More to the Story

March 2019

If knowledge is power, curiosity is the engine. Like they say, “you don’t know what you don’t know” — and I think that’s a good thing.

Had I known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have taken the same path to get to today — but thankfully I didn’t. Naïveté is often a blessing in disguise.

Detroit-born and Spartan-raised, I always knew I wanted to go to Michigan State. To me, the culture in East Lansing was something you felt rather than read about — the perfect mix of ambition, humility, and opportunity. While I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I was confident the combination of challenge and camaraderie at MSU would allow me to find my future path.

And sure enough, it did. I had a blast and developed incredible, diverse relationships for a lifetime. I learned to knock down doors, show up, and get uncomfortable with a “nothing to lose, everything to gain” mentality. I learned to be proactive rather than reactive, that “good people know good people,” and “it’s not what you know, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.” I embrace tomorrow as a function of today and know that for every up, there’s a down — but it always gets better. No matter what, I will never lose that Spartan spark.

However, I haven’t always appreciated it. While progress has been made, different backgrounds still pose compounding barriers to entry. Screening on credentials rather than competencies is efficient, and saves time and energy — but aren’t those key ingredients for growth?

With a greater focus on identity, diversity, and inclusion, it seems a bit outdated to filter for prerequisite packages and lean on muscle memory to dictate decisions. In the future, I hope “different” backgrounds will be considered valuable, complementary perspectives rather than boxes to check and quotas to meet.

Diversity by design can breed resentment. Lasting change requires patience and hard work, a worthwhile investment for the next generation.

There’s much more to the story than what someone looks like, where/if they went to school, and first perceptions. Stay curious or stall out.