Uncover the origin story behind a podcast that’s more than just conversations—it’s a transformative space for Black voices to discuss healing, innovation, and community. Dive into the powerful journey of going from “chains to links,” where storytelling becomes a tool for collective growth and discourse. Explore the complexities of Black Excellence, entrepreneurship, and the unique challenges faced by the Black community. Join Kelly Burton and Ifeoma Ike as they invite trailblazers who are redefining innovation and reclaiming spaces, all while navigating the fullness of their identities. This season is a celebration of resilience, creativity, and the power of coming together.
How are you doing?
I’m so excited. How are you?
The Origin Story
I am wonderful. I’m proud of us for getting to this moment on this show. We talked a little bit about it in an episode, but it’s helpful to go back to the origin story of this show.
You were thinking about a show for some time, right?
Yes.
What was your thought about storytelling and creating a space for that?
I forgot that because we are all so smitten by the idea. There are these conversations that we always have when we are in a safe space with our friends, our relatives, or our colleagues or in our happy hour at the barbecue. We’re like, “We as Black people need to boom,” but there really is no public venue for us to have those hard conversations about how we as people need to evolve, heal, and show up not from a place of judgment but from a place of aspiration and hope. Those are the conversations that I wanted to have. Out of a team meeting we had, the idea that bubbled up from you around chains to links, it was like, “That’s the perfect vehicle to have these conversations.”
As people know tuning in to this, there are times when they will read about the Black Innovation Alliance. This is a bit broader than that. We both have entrepreneurial backgrounds and also support entrepreneurs. When we think about the language and the words that are used to even indicate success or growth, these words often bring about, at least for me, a bit of anxiety. They’re so connected to labor. They’re so connected to the output.
When we were having this conversation, it was a whole room of us. We were vibing. Everybody was thinking about, “When we think about building a Black ecosystem, what would make it different? What would be so different?” We have incubators, accelerators, grants, foundations, and contracting. Those are activities. What exactly are we saying would be different in the Black ecosystem? Are we saying it’s a space that’s the aggregate of those activities?” That is one model.
What emerged was also a conversation about what’s missing from what we’re hearing. You touched on some of those things, healing being a huge part of it. In some ways, collective healing. There’s even discourse. At times, we may not all agree or we may have different definitions of what it means when we say Black excellence. What are our viewpoints when it comes to VCs? Why do some of us struggle when we hear the word unicorn? That was, in some ways, what spurred some of our conversation.
Whether by choice or by design, this work around innovation and entrepreneurship especially can be very isolating. Even though we know there are many of us, it can be an isolating experience. The question is why? Why is it isolating if there are so many of us? Is it about pulling in capital? We know people who have gotten a lot of money for their ideas, but that doesn’t mean that they feel better or safer. Oftentimes, they get removed from their own community.
At least at that moment, it will continue to evolve for us. From chains to links means we have this shared history that connects us. It’s not the only part of us that we’re connected to. The links part is how do we identify the linkages that we have as a community, number one, but also, what does it mean for us to build links together?
I’m thinking of this particular book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. This philosopher, who is a Latino philosopher, talks about how action and protest even are great and necessary, but oftentimes, they can be the enemy of discourse. Discourse on its own without the intent to do some type of action will also, in some ways, turn into its own elitist activity. What does it mean for us to not have the two compete with each other? When they marry each other, that is what praxis is. I feel like this show is a space where we’re going to continue to learn how we practice better to link. That’s why I’m excited about all the people because everyone thinks differently about it.
Chains To Links
I think about the very singular experience it is to be Black in America. When we think about chains to links, there’s a reference to slavery, but it’s about this collective piece. A lot of times people think, “All disadvantaged groups are the same.” I’m like, “That isn’t the case because there’s only one group that I know of that was considered property.”
We were leveraging collateral. People took their slave roles to the bank and got money. We were the most valuable commodity. We were more valuable than land at certain points. What does it mean to go from being owned to being an owner? That’s a very specific trajectory. We need to consider all of the ways that that experience made us resilient and strong but has impacted us generationally in ways that might not necessarily be conducive to our journey forward.
