Iconic Conversations with Tanaka Tava

Chandler Malone has been focused on helping people reach their economic potential throughout his entire career via his work at Bootup and The Family. In Chandler’s 3 years as the CEO of Bootup, the company helped thousands of people get their first jobs in tech for over $200M in annualized salaries at companies like JP Morgan Chase, Home Depot, Mailchimp, Cerner, and more.

Chandler is also the founder of The Family, a venture studio focused on Black and Brown founders. Over the past 4 years, The Family has invested in 10 Black and Brown founders with an estimated market cap of over $300M.

TIMESTAMPS:

[00:00:00] Innovator, hustler, intentional, humble, Dallas.

[00:11:05] Achieving greatness through community.

[00:17:36] Black men: build, don't compete.

[00:22:51] Collaboration, brotherhood, support, legacy, community, growth.

[00:27:14] Fight daily for purpose, not comparison.

[00:32:45] Money reveals true character.

[00:39:36] Live life fully, trust yourself, appreciate foresight.

[00:45:09] Focus on purpose for success.

[00:50:03] Provide access to unlock greatness.

GUEST: Chandler Malone

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandler-...

🐣 Twitter: https://twitter.com/chanoouttathere

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chanoouttat...

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HOST: Tanaka Tava

💻 Website: https://www.tanakatava.com/

🎙 Podcast: https://anchor.fm/tavamultimediagroup

🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@iconicconver...

🐣 Twitter: https://twitter.com/tanakatva

📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/tanakatava

🕺 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@tanakatava

Reggie Singletary is a full-time Pisces, a dreamer, a curious cat, lover of emotions and what accesses them, a R&B fanatic, an aspirational collector of Black art, potatoes' #1 supporter, who moonlights as a Creative Strategist who's worked for a good bit of the biggest brands in the world. Above all else, he's manifesting a life filled with bringing ideas...to life.

TIMESTAMPS:


[00:00:47] Cultural connoisseur, Reggie, brings people together. [00:06:52] Lover of emotions finds inspiration. [00:12:21] Dedication, intention, legacy, standard-setting: Beyonce. [00:18:33] Pursuing greatness: Beyonce, LeBron, JZ. [00:23:36] Create tangible greatness: Beyonce. [00:28:28] Create thing, be happy, serve, honor gifts, consume, create. [00:34:09] Rebirth through flow and structure. [00:39:51] Finding discipline in life: hard. [00:45:20] Be present, connected, challenge agendas. [00:50:09] Question everything.

GUEST:

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginald-singletary

🐣 Twitter: https://twitter.com/reggie_jay/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reggie_jay/

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HOST: Tanaka Tava

💻 Website: https://www.tanakatava.com/

🎙 Podcast: https://anchor.fm/tavamultimediagroup

🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@iconicconver...

🐣 Twitter: https://twitter.com/tanakatva

📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/tanakatava

🕺 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@tanakatava

Tim Salau, is the co-founder of Guide App, A Future of Work thought leader, and a Nigerian American artist. His work and impact have been featured on Forbes, at SXSW, and highlighted by trillion dollar companies like Google, Microsoft, and WeWork. Today, he leads Guide, a bite-size video training platform for freelance workers who want to gain set-ready skills and make more money.

Wen Zhang is the founder and CEO of INNW Institute, a global accelerator for tech startups, supporting entrepreneurs who are challenged to secure funding, to get yes from investors and customers. 

She is a serial entrepreneur who has launched businesses, increased their presence in the global market, and managed a large-scale enterprise at a Fortune 100 company. Through her pitching and storytelling expertise, she has helped her clients achieve over 40 million dollars in funding.

Wen holds a Master's Degree in Marketing and Advertising from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Duke University.

Michael is a 2-time founder and currently the CEO of Entre. He started his career as a civil engineer and real estate investor, then started his first company by connecting and helping other entrepreneurs. He started hosting events for entrepreneurs and partnered with all the major co-working spaces throughout the country. As the community grew, he then created Entre in 2019 to scale and start building out the technology and app. Over the last couple of years, Entre has evolved into a broader professional network for the future of work. As of today, Entre has over 100k users, raised $2M+ in funding for Entre, and has a team of 20 from all over the world.

