With the endless slew of bad news infiltrating headlines every day, it’s easy to slip into what some call a “doomer” mindset, filled with helplessness, aimlessness and apathy. So the All Things Considered team wants to highlight some of the great work our local leaders are doing to fight that dreary outlook, all while giving back to their communities.
To kick off the “Joy Beat,” Tavares Brewington, founder of the nonprofit Street2Ivy, sat down with All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss his work empowering underserved communities through entrepreneurship and helping to fill gaps created by longstanding wealth disparities. Brewington was recently honored as one of the Forbes Next 1000, which celebrates small business owners across the country. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: I gave a vague, bland description in the intro, but give us a bit more detailed explanation about what Street2Ivy’s mission is and how it came into being.
Tavares Brewington: At Street2Ivy, our mission is really to bring the joy and the power of innovation and entrepreneurship to young people from underserved communities who may not have access to those tools. Street2Ivy came into being after I graduated after a long career as an attorney. I went back to business school at Cornell University and participated in their Innovation Program and really fell in love with it. I wanted to bring that knowledge back to the community, so that’s what Street2Ivy is and where it came from.
Rath: I’ve been blessed to be pretty privileged growing up and have that kind of privilege for my kids. But I know the kind of opportunities you’re talking about, things like entrepreneurship and these kinds of ways in, they all take time and money. How do you pull that together for people who don’t have access to time and money easily?
Brewington: You’re absolutely right, but what we really focus on is the information and knowledge and the process of innovation and design thinking and the power that’s in that. What we really focus on in our program is really helping young people learn the information. We also want them to build confidence that they can work with the information, and we try and connect them with business leaders in the city.
The core of the program is really about creating leaders in the community. We teach young people how to think about a problem, how to isolate it, state it specifically and then develop a solution, a draft solution or a mock-up of a solution, and go back to the community that they seek to serve and get the customer feedback to perfect it. Ultimately, we work with them on the financial modeling piece and marketing and how you raise capital.
But at the core, it’s really about how you become a problem solver. How do you isolate a problem? You identify a solution and work with those who are in your community and are dealing with that problem to come up with a solution that works. So that’s what we really want to get across through our programming.
Rath: My next question was about how Street2Ivy has grown. It sounds like what you’re talking about is seeing a problem and finding out a way to try to fix it. Talk about that growth because you’ve started with an online academy, right? And there’s a magazine and these youth programs. Tell us about the journey.
Brewington: So the first program we were able to run, we actually partnered with the Boston branch of the NAACP, and we ran it as a part of Gov. Baker’s Summer Nights program. We have a group of 20 kids who participate in a six-week program, and it was a success. We even had the governor come in and sit through some of the modules that we had. The kids really enjoy that. Every program culminates into a "Shark Tank"-like presentation.
After that initial program focused on traditional entrepreneurship, we actually developed a real estate development program that works with developers in the city to teach young people about that space as well. So we’ve grown.
We’ve been lucky enough to run a number of these programs over the last four to five years, and it’s been exciting. More and more young people are seeing the benefit of creativity, how to harness their creativity and the value of having a framework by which they can take their idea from just an idea to something that’s tangible and can have an impact.
Rath: I want to talk about your work in Seaport because something that I didn’t even stop to think about really — honestly, embarrassingly — and I was reading about what would be a historic first for Massachusetts: a historically Black college or university. It’s kind of mad, if you think about it, that there isn’t that already in Boston. Tell us your thoughts about that and how you think we might get there.
Brewington: We’re part of a team that submitted a response to a request for a proposal from the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority to develop a tract of land in the Seaport. Part of the proposal is to offer a development of an art gallery that would focus on Black and brown artists. But it’s more than a gallery; it’s really a space for artists and creatives to come and learn their craft and the business.
In addition to that, we’ve proposed a design center where we will work with you people to really have a place to innovate. Part of that is partnering with Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design, which is a historically Black college based in Detroit. It’s run by Dr. D’Wayne Edwards, who was the manager of Michael Jordan’s Air Jordan brand for decades. He specializes in sneaker design, which is becoming a huge thing amongst young people. There are a lot of sneaker artists; it’s an $86 billion industry, and Massachusetts has a special place in that industry because we have most of the major brands here in Massachusetts.
What we’re proposing is to work with Pensole Lewis to run courses around sneaker design and business to help more young people enter that market and enter into an industry that’s so big in this state.
Rath: Something I know about from my teenage son now is that there are fortunes to be made in sneakers these days.
Brewington: Yeah, it’s really exciting. I mean, it’s something that all kids love. I think it brings people from all backgrounds together, and it would just be a historic opportunity to really provide that opportunity for young people in the city, really to get involved in the industry that’s worldwide — people love sneakers, and they love the design aspect all over the world.
I think having that in Boston, next to the convention center, we can see it being an attraction that brings people from all over the place here to Massachusetts on the diversity and inclusion side. Really, it gives young people who may not have an opportunity, chance or resource where they can learn to generate wealth for themselves, and also highlights the rich culture that exists, the diverse culture that actually exists in Boston.
Rath: Why Seaport?
Brewington: The Seaport is an up-and-coming area. I’ve been in Boston for a while and have seen it grow, but we want to make sure that everyone has access and feels welcome there. To the extent we can, we want to make sure that there are resources for everyone and attractions for everyone. It’s just a wonderful place to be, but we wanted to make it a wonderful place to be for the greatest number of people and have it really reflect that rich, diverse culture that is Boston.
