and again having that text and starting to again figure out what it was within that that applied to these other groups of people right that didn't believe in that particular religion again we can start to see how these understandings get overlaid on other people I want to fast forward the clock here a little bit and some of you may be familiar with this work this particular drawing is attributed to a man named Johann Frederick Blumenbach he was an 18th century physiologist and he is frankly one of many people over the course of human history that have tried to better understand this whole concept or notion of race but much later than we were just talking about in 1779 he divided the human species into five races and as I pull these up I just want you to think about where you might have seen or heard these ideas before again so in 1779 he divides the human species into five races that says the Mongolian or yellow race this one is interesting that last one so I ask you how many of these overlap with your thoughts on race I know for myself before I took the course that I talked about earlier this is exactly well not exactly very close to what I had thought about when I had thought about race in all of my schooling this was the primary or dominant just understanding of how races were organized how some of them were biologically destined and the crazy right under the the crazy thing about this is that these are not new ideas and what I'll try to do again at least orally is start to also talk a little bit about the context for those of you again who are familiar 1779 was an interesting time in our country in particular right just a few years before we had declared our independence from Great Britain we were engaged in a war to fight for our independence and obviously a few years after this study we became the United States of America as we know it right now and during this time again right people like Johann Blumenbach were trying to explain the world in this way and a lot of questions for me have come up over time what was the purpose of this Blumenbach argued based on craniometry right the study literally of the skull and I think he had at the time dozens of samples from across the world measuring out the internal capacity of some skulls vis-a-vis other ones and other again scientists tried to use other measures of the body in order to define who belong to certain race and another but for me one of the questions was again why why would we need this if for most of human history right we had not to find people in this particular way for sure we had to find people as believers and non-believers as barbarians or educated people right what role did this play and we'll come back to again the connection between why these frames are so prevalent and relevant today but I also want to acknowledge that there was something that had been going on in our world and something that was accelerating to a large part in this part of the world at that time as well and obviously that was right the enslavement of many people primarily from Africa for forced labor and so again the question is how does this understanding how does this division of race allow something like that to happen and again there have been many many books that have been written by scholars that have researched this far more than I have that begin to help people understand how we as human beings could subjugate other human beings and partially it's the psychological phenomena of cognitive dissonance that we have been able to convince ourselves that somehow biologically or genetically we are different that we are not on the same level and because of that right I can do something to another person because they're not human and we hear echoes of that today as well and part of again what I hope to come out of this lecture is for you to if you don't already right to really celebrate that common right humanity that we have with one another and to understand that some of these things right have been so ingrained in our culture in our history but they don't have to be that way that we can do something about it in our daily interactions perhaps in our families or workplaces as well so I want to ask you also to think a little bit about the work that Blumenbach and many other scholars at the time did in order to create this whole framework of race I'd like you to start to think a little bit about the different institutions that existed at the time that still exist today and how those individual institutions may have been influenced by these ideas and I'll use some examples as we go through this to try to illustrate that as best as possible so first of all the education institution if I for example as an English person with power at the time was able to design the curriculum that students were having access to and I could write the textbooks or the books or the lectures right that were given at the time right whose ideas were the ones that were placed above others and which ones are the ones that were provided as the reality of the situation or the kind of natural order of things and whose again narratives were not if we look at an institution like the criminal justice system right how does again a framework like the one that I just shared with you influence the decisions that might be made in terms of adjudicating court cases on simple things like theft or murder or other types of things and again what I'd like to encourage you to do is think about the impact of these institutions not only over a course of years but really again over centuries in our government who was able to hold places of government who was able to run for things like parliament or the presidency or Congress and who again wasn't how did it play out in housing who was able to own land who was able to rent or have to work right land for other people in business in the media today whose portrayals again are shown in a certain way and whose portrayals are shown in another way how did that play out in the military who was even able to wear the cloth of our nation and in what types of jobs and again I go through all of these different institutions to get you to think a little bit about how each of them may have been influenced by this understanding of race and this is the last one that we'll talk about each one of these institutions if I had the opportunity to kind of project them up here right now and three dimensions for you I would because what I've learned is that each one of these institutions have worked together in what some people consider to be a systemic web of racism where each of the different institutions right have worked with one another in different ways in order to create the society in which we live in right now and we can connect any two or three or all of them together to see how they might have played out with one another for individual people and in our country's context for entire groups of people as well who have been defined by their again so-called race about 50 years ago last week some of you may remember that there was a very famous presidential commission that was put together that resulted in a report called the Kerner Commission and in that report they tried to talk about all of the things that in 1968 were attributing to the assassinations of people like Robert Kennedy and Dr. King and others as well as all of the riots that were going on across the country they came to right the conclusion that we were in a dangerous place that we were a country that was divided along the race of long excuse me this idea of race and that if we were not careful we would have two countries over time one again white with access to certain things and one black without and thankfully I think to make sure that we can acknowledge that 50 years later today we have seen a lot of progress in a number of different areas from the level or the rate at which African-American children graduate from high school and access post-secondary options to things like outcomes within our health care system etc but I'll just share with you three statistics that in the follow-up report that was again just published I believe last week 50 years after the Kerner Commission some of these things are still true right that today black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers and while that might seem too bad only a little bit off right we have to ask ourselves what that again means for that individual person their