Interested in merging private and public art sectors and her commitment to making art more accessible to a wider audience, Bailey H. Summers, Director of the Green Family Art Foundation (Dallas, TX) has emerged as a driving force within the Dallas arts ecosystem. Summers is an ardent advocate for the transformative potential and power of art; possessing a profound appreciation for the ability of art to enact progress, catalyze change, unite communities and foster connections. Summers envisions a world where creativity and art function as conduits for progress and change. With a Bachelor of Arts in art history and arts administration from Texas Christian University, her academic background aligns seamlessly with her passion. About the Green Family Art Foundation: The Green Family Art Foundation (“GFAF”) is a non-profit foundation based in Dallas, Texas. Founded in 2021, the GFAF’s mission is to provide a venue for, make grants to museums for the benefit of, and educate others about contemporary artists believed to communicate important ideas that are relevant and discussion worthy today and in the future. GFAF champions diversity and empowerment, notably through its support of underserved and underrepresented artists, female artists, LGBTQ+ artists and artists of color. All programming is free and open to the public.

Grace Casper is the Host of Divorce: What I Wish My Parents Knew & Author of Dear Parents: Notes From a Child of Divorce.

She became a child of divorce at age eight. By age 10, Grace had already written her first manuscript draft for her book. Ever since then, she’s wanted to help families through the process of divorce. She is now 24 years old and runs Divorce Tips from Kids. This includes posting on social media, sending out emails to parents, and hosting her podcast, “Divorce: What I Wish My Parents Knew” (the first podcast created from the child’s perspective).

She is a Baylor University alumni; however, her hometown in Colorado will forever have her heart. When Grace isn’t creating content about divorce, she works as a full-time elementary school librarian. She lives in Waco, TX, with her tiny maltipoo, Teddy, and two best friends.

After 15+ years in the Tech Industry as an Enterprise Account Executive, Jarrett is now launching BlackHire (www.blackhire.com), which is the premier place for companies to find talented black freelance talent, and the go to place for black freelancers to find opportunities.  This venture stems from Jarrett’s calling: promoting Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Tech space, which resulted from becoming a fast-growing Tech Influencer during the pandemic, amassing 120K+ followers across his social media channels, while helping 200+ people from diverse backgrounds find tech jobs through his social audio rooms on Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces.  

This has evolved into Jarrett’s YouTube channel and podcast “Big Tech Energy” where he interviews Black leaders in Tech to uncover their story, process, strategies, and mindset that led to their 6-7 figure careers.  

https://youtube.com/@BigTechEnergyPodcast

The work that he’s done in the Diversity in Tech space has led to him being featured in NASDAQ, AfroTech, as well as being named Black in HR’s Tech Recruiting Influencer of the Year in 2021.

Brianna Kilcullen is the founder of Anact and is originally from Atlantic Beach, FL. In 2019, she helped legalize hemp in Florida while launching Anact. Prior to starting Anact, she worked in the apparel industry for prAna, a subsidiary of Columbia Sportswear and Under Armour traveling to 40+ countries working in factories on almost every continent. She is a dual citizen of the US and Ireland.

Ashley Fischer is the Chief Operating Officer at Anact. She is also the co-founder of Higher Innovation, an organization working on helping create more sustainable consumption.

Iconic Conversations with Zack Bolak - Founder of Culture Technologies - Zack is the founder of Culture Technologies, a music tech and artist services company. The music tech division is developing a product for producers and songwriters, called Collective, to simplify the complex process of accessing music publishing royalty money. With the artist services arm, Culture Technologies amplifies local artists and artist teams to expand their presence in new markets - one of Culture’s first clients is the management company for Argentinian trap artist Lucho SSJ. Prior to starting Culture Technologies, Zack spent nearly a decade in the music industry where he worked for various music companies across music tech, music distribution, recorded music, music publishing, user-generated content, and artist management. Most recently, he served as the Head of Music Creator Product Marketing for RME, a royalty collection company focused on helping music producers and songwriters access money for their music's use on social media. Before that, he was a product manager at Pex, where he and his team built the display for ingested sound recording and composition information. Zack's career in the music industry began with internships at indie labels and management companies for artists like Childish Gambino and Frank Ocean. His first job out of college was at Dubset, a company known for its innovative MixBANK product, which was capable of identifying and monetizing the use of songs in user-generated content.

Albert Prewitt, 25, born and raised in Lexington, KY found some success as a logistics broker and early investor in cryptocurrency but found his true calling when he moved to Austin to partner with the startup, FreeWater. The company prints advertisements on aluminum bottles and paper cartons which pays for everything including a ten cent per beverage donation to water well charities. He quickly immersed himself in the startup community investing in 4 other Austin based companies.

Ace Patterson, also professionally known as Call Me Ace, is a Billboard-charting hip-hop artist and Founder/CEO of Five Mics, a digital hip-hop trading card game (think Yu-Gi-Oh! Or Hearthstone, but with rappers, not dragons). In 2023, Five Mics was selected by Techstars Music as 1 of 10 startups for its accelerator cohort, receiving early investments from Warner Music Group and Concord Music Group. Ace is a first-generation Jamaican-American and first-generation college student, graduating with a BA from Columbia University and MBA from UC Berkeley-Haas. Prior to being a full-time entrepreneur, Ace worked strategy & operations at Deloitte Consulting, consumer marketing at Facebook, and music label partnerships at Google/YouTube. Additionally, Call Me Ace’s music has gained over 5 million streams, appeared in the NBA 2K21 video game, and garnered hundreds of media placements, interviews, and speaking engagements from CNBC to TEDx Berkeley. Symphonic Distribution listed Call Me Ace as “20 Black Artists Who Are On the Rise” in both 2021 and 2022. Above all, throughout all of his endeavors, Ace focuses on living an authentic lifestyle and encouraging his audience, coworkers, and peers to live a rich life, not just a life full of riches. No accolade is worth more than remaining true to oneself. This is what motivates him to remain resilient, navigating the highs and lows, so that he can create access and opportunity for others who are also navigating through life’s hardships. For more, visit: callmeace.com.

Gabe Warshaw is a musician, technologist, and the Founder of Baton - a platform that supercharges creative careers by building a community around work-in-progress material, while ensuring artists are properly credited and compensated for their work. Gabe is also a Founder in Residence at the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute and is currently finishing his master's at NYU ITP, a creative technology program within the Tisch School of the Arts known as an “art school for engineers or an engineering school for artists.”

Jake Zinn, from Chapel Hill, NC, is the founder/CEO of BEEPR APP, a company at the intersection of music and technology. Previously, he ran a music management company that signed and developed artists. Jake has a passion for music and the potential for technology to shape the industry.

Sanika Bhave is an environmentalist, venture capitalist, and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin double majoring in Canfield Business Honors and Plan II Honors in Management Information Systems and Art History. She’s a firm believer in people and has sought to realize the power that comes from community at the intersection of policy, technology, and business whether it be by working in impact investing, policy, or social entrepreneurship.

Sanika co-founded Austin Venture Strategy, an undergraduate venture capital organization working to make the venture capital and startup ecosystem more accessible to all, and co-founded the CBHP Impact Network, which is working towards creating a more impact-minded Business Honors community. In Spring 2021, Sanika was named a Bill Archer Fellow and spent the semester in D.C. doing policy work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Sanika’s Plan II Honors thesis is on fossil fuel divestment and what that could potentially look like for institutions, including the University of Texas. 

She celebrates people coming together to have important and impactful conversations, regardless of political, social, or geographic pressures, to create a better place for the next generation.

Achievement is in Diana Nyamekye’s DNA! She is a highly successful 26-year-old social entrepreneur, former Googler, activist, and global speaker, honored by the Princess of Dubai as the CEO of the Most Impactful Initiative worldwide. She is the product of a diligent single mother, prayer, and a constructive community of Newark, NJ. Nyamekye is the founder and CEO of Black Sisters in STEM, where she is on a mission to unleash the global brilliance of Black women in STEM. To this aim, she is building the largest talent marketplace of Black college women in STEM globally. From Lagos, Nigeria to Atlanta, Georgia, Nyamekye is building a community that the world has never seen.

