 Leadership at a crossroads in the midst of a pandemic at colleges and universities nationwide. Fortunately, there are organizations working at grassroots and high levels to help leaders at all levels at campuses adjust to these changes and prepare for an uncertain but possibly bright future. And today we are privileged to be joined by three co-founders of an extraordinary organization which targets historically black colleges and universities to develop that leadership pipeline and to ingratiate and really enhance skill for the upcoming generation of leaders on campus. We're joined by Tavon Blair, Diller University alumnus, Arian Forman, a co-founder of Excel Leader. I almost forgot to plug the name of the organization. Tennessee State University graduate and J. Nagadossi, a Howard University alumna to talk about Excel Leader, this organization that's working with folks campus-wide, nationwide on the subject of leadership. So brothers and sisters, I appreciate you being here today. First, tell me about the idea of three individuals from three campuses coming together to start something that says we have to really think about ways that we can fortify and support leadership at HBCUs. Tavon, we'll start with you. Sounds good. Well, the three of us were all former SGA presidents during the 2017 as well as 2018 academic school years. And so once we finished up, Arian kind of reached out and was saying, hey, we had a great experience and great running leadership, but how can we continue this work? How can we support the next generation of leaders? And so he said, hey, let's do this organization called Maximize. Let's help train leaders. And then J and I were in our senior year. This was back in 2018. And so we took a break, got into the election time for the midterms and then we came up with Excel Leader. And so I said, hey, J is doing great work over it, that Howard, let's partner with her as well. So the three of us just came together knowing that we may not be able to give back financially to our institutions, so we can give back in a space that helped groom us. So Student Government Association, how can we give back to these students and ensure that some of the guidance that we probably didn't have or we wish we would have had, we could help support these new students. And so in 2018, November 9th, we were able to make the announcement that we're gonna start having this leadership webinar series. They would run for eight to 10 weeks and reaching out to college students and saying, hey, do you wanna run for SGA president? If you're interested, here's this link. You benefit by having connections to former leaders, being able to get advice about how to run your campaign. And so from there, we've had two successful cohorts. Our 2018 cohort was with five students from Morehouse, Dillard, Tennessee State, Kentucky State, and we just been able to groom these students and not knowing how much they needed this during that time. So I know Arian and Jay can really highlight the impact that we've done in so little time. So great experience. Jay, talk a little bit about the importance of training folks for student leadership on campus because I think that to the average HBCU student or the casual HBCU observer, you hear student government association, you think a certain realm of influence, right? Well, we wanna see what campus activities will look like and we wanna see what advocacy for student needs look like. They don't get the interface with the Board of Trustees. They don't get the interface with alumni leadership. They don't get the politics that take place in that. Are those conversations that you have with students who are interested in student leadership and do you really tell them, okay, here's one side of your life as a leader and then there's a dark side. You're talking to a whole bunch of people out of a whole bunch of stuff that means a whole lot on and off campus. No, absolutely. That is literally at the core of what we do, especially when we're talking to these students and we're even taking in new cohorts of students and also helping them matriculate through our program. That's at the heart of what we do. We talk about, it's not only enough just to run and to win, it's now preparing you with the tools necessary to govern. And oftentimes I think, as young students and I can attest to it, Tavan and Ariane could probably attest to it. Walking into student government, even if you've been in student government in any capacity or served in different roles, being SGA president is an experience that quite honestly, as much preparation as you can have, you still can't fully prepare for. There are gonna be things that happen during the course of your term. There's gonna be scandal, there are gonna be issues that happen that affect your university that you may not have seen before. So you're gonna have to be quick on your feet and understand how to respond to it, but also recognizing who your allies are within the administration and how you're able to push through the policies and the agenda that you had campaigned on and actually making that come to life. And so a lot of our program is really focused and we always tell our fellows each year, like this is not a, we're not doing pro, there's not a programming group. We're not gonna tell you how to throw the hottest homecoming. We're not gonna teach you how to throw the nicest event. This is about doing something and leaving legacy on your campus, right? And so legacy oftentimes, especially in the student government realm is achieved through policy, is achieved through creating new rules, new structures, new ways of doing at your university and ingraining it into the constitution at your student government so that you're able to effectively make changes where you might not see it while you're on campus, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years down the line, you go back to your university and you realize that some of the procedural orders, the ways in which, you know, administration interacts with SGA, a lot of those