How much do we really credit Black people with the innovation of freedom and liberation? The significance of the Underground Railroad is not only how it freed enslaved Black people, but how leaders like Harriet Tubman and unknown conductors innovated safe, trusting and liberatory pathways and spaces for Black bodies. From Chains to Links is joined by Jeff Lindor Founder, CEO of Gentlemen’s Factory, Inc, for a powerful exploration of liberatory practices, the power of spacebuilding, and the ways environment impacts innovation as Black visionaries build out their dreams.
Welcome to the show. I am Kelly Burton, your host, and I am here with the indomitable Ife Ike.
That’s good, right?
Yes.
It’s a good one.
It means undefeatable.
I’ll take it.
How are you?
I’m well.
I’m going to kick it to you to introduce our fantastic guest.
I am excited because I haven’t seen our guest in so many years in person, but his work speaks for himself. We’re here with Jeff Lindor. He is the Founder of several spaces, including The Gentlemen’s Factory. He is a serial entrepreneur, a social impact leader, and an overall dope person.
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Jeff, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to this conversation. It’s such an honor.
Kelly usually likes to start off by getting all up in your business, so I’ll have her start.
I’m fascinated by people’s origin stories. I want to know about your people. Where are your people from?
From Haiti.
Sak Pase?
I was born in Haiti too.
I didn’t know that.
There’s a whole Haitian takeover in Black Innovation Alliance, like 40%. They keep bringing their friends and family.
Add me to the equation.
I need to learn Patois. Is it Patois?
Creole.
I need to learn Creole because they are saying stuff and I’m like, “What did you say?” They’re not letting me in.
It always sounds so juicy. They’d be like, “As my grandmother says, sam boule.”
It’s flowing.
You know it’s good. You want to jump rope with it.
I want to be on the inside joke. Welcome. That’s exciting, interesting, and fascinating. You were born in Haiti. When did you come to the States?
Three years old. I came to Brooklyn, Coney Island, the hood.
You came to the hood. You got to the US at three. You came to Coney Island. When did you realize that you are Black in America?
It was interesting because when I, my sisters, and my two parents came to America, we were promised this dream. My sister was a bit older. She thought that she was going to be like Macaulay Culkin and the biggest challenge that we were going to have was being stuck in this beautiful mansion and the robbers were going to come to take our stuff. We thought that we were going to go be Home Alone, but instead, we got The Wire. We were like, “There are a lot of robbers here.” I got that very early.
How about the Black part?
It was interesting because Coney Island is predominantly African American, or the part that I was in in Coney Island. I am Haitian. Both of my parents didn’t speak English at that time. I saw a sharp distinction between the African American community and me, Haitian. It was really interesting because my parents would say, “You’re Haitian.” They drilled it into me. Haitians have sharp conservatism to them. It’s not so much in this era, but back in the ‘80s and the ‘90s when I had to get a certain haircut a certain way and I couldn’t listen to hip hop. It was difficult because in my house, it was Haiti, but outside, it was the hood.
Understanding that I’m Black took a while only because I had to be Haitian and strong, and then I had to navigate the hood. When I would go outside the hood, they didn’t interact with White people and they didn’t see me as Haitian. They saw me as Black like everyone else. It was really confusing because I didn’t know how to navigate that. I experienced that at the age of 5 or 6.
That feels like a common experience for Black folks of African descent who are first-generation immigrants in the United States. What does the reconciliation look like for you? Your parents are from Nigeria. Did you have a similar exploration?
Yeah. I’ve spoken about this. Before, it was the same thing. The house was like coming to America, but outside, it was like, “Rickey,” every day. It was sometimes for fun and sometimes not for fun. As soon as we went in the house, it was almost like our parents were oblivious to what our actual struggle was. Another way of looking at it is if we struggled, they looked at our struggles as developmental things that young people go through as they’re growing up.