family etc today African-Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites and today the medium white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family and I highlight these three statistics because they show that today right race still has a very real impact on how certain people live in our country and how others live as well and I know that I personally have a unique role to play in this conversation I didn't share with you earlier that I grew up in Manhattan and my parents both immigrated here from South Korea when they were quite young my mother was just 19 and my father was about 23 and they came here right with the promise that they would be able to live the American dream into a very large degree they were able to and they provided me access to quote-unquote elite educational institutions and the privilege that I have having been able to access those types of schools and to have had the privilege of being able to serve the communities that I've served is that I know that I need to illuminate this part of our nation's history because these systems of inequality have perpetuated themselves for centuries and that if I personally don't choose to do something about them the likelihood that in 50 years when we write a follow-up to the follow-up of the Kerner Commission report right that these numbers may not look very different there is a biological anthropologist named Alan Goodman that talked about race is not based on biology just like I hope I've been able to argue but that race is rather an idea that we ascribe to biology and again for me there is a clear purpose to why race has been something that we've ascribed to biology because it has allowed us as human beings some of us at least to be able to justify our actions towards other human beings but hopefully again I have sufficiently at least tried to challenge you to acknowledge that history but to also think a little bit differently I know that my time here is starting to wind down but I do want to go through if that's okay bet one additional piece and this for me is extremely critical to go over as well many times when I do these types of talks or when I talk to especially young people they always ask why does racism like how do you define racism and I want to bring this up here because it goes right along with our conversation about race but it also acknowledges something else that we've been kind of touching upon as well and Horace and Paul taught me this very simple formula to understand racism and I'd like to share that with you this afternoon racism equals prejudice plus power and to take that just one small step forward racism here and in any other country in this world right equals racial prejudice plus systemic power and racial prejudice if we had the time right are those things that we identify as stereotypes that we might again have as biases of other people so for example some people when they first meet me always expect me to speak with an accent things of that nature right systemic power is something that we were talking about before it's how those institutions that we walked through earlier right how they interplayed with one another they create the system that we are in right now and the interesting thing about this particular formula is that actually can be used to understand a lot of different isms in our country and again around the world as well and I'll just offer a few of those to you right now the same kind of understanding of racism can be used to understand sexism right sexual prejudice plus systemic power as I alluded to earlier who had the right to vote in our country right asex did for many many many years asex did not until just right about a hundred years ago and that systemic power the power of the vote power the ballot etc was able to keep some things the way that some people wanted them to be kept that again same right frame could be used for heterosexual prejudice plus systemic power very similar again systems that are used in order to create right our society in the way that it is and I'll just use one last example classism right class prejudice plus systemic power and again any number of other isms can be used in this similar way but what's critically important to understand is that racial or sexual or in this case class prejudice right are insufficient to create the inequities that we in our country are experiencing without the systemic power to do so and part of this work is to really make sure that we figure out ways to address right these systemic systems so as I said earlier what I'd love for you all to do is to imagine a world with me as I mentioned I grew up in Manhattan and grew up on the Upper West Side just a few minutes away from this particular image and many of you may know about this from having enjoyed John Lennon's music but I'd like you to imagine a world where yes to a certain degree we can rid ourselves of the notion that there are so-called different races that the phenotypic again differences between me and other people here in this room are real but they're not so different that I for example am either subhuman right or not human enough to be able to live in brother or sisterhood right with all of you and for a long part of our history this has actually been a pretty novel idea and so again I challenge you to imagine a world with me or that wouldn't right be the case so I want to express my gratitude here again for the opportunity to hopefully just illuminate a little bit of the history behind the word race of some of the current implications of that system or that frame that has again played itself out in our country there's a whole lot more that I could go into but I'll obviously leave it here so that we have sufficient time for questions and answers as well well thank you for your talk and what do you have a definition of race as a working definition a working definition you know actually I'm glad that Anne said what she said about it I think that there are many races on the planet in the sense that there are many species however when I think about race in the context of homo sapiens or human beings my working definition is that that there is one right human race that I belong to and that others belong to as well there may be a time when there are other races that will come about but as of right now there is just that one and so I wish there was a kind of a more succinct definition but that is the way that I again think about race does that help answer your question yeah yes yes well I just initially want to say that I'm very grateful that UVM has you I think it'll be a real gift to UVM but my what is sort of the question has risen in my mind in listening to you Paul is that I would I was going to say oh race is a social construct you know just that's a little facile but because it sounded like in feminism they talk about the lure of the androgyne you know we're all the same right but not giving time for female you know strengths and values to have sufficient time in our culture so how do I like sometimes when I fill out form I'll just I won't I won't even put down race you know or I'll put down social construct right so how do you deal with that I mean I mean obviously there are certain real contributions of different cultures that happen to be different colors right right absolutely one of the interesting ways and my assumption is that some of you in this room have had to do this as well but I have a seven-year-old and a three-year-old at home my son is seven and my daughter is three and I've tried excuse me my best to try to explain to at least my son first this whole understanding of race and he doesn't get it right and I honestly think that most human beings when they are that age don't either they're like what difference is there and I had to try to use a silly example and I said well why do we call this a chair and he was like I don't know like because somebody said that we're gonna call this chair and I said yeah kind of right what I want to say also to what you were just asking about is that there are some times when I do fill out those forms and I you know in a picky way or in a kind of silly way I write human as opposed to whatever it might be but I've also learned how to play the game and I've been taught how to play the game so to speak so that I know that I have to exist within the current structures that we have in our society in order to access certain things