An “About Me” page is supposed to convince you to like me or buy something I’m selling by sounding charming and experienced.
But I’m not going to do that because if you’ve gotten to the “About Me” page, chances are you have already decided whether you want to collaborate with me.
I’m also not going to try to dazzle you with a list of my accomplishments because they are literally listed on every page.
So, it’s just me and you here.
Why should you collaborate with me or take one of my classes?
I can’t answer that question for you. Only you know whether I click with you or not.
By the time you read this, I’m at least 50 years old, if not older. In every stage of my career, I learned to bloom where I was planted — whether I was an office assistant in the famed Photography Department at National Geographic Magazine or ensconced in the press section of the Democratic National Convention in 2004 when a little-known U.S. Senator, Barack Obama, took the stage.
I reached the highest of highs—working on the North Carolina team that helped elect the first Black U.S. President—and the lowest of lows, being downsized from more jobs than I care to remember.
In 2016, I broke up with the United States and moved to a small beach community in the Mexican Caribbean. Every year, I threaten to leave and find my fortunes elsewhere. Then, I fall in love with this community all over again. I cherish my sunrise walks to the beach, my neighbors’ kindness, and the squawking of the birds. It’s hot as hell here most of the time. But I somehow feel alive.
I’m at a point in my life and career when I realize I have something to offer that’s far greater than chasing the biggest byline or accumulating more stuff. My mission is clear. I want to inspire people to live authentically, dismantle generational barriers, and embrace joy.
The mission serves as a throughline of my work, whether I’m learning how to swim, dive, and map sunken slave ships or teaching writers to infuse their memoirs with family history research. It’s all the same and lands the audience or participants to the same place — joy.
Without joy, we cannot love, feel, be, do, or experience the richness of life. There is absolutely nothing without joy. By joy, I don’t mean feeling happy all the time. Joy, for me, is a sense of contentment, like back floating on the ocean and staring in awe at a cloudless sky.
I’ll give you my motto, and you can decide whether to give me your time, attention, or money. “Joy isn’t what you take from the world; it’s what you bring to it.”