I don’t think they fully appreciated the socialization of poor Black kids growing up. Education was always drilled down, and to an extent, competition was drilled, but not in the sense of, “Compete with your brother or sister. You want to strive to be the best.” That can be exhausting, but that is the household that I was raised in. There’s a whole nother faith component on top of that.
In some ways, I was so busy being a Nigerian child in the house that over time, I yearned. I have an experience akin to eldest daughters, which is the invisibilized ways that we are adultified. There’s no remorse from your family, especially from your parents who are struggling every day. You are like the third adult. That was my experience.
I have been told by not just those who came straight from the diaspora, but even those from the Caribbean that outside of my name, most people do not assume that I am anything but from Trenton, New Jersey. That does not offend me. When it comes to reconciling, I personally am affirmed in both areas of being Nigerian American and being Black.
The reconciliation on a mass scale, which we’ll touch on a little bit in this episode when we talk about liberation, is something that has to be a conversation that we at least get comfortable being uncomfortable with. Whether it’s the Caribbean or the continent, as I told my parents, “When you are in America, you are Black. However you slice or dice it, you are Black. The respect of the history of multi-generational Africans who have an American experience is important to respect on this soil.” I don’t know if this was the case for you, Jeff, but with older generations, that can be a hard conversation to say, “You have to respect what we are experiencing, but you also have to respect the land that we’re on.”
I agree 1,000%.
Talk to us a little bit more about The Gentlemen’s Factory.
With The Gentlemen’s Factory, I see it as an accumulation of my experience as a Black man in America and unpacking what that entails. I was raised in the hood. Coney Island is so interesting because when you study the 11224 ZIP code, you would think that it’s a middle-class community. Coney Island has this gated community called Sea Gate. Right outside my window, I would see these beautiful homes that I couldn’t access because there was this huge gate that said, “You can’t come in here.” I saw wealth every day, and then I said, “Why does wealth look White and poverty look Black?” because I saw that every single day.
I was always asking myself as I graduated high school, college, and grad school, and in all of those different jobs and careers that I had, “Why is there such a disparity? Also, from an isolation standpoint, why are Black men so isolated? Where do we go? Where do we go to connect to share ideas?” If you look at where the root of isolation comes from, if you see 10 Black boys or teenagers, and I have a 12-year-old that is in AAU basketball, etc. and is pretty tall, if he and his cohort of friends are at the store or walking, society will look and say, “That is a threat. That’s a gang,” or “What are those kids up to?”
There are ten of them. They’re playing basketball. They’re on a basketball team. Even if they have the same uniform on, it’s still like, “This is a threat,” Whereas if you put another demographic of young men in the same scenario, there would automatically be an assumption of, “What are they up to? What sports are you?” It’s a threat to you being together. It’s safer for you to be either by yourself or in pairs of two.
If you think about it from the neighborhood that they’re in, their neighborhood could then be saying, “What are you all up to?” etc. From your own community, you may be seen as a threat, and then from the police, you may be seen as a threat. There are all of these externalities that would trigger you to then say, “It’s much safer if I’m alone or isolated in some way.” That stems from Corporate America. If you have five Black people in the lunchroom, they’re like, “What are they up to?” It is all of those things.
I started out in banking, and then I worked in healthcare, city government, etc. In all these jobs, I had a lot of access, and then I saw that every time that I was climbing up. I was isolated because I then said, “Where are all the people who look like me?” I then said, “Let me find where we’re at.” I had these different networking events and different mixers to bring us all together.
Back in 2016, I had this really big event. It was on a rooftop in downtown Brooklyn. There were about 300 of us. That night, they were like, “What is this? Is this a hobby or is this an enterprise?” That’s when I made the decision. I said, “I’m going to focus on this full-time.” A couple of weeks later, I resigned from my career in public policy and launched The Gentlemen’s Factory.
You haven’t looked back since.
It has been over seven years.
