On Friday January 15, 2016, the actual birthdate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was only befitting that a I Have A Dream Summit be called by My Brother’s Keeper Task Force. The summit was a collaboration between President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, BLOC and Student Dream. This amazing group was able to pull together some of the best and brightest from the black community to discuss solutions and outcome oriented actions that could help propel all youth and young adults to pursue academic and professional opportunities in entrepreneurship.
Some of the speakers included Blavity’s own CEO, Morgan DeBaun who was able to share with the energetic group the story of how Blavity developed and the power of using various social media platforms to reach your core audience. Along with Morgan Debaun, participants were able to hear from Courtney Sanders or Think And Grow Chick, a website geared towards providing black women with programs that inspire them to live their best lives. Rounding out this great group of speakers was Andre Woodley Jr., creator of Quest, an app geared towards helping its users build memorable lives by discovering, connecting, sharing, or discovering their moment within 10 seconds. Woodley, a graduate of Tennessee State University, explained to the students that if big ideas and innovation can come out of Harvard it can also come out of an HBCU. The room had no shortage of HBCU alumni and students. Schools like Claflin University, Southern University, Howard University, North Carolina A and T University, Morgan State University and Lincoln University were well represented.
As the conversation about solutions and outcome oriented actions continued throughout the day participants were forced to ask themselves what part were they playing in pushing the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs. That question isn’t just one for the participants to consider but one for us all to consider. How are we helping the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs? Hopefully we all can work towards answering that question.
