Race & Gender Unfiltered with Daniel Edmund

This episode I speak with multi-award winning coach, consultant speaker and former athlete Michelle Moore. She has lit up board rooms, sports halls and conference rooms alike, sharing her experience and message of our power to rise in spite of challenges, and inspiring a progressive brand of conscious leadership for a new age of sport and business.

Championed for a brand of activism which is unapologetic yet grounded in compassion and a desire to effect positive change, Michelle has spoken and consulted everywhere from The London Mayor’s Office, The Commonwealth Games Federation, UNICEF UK, The University of Cambridge, The BBC, The International Paralympic Committee, Sport England, The University of Texas and Premier League Football.

Voted as one of the UK’s ’50 Most Influential Women in Sport’ through the delivery of coaching and leadership programmes across government, sport, business and charity sectors Michelle’s work focuses on the personal and collective transformation of people, communities and organisations. Michelle is the winner of the 2016 UK Precious Award for ‘Outstanding Woman in Sport’, a Football Black List award and an esteemed national Change Maker award.

Michelle and I speak about her journey growing up as a Black mixed-heritage woman, developing leaders and her new book Real Wins.

To find out more about Michelle visit michellemoore.me

And you can order Michelle's new book here

This episode I speak with Taimour Ahmed who is the founder of Expert By Experience, a volunteer-led multimedia platform dedicated to looking at mental health in South Asian communities from an intersectional and critical lens. As a mental health advocate, he came up as a young writer in online publishing with the company Media Diversified from its inception. Nowadays he can be found either working away at EBE or cooking Pakistani dishes. 

Taimour and I speak about his experience growing up in Pakistan and moving to the UK, challenges South Asian men experience, as well as men processing anger.

To find out more about Taimour visit expertbyexperience.uk. 

In this episode, I speak with Nova Reid who is an Activist, TED speaker and author, with a mission to improve racial justice by helping people be the change they want to see by courageously unlearning their racism.

Nova uses her professional background in mental wellbeing to encourage meaningful change from the inside out. She has worked with a variety of organisations including BT and Bloody Good Period and has an online anti-racism academy. 

Nova regularly appears on BBC News, Sky News and BBC Radio as a media expert on race. In 2018, Nova was invited to attend the Royal Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to provide expert media commentary.

Nova is an accomplished public speaker and was headhunted by TEDx Frankfurt to deliver a talk on microaggressions which was upgraded as a TED talk in 2020. Nova was named one of the Top 100 Black British Women by the Black Magic Network, as part of International Women’s Day 2019 and in November 2020 she was awarded a Precious Award for Social Impact for her work in racial justice.

Nova is a passionate advocate for equity, collective healing and helping people use self-agency to role model change. Her debut book The Good Ally is out in September 2021.

We speak about her journey getting into anti-racism work, the challenges of collective healing and the joy she’s found along the way.

To find out more about Nova, visit her website novareid.com 

In this episode, I speak with Benjamin Alexander who is working towards becoming Jamaica’s first Olympic Alpine Skier.

Benjamin spent the majority of the last decade on the road as an esteemed international DJ, resident for the quintessential Burning Man brand; Robot Heart. After retiring from nightlife in late 2018 his mind shifted to what challenge would motivate and drive the next chapter of his life. 

 Benjamin is now racing against the clock to qualify for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in the midst of a global pandemic. We speak about his athletic journey so far, connecting to his Jamaican ancestry and what going to the Winter Olympics represents for him and the island.

You can find out more about Benjamin on his Instagram page @benji.ski

This episode I speak with Jeremy Herte who is the Host and Founder of Let's Talk Bruh. Let’s Talk Bruh is a platform that creates content around Black masculinity and the impact of patriarchy in Black communities. The goal of his content is to create interactive, healing, and learning experiences with his audience, primarily Black men and male socialised folks of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

We speak about his journey starting Let’s Talk Bruh, platonic male intimacy between Black men Black men healing and divesting from patriarchy.

To find out more about Jeremy you can find him on instagram @jherte and the Let’s Talk Bruh instagram page @letstalkbruh.

This episode I check-in with some reflections about one of the healing processes I'm currently involved with and my hopes for us as a collective moving forward.

This episode I speak with Assistant Principal Abbi Bainton who has been working professionally in the educational sector both in the UK and in the Caribbean. We speak about her experiences of being a mixed-heritage woman living in the UK, racism in the British educational system and the false narratives behind the attainment gap of Black Caribbean students in the UK.

In this episode I share my reflections of the past six months and how this "dark" time has shaped me.

This episode I recite the poem ‘Who Will Cry For the Little Boy’ by Antwon Fisher. Antwone Fisher (born August 3, 1959) is an American director, screenwriter, author, and film producer. His 2001 autobiographical book Finding Fish was a New York Times Best Seller. The 2002 film Antwone Fisher  was written by Fisher and directed by Denzel Washington.

Fisher was born in prison to a single mother. His father, Edward Elkins, had been shot dead by a jealous girlfriend two months earlier. Antwone was placed in a foster home weeks after he was born, and remained in foster care through most of his childhood. After living with a foster mother for two years, Fisher was taken away from her. He was then placed into another foster home with a family named the Picketts. He spent 14 years of his childhood with the Picketts and was abused physically, verbally, and sexually. 

Fisher reports his earliest memories are of being sexually abused, beaten, tied up and left in a basement for hours, sometimes days and the abuse left him in a state of paranoia

He was then removed from the Pickett home after having a fight with his foster mother. Antwone was sent to George Junior Republic School, a discipline school for boys, from which he graduated before he joined the United States Navy.[1]

Fisher joined the U.S. Navy to escape homelessness. Fisher spent 11 years in the Navy. Here, he met Lt. Commander Williams, a psychiatrist who helped him work through his emotional traumas. And this is the story we see played out in his debut film Antwon Fisher. 

Fisher now resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife LeNette and his children.

This episode I recite a short passage from James Baldwin’s book ‘The Fire Next Time’. I know it's a very short passage. I was considering reading more but that particular part resonated with me. Also, the length of something doesn’t always equate to its depth and I think that’s one of the great things about quotes and short passages.