and so I play that game and I play it I think fairly well because I know that there will be doors that will be closed on me and on my family if I don't and so I choose again when I fill out the census or I have to apply for a passport I fill out the information as I'm asked to fill it out but I also do so with the truth that I understand that these are as you just said social constructs that again humans have created and have kept and perpetuated for again very specific reasons and so there's an acknowledgement of that but then there's also the work that goes on in my professional life that hopefully we will start to think of other ways of organizing our world or acknowledging those differences as well thank you what is your take on black lives movement and then the kind of counter reaction well all lives matter it is not a relevant question at all so if you are watching the news if you are listening to the radio both here locally and internationally as well over the past few years the black lives matter movement has gained a significant amount of momentum I think for me personally what people are trying to do when they talk about black lives matter is actually to invoke a lot of the history that I try to again touch upon very briefly here is that for again centuries now much of the quote unquote civilized world has considered black people or those again with dark pigment from the content of Africa as something other than human and that again construct has made the reality of those peoples is existence on this planet as human beings very difficult and there are obviously countless stories of enslavement of people who quite literally would jump off of boats as they were being transported from Africa to other parts of the world because they would have preferred death to bondage and I think that again the black lives matter movement is trying to acknowledge that history but to shine a light on the current lived experiences in particular of black people here in this country and elsewhere in the world and so what I think unfortunately is is done in our media and in other places as well is it simplifies that to say well they only care about black people and put them above others but what about everybody else and I think that for me personally that obviously misses the point again I'm obviously not somebody who identifies as black but I understand especially in this country the reality of those people and again all of the outcomes as well so I do believe right that all lives matter in the sense that we right as human beings I think all have the right to be alive and the right to be human beings in the fullest way possible but I also again when I hear black lives matter what I'm hearing is the echoes of people who frankly for much of the past almost five centuries have not had the voice to be able to express how they again have been denied their humanity so I hope that answers your question as well. I think you call them systems in your pitch education healthcare is there a priority list of where you say we need to work? So just one small clarification criminal justice so one small clarification that I just like to make is that those are at least in my experience considered institutions and again we obviously are literally in one at the moment or at least a representation of one part of that institution but there are many other again institutions the systemic piece is the way in which those institutions interact with one another and in other work that I do we might take a case study of an individual who might for example move to a new part of the country and have to access right different institutions within that system so for example when I first moved here to Vermont I had to go to the DMV to get a new license I had to work with realtors in order to access homes I had to think about which schools my children were going to attend etc. and it's how each and every one of those different institutions right interplay or interact with one another that again what some people have defined as systemic or the web of systemic racism you can think of again examples you know 1958 1959 United States if you were in Birmingham Alabama and had to access those same types of institutions how obviously all of those institutions interplayed with one another to result in the way in which Birmingham Alabama at the time was kind of designed right as a segregated city that is so does that help to answer some of that piece about a year ago I went to some presentations down at the Flynn about criminal justice and how it is designed in the 1950s so it's not up to some of the social needs of today so I wondered how much is the criminal justice system sort of stifled because of its perhaps racial overtones right right so I just think that I guess my short answer to that would be that I would argue that almost every single one of our systems still carries pieces of this this frame the mental models that we all have in our minds that we use to interact with the world are all embedded within those institutions because that's where we live or that's where we work and so I think what we are seeing again in and we could go through any number of different statistical analyses to see how how our systems are producing outcomes for certain groups of people and we will see in our country at least very clear outcomes for kind of white people writ large and if you compare them for example to black people you'll see that there are very very different outcomes in virtually every I mean actually I don't think that there is any single category that it is not but that's again how I would see right those types of institutions need to be redesigned to have different outcomes for the future very very very much


Aloha, welcome everyone to Sister Power. I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, and we are gonna have an intimate chat with Jessica Norwood. Name to Essence Magazine's 50 Entrepreneurs to watch the list. Jessica Norwood is a financial activist, impact investor and social entrepreneur. Jessica is the founder of Runway. Runway uses entrepreneurship as a strategy to close the wealth. Gap in black communities by providing pre-seen friends and family, capital, or what's Jessica calls, believe in you money to fund black-owned companies. Jessica, welcome to Sister Power. Aloha, Sharon. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so great to be here. It's so, we're so happy to have you. We have assistant in part in Hawaii and Sister Power. Congratulations on your new baby, Runway Magazine. Thank you so much. And thank you for always, always supporting me and other artists and entrepreneurs and making this platform available. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited about Runway Magazine. It's really a gem. Let's look at that beautiful cover, Runway Magazine. There it is. Isn't it great? And talking about that cover. Oh my goodness. This cover was, it is, there's so much to talk about with this cover. So I first want to just shout out the incredible team at Runway, our communications director, Jamaica Elle, who led consultants and writers to put this together. And on this cover, we actually have a lot of the companies that we support on this cover that we've invested in. So the flowers are from Essence of Flowers out of Oakland. Boss Mom is one of the companies. And then there is a little photograph right in the center of it. And this is actually the part that really warms my heart so much because that photograph is actually of Maggie Walker, the first black woman to ever start a bank, the first woman period in the United States to ever start a bank. And we honor Maggie Walker and her ashay that brings us here to do this work. And so she is also very present on the cover. That's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But what inspired you to develop Runway? Like a lot of people I have been in business and I wanted to figure out why my business was stalling and I couldn't get the kind of finance, the capital that I needed. I thought, you know, is something wrong with me? Should I be doing something different? And I started to learn really quickly that there have been a historic chasm of not providing financial capital. And they started to call it the racial wealth gap, but it was bigger than a gap. It is sinister. And it really includes things like redlining and absolutely not making capital available for black