I first learned about The Gentlemen’s Factory when I was working for the city of New York at the Young Men’s Initiative. I am a lawyer who doesn’t necessarily see law as the space of justice, but it is helpful for storytelling. What a lot of people don’t know, especially immigrant communities when they come here, is that when we see a group of two or more Black people, specifically Black men together, and there’s this weird sense of either unease or nervousness, that is by design. Our laws, specifically our vagrancy laws, made it so that the number of Black men was controlled.
I find that to be powerful because when we think of how laws shape behavior and also the ways that many people feel like the laws, the Supreme Court, or whatever is so distant from, we’re learning over the last couple of years that it’s not distant from us. It has gotten much closer in proximity to our day-to-day lives. It is important for us to then recognize that anything that can be designed can be undesigned. Thinking about what reparatory policies look like is helpful.
Also, getting back to The Gentlemen’s Factory and what stood out to me when I was at the Young Men’s Initiative was that oftentimes, our solutions to these social issues are not laws. They are actions that help shape and redefine behavior. One of the things that we want to explore is that in the space of innovation, which is often a response to what’s missing or what’s not there, and then also mirroring the fact that you are Haitian. Revolution and liberation is not a new thing for you all.
First, I would love to hear what you feel like Black liberation means in this climate. When you hear that, what does that mean? When you think of the space that you were able to create, what is liberatory about that space? What is it that you’ve observed or witnessed when you all convene and congregate? We want to hear a little bit about that.
Putting those two things together, Black liberation is believing that this world is yours too. This sounds simple, but it’s not. As a full-time entrepreneur for seven years, I had to realize that I had so much unpacking to do in terms of what I could and couldn’t do. In the Gentlemen’s Factory, we had this really cool cigar event where a lot of the members were there hanging out. I was talking to them about this business opportunity that I had.
It was a crazy number. I didn’t have the money. I don’t even have the money now, but I was trying to acquire this company or whatever. I said to them, “Do you think I should do this?” In saying that, I didn’t even factor in that I don’t have X amount of millions of dollars, but it’s me believing that I can do it. It’s this freedom of thinking and of being, and it’s really unpacking all of the things that I was told that I was unable to do.
When I look at The Gentlemen’s Factory members and then what the core value is, it’s really believing that you can. It’s surrounding yourself in an environment of other thinkers and believers and seeing, “This world is mine too.” That’s what liberation is. If you think about it as well, we’ve been taught that we can’t. Every single day, we’re taught that we can’t from our education system and even our parenting. Our parents put the fear of them into us.
I have two children. I have a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old. I am monitoring how I parent them. I’m Haitian. I was born in Haiti. There’s this sharp conservatism. I’m not lackadaisical with my parenting, but at the same time though, I want them to believe that they can do whatever it is that they want to do. People operate in life based on the information they’ve obtained. I want to expose them to everything, but then the quality of your life rests upon the quality of your thinking.
I want to make them think and believe that they can do whatever it is that they want. When I think of Black liberation and what the philosophy of The Gentlemen’s Factory is, it’s ingraining a population of people who have been so taken advantage of and believing that you’re powerless. We’re saying, “You’re really powerful.”
I continue to hear this theme around dreaming and belief in these conversations.
We’ve Stopped Dreaming
We stopped dreaming. Also, the societal expectation of Black men is if you’re not stopped by the police, then your life is good. Police brutality is a massive issue. I have a Master’s in Public Policy. I study public policy. I read about it all the time. I worked in criminal justice for quite some time, so I’m not saying or diminishing mass incarceration. That’s a thing, for sure.
The success of my life cannot be predicated upon that I did not get stopped by the police because that is such a low expectation of living. My life should be predicated upon whatever it is that I believe that I can do. If the narrative is that it is a win if a Black person is not shooting another Black person on Flatbush Avenue at 3:00 PM, then we’re good, no.
Elon Musk is thinking about going to space. There was a guy who was curious. He went and built something to go see the Titanic. It didn’t pan out well, but he was curious. Our intellectual curiosity has been suppressed with the day-to-day minutia of our lives. How can we think beyond the immediacy of our current situation so that we can fully explore what this world has to offer? I do believe that this world is ours too.
I love the word curious. I also really liked Curious George growing up, although there were some racist undertones.
I have to check that out again.
It was the first time I was curious as a word kept coming up for me. However the storytellers of Curious George tried to design him to be, I have always been somebody who always asks questions. Dreaming in many ways is a thing we do unconsciously and sometimes subconsciously, but curiosity is what we do with our consciousness. The thing that allows us to inquire why things are the way that they are. Therefore, they’re akin to each other. I think about how many times we are punished for being curious. I tell people all the time that depending on the type of teacher that I had growing up, I could have either been in special education or gifted and talented. I happen to be on the gifted and talented route, but I know that curiosity for young people can come up as raising your hand a lot, being disruptive, asking questions, interrupting the teacher, challenging the teacher, and challenging the Sunday school teacher. That results in a beating on a Sunday.
I love what you said about our parents. When you’re a child, you look at your family structure, however flawed, because they are human beings. I believe that most parents are doing the best that they can, but they’re also operating from a much-evolved worldview of realities and making decisions about those realities often predicated on survival.
In a White dominant culture, we have set these standards. This standard of if you don’t get stopped by the cops, then you are successful, I feel the same way even about the attainment of certain things. If you acquire a degree, that automatically makes you a smart person, or that automatically makes you a kind person or a safe person.
I would love for us to inquire and bring curiosity back in many ways as a practice of some of the childhoods that we lost. We get rewarded for being smart, but I don’t think we get rewarded for asking questions. Young people who can’t ask questions hurt us in a way where even in the world of innovation, we don’t necessarily get the tools. You always had the kid, or maybe I was a kid, that was always like, “I got an idea,” but there was not this response of, “Let’s get the resources to the kids with the ideas to figure it out even if they fail.”
I’ve been obsessed with failure in a healthy way for a little bit. I feel like there was something that spurred around curiosity, which then leads to I would like for you to talk about this other narrative with brothers around failure because I don’t think we call it failure. We use other clever terms to discuss it.
Do you feel like there is this boulder, if you will, for brothers or individuals who identify as even non-binary or more masculine, if you will, within our community? Do you think that there is this chip that is there of trying to overcome these stereotypes that have been created that maybe at times hinder how we become curious, innovate, and maybe even fail even as adult entrepreneurs or professionals? Do you feel like there’s this rubric that you all have to go through, or do you feel like we’re at a time where there is more room for flexibility, innovation, and entrepreneurship that’s a little bit more non-traditional, if you will, for Black men?
The answer is no. We don’t feel safe anywhere, generally speaking. Our parents were raised with so much trauma if they experienced the Civil Rights Movement or whatever systematic oppression that was occurring either in America, Haiti, a continent, Jamaica, or wherever. If you think that we have systematic oppression now, imagine many years ago.
In speaking for Black men, and generalizing it, we were raised to be tough. It was like, “You got to be tough. You have to be strong. You got to be mighty. You have to be hyper-masculine. You can’t cry. You can’t fear.” I understand my parents’ perspective from that route because it was a survival mindset. It’s survival. It was like, “You have to survive. If you show emotion, then you show a sense of weakness. You’re vulnerable and you’ll get snatched or get crushed because this world is not your friend.”
It is this transition of unpacking that trauma. I’ve been in therapy for seven years, so I’ve been unpacking so much stuff. Guys are starting to be more inclined to feel. As you feel, there is this fear of the vulnerability of things, so then you don’t want to tap into that because you’re battling the toughness with the insecurity, fear, and all of those things. That translates into everything. That translates into their personal lives, their marriages, or their children. It translates everywhere. It translates into entrepreneurship. It translates into so many things, but at the core of it though is success.
We tie our worth into wealth. Black men deal with their trauma by seeking wealth. If you’re trying to seek wealth but you’re systematically designed not to obtain it, then you’re seeking something that is extremely challenging to obtain. When I say wealth, I’m not saying you make $100,000 or $200,000 a year. Since they’ve been so exposed to what can be, they’re saying, “How in the world can I get there?” Every time you try to get there, it’s like, “It’s higher.” There’s never this satisfaction. You are wrestling with so much within because your validation is tied to wealth. You’re not unpacking all of these things.
You also don’t feel safe with the vulnerability of saying, “I don’t know,” because you’ve been conditioned to be strong. As you’re strong, you can’t show weakness. The question is, what is weakness? You don’t even want to touch in or tap into what is a weakness because weakness ties into failure. I don’t speak for all Black men because I’m figuring out my life too, but we’re at a pivotal point because we are more inclined to start to think about unpacking these things because it’s a little bit more socially acceptable. It’s this fear of tapping into those emotions because you don’t know what you’ll find.
I’ll tell a quick story. In the first year, I would go in really strong. I’m Haitian. I’m like, “I’m successful. I don’t need this. I’m here because I really want this.” The therapist said to me, “Relax. Calm down.” I’m like, “I am relaxed.” It was about a year of me being strong, and then she said to me, “Let me give you this analogy. In here is a safe space. Your mind is on display.
In here, we are going to walk through the dark corners of your mind that you don’t want to go to. We’ll go there slowly. As we get there, we’ll turn on those lights slowly, and then we’ll clean up each room slowly. You are not going to be there by yourself. I’m here to guide you. We’ll start unpacking.” When she told me that, I felt safe. I’ve been there for seven years. There are still corners that I haven’t gone to.
Unlocking Opportunity In The Black Community
Jeff, that’s so powerful. There’s so much in my mind. First of all, I’m like, “We need a gajillion dollars to scale that experience.” If there are foundations reading and you’re trying to figure out how you can unlock opportunity in the Black community, we have to start there. We as Black people need to find our way to do our own work. We have so much unprocessed individual and personalized trauma and collective trauma, like group trauma in so many different facets, and we don’t have the tools.
For me, I’m really excited about this show for so many reasons, but I want to get to the collective play. What is collective play? From chains to links, what is that piece where we link arms, we sync up, and we become Voltron? What is that play? We can’t even get there because what I’m realizing, even in our work at BIA, is some folks aren’t ready to show up in the community. It’s like, “Work on you and come back when you’re ready.” It’s hard to say that because you want to be inclusive to say, “Everybody belongs.” That calling to do our own work is real and necessary. How’d you get there?
I got there because of the community. One of my best friends is a psychologist. Shout out to Dr. Florence Saint-Jean. She was like, “You have so much potential. You are great, but you are really tense. You’re a strategist,” and all of these attributes that I have. She was like, “You have to unpack all of these things.” What it was though was that I trusted her opinion, believed in her, and knew that she had my best interest at heart. That’s why I then went to therapy. I wouldn’t have gone to therapy because I was strong. It was like, “Why is a strong man doing therapy?” I felt safe with her because I knew that she had my best intentions at heart. That’s what changed my life.
Shout out to you because you came in here loose.
I’m super relaxed. I’m so chill. Thank you.
You touched on one of the things we wanted to explore in this conversation, which is the unique needs that Black entrepreneurs have, especially those who are in that category of founders. There’s one thing to be a consultant, and a lot of us can thrive in that space, but it’s another thing when you’re building a team. You may not necessarily be a mirror for other people, but when people can see your reflection or people can see what you’re going through, that is a very tough thing to be in and one to be honest in.
Kelly’s talking about this collective conversation. Whenever people put stuff out there, since I’m a very visual person, in my mind, I’m thinking of all the different steps that it would take from individual to community to the collective. I’m going to use this word from another guest that we had. It’s like, “What is this healed utopic space? What would that look like?” It’s a lot of work.
I also know that I’m one of those people that in addition to being impacted by seasons, I’m impacted by environments. When you grew up in the hood, it doesn’t matter who I’m speaking to, but when I hear the hood, there is a structural image that I get. I’m always curious as to, “Their hood may not look like my hood, but it probably was close. On the inside of that thing, there probably was if you ever know what it’s like to have a leaking ceiling or if you know what it’s like to see some critters that you didn’t want in the house.” There is an environment about the hood.
I wanted to hear a little bit as we’re winding around how you could have done anything. You could have even taken what you were doing and, almost like a train-the-trainer, supported other consultants who are trying to do their thing. I’m not saying you don’t do those things. What was really impressive to me was how you looked at space. You did talk about what it meant for the community and the population to have a space.
What is it about space itself? Was it that you desired more space as a kid? Was it that you felt like this was something that was missing for you as an entrepreneur? I’m curious to get a sense from you if there’s any philosophy that you have around infrastructure. The Gentlemen’s Factory has grown. It started off as one space, but then it kept building an actual physical space. Talk a little bit about that.
It’s one like safety. How do you create spaces where you feel safe? I went to Parsons School of Design, so design thinking and design strategy, being in that design space. When we opened our downtown Brooklyn Gentlemen’s Factory location, prior to being there, the MTA had it. No shade to the MTA, you don’t know anything about space. That was not your priority.
I hired an amazing interior designer, a Black woman named Chanel Brandon. She’s amazing. She was asking me questions, “How do you want the members to feel when you walk into this space?” We met for hours upon hours. She was asking me so many different questions about dopamine, colors, and all of these things. When you go to The Gentlemen’s Factory location in downtown Brooklyn, it’s very intentional. It’s extremely intentional.
Intentionality is really important, especially for Black men, a population that no one cares about, generally speaking. It’s like, “Why are you creating intentional spaces for them? Put a whiskey and cigar there and they’re good.” It’s about how we can create a hyper focused environment that allows them to, one, know that this space is for them. This is a space that’s designed intentionally for you. One can argue that a lot of those spaces don’t really exist with the level of capital that’s infused into it, the level of detail, etc., and all of those things.
Going back to me, those spaces didn’t really exist for me. I’ve worked in some great jobs. I saw that in those spaces, I had to fit in, but then, there weren’t spaces that fit me. I realized, “I deserve that too,” because I was walking into other folks’ space where I had to make sure that I didn’t talk about basketball like that or whatever. I love basketball, but I’m like, “I don’t want to be the guy that’s 6’3” that only talks about basketball.” Meanwhile, I love basketball.
You don’t want to be stereotyped. You don’t want to reinforce a stereotype.
I’m trying to go to work and be like, “Did you see that game?” but I can’t say that. It all boils down to safety. Do I feel safe? Also, as Black men, we’re not monoliths. There’s so much diversity within us. That’s what I also learned. When I built The Gentlemen’s Factory, my intention was to learn what the Black experience is, and I’m still learning. I don’t know.
I’m Haitian. I was born in Haiti. I’m bilingual. I have two children. I was raised with both of my parents. I was making decent money before entrepreneurship. It is all of those things. I was really keen on not creating an elitist space that said, “If I made it, you should make it too.” I started out at a community college, Kingsborough Community College. Shout out to Kingsborough. I’m very intentional about not creating this elitist type of environment where it’s like, “You got to be strong.”
Also, together that figured it out.
All of that. We have an amazing team. We have a lot of full-time employees that work with me at The Gentlemen’s Factory to figure it out. We figure it out every single day.
I don’t know anything about your marketing strategy, but you need to market the Black wives because I would pay. I would pay to ensure that my husband had a space where he could be around like-minded Black men. I would pay that out of my pocket or out of my American Express recurring monthly. When are you coming to Atlanta? That’s the question, Jeff.
As a matter of fact, I’m going to be in Atlanta.
I’m speaking for Black women with Black husbands and Black baes. It’s a beautiful thing.
She’s like, “I don’t need to be there. I need you to be there.”
