What brought you to Charlotte, and what keeps you here?
Charlotte School of Law brought me to Charlotte as a student back in 2015. For those who don’t know, it was a for-profit law school that admitted a lot of students. Once there, I didn’t feel called to be a practicing attorney. It was just as well because the American Bar Association found the school out of compliance on admission standards, and then the Department of Education withdrew financial aid funding to any student attending the school. That turn of events allowed for me to really figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
For some reason, Charlotte had this strong pull on me because of the communal feel. It was still up and coming at that point, because I think Charlotte has grown a lot since 2015. I guess what keeps me here are the endless opportunities to continue to grow and to see the city grow. There’s especially opportunity as it relates to my work at GardHouse. There are a lot of students and small businesses that need a certain level of support, and GardHouse has been able to address that need. What keeps me in Charlotte is being able to have an impact in a city that I have come to home.
Tell me about your inspiration and motivation for creating GardHouse.
My inspiration was my own journey in trying to find a job after leaving law school. It was extremely difficult. I had no social capital in the city. I hadn’t grown a professional network, even though I’d been here for a while before the school closed and had had internships back in Philly and in Charlotte. Charlotte is a communal city, which brings advantages and disadvantages. You must learn quickly how things work here. Knowing the right people, making the right connections, and doing really good work go a long way in a city such as Charlotte.
My job search experience started me thinking seriously about why I didn’t have the right connections in Charlotte. I began examining all the jobs I was applying for but wasn’t getting. I eventually landed a job and as I worked my way up, I heard the same exact story and experiences from people who were now my employees. Everyone kept sharing how they wished they had had support throughout college, especially those who had been first generation college students like me. They wondered how they could increase their social capital across boundaries, including across state lines.
When I transitioned from one job to the next, I thought the new role would allow me to do more for folks to close the social capital gap. I soon learned my calling was greater than the scope of that 9-to-5 job. Four months into the role, I went to HR and said, “I’m thinking about doing something kinda drastic, how do you feel about it?” They were quick to say, “Don’t do it.” It was then I went back to my office and called family and friends, who assured me that had my back, 100 percent. That day, I submitted my two-week notice and started the foundation of GardHouse. I began planning the programming and identifying key players in the space.
I started the organization without a job and definitely wouldn’t do that again, but sometimes you need that audacious faith to push yourself into the next stratosphere.
We met when you famously and brilliantly pivoted with a GardHouse fundraising event at the outset of the pandemic's shutdown. Innovating and being creative obviously isn’t new to you, especially now that you’ve shared your Charlotte School of Law story. How does innovation play out for you in meeting challenges?
I’m a grand-scale thinker, and that’s good for innovation but terrible for implementation [hearty laughter]. When it comes to challenges, I tend to think of the goal—what would I love to see in a perfect universe. And then the reality side of me, which I rely on in my day to day, asks: How do I make this practical? How do I move the mountain in stages? I once heard a speaker talk about moving mountains by grains of sand, bit by bit. So now that’s how I approach innovation, I get this grand vision of what I’d love to see happen, then I scale it back to determine the “grains” that must be moved, step by step, to achieve that grand vision. We may be solving a portion of the problem today, but ultimately we are actually transforming something.
What’s your happy place and why?
I’ll talk about two. Back in Philly, my happy place was a secret spot across Boathouse Row, which sits on the Schuylkill River. I’m envisioning it right now. On the lefthand side are places where all the boats dock and where everybody goes. However, when you go a little further up, there is this cool area enclosed by a grove of trees. There’s a small pond of water and a smaller dock that typically no one goes to. I would always go there, usually at night, whenever my mind needed to be cleared. Gazing directly into the sky at the stars and moon yet also seeing it reflected in the water would allow me to reset mentally. That place could take out any frustrations, stress, and anxiety and allow it ripple away. That’s in Philly.
In Charlotte, my happy place…my safe space is my house. It’s honestly why I named my organization GardHouse. I love being in my kitchen and my dining room because that’s where community is. It’s where I get to eat, and I love food. 100 percent, my safe space, my creative space, my reset space, all of it, is my dining/kitchen area.
What could a city like Philadelphia learn from Charlotte? And vice versa?
I’ll start with what Charlotte could learn from Philadelphia. It could learn to appreciate diversity of thought and experience. Philly is a huge melting pot, in terms of the foods, cultures, religions, races and sexual orientations. Whatever your background, you don’t feel singled out in certain instances. Philly really is a beautiful place to be if you’re looking for diversity. Here in the South people are accustomed to certain way of life and standard of living that works for some but not for others. Even though it has gotten better since I first came, Charlotte could still learn to embrace a wider range of constituents and communities and better support people of all backgrounds.
What Philly could learn from Charlotte is how to create communal space. Though there is diversity of thought and a diversity of people in Philadelphia, it is still somewhat segregated. You know what part of town belongs to who. You literally know where each group is based: Italians in South Philly, the Irish in Fishtown, and Black people in North and West Philly. Philly could do better at creating more common ground.