businesses. And so I wanted to be a part of changing that and we started Runway to do just that. That's remarkable. You know, we still just think in 2021 we're still talking about redlining in 2021. Well, what challenges did you have to overcome at the beginning of your journey? Yeah, you know, I would say that one of the biggest challenges I faced in this is the first part was really being precise and talking about black entrepreneurs. A lot of times we wanna just talk about things from a diversity standpoint and we pull everybody together. Women and anybody who is not a white male then everybody fits into diversity. But when you do that, you aren't able to be really exact about the problem you're trying to solve. And so we wanted to really talk about black entrepreneurs and the unique history that they have faced in this country. And that was a challenge to get people to be comfortable with just expressly saying this is intimately about solving a challenge that happens when black communities and understanding the culture of those issues a lot more intimately. But even with that Sharon, that isn't actually even the biggest thing. The biggest challenge that we face is really the mindset. Often we're talking about what it means to be friends and family. That is the first round of money that any business gets is what they call friends and family round. And the idea is that you should borrow money from your friends and your family when you have a good idea for something. But with that wealth gap that we just talked about, that's not gonna be possible. Black families and other brown families have less money to pull on to actually make an investment in their business. And so what we started to talk about is we should show up for each other as friends and family and loan that money to these companies in really generous loving terms the way that a family member would give it to you. But people felt like, well, they're gonna take the money or they're gonna fail. Not thinking that part of the entrepreneur journey is to have that capital to actually test things out, to pivot and to do, you know, and to potentially succeed and sometimes you do fail. But it's the lessons we learn on the other side of it that really matters. And so getting people's minds to understand that this kind of money is the kind of money that we should be talking about, the believe in you money that shows folks that you really do care. You really see them and you see their innovation and believe that it's something that we need as a community. That just warms my heart because this is what we need to hear. We need to look at the glass half full. Yes. Just go into that type of mindset. So is that one of the uniqueness about your business? Is that one of them? Yeah, I think so. I think one of the things that's really unique for us is we're talking about financing but from a reparative way. So we're deeply looking at the wounds of the past and how that's created this huge chasm where we don't have the kind of capital we need. And so the money has to behave and understand what has happened in the past and not redo the same kinds of old underwriting and where you're like, what's your collateral and what's your this? And really start looking at more unique things that really talk about the character, the integrity, the business itself, and not all these other things that we already know that entrepreneur isn't going to have when we start off. So how we underwrite all of our loans is really different. And we're all black and brown woman squad of economists and finance professionals. We're artists, we're wearing many hats and we're bringing all of these pieces in together to give our entrepreneurs and our investors a unique experience about what it means to repair the damage that has been done in our country. And it is transformative for everybody. Once you get money in a loving way, you don't ever want to go back to anything else. So our entrepreneurs stay with us, our investors stay with us, and we're growing. We're growing. That's the key word that people do not associate with business is love. Love, love, love, yeah. And you can feel it though, right? You know, like when you go into a business and you're not feeling the love, you know when you're not, but differently when you are feeling that love, it feels differently. And I think what we've gotten into recently is we'll talk about businesses as, you know, with these sort of esoteric kinds of ideas, but the business has to have those values baked in in policy. It needs to be reflective in the leadership and it needs to be apparent in the actual consumer product. So it just can't be nice words to say. And the other thing is everywhere inside of runway, inside of our business, we are working those same values and that same cultural understanding. We have community run tables for our loans. So community members make those decisions. And equally inside of runway, it is a worker-driven organization. And so the people who work there make the decisions. It isn't me, it isn't me that gets to make the decisions. I get to be a part of it, but that's the way community really is. We get to be a part of a thing. We don't have to be the whole thing. And that is so liberating for me too, because I get to enjoy life and do other projects, right? So it's a sweeter thing. I think people think that they're gonna lose out or what's gonna happen to the power if I don't hold it all. But what happens is you get to spread it out to other people and you get to find other joys in your life than just being at work. Well, there's a rule for anybody. This is what people have to realize. This planet is huge and it can compass all of us. So what inspired the creation of runway magazine? I think we talked about it, love, you know, love.  I actually write like one, maybe three weeks between. And I think my mother intentionally didn't tell me at the time she really knew because she knew that I was launching this company at that time.  And I'm her only child. And so it was us, it's always been us. And so it was like, okay, what are we gonna do? And I had to, as soon as I lifted up runway, I pretty much had to go into a quiet mode for myself to take care of myself and my mother. And I had to immediately let go of a lot of things and control of a lot of things that I thought I was gonna be, you know, handling and I'm gonna be on the scene and I'm gonna be here and a lot of money that I had to kind of step away from because I couldn't meet the demands and be there with my mom during the closing of her time. And so I was going through that at the same time.  And I was with her as she took her last breaths. And I remember I was coming from Alabama and I'm coming up to Chicago to come and see her and I walked in the door and she had her arms out and she was much smaller than she had been since I had seen her maybe like three weeks before. And she said, I waited for you. I waited. And she literally really did wait. The next day she passed away. And that whole night, all she wanted to do was talk to me about love, about what I didn't know about it, about what she wish I understood, about how much she loved me, but I felt an enormous amount of love from my mother. And I knew then, Sharon, that that love was accessible in the world, that somebody would talk to God about me and hold up her life so she could give me these messages and not messages about making more money or all of these other things that we spend our lives pursuing, but it was about love. And it was about her demonstrating how much she loved me. So when I think about runway, that to me is sort of the essence of it, how much we love you, how much we need you, and how much we actually rely on you. Like you are our breath. These entrepreneurs and our businesses and our community, they make the thing work. They are the employers. They are the teachers, the friends. They are the sort of backbone. And that kind of love is available in the world, but we need to figure out how to move that in the way of our resources. And so it was my mama. It was definitely my mama.  We know her. I've worked with her. We worked on two projects together, Chocolates and Paradise of I.E. And the African-American Film Festival. Because of your darling mother, I have lifelong friends. We talked about that earlier. Dr. Patricia Jones-Blessman, June Deniz, Barbara Mitchell.  