It’s to be able to unpack that in a safe space where it’s not about judgment, vilification, coons, Toms, or all these other things that tend to marginalize different thinking and to say, “Let’s create a space where we can unpack this in love and in reverence for what we have all gone through both on the continent and in the new world.” There’s a lot of violence, extraction, theft, hurt, and pain regardless of where you derive from or come from, as a person of African descent. There are so many conversations that need to be had. I’m excited about creating a space that enables us to have them.
Also, the joy part, the ways that we innovate often get missed. Many of us share this desire to reclaim innovation, entrepreneurship even, and collective impact. All of these terms that are used so much in very corporatized ways, what does it mean when the community takes those words back? I’m excited as to how this season allows us to invite really dope people who are innovating in their own spaces. Maybe those who are tuning in have never heard of them or have never even heard of their industry. That in itself is an innovation.
I’m always sensitive to the ways that innovation feels to us. People think it has to be something that’s better than the next person or has to be brand new. Innovation is a way of doing things. It’s a way of responding to things. It’s a way of fixing things and problem-solving. To invite problem solvers who also are trying to figure it out to balance the fullness of who we are while doing this work and, in many ways, are practicing being the ecosystem as we are hoping that people over time accept the invitation to do things more together instead of as individuals is its own experiment. Who knows where we’re going to be at the end of the season?
Excitement is the word that I keep coming back to. I am giddy about it. I’m giddy about the possibility of this and what we’ll be able to tap into and unlock. I’m excited to hear what other people think. We’re tackling conversations around Blackness, baselines for Blackness, and the essence of Blackness. Those are pretty dicey conversations and can be because they’re loaded. It has to mean something, but then, if it means something, what does it leave out and who does it leave out?
I don’t know if any of us have the answers, but these are the questions we need to be asking. Blackness is evolving in ways that we are not acknowledging or paying attention to. There are certain conversations around appropriation that always get lifted up, but there’s other stuff happening as it relates to Blackness that deserves attention and conversation.
When you think about the audience, who is the audience of the show?
I don’t want to leave anybody out.
Who shouldn’t be tuning in?
I don’t know. The challenge is it’s hard to really deal with your stuff with people who are gazing, peeking in, and being voyeurs because they bring their own baggage, stereotypes, and assumptions that are not rounded out and fleshed out. The assumption is if you are a Black person and you’ve been living in your Black skin, you bring in some nuance.
Is it exclusively for Black people? I would say no. If you come in with an open heart to read and learn, then it’s open for everybody. The folks who will really appreciate this are people who are thinking deeply about these questions. They will know about something that strikes a chord in them because it’s something that they’re likewise curious about.
My hope for this show is ditto. It’s similar to you. It’s very hard to be Black. The way Black has been designed has been so connected to White. The two don’t exist without each other as in the design of Blackness. When a construct that isn’t real but is real as in how it impacts your life is created for you, It can be uncomfortable for some to say and share their true thoughts about how they build, how they design, and what their struggles are as they’re doing it when, in many ways, their prosperity may be connected to appeasing and pleasing White audiences.
We are taking a bit of a risk at this moment. We do our own work. We have our own audiences. We have our own clients. For both of us, we’re researchers, which at the base of research should be truth. One of the things that I am hopeful for is that people accept that there are so many diverse ways of Blackness. There are also so many stories of truth.
We are leaning into the braveness of inviting a space where people’s truths will be honored. Hopefully. all of us would be able to benefit as to how we grow better because we are opening the door to that truth. I think of what society would be, what our GDP would be, and what our education would be if we allowed truth. If we allowed the truth to exist and we didn’t try to kill it, lynch it, exterminate it, and have it assimilate, what then would that mean as to how we grow and how we produce? That’s a multicultural conversation.
