#BlackBoyFly is a movement to encourage Black males of all ethnicities in regard to overcoming obstacles to achieve their dreams. Throughout the year, I’ll be featuring Black males that are flying toward their dreams. www.blackboyfly.club

Dr. Kevin Haggard, Jr. is a father of two daughters, an Assistant Professor, and the MSW Coordinator in the Department of Social Work & Urban Studies at Tennessee State University. We’re both cycling aficionados and crossed paths back in 2015 when we co-founded Domestiques Cycling of Tennessee. I regard Kevin as a Black intellectual that is focused on inspiring, promoting, and facilitating transformational change within communities that have been negatively impacted by unjust and inequitable systems. Kevin was born and raised in Louisville, KY, and is a product of Jefferson County Public Schools. He holds a Bachelor’s of Social Work from Tennessee State University, a Master’s of Social Work from Western Kentucky University, and a Doctorate of Education in Professional Practice and Leadership from Trevecca Nazarene University.

Shortly after college, Kevin began working with the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services as a Family Service Worker, working in partnership with children and families to achieve permanence. After a multi-year term with the department, he began working in public education, serving as a leader in various K-12 and higher education spaces. In most recent years, he has served as a Family Resource Center Director, a Site Coordinator for a national drop-out prevention organization, a Director of School Partnerships for a national organization that focuses on disrupting educational inequities, and as a Director of Talent Management for a high-performing network of schools in Tennessee and Mississippi.

#BlackBoyFly is a movement to encourage Black males of all ethnicities in regard to overcoming obstacles to achieve their dreams. Throughout the year, I’ll be featuring Black males that are flying toward their dreams. www.blackboyfly.club

As a self-proclaimed techie, I’ve always been a fan of software that makes life easier to manage. Calendly is a classic example of that. It’s a tool that I rely on heavily for scheduling meetings and booking appointments. Calendly takes the effort out of working with someone to find calendar availability. A few months ago, I came across Inc. Magazine’s story of Calendly’s Founder and CEO, Tope Awotona. I was surprised to learn that the creator of one of my favorite apps is someone that looks like me and has a similar family story. Tope and his family emigrated to the United States from Nigeria in the mid-1990s. He has an amazing journey of overcoming personal tragedy to reaching the heights of entrepreneurial success. I encourage you to learn more about him and become a Calendly user. According to Black Enterprise, Tope’s company was recently valued at more than $3 billion after receiving an investment of $350 million from OpenView Venture Partners. This brother is the epitome of the Black Boy Fly message. He’s making history as a Black man in the technology industry and I’m excited to see what happens next. Many thanks to Tope and the Calendly team for a great product offering.

#BlackBoyFly is a movement to encourage Black males of all ethnicities in regard to overcoming obstacles to achieve their dreams. Throughout the year, I’ll be featuring Black males that are flying toward their dreams. www.blackboyfly.club

Brian Sexton, a Chicago native, is a husband, father, and modern-day renaissance man. We met during our freshman year in college and I have a profound respect for his talents. Brian is a Community Development Practitioner and partners with nonprofits, artists, and entrepreneurs in an effort to grow their professional brands and human-to-human capital. Brian’s passion for building bridges between neighborhood groups, nonprofits, and small to medium businesses has afforded him the opportunity to represent awesome organizations such as MDHA’s Nashville Promise Zone, the National Museum of African American Music, New Level Community Development Corporation, and Creatives Day in an effort to create more public-private partnerships that will help make Middle Tennessee communities stronger. Brian holds an undergraduate degree from Tennessee State University in Business Administration and a Masters degree in Urban Planning and Community Development from Texas Southern University.

#BlackBoyFly is a movement to encourage Black males of all ethnicities in regard to overcoming obstacles to achieve their dreams. Throughout the year, I’ll be featuring Black males that are flying toward their dreams. www.blackboyfly.club

Joshua Mundy is a native Nashvillian, husband, father, and award-winning community advocate. We crossed paths in 2015, when I moved back to Nashville, and have been good friends ever since. Josh was inspired at an early age to generate income in very creative ways. His forecasting and visionary skillset have developed him into a serial entrepreneur, with the ability to think of an idea or need in the community and quickly take action to set a goal to meet the need. Josh previously owned Music City Cleaners and theLAB Nashville on Historic Jefferson Street, business ventures that closed due to the aftermath of the massive March 2020 tornado. His incessant entrepreneurial drive led him to become Co-Founder and CEO of Pivot Technology School, which helps diverse talent pivot their careers through 20-week virtual training programs in cybersecurity, data analytics, and web development. If I know Josh as well as I think, he’s already working on his next entrepreneurial idea.