So, you know, so we're here. And here we are. And do you remember, Sharon, we met with Connie, actually. We didn't actually meet through my mom. We met through Connie. So, A-E-O. A-E-O. A-E-O. Our other good friend. Yes. It was a project. What do you have in the game? It was Runway. We were at the A-E-O conference and Runway was there. It was Runway Project. We've dropped the word project this past year. We're like Beyonce now. We're only one word, right? Right? I like that. And you were there at the very, very beginnings of that, supporting, as always. And so we have so many points of good, super women friends in this network. And, you know, and Connie got a chance to meet my mom before she trans. So it was just beautiful. It's been beautiful all around. Yeah. You know, we can go on and I just love reminiscing about sisterhood and what I'm loving. And when I read about your business, Runway Magazine, it's run by black women. Yes. Yes. It's exciting. It's exciting. The sister power that is wrapped around this idea. I mean, wow, we have, I can't even really just talk about the caliber of talent and thoughtfulness that goes into, when you get a chance to see this magazine and I hope everybody who's listening gets a chance to go to our website and check it out. You can access it there. But I'm telling you, the magazine and the team that puts that together, one of the things that folks don't know is we actually hired the companies that we invested in. So they were a part of the consulting team that put the magazine together. So it is a full circle thing that our vendors are actually the companies that we also invest in.  And so the writers, the whole team is just brilliant. They've been investment banking. They've been in traditional banking. We have a couple of us have done fellowships and work in impact investment funds. And, you know, so we are finance folks, but we are also artists. One of our actual fund manager is also a big time international DJ. And so we gotta like, look at the funds and go DJ. So, it's a lot of fun. We need to bring all that black love and all that black money and these entrepreneurs here to honeymoon with Hawaii. And we'll talk about that more. You know, this is so neat. I, before I forget, talking about your team, Malia Lazu. Malia, Malia. Homegirl, that's your homegirl. That's my baby.  I just feel like the mother, the auntie, the supporter. The love is there. I am so proud. Aloha Malia. Aloha Malia.   And so she's been amazing. Been leading a lot of our banking work with our bank partners and political analysis is just always on point. We've been friends for years.  We have been friends for years. And so when I had the opportunity to say, come and work with us, please, she was there. And that's the best part about this is to be able to build a dream team like what we have. And when I tell y'all, we got the best folks, we got the best folks for sure. Wow. Well, what advice would you give to someone who is trying to become an entrepreneur? Mm, you know, this is a really good time to try it out. And I think you can set terms like you want. And that's the thing that I would really encourage people negotiate right now is a good time for you and your business. And if you've got something and you want to share that and somebody is interested, don't take the first offers. Talk about what it is you really want to see happen. I'm encouraging all of the entrepreneurs that I know that if you find yourself in a place where people are throwing money towards you, that happened a lot, Sharon. Right after George Floyd last summer, we saw so many people saying, we want to support black businesses. And it turned into just a haphazard, lots of things moving around and really not feeling great for a lot of folks. But some people did good. And so I encourage people who did well during that time, share it, pass it forward. And for the folks who are still out there trying, as you get an opportunity, definitely negotiate. Know your value and your worth. Talk about that with folks. And get feedback from other people who are doing the same thing that you're doing. And keep building through that. I think it'll work out. This is a good time for you. That's good. So again, Jessica, tell our sister power viewers how they can stay in contact with Runway Magazine. We need to know where you are, how to contact you, and hear more about your consistency. Yes. We would love it. So the best way to learn more about Runway is to go to runway.family. And it is a different email web address than what you might be used to, but don't put anything else. .family will get you there. And check out the whole website. It is Afrofuturism, Blackjoy Finance. Everything merged into one. It's a beautiful website. And first page on the website, you can see the link to our magazine. It is open. All we want to do is to know you. So give us your email address so we can tell you more about us. And we will send newsletters periodically. We don't send them all the time, periodically, about what we're up to. And we hope you follow us on social media. We're on Instagram as well. So that's a great place. And send us the love. We feel it. We know it. And we want to encourage more people to be talking about things like runway, like friends and family, like repair in the finance, terms that are loving. We want people to know that that is possible. And I want you to be asking for it. The more you ask for it, the more people will have to produce it. And I'm here to tell you that we do it. We do it. And it is possible. So that's what I was. Check us out on the website. Right. Why do you do this? And what sets you apart from other organizations? Why do we do it? I think the reason that we're after this is, you know, there's only so much we can do as far as thinking about shuffling, would they say shuffling the chairs on the Titanic, so to speak? There's only so much you can do. Eventually you've got to get really proximate to the problem. You've got to name it and you've got to really solve it. And I know for years we've talked about access to capital for black businesses as this huge issue that we could never figure out. Access to capital, access to capital. And I kept thinking there's money here and there are people here. And why don't the two meet up? And I came to the same conclusion over and over and over again, the mind has to change, the heart has to change. We have to stop looking at one another as if they're a risk. And when they're not, you know, we've got so much data, 98% of black businesses across the globe repayment rate. So these ideas that it's not gonna work or they're gonna fail is rooted in racism and bias. And we've got to say that and we've got to move on to a new thing. COVID, if nothing else, we've saw a record number of businesses closing, black businesses, brown businesses that won't open up again. And the reason that they closed because they had weaker banking relationships. They did not have the access to the same kind of capital that other businesses did. And so they weren't, they didn't have the cushion to withstand a couple, not even a week being closed, a lot of them. So this moment in time feels really, really important. And for Runway, the reason that we got into the game of this is to just tell the truth about what has been going on and to give folks a solution. Not, you know, Runway has a product that works with banks. We have trainings that work with folks who are looking to place capital for black entrepreneurs. And we have the best financing for our businesses, wraparound services for the life of the loan. And that makes us different. People will give you capital, let's say here, $50,000. But we're saying for the life of the loan, you are also going to get so much extra support because that's what friends and family would do. That's what we would do. So we don't want to ever, we want you to succeed. We want you to make it. We want you to take off on that Runway. And so we are different in that way where it's not just about capital, it is wraparound services and the whole shebang inside of it. How can our viewers, Jessica, contribute to the financial standability of Runway? Oh, well, thank you viewers, check me out. The website is a great place to go. There is an icon that says donate and we would be completely honored to have you as a part of our Runway family. Oh, excellent. Well, Jessica, what's next? Oh my goodness. We've got a big announcement coming up in April. I know, I know. I can't wait to tell you about it. You're gonna be one of the first people when I send everything out. I'm gonna tell you about big announcement coming up April 2022. And so I'll be in California for a couple of weeks making that announcement and go doing the rounds. And it's a historic announcement that'll be coming out. So it's been a couple of years in the making and it's finally coming together and we'll see foundations, banks, black businesses all lining up around this particular issue we're talking about. And so I'm very excited. You know, I moved here from Los Angeles. So if you need a LA girl, I'm your girl. Are you gonna be a LA girl? Are you gonna be a Los Angeles when you make the announcement? Very, very, very soon. Very soon for Los Angeles, yes. Okay. Jessica, I can't believe it is over. In 30 seconds, before you leave, give us and give the sister power, power while statement to all the black and brown entrepreneurs out there. I would just say that I love you. We love you, we respect you, we believe in you. And keep going. Don't let anybody tell you any different. Trust yourself, trust your instincts. It is your time. This is your season and your moment and you are purposely made for this exact time.  We will be deeply honored. Thank you. Mahalo, Nui, Loa, Jessica. Again, on behalf of Sisters in Park, the Bitey and Sister Power, congratulations. I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Aloha.


Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Noor. Today, we're talking with Nick Turner, a lecturer at Queen Mary's College in Hampshire, England, and a consultant with NT eSports. Our topic is eSports Across the Pond, Educating and Inspiring UK Students. Welcome, Nick. Hello. Thanks for having me. It's lovely to be on the show. All right. So, what do you teach at Queen Mary's College? College. So, yeah, at QMC, we're the leading provider of eSports education in the UK, and we teach 16 to 19-year-olds on a formal basis with a curriculum which involves a total of 20 different units, and the full-time students will do 15 units, of which five are mandatory. They have to do them, and then another 10 optional. But we also run it on a slightly smaller scale so that you have, it's like the equivalent of 1A level. So, they might do eSports as 1A level, and then they might do business studies, and they might do media or maths or two other subjects. And we teach a whole range of things to do with eSports. The mandatory units are based around introduction to eSports, where we look at organisations, the structure, we look at traditional sports and how that compares to eSports. We look at teams, games, tournaments in the UK and abroad. We then have the second unit, which is skills, performance and analysis, which is where we look at the different genres of games that are prominent in eSports, and then how we analyse those, and the students will undertake their own performance analysis, watching their peers play as teams in competitive games so that they can come up with an action plan, they feed that action plan back to the team, and then they analyse them again so they can assess the impact. Enterprise and entrepreneurship, which is where they have to come up with an idea of an enterprise that they could start up within eSports, which is kind of, we teach them business at the same time, so the different ways that you can set up companies and PLCs, private limited companies, sole traders, freelancers, etc. And then they have to create a business plan, a proper business plan with an executive summary, having done all the research, and then they pitch that idea to us, which is always good fun, it's like Dragon's Den. The fourth one is health, well-being and fitness, because we're very keen to disperse the myth that, especially with parents, all gamers are just teenagers in dark rooms, drinking energy drinks, playing all night, so we're very keen to show the other side and the importance of it, which is kind of interesting as well, because if you look around the college, if you walk around the college first thing in the morning and you look at the students doing lots of other subjects, there are lots of students who are half asleep, eyes are shut, where they've been gaming all night, whereas you don't see it in the eSports classes, because they know, they learn that it's not a good way to progress, it's not a good way to develop, so we're installing some values into what they do, which is quite good, and then they're the key units, the mandatory units, and then you have the optional units, which are, I would say, slightly more practical in their nature, so they do events management, so I have to put on eSports events, whether that's like a little LAN tournament or something, they'll do livestream broadcasting, content creation, video production, games design, so in the games design unit, they're going to be designing a first person shooter, and then there's other things like branding and nutrition, so there's a whole kind of plethora of subjects that are all interrelated with eSports, which makes that eSports qualification great for transferable skills, because they can take the business side, the financial side, the house side, plus the gaming side, and it's not a gaming course, we don't teach them how to be pro players, it's very much about the industry and the business, because what's happened around the world, but certainly here in the UK, is that we've got more and more companies setting up more organisations developing, the industry is growing exponentially, and we've just been stealing people and experts and specialists from other industries to fill the hole, fill the gap, so the idea is that we're now starting that generation of training people and educating people to go straight into that workplace, go into the eSports industry, so there's plenty to go at, and in the last, it was launched three years ago, and there was probably about 10 colleges that started running it, of which we were one, and now it's closer to 200 colleges, so there are eSports students across the UK now, looking to progress, so it's all very positive and exciting. Okay, fantastic, well I think the people in the United States will need to hear a little bit about how UK education system works, because when we talk about 16 to 19 year olds and college, that seems quite foreign to people in the US, as well as A levels, and so can you explain that? Yes, so the way the education system works in the UK, we have school, which is compulsory from four through till 16, so everybody has to go to school, that's the good, you know, if you don't go to school, you get punished, there are fines in place, etc, and at 16 they take GCSEs, which are a level two qualification, so once they've taken their GCSEs, they then have to either be in educational employment or training, so most people, the majority of people at 16, go on to college, which is a two-year, generally a two-year study program, and then in that two years, that's where they do their A levels, which is the next level up, level three, or they do what's known as BTECs, which is what the eSport is, which is a vocational qualification on the same level as A levels, but A levels are more kind of exam based, and lots of people see them as more academic, which isn't a view that anyone who delivers and does BTECs thinks, but they go through that process of college, and then once they've finished that course, that's when they go to university for three years to do level four, level five, level six, and then at that point you graduate, and after graduation, you can study further in terms of the master's degree and or a postgraduate diploma or something like that, so that's the kind of, that's the way that the education system works in the UK, and yeah, so 16 to 19, they don't have to be in college, but they do have to be doing something in terms of developing their skills for employment. So what type of students are attracted to this program, or is it gamers only or others? It's interesting, so when we first started running the course in terms of recruitment, we were quite surprised in the first year at the variety of people who joined, and what we found was that 99% of them did game, of those probably 15%, you would consider quite serious gamers, you know, ranked and were playing in tournaments, the majority just enjoyed gaming, and there was a few that hardly