If cultures don’t want to accept the fact that Black people have been both the wealth of others to the deficit of themselves and then are also forced to jump rope in a wealth concept that also is already designed for us to be last, and the only way we can be first is to compete with our own, then we’re taking a risk, but it’s a risk we have to take in some way. We’re going to fumble. We’re going to mess up. We’re going to say things. We’re going to cuss. We may cry, but these are the things that we’ve been told you cannot do and still be successful. The weird thing is all the things we were told that we should do, we still aren’t equal, so we might as well go ahead and tell the truth.
I appreciate so much what you said about truth and there being multiple truths. Maybe a muscle that we can build within the Black community is the ability to hold multiple truths at once and appreciate multiple perspectives at once. There are folks who I deeply respect for which there are a number of things we don’t agree on. How do you hold that? How do we as people hold that? It’s necessary if we’re going to have hard conversations. You mentioned that we’re both researchers. The foundation of truth is truth but also inquiry and iteration. It’s learnings on top of learnings. How do we create the foundation that enables and that is strong enough to bear that? I’m hoping that this will be a part of building that.
Topics To Look Forward To For The Season
I hope so too. Is there any topic that you’re looking forward to talking about the most this season?
I want to talk about collective economics.
That’s your jam.
That’s my jam. That’s what I’m most curious about. I know there to be power in Black people than the Black dollar in ways that we haven’t always talked about. I feel that we tend to recycle certain conversations. We can’t get out of that loop and think broadly about these things. I am excited that our guests are expansive thinkers and are building community in their own respect and have insights into how you do that well. I’m expecting so many learnings from that that hopefully will be useful for our audience. How about you? What are you looking forward to talking about?
Since I’m in that moment of this #FailingWhileBlack, which is my hashtag, I think of how we are allowed to fail. What does that look like? What does it look like to make a souffle and it doesn’t rise? What does it look like when you forget to put an ingredient in? What is the cost of what it means to fail for us? There’s a collective trauma around the silence of failing for Blackness. I feel like the more we discuss our perceptions of failing in public or in spaces where we can go from, “I trust this person,” to, “I can publicly talk about it where I’m not ashamed,” that’s helpful for innovators especially and entrepreneurs because failure is supposed to be a part of that process but it’s not something we can afford to do.
I’m really interested in how people are human-ing through their journeys. We’re going to have amazing guests who are going to model transparency in that way, and that is a capsule. I feel like it’s not just going to matter now. It’s going to matter in the future. Things are getting more competitive. The standard for how we even labor is questionable. The future of work is on the ballot. What that means for us, I don’t know. Do we have to run faster? Do we have to run harder? I don’t know, but I hope that we get some people who help us to take a moment to appreciate ourselves in the process. I know that’s something I’m working on at the moment.
It’s interesting when you said the future of work. A lot of times, people think in terms of automation, but also, it is the future of work in terms of how we choose the labor out in these streets and how we choose to prioritize rest out in these streets, model it for one another, and hold one another down when they choose to prioritize rest. How do you be a support system for a community that is really operationalizing rest?
I believe in my mind we’re not going to stop automation, but I do think that humanity is going to exist within communities. I don’t think it’s going to be an individual venture. It can’t be. This vision of a Black ecosystem that is one of collective economics, community agreements, and transformative justice ways that we can resolve conflict and still feel like we’re about the community and not necessarily going to be cast out immediately takes a lot of practice.
I feel like we’re trying. We’re a tool. This is a tool for us to create opportunities for that. What I think is a beautiful space for us to move towards, but it’s also one we’re being forced to move towards because the world is moving in that way. I love that we are being proactive about how we have these conversations safely. There will be a moment where we will have to have these conversations with other audiences and it may not be as safe, but we will be stronger if we do it together.
100%. Speaking of that, thank you for doing this together with me. I’m grateful for you.
I feel honored.
Ify’s New Book
I’m grateful for you, the voice that you hold, and all that you mean. I’m excited about your new book that’s coming out. I love it so much.
I’m excited about your book
I’m so proud of you.
Thank you.