different changes are a byproduct of your leadership on campus. And so that's really a lot of what we stress to our students. Arian, how do you, I guess develop skill building and training across different campuses where the SGA culture and the political climate can be different from campus to campus. So for example, if I go to Morgan, SGA plays a different role and confronts different challenges even from those at Coppin, even though we're only separated by a couple of miles. And certainly it would be different, you know, between a Tennessee state and a Howard University, even though both of them are large, one is a public, one is a private. There are different elements of what role and what responsibilities SGA has and the politics they have to face. So how do you go about developing, you know, strategy building and getting young people used to certain elements of leadership from campus to campus is so different? Well, first of all, thanks for having us. I think one of the things that's so important and so big about Excel leaders, we have a common denominator. A common denominator is students. We know throughout different campuses around the country that although they may face different politics, different policy issues at the end of the day, the common denominator as student leaders on campuses, and then that's what's been the focus of our work so far, at the common denominator is students. And so if we could teach students how to focus on student issues and to properly advocate, the game will come with it, right? Because all of this is relationship building. And so one of the things that I think we pride ourselves in at Excel leader is the fact that students are the common denominator. And while other, you know, larger institutions may, you know, larger non-black institutions may have the ability to have support in leadership and get different conferences and mentorship groups. HBCUs don't have that. So it feels good to help students understand the power of advocacy and organizing. And at its base level, it's being an innovator. You know, we pride ourselves in making sure students understand that innovation is what creates policy that creates change that creates legacy. And so at the end of the day, while campus politics are different across the country, the baseline of what we do is advocacy on enhancing the student experience that HBCUs across the country. Now that you guys are a few years removed from undergrad, how do you look back at leadership and say, yeah, if I had to do it again, I would do that same thing or I would take that same approach or I would mobilize the same way. Or when you look back at it with the benefit of experience and age and time, do you say, man, you know what? I got that all wrong. Yeah, I would have done that. I would have done that totally different if I could go back with this mentality. How much of yourself do you see? Yeah, I did that. I made the right call on those things and how much do you say I would have done that better? Or done it differently at least? I honestly think so. And I'll put you back here because it just kinda eludes to one of our programmatic offerings. The reason why we recently changed our fellowship name to just, to the executive student leader fellowship is because I think we've all had the opportunity to work on a campaign or work at a corporate office or work for a rights activist where we've learned that being a student government leader is an executive role. And so if I could go back, there's so much I would change, stuff as simple as having one-on-ones with certain leaders in SGA, right? Focusing more on a certain different set of issues rather than others because now that I've lived and I've kinda been down the road a little bit, I learned that sometimes, student leaders get too in the weeds on stuff that they're supposed to have high-level overview and direction over. So I think for me, certainly now that I know that being president of anything is an executive role, I probably would go up a couple thousand feet and focus a little bit more on bigger issues that could have made a bigger impact. I would say for me, so the time at which I was in leadership was the year in which Howard was going through large financial aid scandal with our aid building, where money was essentially stolen from the university by way of different staff members that worked at the university and it was a huge scandal, right? And so a lot of my term, specifically the second half of my term was literally consumed by student activism around that issue and arguing for more student power at Howard, arguing for more accountability as it relates to the financial aid office and issues like that happening at our university. And to be quite honest, as I look back now, certain things that we did, like certain decisions that we, I think overall our decision-making was pretty sound and I'm actually proud about that, proud to have been a part of that movement to hold my university accountable, but also proud that as we sit today and we see how society is moving, right? There's more activism, there's more progressivism, there's more mobilizing as a collective to know that we were able to be a part of that at that moment in time and literally go up against our own institution, which I love, I'm a proud Howard University graduate, I love Howard University without Howard University. I think that my college experience would have been, totally different and my trajectory would be totally different, but I feel like in confronting your university, there's some piece of love in that, kind of it might sound crazy because we're like protesting outside, like doing our thing, but it's our love for our university that drove us to say, we need to hold ourselves accountable, we need to make sure that we're ensuring that the monies that are, you know, alum, the monies that we get, the monies that are supposed to go to students are left and remain for students, right? And so there was like that love piece in there and at the time I felt kind of, you know, outside