gained at all, but they wanted to learn about the industry, and it's important when we have our open days and we speak to parents that we explain that it's not a gaming course, because we also had issues with people just joining, and then they were really disappointed that they weren't just playing games all day long, despite the fact that we were telling them that's not what's going to happen, that's not what this course is about, you know, there was still that perception, whereas now we have a really interesting range of students that take the course, we had a student last year that took esports alongside law and business studies, and they wanted to be a lawyer, so they were going to go on to university to study law, but the reason they took esports is they wanted to be a lawyer in esports, because their interest and passion in esports. We have a lot of students that take esports and business as well, because I think a lot of people see the opportunity and the money or the potential earnings that they could make and the way that the industry is expanding, so they see opportunity to generate and create business, so we have a lot of entrepreneurial types that take the course, and you know, just at QMC in the last three years, we've got three different groups of people who've set up enterprises themselves, mainly in the sense of teams, you know, like small organizations where they have a number of different rosters, and we had one of our students in his first year at college, he set up a team, and they competed in a, this was during COVID, and they used the facilities at the college to compete in a fortnight tournament, and won, that's £70,000, and you know, that's a 17-year-old, and it's, but those are things that are inspirational, you know, they're the things that other students see and think, wow, you know, that's unbelievable, you know, and so others just kind of, that's what they want to do, so we're guiding them through that pathway to show them that they can do that, they've got things to learn, and we're, you know, as well as working in a lecturing capacity, in a teaching capacity, we're very much mentors for our students, you know, they come to us with their ideas, we get them to pitch their business to us, all their ideas, and say, you know, tell me what you're doing, how are you doing that, what's your money, you know. And you mentioned Dragonstone, which US, our US version is Shark Tank, and so I know that people watching might not know what that is, so that's kind of interesting. Why don't we show the video, and you can tell us what we're watching. Okay, so this was just the day at college, this is the streaming, really, where we've got two things going on in there, we've got people streaming, students streaming, and students shellcasting, and then in the first arena, we've got one group, and they're doing performance analysis, so there's teams playing, and then they've got their classmates are watching and analysing, so that they can then feedback and do their performance analysis, and then as you go through the building here, and we go into the main arena, and in here we've got students playing the games that the students in the first room are shellcasting on, so they're all involved in different ways, with kind of like three or four different elements of esports, and it was just one of those afternoons where I was teaching in one arena, my colleague was teaching in another, and I've kind of walked between the two and gone, oh, this is amazing, like it's all going off, you know, they're all engaged, you know, they're kind of like they're all doing what they need to be doing, but they're learning at the same time, so, you know, that was, it was quite a nice video, and the other times that is really exciting is when we have the, on a Wednesday afternoon, we compete in the student, the British esports student championships, so both of those arenas are full, and we have teams competing against other colleges around the country to try and qualify for the LAN finals at the end of the year in Nottingham, which is also an enrichment, so we have students at the college who don't study esports, and they're doing other subjects, but they're really good players, so they try out at the start of the year to get into the teams, and then they go off and, you know, and compete in the finals, and I think we had more teams than anyone else in the finals this year, which is good, because we're kind of like the leading colleges, one just expects QMC to be the best at everything, the reality is in terms of probably what we deliver, teaching wise, and the facilities that we've got, we are 100% leading the way, but across the country, as you can imagine, there are some very, very talented young gamers, you know, and we don't win everything, we don't expect to win everything, but it's, it's really nice when we do. What, what titles are, is your college competing in? Yeah, so, so we compete in whatever the British Esports Federation set up, so currently it's Valorant Overwatch League of Legends and Rocket League, so they're the four, and we're obviously restricted by age, you know, we can't, we can't have, we can't be playing games that are over 18s, which annoys some of the students because they'd love to be playing, so those four, you know, we, we compete in every, every week on a Wednesday from kind of mid-September, and then the LAN finals are take place in, at the end of the year, in kind of June, June time, which is nice as well, because, you know, they all get their jerseys with the game tags, and we all go away for the weekend, so, you know, that's, that's a really nice kind of like element, but we also just have other enrichments like extracurricular activity with eSports, where we have just escapism, so any students from around the, the college can come and just play any games, no, you know, not competitive, just enjoy the facilities, we have a couple of different Minecraft sessions that we run as well, you know, which attracts a lot of interest, so we just try to maximize the, the amazing facilities that we've got. Terrific, and people watching this will be inspired to go to your college, I'm sure, or something similar, so you mentioned health, and so we have some pictures, let's bring up the one where people are, are actually relaxing or laying down, what are we looking at? Yeah, so, so on this one, the students are doing deep muscle relaxation therapy, and I just happened to, I was teaching in the arena next door, and I walked past the room, and kind of had a double take, and looked at the lecturer, and he kind of like gave me the thumbs up, it's nice to say, this is good, isn't it, because I'm just like, I'm not doing much now, and, and they all, they all sleep, you know, because of that kind of like, like, how do you, how do you calm down from the stress, how, you know, if you're angry with a game, or, you know, you're tired, or whatever, how do you break out from just currently, you know, drinking energy, drinks, and staying up all night, you need to learn the techniques and the methods to take control of your personal well-being, and so, you know, Matt Johnson, who did that session, was doing that, and I spoke to one of the first years today, who did that lesson this week, and they all fell asleep as well. So, you know, that's my kind of teaching, I'd be quite happy, they do fall asleep in some of my lectures, but they're not supposed to, so, you know, I can't claim any credit for deep relaxation therapy. So you have some other things you do to promote communication, let's look at the photos, what are we looking at here? Yeah, so obviously communication is so important in any team sport, you know, in particular with eSports, so just to try and highlight, you know, we're always trying to look at innovative ways of delivering teaching, so we set them a task whereby they had to play Pac-Man, so nice and simple, but they had to have, they had a tally chart, and it was, they had options of verbal, non-verbal, and then non-physical, so that they all, and they had to come up with their own strategies of how they were going to do that, so you could see in those photos, some of them were kind of hand-on-hand, and there was, there was, they were like tapping and touching, like we can see there, you had other people that were stood behind, like tapping backs, you know, tapping heads, and it was, because they can't see you either, it enabled us to really kind of like go around the room and kind of see what they were doing, and then they were recording all of their results to see, to come up with the most effective way of communicating without the normal things that they do. So yeah, it's just kind of, it's just trying to bring things into the classroom that they're going to enjoy, and like find a bit of fun, but there's a, you know, there's a key message behind that. Sure, and let's bring up the Fortnite photo with the colorful things, yeah, can you tell us about that?  