Powered by AI, their platform improves the hireability of Black women through live projects, mentorship, and learning communities at scale. Under her leadership, Black SiS built an ecosystem composed of ~7.3k women in 24 countries with representation from 12 African countries. All in just 3 short years. She is a proud alumni of the University of Virginia, and a proud recipient of Pure Leaf’s “No” grant, led by Olympian Allyson Felix.

Warwick Powell is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Design at Queensland University of Technology, where he is an industry lead in a multi-disciplinary research program focused on the design and application of distributed ledger technology solutions to supply chain environments. He is also founding chair of Smart Trade Networks, a blockchain technology development and commercialisation company with partners in 5 regions globally. He has founded and exited a number of businesses over the past 25+ years, principally focused on applied statistics and data analytics, and design-driven communications. He has industry experience in cross border trade and investment, and sector experience in ICT, food systems, natural resources and energy and land use. He is a social impact expert, and advises property development projects on how to optimise beneficial social impacts. In this capacity, he has also been an expert witness for matters before the Planning & Environment Court of Queensland in Australia.

After a year of lockdowns, global economic turmoil, 9% inflation rate, record high home prices and record low savings rates, the average American is hurting financially with $6500 in credit card debt and less than 10% over 65 having enough to retire. The cost of a college degree is going through the roof while its value is going through the floor. So how do we fix this? 

Grant Watkins is an entrepreneur working to bring financial education to kids from elementary through high school with a fun video game. Learn the basics of financial literacy, investing, budgeting, real estate, buying a small business and more in an exciting and interactive way.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Grant worked a number of sales jobs, from selling Toyotas to pay his way through college, to manufacturing contracts in Beijing, China, to residential real estate in his hometown of Houston, Texas.

In 2019, Grant began working on his own personal finances which led him down the rabbit hole of modern finance and all its problems. From the overall lack of education to traps such as payday loans. He began plugging himself into the Houston ecosystem in August '21 and finally took the leap into full-time entrepreneurship in January '22.

Self-made developers Calvin and Chris LaMont host the HGTV Hit Show Buy It or Build It. The duo’s journey to builder success started with their first company, which specialized in fixing fire and water damage (and helped them hone their renovation skills). 

Soon after, the brothers found major success flipping fixer-uppers, eventually growing a stellar reputation. Today, the former college football players own more than 25 residential lots in up-and-coming Dallas neighborhoods. They have their sights set on creating entire communities in cities outside of Texas, including St. Louis and Augusta, Georgia. 

Rena is the CEO of Boutiq, which is building a trusted luxury vacation rental brand and real estate investment engine. Prior to launching Boutiq, Rena worked in finance and strategy for Indeed’s new product portfolio, and led an edtech startup, Prepify. She previously was a senior consultant at Deloitte and has also worked at organizations such as Bono's ONE Campaign. Rena earned an MBA from MIT Sloan, an MPAff from The University of Texas' LBJ School and a BS from Georgetown University.

Isaiah Studivent is the CEO, Head of Growth of Evron Digital, a RevGen Ad Agency that uses social media as the primary customer acquisition channel for growth-stage B2B SaaS companies.  As the CEO, Isaiah's goal is to facilitate and cultivate a culture of innovation, creativity, and progression that results in sustainable, repeatable, and momentous growth for clients.   With a background in design, he approaches client problems as a blank canvas and orchestrates an assembly of elements to create the perfect outcome that our clients envision.   Isaiah attended RCBC, a community college in New Jersey before leaving to pursue entrepreneurship. Alongside running Evron, Isaiah helps early  stage founders build RevGen models and customer acquisition strategies for accelerated growth.   

Chalique Seabron is the COO and co-founder of Evron Digital. Which is a Rev Gen Ad Agency that works with hyper growth companies receiving Series A/B funding.  He creates efficiency-boosting frameworks, facilitates growth initiatives, and drives continuous iterations of systems, workflows, and development projects.  Chalique attended SNHU for 3 years, studying computer science before he made the ultimate decision to go into business full-time.

Jonathan Barshop is a podcast growth marketer for the HubSpot Podcast Network — working on top business shows like My First Million, The Hustle Daily Show and more.  Before joining HubSpot, he co-founded a podcast agency where he helped brands like FreshBooks, Four Sigmatic & Doist grow through podcast PR and production.