The Importance Of Spacebuilding
That’s it. It’s also helpful. Even listening to you deepens the empathy that I have for my Black man. Hearing it from your vantage point, I can see aspects of that that are relevant for my husband. There’s commonality across. That’s why these spaces are so important for us to cross-pollinate and learn. It’s about healing, but it’s also about deepening our empathy for one another.
I don’t think we give one another enough grace in the Black community. There’s a lot of internalized judgment that we need to work through. I’m so grateful for you, everything that you represent, and everything that you’re doing. I’m going to get teary. I made it through a whole bunch of episodes and I never got weepy, so I’m proud of myself. I’m going to stop there and hand it to Ife to wrap it up. I’m grateful for you. I got some deep heartfelt love, appreciation, and gratitude.
If you haven’t done it already, we would love to hear from you. I’m going to try to do my best because I love when Kelly asks this because Kelly gets excited. What’s your soapbox? What’s the thing that makes you tingle? The thing that if you only had one thing to say, what would you say? What is the fire in your belly? What is your soapbox?
If you want to see the world differently, you ask different questions. My soapbox is helping our community to think differently. That’s it. Thank you.
I love it.
A soapbox in a sentence.
That was concise. That was powerful.
Before we get to our last question, I love the responses to this question. Dead or alive, real or fictional, who is your favorite Black inventor or innovator at this moment? We know that there is a papyrus list.
I love the great philosopher Sean Carter, Jay-Z. I went to the Brooklyn Public Library exhibit. I value him so much, Jay-Z, because I see a lot of the evolution of the Black male experience in him. He went from selling drugs, being in the hood, and then being entrepreneurial to starting Roc-A-Fella to then putting all of his friends on with Dynasty. For him not to be an isolated factor or isolated person, he created The Dynasty. He was like, “These are my guys. It’s the Roc.” It was from that and then also seeing him transitioning from Big Pimpin’ to Bonnie & Clyde to him getting married and having children.
He is also an art collector and tech entrepreneur.
It’s this evolution of the Black male. I had a front-row seat in seeing all of his albums. I’m always listening to his music because he thinks differently. That’s my guy.
That is so dope. I love it. It’s always an interesting fact. Some people don’t know that he’s also first generation. His mother’s Jamaican and so is Biggie’s mother. It’s so interesting we don’t think about that aspect as well as his influence. I’m so sad that this is the end of this episode because I feel like we have to bring you back. There’s a part two to healing strategy and space conversation that we need to have. Where can people find you if you want to be found?
My personal Instagram is @MrCommunityNYC. Follow The Gentlemen’s Factory on Instagram. That’s @Gentlemens.FactoryGF. Our website is GentlemensFactory.com. I am on LinkedIn, as Jeff Lindor. Please reach out. I’m here.
That’s awesome. Thank you so much, Jeff.
Thank you, Jeff.
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us for another episode of the show. I’m so full. It was awesome. See you all next time.
Important Links
Jeff Lindor is the Founder and CEO of the Gentlemen’s Factory Inc., a membership community with physical locations providing co-working spaces, Think Tanks, Barber & grooming stations, and incubators focused on empowering men of color. Recognizing the pervasive isolation experienced by black & brown men, Lindor established Gentlemen’s Factory as a nurturing environment fostering personal and professional growth. With multiple locations throughout NYC and hundreds of members, The Gentlemen’s Factory serves as a hub for Black and Brown men, connecting them to career opportunities, investors, and a forward-thinking community.
Prior to being a full-time entrepreneur, Lindor served in the Executive Chamber at the NYC Department of Correction advising the Commissioner, the NYC Mayor’s office, and Legislators on Rikers Island Reform initiatives.
Lindor sits on the board of NYC Tech Alliance, Kingsborough Community College, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, and the Community Fund for Public Housing. He is an angel investor financing black-owned startups and raises tens of thousands of dollars for political candidates that support his vision for the future of black and brown communities.
Lindor holds a bachelor’s degree in history from The City University of New York and a master’s in urban policy Analysis & Management from The New School. He resides in Brooklyn, NY, with his two children.