So again, you know, it's just, just, just things to, to get them out of the classroom and thinking about it in a broader context really. Sure. And, and there was a photo of a visitor who came and who happened to be a champion. Let's bring that one up. So we've got Daniel Squibbs there, who was a former pro Rocket League player. He works for Guild eSports, which is David Beckham's organization, the first eSports company in the UK to float on the stock exchange as a PLC, and Guilds have been in on a number of occasions. And Danny was also the, we had the Commonwealth Games here in Birmingham over the summer, and eSports was introduced as a pilot, which was, which is great for all things eSports. And Danny was the coach for the England team for the Rocket League. And again, you know, I was there as a guest of the British eSports Federation. And it was great to see kind of like see him in action as opposed to in the classroom. But also there was, you know, there were a couple of our students there that I didn't know were going. And the next thing kind of like Twitter pings and sort of like, because there's taken a photo of me speaking to somebody else, but they then get to see it like at those events, they get to see the people in real life who have been in and spoken to them. And that's when they realise how kind of fortunate they are at QMC, because we have, everybody wants to come in, everyone wants to be part of it. You know, we've had Excel in Guild and we have a partnership with Fematic, which is new for this year, which is really exciting, whereby they deliver stuff for us. We get to take them up there to their headquarters. And that kind of like industry engagement is really interesting. The head of the British, he's the founder and CEO of the British eSports Federation features in, when we're talking about the way that eSports works in the UK, you know, we bring Chester in to that so we can explain who he is and what he does. But the photo that they see of him is him stood right outside our big QMC sign, because he came down to launch the facility. You know, was it Monday, we had guests from the Middle East coming in to talk about the investment that they were going to put in out there, along with the Chief Educational Advisor from the British eSports Federation. And, you know, it's an eye-opener for the students, because they almost take it for granted because it's their local college. And they think this is great, but they also think that everywhere else is like this. And so when you get all these guests in, A, inspires them.  And kind of like that excitement is the things that leads to inspiration. And hopefully, you know, we're going to have some really successful graduates. Not hopefully, I'm very confident that we will see a lot of our students in really good positions within eSports in the UK, further beyond. Right. And are girl, young women, are they in your program? Yep. So it's open to all. So we have, and again, that's one of the beauties of eSports is that inclusivity. We have males, females studying the course in terms of the competitive scene. We have female teams this year. We have mixed teams. And the photos that you just saw there were of the land final in Nottingham for the British eSports student championships. And you can see in the Overwatch team, so Overwatch Division one is like the pinnacle of the championships. This is our team. And we have two girls, three boys. And of those, four of them study eSports. Now, three of them study eSports and two of them don't. They're just in the team study elsewhere in the college. And one of the highlights for me was watching the stream when they walked out onto stage. And the chat on Twitch went mad because we had two girls.   And then we won. And it's sort of like, you know, it's just goes to show. And then after the after they won, you know, they get presented the trophies and they'll get interviewed. And, you know, it's a really good platform for those girls to encourage other girls to think, okay, it's not just it's not just boys that can compete, you know, we've competed at the highest level in the student championships and we've won. And, you know, and another thing that came from that victory, which is something that we promote quite heavily in terms of eSports with parents, is all of those things that eSports brings in terms of personal development, you know, like strategic thinking, communication, dexterity and quick thinking. All of those things that, but one of the most important things is confidence because you have, you can have students who aren't necessarily that outgoing and that confident, but they're very confident in their gaming. And then that brings confidence. And I have one student who was a first year student last year who was part of that team that won and he's now second year. And in the first year, he was so quiet, he hardly spoke at all. And since he's come back, he is a completely different young man. And it's so good to see that kind of right level of confidence that that he's now achieved. And so now he's gone into the second year and he's in the team again, you know, he's, he stepped up, you know, he stepped up into like a much more senior kind of like role in the way that the rest of the college see him because, you know, he's one of our heroes that went and won the student championship. So all of the things that we predicted and hoped for and wanted to demonstrate through the eSports qualification and the extracurricular activity, you know, are coming to fruition and it justifies what we do. So we'll wrap this up by having you tell us about your consultancy. Yeah, so NTE sports is my consultancy company, which is just basically stemmed from demand really. You know, I've been in education for a long time. I used to have a business before I got into education. I started to advise an eSports company about education about seven or eight years ago, and then jumped out of education to work for that company to kind of like build up eSports kind of knowledge and get a feel for everything. And then jumped back into education when the BTEC was launched, the qualification. And from that, we just had so many, I had so many people kind of like asking for help and support in terms of set up. How do we set things up? What do we do with an arena? How do we get an arena? Resources, like how do we teach eSports? Because as you can imagine, there's lots of qualified teachers in the UK. There's quite a few people that have been involved in eSports, but there's very few trained teachers who have experience in eSports. And at QMC, luckily, we have three. There's three of us. And so that kind of stemmed from there really. And, you know, and how colleges set up arenas, they can come to me and we can sort that out for them. Resources for teaching, bringing products to market, you know, where companies have a product that they've designed, but they don't know anything about eSports and they don't know how to get into the market. So it's quite varied and it goes beyond the UK. So I get to do things around the world, which is kind of the passion, I suppose, for me. I set up my first business when I was 24, which was a radio business. And I really enjoy that kind of taking ideas from something on paper and turning that into something that exists in reality. And NTE sports has enabled me to do that. So I've got a really good, comfortable life balance at the moment.  So, you know, and I get to meet lots of nice people and network with lots of nice people like South Catherine. Well, Nick, thank you so much for being my guest today. And thank you to our viewers for joining today. In two weeks, Tom Leonard, the host of the podcast, Gamers Changed Lives will be my guest host. Look forward to an interesting session. And Aloha and Mahalo. Also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.