Lauren is the cofounder and CEO of Fundr, a platform that uses data and AI to empower decision making in seed investing.

Prior to this, Lauren cofounded Black Women Talk Tech, the largest membership organization and only conference for black women founders and KeepUp, an automated social listening platform. Her companies have won multiple awards including 43North, the Advanced Imaging Society’s Distinguished Leadership Award and the Austin Inno Fire Award. She has been featured in The New York Times, TechCrunch, Elle, Inc and Fortune and has been listed as a top entrepreneur in CIO Magazine, Essence Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and the ForbesNEXT1000 list.

Lauren started her career as a special education teacher with Teach for America and went on to develop marketing and data strategy for over 100 global companies at InStyle Magazine, TVGuide and Omnicom Group. She has her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. She is on the board of advisors for SXSW Pitch, Athena and New Profit’s Future of Work Fund.

At 19 years old, Blake Zonca dropped out of college where he was studying to become an aerospace engineer to work full time developing a virtual reality video game.

Two years later after thousands of hours of coding, hiring a team, and many highs and lows, Crunch Element launched successfully in December 2020.

Blake is continuing to grow Dreamlab XR while enjoying the freedom of being his own boss and he's recently launched a podcast where he interviews people in business and tech who have the wisdom to share with the next generation

Virtual reality makes isolation and depression easier, and suicide and substance abuse are too common to ignore.

Yoga and meditation are free mental health tools offering potentially lifesaving coping mechanisms for optimal mental health in the Metaverse.

Christine Lewis is known as The Yoga Boss after teaching Transformational Yoga Therapy since 2009 to founders of multi-billion-dollar companies, professional athletes, and leading Yoga Retreats around the world.

The Yoga Boss launched the Yog8 DAO to eliminate the elitist access to Yoga and Meditation by offering incentives for Self Care through a wellness metaverse that merges gamification with meditation and Yoga. Christine created the Yoga Boss NFTs to make meditation easy using Sacred Geometry Animations with Chakra Frequency music for an immediate meditative experience.

Wellness in Web3 is mandatory and the Yog8 DAO offers mental health techniques to a worldwide audience in desperate need of accessible and affordable mental health services and physical mobility and wellness practices.

Landon Campbell is a 24-year-old Podcaster and Media Executive based in Chicago, IL. He’s the Co-Founder and Host of inTheir20s. Upon graduating from DePaul University during the pandemic, Landon created the popular inTheir20s podcast as a way to share the best advice with fellow twenty-somethings.

On the show, he interviews top business leaders and influencers to explore what they did in their 20s. His notable past guests include: Steve Wozniak, the Mayor of Miami, Ev Williams, Dr. Meg Jay, Guy Kawasaki, and Kat Cole.

Destin George Bell is a serial entrepreneur, content creator, real estate & equities investor, and natural-born hustler. Since he started selling toys to neighborhood kids at 5 years old, he's always had a love for business & has always found a way to make money for himself. 

After graduating college in May 2020, at the peak of COVID, he moved to Austin, Texas without ever visiting or knowing anyone there. Over the last 2 years, he went from $2000 to his name & no job to founding a gamified cardio fitness startup that's venture-backed & funded by Pokemon Go, becoming a 6-figure brand personality contracted by the NBA, Old Spice, McDonalds, Mobile1, and several other, and owner of a duplex near downtown Austin valued at over $500K with 3 tenants. All without ever taking a 9-5 job.

Liz Trosper is a new media painter working with ideas of reproduction, the body, painting, and technology. She teaches as Assistant Professor of Instruction at The University of Texas at Dallas. Trosper’s work centers on the desire for touch that is both fueled by technology and denied by it. Her creative work examines reproduction as a concept and as technical means. 

Her work is represented by Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas and has been shown via the international DANAE HI digital art network in Paris, CICA Museum in South Korea, and the Artron network in China. Her work has been included in surveys of abstraction at the San Antonio Museum of Art and The Museum of South Texas.

She was also the subject of a one-person exhibition at The Wilcox Space, an initiative of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, a site for the exhibition, documentation, and study of the work of artists who explore painting as a medium and idea.