“All of these missing pieces became seeds I planted firmly in my mind. I started to think if I need all of these things, and if I feel like they’re missing from my life, perhaps they’re missing from other young people’s lives too?”
Some of my life’s toughest experiences made me realise I was going to need so much more as a human being to make it through this journey.
I had professionally been in the world of pop-culture from the tender age of 18 when I started working for FUBU. I travelled the world, met celebrities, and got invited to all the dopest events and parties. On paper, life looked like “the dream” and for a while tbh it was. Because that’s what I thought life should look like. Living life on the peripheral is what we’ve been taught. Our society values commodities, titles, the facade of exterior pretences. We can only ever live up to this until we realise that all of this is BS. Those realisations are usually made when you’re pushed over the edge or when an experience forces you to question things deeply.
When this moment came for me it came with full force. Complications with my son’s birth, confronting life and death, and then the after-effects of trauma and healing were what drove me towards—and through—some of my most profound lessons.
There was so much missing from my life; the skills to deal with serious trauma, community, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, self-care practices, being true to myself, communication, spaces to be seen and valued…the list went on.
All of these missing pieces became seeds I planted firmly in my mind. I started to think if I need all of these things, and if I feel like they’re missing from my life, perhaps they’re missing from other young people’s lives too?
“At this moment a vision for BE. was born. I imagined the creation of a new system; a strong collective where young people can be seen, valued and heard, to nurture each other in many loving and creative ways, to cultivate opportunities, to show up for each other, and to activate our imaginations and inspire free thinking."
I had always been very passionate about youth culture—how young people think, how they view the world, how they express themselves and what they find most important. Because of this, I made a personal commitment to combine my professional world and utilise my platform of 20- years to create a new pop-culture, one which filled the void of what I felt was lacking from society for young people. I began by doing this through my work with brands and my activism with non-profits. However, it was a lot of hard work to convince brands they needed to change and it was tiring to constantly come up against resistance. After years of working on what would later become the BE. model, I was in NYC and was invited to give a talk at New York University. I felt ill-equipped to do the talk because I wasn’t an academic, but after psyching myself up I realised I spoke the same language as all the students, and that everything I was creating was relevant to them.
I was on the plane to LA after the talk and something incredible happened: I had a huge lightning bolt moment, something totally divine took over all my senses. It was streaming through me like an open portal. I grabbed my laptop and started typing everything that was coming through me.
At this moment a vision for BE. was born. I imagined the creation of a new system; a strong collective where young people can be seen, valued and heard, to nurture each other in many loving and creative ways, to cultivate opportunities, to show up for each other, and to activate our imaginations and inspire free thinking. An entire unique eco-system that celebrates the brilliance of young, curious, passionate minds.
It’s been incredibly touching to see how many young people have resonated with this idea and especially how they’re showing up in numbers because it speaks to their hearts.
I am excited to be on this journey with the BE. fam.
Gx