voices say, oh, why are you guys putting Howard out there? You know, it's not a good look, right? Like that was kind of the narrative, but now looking back, I see, you know, that was born out of our love for our institution and I think that it made Howard a better place, especially for the student governments that came after me and the amount of power that they now have in decision-making at the university due to us, you know, locking ourselves in the A building and occupying that space. So let me just ask, were you one of the people saying, bitch, better have my money? No, I wasn't, but I was in that, I was in that quarter. Were you in that video? No, no, I actually wasn't. I was in that video, me and myself with my vice president, we had a loudspeaker, we're like out there, we're walking and like, mind you, we go to Howard University, right? Like we've seen protests and we've seen occupation of the A building before. We've seen Stokely Carmichael's come through our campus, you know, and set up shop. And so I think that's just a part of the calling and a part of the Howard University legacy and history. And so I feel like we embodied that. Now, some people, they're like, you know, the rounded bitch would have my money, but you know, the premise was real and it's true. If somebody took your money, you would want it back, right? Like we don't do that at Dylan. But what did you do at Dylan? What I was gonna say is that during from Jade and Arian, I was strengthened to have a second term. So I was actually a president as a junior and then ran again my senior year. So I was able to get that second chance to do things differently and seeing how, you know, learning from first time, second time experience. And so I think it is important if there are opportunities, I know some universities constitution don't allow that two-term kind of access to become president again, but it'll be important for students to have that. Cause each year we realize is that with our leaders, they jump in. So each year there's a new president that wants something different instead of building this legacy on, okay, I started this. Here's this transition of, you know, the work that we started, we brought the conversation up and here's this passed down kind of legacy thing that we're doing. So I think for Dylan, our experience, we had some crazy stuff happening about my first term. And like, you know, just looking back and saying, okay, we're breaking down, you know, trying to get students to understand where I guess getting more constant and more information about what's happening on campus instead of finding out, I guess, the week after something something happened. And so now we're like more reactionary to it. Find a way of how we can be proactive and knowing, you know, ahead of time, making that relationship with university leaders and saying that, you know, we're not here to, to be combative. We're here to work together, here to find a solution for both parties. And sometimes leaders, we may have, may feel we have the way that we have to go to either supporting the university or supporting the students. And at the end of the day, we both are one unit. I think that is the point that all leaders should kind of get that kind of training beforehand. But many of us, we step into these spaces and all are like, okay, I'm here and we're in the election. What do I do now? So that's where we step in. That's the view. That's one of the beauties of what we do is because I think a lot of students, a lot of student leaders at HBC use when the position to be like, okay, cool. No, no, no, no, no. When you come from Excel leader, when you come from the product of what we do, we're sending you off with a firm agenda to walk in facing issues, preparing to solve issues. And I think that's you, that, you know, Toby accurate there. We send students out to prepare them to fight and, you know, to build where needed. Yep. And also, I'm just, sorry, just one last thing I want to add in there as well and also to that legacy piece, right? With our fellows, really impressing on, impressing on them the importance of reaching out to presidents that have served before them, right? There's nothing new under the sun, SGA, although, you know, you have different administrations that come in with new ideas. I promise you more often than not, there was an administration three years, four years before you that were arguing for those same things. And so for us, we impress upon our leaders and connect them with former presidents at their universities so that they're able to really kind of get a better understanding of what's been done, what groundwork has been laid and then build on top of that. You guys are venturing into some very specific conversations about leadership. Jade, I know you're going to be core to a conversation about women in leadership on campus. You guys are also looking to address issues of student leadership in the era of COVID-19. Talk a little bit about some of those emerging conversations and what excites you most about those new, those new dialogues that you'll be having with student leaders. And Jade, we'll start with you since you'll be working with the sisters program. Yes. So this year, this fall actually, she's very new. We launched Exalite Her. It's definitely a labor of love. And I'm really excited about Exalite Her because what, you know, the premise of Exalite Her is essentially supporting HBCU women to lead on their campuses, right? In many different capacities. It's not just limited to SGA. It's not just limited to student government. It's leadership just in general. And oftentimes it's an anecdote that myself and other women presidents, other women SGA presidents often say, which is, you know, our campuses, more often than not are predominantly women, right? Well, they more often than not, always, what does it say? Literally, maybe one or two, it's close. But at Howard, I know from my experience, it was like 17 women to one man on campus, right? It's alarming. But in knowing that, you know, and having that fact and having, you know, seeing that on your campus, you don't see that translated to leadership, right? So oftentimes, you know, Howard University was man after man after man after man after man that was SGA president or SGA vice president or holding these different, you know, leadership titles on our campus and women weren't represented there. And so for me, that board just like a deep seated problem that I've always had, and especially considering that, like I said, our campuses are predominantly women, that's an issue that we need to address, right? How do we support? How do we empower women to say, hey, I want to run and empower the women on their campus to support, you know, women who are running, right? Women who want to take on leadership. So really trying to change the ecosystems at our university and really kind of opening up a conversation that oftentimes we have in these little silos or sectors where, you know, I talked to a lot of my SGA women past presidents and they're like, yeah, there's not a lot of us. And we say that in that room, but yet there's nothing that's being done to translate to change on our campuses. And so I've had the direct experience with the president before me, Alison Carpenter, one of my really good friends and one of our board members. She literally told me, I was not gonna run for SGA. I was like, I wanna be behind the scenes girl, let me just be chief of staff, I'll do all the work. I don't wanna step out on leadership. She was like, you have to run, right? And she kept pressing me and pressing me and pressing me. And I think that, you know, that experience for me, I did run, but it impressed the importance of other women lifting up other women saying, I see it in you, sister, I know that you can do it. And I'm gonna be here to support you in your run, your bid for whatever position you wanna be in, right? And so I took on that charge, you know, when I was SGA president and now I see at Howard, you know, since then we've had more women in leadership than we've ever had at our university in terms of undergraduate trustees, you know, graduate trustees, SGA president, down to like the Senate is comprised of women. It's like a woman run show, right? And so that just takes, you know, intentional leadership on our campuses and having the tough conversations and figuring out how we can change the ecosystem that exists. Beautiful. And then the leadership in a COVID, I guess in a COVID era, brothers, I would turn it over to you to give you some of the highlights from what you think are gonna be important takeaways in it. And this is really interesting because it's, what can you say? What is leadership when no one's on campus in some spaces? What- That's the conversation we've been talking about. Let's talk about that. We do not wanna come off as experts in the conversation with the students tonight, speaking about how to lead during a COVID atmosphere. We never experienced that. And that's why we tell our students is that, yes, you all are this first group of people out of none of your success. You know, your predecessors have been in this space saying that, oh, this is the code book. This is how you can look, one, two, three. This is the guide to how you can effectively lead during a pandemic. And we don't wanna give the information to them because we're all learning. We're learning with each other. And so the conversation how it's gonna go tonight is just hearing what they're going through and seeing how we can, you know, offer up some suggestions for like, hey, you know, this is the issue, but there's also that student at Tougaloo has to have the same exact experience from someone at Morgan or Savannah State. You guys are not alone in this journey. And so we're not the ones that are gonna help give you that perfect answer. It's your peers in this space. And so these students, they didn't have a NAISAP this summer. They didn't have, you know, this different student literature conferences. So the time we spent, that's how we all met each other. We met each other from conferences. They don't have that chance anymore. They're meeting virtually through Twitter, through social media. And so we wanna build this space for them tonight. The ones that do have access, you know, it's exclusive space on Clubhouse to have that conversation with them and to help build these ideas. So when this, if we are still in this COVID atmosphere, you know, going to, you know, the next term, we have something to work off of. We have a new way of how to train them to win their election, a new training, how to help them lead effectively and work with universities, especially in this past or fail kind of issue that students are fighting with right now. But Aria, if you have anything else you want to add in. The biggest part about tonight is what we're gonna do. We talked about this last night. It's checking on them as people. Before we can talk about leaders, we need to check on you as a person because I know if this pandemic has locked me in the house for some hundred days, I know we just need to go back down to the base level of, okay, how are you? Right? But when we get past that and we established some of those self care practices, we established some of that other stuff that's very important to your physical being. The next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna level the playing field. We're gonna help you acknowledge that there are executives of Fortune 500 companies, the manager at McDonald's, the trash worker, the mayor, the president of the United States was not prepared to lead in the panoramic, I mean, the pandemic. Here it is, here it is. You are not alone. I think that's what a lot of these HBCU students need to feel is that you're not alone. And at the end of the day, there is no play before pandemic. And so what we're gonna do tonight is do what we've done as black people for millennia is instead of eating the turnip, we take the greens off the turnip and we take the leaves off the turnip and we make turnip greens. So I think that tonight is our opportunity to tell them like it's in our DNA to innovate and to take the intestines from a pig and make chitlins, okay? It is a hard time. I don't even know what you're talking about, I don't know. But it's- Leave it to somebody from Tennessee State to come do it with chitlins. I know, with the chitlins, just throw off the chitlins. I'm like, I'm like, go in here. But I think that the beauty of what we're gonna talk about tonight is that, and I always, I talked about this in one of my first books, is that when there is a lack of resources, that is the time where innovation is inspired, it's grown. And so I think our conversation tonight, we're gonna mess around and folks will come out of there with playbooks for the second semester. And that's just what we do. We are a people and an organization that believes in getting in there and working with students and helping them wear. And I'll just- I love it, man. You're good. I'll just note that and even on this call later on, we made a concerted effort to literally grab some of our, presidents that served during our times in leadership to also lend their voices and support because we recognize that this is a new space for everybody, like my colleagues have said. But there's experiences that we might have had that we might be able to connect to and say, hey, if you're having issues, breaking through with your university's leadership, I've been through something like that. It might have been different but here's the steps that I utilize to work through that issue. Now, maybe it'll have to be something specific for you. You'll have to tailor it, right? But there's, you know, this is my lived experience. These are experiences that I've had and we have a panel of other former SEA presidents and SEA leaders at HBCUs that are also gonna be on the call to share their insights and experiences as well. So it's really gonna be like one big, kind of like brainstorming collaborative effort to really look at the pandemic, look at leadership, look at our universities, what's at stake and identify ways in which we can support student leaders to be successful in their time and to also advocate for students in the midst of this pandemic, right? Yeah, and I think that we're, and Tamon, correct me if I'm wrong, because Tamon is the leader of this project. I think we have a Zoom version of this too. Yeah, so we're doing a Zoom version after final. Yeah, but those are gonna be watching us just check the way it's not in our social media and we'll have these up there. So that y'all segue right into the perfect thing. Tell us about the website. I have it listed here at the bottom. I hope that folks that watch this will go and check it out. We'll also link to it on our social media. But tell us where we can find each of you and where we can find more information about Excel Leader. So definitely, I'm sorry. I'll just say, make sure that you guys look at that link in the bottom, www.exceler.com. You can go to our website, it's beautiful. You guys can go and peruse our website, see the different programs that we offer and some of the impact that we've been able to make within these two years now going on three years now looking ahead. And so definitely go to our website. You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter at exceler. And so it's spelled the same way. And then for me personally, you all, if you wanna keep up with me, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Jade Agadosi. It's my full name, so J-A-D-E-A-G-U-D-O-S-I. And that's on all social platforms. I'd love to connect with you all, especially women leaders. We're looking for, especially to support our new ex-lead her program. We're looking for more women leaders that have previously served at HBCUs to get connected with us. Cause we wanna make sure that we're supporting as many women as possible. So we're literally building a network of women. And so we wanna get connected with you all and we actually have a forum where we can get connected with you all. You guys can drop your information down low. You guys will literally be able to connect with us and get more updates on the work we're doing. Yeah, so Jay gave you all the spiel about us. So if you wanna follow me, I'm at Arian Jay. So that's A-A-R-I-N-J on all social platforms. I'm not just a really big stuff at the top of the year. So please listen, if you wanna connect, I'm always talking about business, faith, leadership, and food. So come find me and we gonna take off. Yes, you are gonna find me at Tavon Blair. I say, bring yourself now. So my first and last thing was my social accounts. Make sure you all follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Just to know that this is the conversation that's happening for HBCU leaders and knowing that this space exists for you. You're not in this journey alone. Even with civic engagement on your campus, reach out to us, shoot us a DM. We're here to help and support in any effort. Yeah, I'll have to put this real quick. Tavon is actually famous on social media. I was a student called me the other night and he said, what's the co-founder guy that you work with? He's always going viral on Twitter. So he probably found Tavon before you find me. But yeah, Tavon Tavon. Probably a sweet tweet of him liked his post before. He's big on social media. He's Mr. HBCU on Twitter. So if you just literally look up in the search bar, HBCU, you'll see Tavon's name right underneath your profile. Y'all are funny. That's up then. I love to see it. Young alumni trying to pour back into HBCU students, trying to pour back into HBCU institutions. Thank you guys so much. It's been a real treat to hear from you guys and hear your dynamic perspective on this stuff. And I hope to have you back on in the near future to talk about some of this programming. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And shout out to the brother in the back at Yvonne's house. You know what you're doing. That's fantastic, you know. And we will check in with you guys again. Thank you so much. All righty.