Do you want to talk a little bit about it before we break away?
Before I do that, I also want to say I’m grateful for you. I wrote a post about it. For those who are reading, Kelly pays some of my bills.
Black Innovation Alliance pays some of Ife’s bills.
It’s so much more than that at this stage. Policy is my love language. Equity is my practice. When you speak to folks about a vision, oftentimes, they want parts of it and pieces of it. I’m so used to that. I remember coming to you and being like, “This is the vision for Decade of Black Innovation.” You’d laugh because you already know what I’m going to say. I’d be like, “What part of this are you vibing with?” Your only answer was, “Yes.” I was like, “Which thing? Which one?” I’m like, “I don’t know her. It can’t be all of it.” I was like, “You’re not supposed to trust me with all of it because it also has a lot of me.”
We don’t like to say this as designers, but there was a lot of me in there. I was like, “She may not like the kneecaps or the ashy ankles but she’s going to take these cheekbones. She’s going to take the nails because I know they’re manicured.” You were like, “Yes.” What was wild is that this was 1 of 2 spaces. This is one of them where it was like, “This place wants the whole person, not just the product from the person.” That is wild.
You’ve guided this team through having a book club. I’ve never had a client do a book club in my life where every week at a meeting, they’re like, “Chapter four, I can tell which ones haven’t been reading. How about the ones that haven’t been speaking? What are your thoughts?” It was on Crucial Conversations. It wasn’t even about the book as much as we were doing it together. We also are Black, so we knew we were going to have our zhuzh on top of the words that were in the book.
I say all that to say that in so many ways, we have practiced this from chains to links because we all were individual chains. You have worked really hard to not just have us be in a space building for Blackness as separate individuals. Thank you for that. Thank you for that space. Thank you for taking this whole-ass Nigerian-American, disabled femme person, dog mommy out here in these streets who can get intense, only because my parents are mad intense, but is silly as fuck. I say all that to say that’s who I am, and I value that.
The book, The Equity Mindset, is not about these definitions. It’s not about DEI. That’s not what this is about. It’s about how people who are doing this work are struggling to make sure they’re moving the needle. Ultimately, for me, equity is something about when you step in the room, what changes when you leave that are moving the needle but are also coming into these spaces being deeply impacted by the impacts of their intersectionality?
I hope you enjoy the conversations. I wrote it while also experiencing long COVID. I look at some of these paragraphs and I’m like, “What was I saying?” but I also recognize that I was pushing through a disability. Sometimes, we are even ashamed of sharing that or being honest about that. I am excited. I hope the point of it comes through.
If anyone knows you even a little bit, even when you tie it, you are pretty damn brilliant.
Thank you.
You can’t help yourself. Stuff is falling out of your mouth and I’m like, “That’s a whole media property.”
Thank you so much.
We are going to have so much fun on this show.
It’s going to be a great season.
It’s going to be fantastic.
We want to shout out everyone who helped make this happen. The Carbon Thread team, Studio Jay Lauren, all the BIA folks, and the Pink Cornrows team. It takes a village.
Also, all the amazing guests that’ll be joining us. Folks don’t realize people have to break away from their lives, their jobs, and their babies and chill. They need time to be sharing space with us. It’s an in-person show. Not to say do it right, but we wanted to put our foot in it to the extent that we could and place different demands on people’s time. We’re also grateful for all the people who are giving up their time and their voice to break bread with us.
I can’t wait to see what happens on the other side.
Let’s do it. What do you think? Did you like it? You know you liked it. It was good, right?
They know they liked it.
If you like it, make sure you subscribe and that you find it on all your streaming platforms. Make sure that you like it, love it, and heart it. Make sure that you give us the prayer hands and the applause.
All the good emojis. Share it with your friends. Share it in your stories.
Share it with your mama.
Bring your friends.
Share it with your grandmama and your cousins. Share it with all the people who you know and love and know will appreciate this conversation about how we advance the cause for Black folks in this country and around the world. We love you all.
Thank you.
Important Links
