Seed of the Free - Are You Ready?
By: Martrice Gandy, Founder/Executive Director of MindWorks Collaborative and 2020 Camelback Fellow.
As a Black woman leader and entrepreneur, it is empowering to witness Kamala Harris, an HBCU educated Black woman of Indian descent, become the first female Vice President of the United States. This is a culmination of the work of many Black women leaders before her and I have no doubt she will follow their and her mother’s charge to leave the door open for others to follow. Vice President Harris embodies the meaning of Sankofa as she constantly connects her source of inspiration to the audacious spirit of her mother and is deeply driven by the stories of her ancestors. In this I feel she is a kindred spirit, as my journey as an entrepreneur and leader are too tied to family lessons and legacies.
Seeds of Early
My favorite part of Gandy Family reunions is the “Are You Ready?” call-and-response. My grandfather leads us in this 70+ year tradition started by his father as he rode a mule-driven wagon around the Gandy Loop, a 120 acre homestead. Given the systematic way land was stolen from Black families, keeping this land in our family is the product of fierce determination to document and a relentless drive for self-sufficiency. Raised to always recognize gaps as opportunities, be an owner, and climb higher in ways that build up my community, today, I am a #ruthlessforgood entrepreneur.
My career began as a special education teacher and quickly moved into leadership. At times it was a hard and exceptionally lonely journey with minimal extrinsic reward, investment or recognition. I started pursuing being an entrepreneur but it took me years to fully commit. I constantly battled with feelings of being a “sell-out” to the profession, my students, and their families by choosing a path outside of being a school or district leader. However, staying felt like a disservice to my own reoccurring dreams – my legacy. Launching MindWorks Collaborative (MWC) was my way of making sure other leaders committed to breaking the special education to prison cycle had the support to sustain the fight. Never having to go the journey alone or experience burn out working for organizations that did not align with their values. MWC is a digital community platform built by diverse special education leaders to engage culturally responsive professional development, career support, and a collection of practice-based resources that they need to thrive and grow impact in the field.
Have your receipts
Being in a schoolhouse felt as much home as my co-working office – until it didn’t. My last boss tried to bully and shame me into taking on a new contract that was the equivalent of blending three roles, without commensurate payment. I declined and I watched as my boss had a Donald Trumplike melt-down. How dare I tell him no? How dare I recognize my power and worth and ask to be treated and paid on par with the white leaders? How dare I channel Early Gandy and point out the miscalculations and schemes of the landowner? He wasn’t ready.
Thankfully, I had a community of Black and Brown women leaders who quickly took action to advocate for me in rooms we could not be in and offered help when trouble was afoot. We were just beginning to manifest our dreams when word got back to my old boss that we dared to have a little success. Months after my departure, he was calling our potential clients and funders trying to block us from thriving. Admittedly, at first, I was devastated. It rocked my confidence and ability to know who to trust – there were many days that everything felt insurmountable. However, I leveraged the knowledge my elder Black entrepreneurs had learned about the value of documentation. I began to counteract the lies and negative story-telling by producing my “Book of Receipts,” which included job evaluations, recorded meetings and conversations, written communications, offer letters and other items. While MWC has managed to survive the storm it certainly took its toll on me emotionally, mentally, and physically.
Are You Ready Kamala?
As Madame Vice President Harris gets ready to walk into the oval office, I am both proud of her and concerned for her wellness and safety. The same aggressively racist and sexist attitudes that attempted to stop my ancestors from owning their land, burned down my grandparent’s barn of 500 chickens (in New York!), unsuccessfully tried to block my mother from getting her master’s degree, and pulled funding from my venture, are all alive and rampant in our political arena. The events earlier this month in the U.S. Capitol reaffirms that it’s just barely beneath the surface and ready to emerge with the tiniest perceived slight. As Kamala prepares to endure the greatest fight of her professional and personal life, I offer these words of encouragement to her and any Black, Indigenous, Latinx or other womxn who dares to challenge the status quo and forge new paths:
Build a squad
Being a leader is an often-isolating experience and you can only go but so far alone. Have a support system of brilliant, like-minded leaders who can catch your blind-spots, up-level your thinking, and sing your song back to you when you forget the words.
Prioritize Family and Self
Work is not life. It is a way for you to live out your life in a way that enriches yourself and your family. Aim for work-life symphony – not harmony. Having a shared but flexible understanding with your family of what time is for work, what time is for you, and what time is for them allows for the complexity of each of those relationships to support each other while allowing each to thrive.
Lead with Curiosity
Leadership is not about being the sole provider of solutions and innovations. The best among us, leverages strong teams in challenging moments by asking questions that reveal “why” things are the way they are before asking “how” one can make it better. This opportunity to step back crowdsources the most effective and innovative solutions from those most directly impacted by the challenge.
Center your values
Being a leader or entrepreneur does not make you unique or special. The culture you build and the way in which you operate as a leader does however. Commit to leading with a deep sense of purpose and grounded in the authentic values that drove you to take on the challenge of being a leader in the first place and watch your impact grow.
Resilience
Despite being a leader – you cannot control everything, especially human behavior. Control what you can, strive to influence everything else, and view set-backs as opportunities for growth and progress. Use data from set-backs as learning to help you successfully respond and recover.
The Legacy Continues in 2021
If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that no one can predict the future. We can set strong intentions though and control how we respond to life’s events. Sojourner Truth is quoted as saying "Because of them I can now live the dream. I am the seed of the free, and I know it. I intend to bear great fruit." There is no denying that Kamala is the result of generations of folks fighting for the right for her to exist. Likewise, I too am able to bear great fruit through MWC as the seed of generations of fighters. Let’s all move into 2021 and beyond by bountifully growing the legacies and dreams of our ancestors!
Learn more here about Martrice Gandy and MindWorks Collaborative.
Find out more about all of the CBV Fellows by clicking below: