Authenticity & Unapologetic

If I were asked three words to describe myself? Understanding, Relentless, Unapologetic.

To me, being unapologetic is not the Merriam-Webster definition, which is not feeling or showing regret; a definition, to me, which strips away the sense of empowerment historically associated with the word. A definition more aligned with the adjective that oppressed groups (i.e., unapologetically Black) have proudly used as a descriptive for themselves is the understanding of when to be sorry and when to be proud. An adjective which is fitting, because a group who has to deal with a corpus of traumas such as school trauma, preconceived notions, passive aggressions, workplace bias, increased harassment, amongst more – due to their identity – is a group who is reminded daily of why they should not be proud. Who would be sorry for remaining proud in their identity when unwanted negative forces try to strip that away from you?

Socrates insisted on knowing thyself. I agree, as I think the ability to know oneself is to be proud of your natural identity, along with the willingness to sit with discomfort and examine yourself honestly (the healthy and unhealthy habits, the patterns that repeat, why particular choices feel instinctive) - a fulfilling journey that fights back against the norm of carefully curating an image for public acceptance, and focusing on personal alignment, regardless of unimportant optics.

"Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets."

First Decade

I was born in 1994. Barely.

I'm a native New Yorker, though I am the only New Yorker on my mother's side of the family.

My mother is from Goldsboro, North Carolina. She grew up in the South, raised by a devout pastor mother. Her father was largely absent. She also was the oldest of four, each born nearly one year apart.

My mother and her siblings grew up extremely poor. As children, each sibling set mouse traps around the house, marking them with their initials. Whenever they heard a snap at 2 a.m., they would get excited, all running to see who had earned a quarter. That was my mother's introduction to money.

Her mother earned roughly $4,000 a year, which was stretched to support herself and four children. My mother was allowed one new outfit each year, if possible. At the time, this felt normal to her. It was the only reality she knew. She was, by her own memory, a happy child until high school, when her father kidnapped her. During that period, he imposed hardship as discipline, forcing her to eat and drink things she disliked in the name of "building toughness," and withholding anything that brought her joy. Her initial experience with depression was rooted not in growing up poor, but in not feeling free.

She became determined to be the first in her family to attend college. Less for prestige and more for escape. She enrolled at NC State and graduated with two degrees – Accounting and Business Management. With nothing waiting for her back home, she moved to New York. She arrived without a plan, but with certainty that she would figure it out. She slept in her car and worked odd jobs to stay afloat. Eventually, she entered real estate, where she began to earn consistent money.

When she had me, her goal was clear: I would not experience what she had endured. Her childhood shaped her parenting. It was less about replicating how she was raised and more about rejecting what she never wanted to be.

As a child, I had lobster and fruit cups for breakfast, traveled overseas regularly, attended Alvin Ailey shows, Broadway shows, and went to amusement parks monthly. I was taught how to play the piano and flute, play chess, dance ballet, sing, and act. She wanted me to experience everything she never had. As a child, I was happier than ever. I often joke that I grew up a pescatarian who ate oxtail, because the first time I ate a meat other than oxtail was in fourth grade.

I also got my first computer at four years old. My day-to-day activities aside from extracurricular activities consisted of playing chess on the computer, playing Microsoft Pinball and Minesweeper, using math games that adapted in difficulty, playing memory games, and listening to reading programs that read advanced books out loud while I followed along with the words. I was extremely comfortable with technology at an early age.

I also loved being outside and watching sports. As a child, I began to discipline myself internally. If I wanted to hula-hoop outside, I had to win a game of chess first. If I wanted to play with my friends, I had to finish an entire book. If I wanted to watch the Mets, I had to learn something new on the computer.

In kindergarten at the Nurturing Center, my teacher, Ms. Collins (God rest her soul), told me I was the smartest kid she had ever met. As a child, this meant the world to me. Especially coming from a woman over eighty years old. It inspired me to study more. I asked Ms. Collins what children were taught in first grade all the way through college. I remember being told to enjoy being a kid, but she began preparing extra challenges to feed my curiosity: second and third-grade math problems. I graduated Valedictorian of my Kindergarten class and skipped first-grade.

My first day of second grade, which I considered "real school", was on 9/11. As a child, I didn't understand the concept of terrorism. I only understood that what had happened was bad. My goal became being able to recite the names of all the 9/11 victims without having to read them. It may seem unusual, but I believe it marked the early beginning of how I learned to process and retain large amounts of information seamlessly.

Fast-forward to 2003, when LeBron entered the league. I gravitated toward statistics. Being exactly ten years younger and sharing the same birthday, I became determined to prove LeBron would become the best player in the NBA based on that coincidence. I studied the profiles and statistics of every player in the league. Using numbers to validate intuition felt like a cheat code to life, especially since I was already familiar with sports debates through endless Yankees-versus-Mets discussions. Processing large volumes of data also came naturally to me, something I believe was rooted in my early 9/11 exercise.

As a child, I was trained to be an intellectual while being surrounded by luxury.

My mother's generosity extended far beyond my childhood. She would give a homeless man two hundred dollars without hesitation. She loaned money to friends constantly. On the surface, it looked noble. She was a provider. But even as a child, something didn't sit right. I once asked her why her friends only called when they needed money, and never just to talk. She snapped at me.

That reaction stayed with me.

After a real estate awards ceremony, she asked me what I would do first if I made a million dollars. I said I would probably buy her another house, then figure out what made sense from there. She told me that was the wrong answer. I was supposed to give my first million to her.

That was the moment something shifted. What I had once believed was the best childhood imaginable began to feel fragile. Life still looked perfect from the outside. I had everything I wanted.

Internally and externally, everything appeared aligned. And yet, I felt something slipping. Something I didn't yet have language for, only the sense that it was being taken from me.

Over time, my attention shifted to what I felt misaligned with beyond money. What stood out were certain Southern norms that never sat right with me. I wasn't allowed to have long hair because "you don't get jobs with certain hairstyles." I was dressed in suits and ties when around white spaces. In her mind, she was preparing me for the real world.

But internally, something else was forming. This was the beginning of an unapologetic Black identity: one rooted in the understanding that appearance and performance do not equate to intellect or depth. At a young age, the mission of redefining stereotypes started to form.

Public School Bryan

In 2004, my mother married my stepfather. She met him at The Manhattan Club, where she was a timeshare owner and he was a security guard. As finances shifted and because I wanted to attend the same school as my childhood neighbors, my mother enrolled me in public school for the first time. Shout out to P.S. 195.

This was my first exposure to an environment where my upbringing made me an outlier. I wasn't bullied physically, but culturally. I was mocked for knowing how to play the piano and the flute, for loving to read, and for not knowing rap songs. I was called a square because of it.

At that age, fitting in mattered. I stopped playing the piano and the flute; decisions I still regret. I replaced daily reading with catching up on the cultural landscape around me. Click n' Spark by Fabulous was my introduction to rap, which quickly turned into studying every 50 Cent track, every Biggie verse. Anything that would help me blend in.

I wanted to wear durags every day. I still do. My personality changed, and some of that change was genuinely positive. But the motivation behind it was flawed. I wasn't evolving; I was adapting out of fear. I didn't like being singled out, and I learned early how quickly identity can be reshaped by the desire for acceptance.

Years later, in high school, I would realize that the very traits I muted were always valuable, just not universally appreciated, and that was perfectly okay. That realization didn't make me resent my early public school experience, but it did instill a lasting principle: remain rooted in who you are, not in who you think others want you to be.

By 2006, my mother was deeply concerned about the version of me that had emerged. Beyond cultural adaptation, I was getting into fights regularly, cursing constantly, and stealing bikes for sport; largely because everyone else was doing it. The year prior, I was suspended for stealing an entire batch of Butterscotch Krimpets from the teacher's closet, a reward reserved for students who knew it was Sodapop Curtis's favorite snack in The Outsiders.

In response, my mother sent me to a predominantly white institution, Lawrence Woodmere Academy (LWA), to "get my act together."

Fanon Era

At Lawrence Woodmere, I was almost bullied again, but for different reasons. For being "ghetto." But by this point, I wasn't complying. I had already changed myself once. I wasn't willing to keep reshaping who I was based on other people's comfort. I started speaking up openly when people had something to say about me. Right or wrong, my mindset was simple: I would not be bullied, and I would stand up for myself.

Unfortunately, this was also where I experienced my first real exposure to passive racism. I wasn't seen as a kid defending himself. I was labeled an aggressive, loud, and disrespectful Black kid. I was in detention almost every day. Some of it deserved, some of it not.

One incident still stands out. My French teacher told me she didn't think French was my problem, but that it was my English. I was extremely offended. Her comment was rooted in her not understanding Black vernacular. I responded that it would mean a lot more if her feedback came from a U.S. born citizen. A response rooted in defensiveness and an incomplete understanding of optics. I was suspended. I was highly confused why I was punished and she was not. I felt that everybody always saw the clap back, but not the clap that caused the clap back.

In a separate incident, one of my eighth-grade math exams included a question that asked for all the numbers between 100 and 105. It did not specify whether the range was inclusive or exclusive, so I answered: 101, 102, 103, and 104. My answer was marked incorrect and I challenged the grading. Instead of acknowledging the ambiguity in the question, the teacher responded by giving me a math exam at a second-grade level, seemingly to test whether I understood basic math before questioning her authority. I asked whether the exam was meant for her before ripping the paper in front of her. I was suspended again.

After eighth grade, Lawrence Woodmere told me I was not welcome back for high school. To make matters worse, nearly every top public and private school in New York required a letter of recommendation. Lawrence Woodmere refused to write one.

At that point, it felt like the world was against me. I began reflecting constantly. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? I replayed moments in my head. I shouldn't have said that to my French teacher. I shouldn't have ripped that paper! Then, almost immediately, my brain went to "you were defending yourself. Do not be mad at yourself!"

While I was navigating my challenges at school, home offered no refuge. My mother and I were locked in sustained conflict. I believed she should have defended me in response to what was happening at Lawrence Woodmere. Instead, I was punished both there and at home. My refusal to comply was framed as ingratitude. I was repeatedly reminded of the financial sacrifices being made on my behalf and warned that I was wasting them. I was told often that she would never do anything of substance for me again.

While at Lawrence Woodmere, my younger sister was also born, which became further justification for my mother to redirect her time, attention, and energy. Around then, she also stopped working altogether and fell into severe substance abuse.

Experiencing instability both at school and at home led me to spiral into a universe of emotions. I had no relationship with my father at that point in my life. There was nowhere to decompress, nowhere to feel protected. What I was navigating academically and socially was compounded by the collapse of stability at home.

I was emotionally dysregulated, caught between self-critique, self-acceptance, and self-worth. I knew I wasn't perfect. I knew I wasn't a bad person. I knew I was misunderstood. At the same time, I carried a belief that I was chosen, shaped by my early experiences and reinforced by recent hardship.

One question kept returning. Simple but heavy: Why am I letting other people's perceptions dictate my emotional state?

That question became foundational. It shaped my earliest understanding of what being unapologetic meant, what speaking with conviction meant, what respect meant, and what self-respect required. I vowed to speak with conviction and remain respectful, believing that integrity alone would preserve my internal peace, regardless of others' opinions. Or so I thought.

High School & Trauma

Since Lawrence Woodmere Academy refused to write me a letter of recommendation, I found myself at the Academy for Careers in Television and Film (ACTvF). A school willing to take a chance because it had just opened. I was part of its first graduating class. I arrived with a sense of perspective shaped by everything that came before.

For the first time, things felt aligned. Academically, I felt ahead due to what I had learned at Lawrence Woodmere, but socially, I no longer felt like an outlier. The personality I had developed over the years allowed me to integrate naturally. It felt like the right environment.

The one suspension I received during high school did not affect me emotionally. If anything, it reinforced a mindset I had already begun to develop.

I was suspended for completing another student's homework in exchange for one hundred dollars. Selling candy on the train and completing homework in exchange for compensation was my high school hustle. I was simply caught this time because the student had special needs, and the teachers were suspicious of the unusual high grade.

The narrative quickly became that I had taken advantage of a special needs student. I acknowledged that I was wrong for doing his homework, but I refused to accept the narrative being imposed on me.

I served my suspension without anger. I wasn't upset about the story being told about me because I knew the truth. What I did learn, however, was the importance of optics. How easily intent can be overshadowed by perception, and how certain situations can be weaponized regardless of motive.

Outside of that incident, high school was a good period in my life. I earned straight A's, built meaningful friendships, and felt aligned as a person.

Then, within a short span of time, everything changed.

My mother kicked me out of the house after I threw away her alcohol, having seen firsthand the toll it was taking on her. With nowhere to go, I had a third-party reach out to my father, unable to reach him directly. My father took me in, and for the first time, I began to build a relationship with him after years of absence.

Simultaneously, I started to build a list of traumas. A basketball friend of mine was killed by a stray bullet. A childhood neighbor I used to babysit died in a car accident at eight years old. These losses occurred within months of one another.

Then came the worst of it.

My father was arrested for murder and sentenced to life in prison.

That broke me. As a child who believed he understood the world; who thought he had developed wisdom beyond his years. I suddenly had no idea how to navigate life. I felt completely without parental guidance. I was lost. School no longer mattered. I had no place to call home. The structure I relied on disappeared. Life itself no longer felt familiar or intelligible. I found myself reexploring who I was as an individual. 'Luckily' for me, college was only a few months away.

College & Breaking The Mold

I entered college with a distinct upbringing, yet I quickly found myself facing a familiar battle due to the recent tragedies I endured and the new environment I was in: redefining who I was. College introduced me to people of remarkable depth, backgrounds, perspectives, and life paths I had never encountered before – grounding me in the understanding that we all have different stories, which is what makes life meaningful.

I gave myself a simple directive: whatever happens, be yourself and do not fit a mold.

But what was the mold?

From a computer science perspective, it was the expectation to be clean-cut, purely input/output, engineered to satisfy requirements, not to question systems or challenge assumptions.

From the perspective of being a Black man, it was the pressure to comply quietly. To make oneself small enough to avoid scrutiny, to never give anyone a reason to take issue.

From the perspective of being a college student, it was the incentive to perform. To be widely liked, affirmed, and rewarded, even if that meant compromising one's values.

I rejected all three.

I grew my hair out for the first time in my life. I was the Mac developer in an era dominated by Windows. I spoke openly about subjects that many people thought about privately but lacked the courage to say aloud. This became my reputation.

I joined a Black fraternity, Omega Psi Phi. An organization often associated with wild behavior and exaggerated displays of hypermasculinity. Instead of conforming to that stereotype, I chose to redefine it. During my time on campus, my chapter won Chapter of the Year. Every event we hosted during my tenure sold out. We were respected because we led with respect and intention, and we became known for scholarship rather than chaos.

That shift was not welcomed by everyone. Some older generations, who, in my view, were conditioned to conform to systems rather than challenge them, were openly dissatisfied with how the chapter was operating. They believed I was redefining the purpose of undergraduate operations. I was. And I wasn't sorry about it.

I knew who I was, both as a person and as a scholar, and I understood that public perception had no bearing on that truth.

To make the point unmistakable, I often leaned into being deliberately outspoken and theatric, to demonstrate that appearance, demeanor, and conformity had no correlation to depth, intelligence, or rigor.

Homelessness

Post-graduation, I encountered a humbling reality. Finding meaningful work proved far more difficult than I had anticipated. The roles I was offered were largely testing positions and documentation engineering. Necessary work, but far removed from the intellectual rigor and creative problem-solving I had been trained to pursue.

I had deliberately shaped my education toward becoming a Swiss-army data developer: someone fluent in statistics, data architecture, data engineering, data science, and data analytics. It was a highly nontraditional path for an early-stage computer scientist. Data had always been the backbone of how I understood systems and value creation, rooted in my early obsession with sports analytics. I wanted my career to reflect that.

Technology has its own form of gatekeeping. Your last role often dictates your next, and I refused to accept a position that would pay the bills but quietly lock me into the wrong trajectory.

My mother's brother, who also has a computer science background, was building his own startup: YobiFund, an equity crowdfunding platform. He offered me the opportunity to work with him unpaid, promising meaningful experience in fintech and data architecture. I had the chance to learn directly from someone I trusted.

On paper, it sounded ideal.

Almost immediately, the reality was different. His framing was explicit: "You pledged Omega Psi Phi. Now it's time to pledge computer science." Meals were conditional. Hot food came two or three times a week, only after tasks were completed. A family member chose to exploit his own nephew for labor, leveraging dependence to control outcomes. I learned how easily power can be abused. I endured that physical environment for roughly six months.

Eventually, my own moral boundaries became non-negotiable. I knew I would not tolerate abuse, even if refusing meant having no financial safety net. I reminded myself that my mother had escaped to New York with nothing and found a way forward. It was my turn to do the same.

I left. For the next two and a half months, I lived on friends' and family members' couches. Never technically homeless, but constantly at risk of becoming so. However, I was the happiest I've ever been. During that time, I was more grounded than ever in who I was, what I would allow, and what I would not. I believed I had experienced pain in many forms by then, but this period reframed it. I didn't see it as a collapse. I saw it as an origin point. I treated it as fuel.

Surviving Corporate

The work eventually paid off. I received an offer from a consulting firm auditing mass-tort litigation cases. Being a key developer for projects tied to the Volkswagen emissions scandal, the Endo transvaginal mesh settlement, and Bosch. I was doing work that felt both meaningful and ethical.

At the time, my salary was $75,000. Coming from where I had been, it felt like wealth. Only later did I realize I was significantly underpaid. But that realization came second. What mattered more to me was that the work aligned with my values.

It was also my first sustained exposure to corporate dynamics as a Black, qualified professional. I learned quickly that competence paired with conviction can feel threatening, especially to individuals who occupy positions of power without the skill or rigor to justify them.

Still, I remained rooted in myself. The real question became: how does one remain authentic, unapologetically so, within a corporate structure built on politics and appeasement?

I delivered strong work. I built meaningful relationships. But I never learned how to 'politic.' Appeasement, with everything I've learned throughout the years, was not in my DNA. And that refusal, more than any lack of qualification, led to repeated professional friction. My departures at every company were voluntary on my side, and never about performance. They were about discomfort with diluting myself to maintain hierarchy.

One moment, in particular, stays with me. At The Washington Post, I openly disagreed with a colleague who had over four decades of experience regarding a production issue. He raised his voice and told me, "When I speak, you listen." This was his response to me disagreeing with his suggestion. I laughed and told him not to let a nice shirt fool him. He called HR on me. What followed surprised him: every colleague in the room defended me. The situation ultimately worked against him.

That moment affirmed something I already believed. Being rooted in making the right decision, even when it sounds wrong in the moment, tends to hold up. The question also became: what does it mean to be deeply convicted in who you are, yet dependent on a corporate structure for survival?

That contradiction felt backward to me. And so, I made a decision that would again disrupt comfort and certainty. I stepped away from corporate life and chose to work for myself.

I was always disheartened when reading professional bios that included the disclaimer, "my views do not reflect those of my employer." To me, it signaled an imprisoned mindset. The necessity of preemptively distancing oneself from one's own thoughts to remain safe. I was advised to adopt that posture as well, particularly because I shared pro-Black perspectives publicly and asked questions that invited meaningful discussion regardless of how they might be received.

I spoke with conviction and rarely filtered myself through optics. The underlying reality that so many people felt compelled to silence themselves over what I considered basic expressions of humanity was deeply unsettling. Rather than contort myself to fit that structure, I chose to remove myself from it entirely.

Founder Journey

Before building an enterprise platform, I deliberately chose to start with my own sports analytics company. Sports analytics was the original catalyst that drew me to computer science, and returning to it allowed me to close an intellectual loop. More importantly, it provided a low-scrutiny environment in which I could learn business fundamentals beyond technology. Specifically: how distribution actually works, what scales naturally, and what fails regardless of technical merit.

During this period of building, I was approached by Paul Hill, the founder of Strada, regarding a potential co-founder role.

On paper, the outreach was validating. He was publicly associated with partnerships involving OpenAI, Spotify, Apple, and the Brooklyn Museum, and had received Forbes 30 Under 30 recognition. For any early-stage founder, that combination of visibility and institutional proximity is difficult to dismiss outright. My work had been largely behind the scenes within corporate institutions, and I saw this as a strategic opportunity to align public visibility with my technical rigor before starting my own venture.

I thought my discernment was high. In hindsight, not high enough.

What followed crystallized a lesson I had encountered before, though never with this level of clarity: recognition and performative credibility are not substitutes for character, financial integrity, or operational truth. I observed behavior from Mr. Hill that included bringing people on without secured capital and extracting labor without having the means to pay. Details I found out when he missed payroll a few months after starting.

What disturbed me most was not just the misuse of venture funds that were raised during my tenure, but watching a Black man assemble a team composed entirely of people of color – not out of solidarity, but because that is who he felt comfortable exploiting. His own words were that he loves working with Black people because they are "scrappy" and "resourceful."

Even after a mass resignation driven by unpaid labor, he continued to demo the product and solicit venture funding, a behavior rooted in an internalized slave-owner mentality, where unpaid work was being used to champion his lifestyle.

The gravity of the situation was beyond his erratic behavior. Individuals were actively recruited away from high-paying roles despite the knowing absence of sustainable funding to support them.

Initially, the experience forced me inward. I questioned my own judgment; especially after everything I had already lived through. But that reflection led to a more sobering realization: this was not an isolated failure of my discernment. The pattern extended beyond me, implicating venture capital, institutional signaling, and the broader ecosystem that rewards optics over verification.

That experience did not deter me from building. It reinforced, with precision, why I am building what I am building.

For me, being unapologetic has never meant being unaccountable. It has meant being first to truth, regardless of perception. And as I repeat, knowing when to be sorry; and when to be proud.