Many of my colleagues who facilitate training and workshops for companies—especially around equity and inclusion—are gearing up for an intense season. With the holiday season upon us and the reality of the election still settling in, many of us are experiencing anxieties about the future. But a bit of reflection on how much black folks… Continue reading no time for despair
Category: Newsletter
learn by doing
In the first few months of launching and running Abernathy, I learned more than I would have in a year of grad school. Not just the nuts and bolts of publishing and media and selling sponsorships, but also things like the transformative power of going faster than you’re comfortable with and working on projects that… Continue reading learn by doing
you first
This magazine was launched to surface narratives reflecting real, lived experiences and targeted at a professional black male demographic—narratives that aren’t typically found elsewhere. We’ve since published more than 250 articles, poems, interviews and profiles that have reached hundreds of thousands of people, and no one has benefited more from the content than me. But… Continue reading you first
here and now
There’s a palpable tension in workplaces across the nation right now. For many, the police shootings of unarmed black men, protests, and unrest spilling into the streets is hard to make sense of. With each passing day, it becomes harder and harder to separate work from life outside of work. One of the challenges with… Continue reading here and now
batman and black women
I’ve lately been fielding questions from non-black founders and hiring managers looking to diversify their teams. They sense the need to acknowledge the risk inherent in uprooting a person’s life when pursuing new opportunities, and acknowledge the challenges faced by blacks when competing for roles. The subtext of the questions are, “how do I show… Continue reading batman and black women
lesson learned
My first job out of college was with a company that currently employs more than 375,000 human beings. Since disconnecting from the Matrix, my professional life has been organized around much smaller (and often distributed) teams. I’ve had great managers, hard-working teammates, and wise mentors. But none of this prepared me for a head-on collision… Continue reading lesson learned
holding space
I started my first Fortune 500 internship in 2005 with Convergys Corporation in Jacksonville, Florida. The work had precisely nothing to do with my Information Technology degree program, I was making $5/hour less than my peers at the same company (a fortune to a college sophomore), and at no point in my life had I… Continue reading holding space
the punch line
One Saturday a couple years ago, I was waiting for a table outside of one of my favorite brunch spots in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A server came outside with an order someone had placed and said “black bean burrito?” I raised my hand and said, “sir, it’s African-American bean burrito.” That one went over pretty well.… Continue reading the punch line