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The Global I Am's Max Rodriguez welcomes PBS NewsHour anchor and acclaimed author Geoff Bennett for a candid conversation about his memoir Black Out Loud, the power of storytelling, and the role of journalism in strengthening democracy. Bennett reflects on the mentors, experiences, and defining moments that shaped his remarkable journey, offering insights on leadership, representation, and the importance of finding—and using—your voice.

Topics Include:

• The inspiration behind Black Out Loud
• Journalism, democracy, and public trust
• Mentorship and the power of representation
• Leadership through storytelling
• Race, identity, and the American experience
• Building bridges across communities and perspectives
• Finding your voice and using it with purpose

A thoughtful and timely discussion with one of America's most respected journalists on truth, leadership, and the stories that shape our lives.

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Global I Am -  Episode 4: Dr. Dennis Kimbro
“Think and Grow Rich: The African Choice”

In this powerful conversation, renowned author, educator, and economic thinker Dr. Dennis Kimbro joins culturalist Max Rodriguez for a far-reaching discussion on wealth, legacy, vision, and the future of Black economic consciousness.

Best known for his groundbreaking adaptation of Napoleon Hill’s philosophy through works such as Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice, Dr. Kimbro has spent decades exploring the principles of achievement, ownership, discipline, and generational prosperity within the African diaspora.  And he is still only beginning. 

Together, Kimbro and Rodriguez examine how “being in the black” is not simply an accounting term — but a visionary framework for imagining the future, building institutions, and redefining community wealth in the 21st century.   

This episode of Global I Am explores a larger idea increasingly central to the movement: that community itself may be one of the world’s most undervalued asset classes.

A conversation on economics, culture, self-determination, and the architecture of possibility.   A conversation around the prosperity of love. 

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Welcome back to the full season of The Global I AM Podcast at the Nexus of THE Culture and Our Capital.   After our first 2 beta-episodes as well as episodes from our vaults earlier this year,  Global I Am will resume every Friday to share information from around the worlds of culture and finance. 

For our first episode back, we lean into the wisdom of the Pacific Ocean at Point Loma University,  a Christian liberal arts university in San Diego, California, founded in 1902 and rooted in the Wesleyan tradition - Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) is named after its location on the Point Loma peninsula in San Diego, California, where it moved in 1973

In a rare and layered gathering of minds — Dr. Dean Nelson of Point Loma University, our Max Rodriguez of the Harlem Book Fair, Kenyan leader Wavinya Makai of Cambridge University, global financier Bill Huston and visionary Patrick A. Howell - explore the intersection of literature, leadership, and lived identity.  

At the center stands Jesse Jackson as a living force through the people whom he inspired.  When he declared, “I Am Somebody,”  in 1984 and 1989 as a presidential aspirant, he did more than inspire -  he changed the nation, he changed the world. 

Dean and Max talk about Jamaica Kincaid - a literary force whose voice, rooted in Antigua and expanded across the world, has shaped how we understand place, power and self-definition, from St. John’s to Harvard, from the Caribbean to the global stage.

Dean E. Nelson, Ph.D., is a beloved award-winning journalist, author, and 21st Century thought leader who founded and directs the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU). He is also the founder and host of the distinguished annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea. 

This episode moves across continents and disciplines:

•  From the civil rights movement to the global diaspora
•  From economic systems to cultural production
•  From personal testimony to institutional consequence

It positions Jesse Jackson as what he truly is:

The bridge - between Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama, between protest and policy, between voice and power.

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Hollywood icon Bill Duke joins the Global I Am Archive in a conversation that examines the intersection of capital and culture. At Global I Am we operate from a simple premise: culture is not separate from markets — culture is markets.

Across films in which Duke has acted, directed, or produced, the combined box office impact exceeds $1.6 billion, including projects such as Predator, Sister Act II, Payback, Red Dragon, and X-Men: The Last Stand. Nearly 80% of these films are major studio productions, with over 70% profitable, reflecting the rare combination of artistic mastery and professional discipline that defines Duke’s career.

Yet the deeper story is craft. With more credits behind the camera than in front of it, Duke has spent decades refining his work across film and television—from Kojak and Miami Vice to Black Lightning.

In Global I Am terms, Bill Duke represents the fusion of story, wisdom, and enterprise - a modern global griot whose legacy reminds us that the oldest technology in human civilization remains the story itself.

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In this powerful archival episode of Global I Am — At the Nexus of Culture & Our Capital, we sit with Ruth E. Carter, one of the most influential costume designers in cinema history.

Originally recorded for our legacy Victory and Noble series Getting Deals Done, this conversation explores Carter’s extraordinary ability to translate cultural memory into visual language — a gift inspired in part by Black Arts Movement icons Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni.

Ruth Carter has long shaped how Black history, imagination, and identity appear on screen — from Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) to Spike Lee classics including Malcolm X (1992) and Do the Right Thing (1989). Here, she reflects on her journey, her craft, and her role as a cultural custodian.

This episode lands at a historic moment: Carter has received a new Academy Award nomination for her work on Sinners — a recognition underscoring her enduring impact on American cinema and global cultural storytelling.

At its core, Sinners follows twin brothers returning home only to confront a darker reality than the one they left — a powerful meditation on memory, reckoning, and the ghosts we carry.

In this archival Global I Am conversation, we explore:

• How design becomes narrative and living archive
 • The responsibility of cultural representation in global media
 • The lineage of Black aesthetics in film and performance
 • What it means to stand at the intersection of heritage and innovation

Carter’s work reminds us: culture is a language — and those who shape it shape how communities see themselves and the world.

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In this archival episode of Getting Deals Done, the Mastermind Forum, we look at a larger cosmic picture and identify  opportunities based upon information gleaned from past episodes.  In this case, we note trends by Fortune 500 companies as Viasat Satellite Communications and Newport Beach's Alhambra Technologies with manufacturing in Bahir, Ethiopia. 

The Africa insurance market reached a value of US $70 billion in 2020. Revenue in the eCommerce market is projected to reach US $43,885 million in 2022. Agriculture takes up 15 percent ($100 billion annually) of the whole continent's GDP and is also the largest economic sector. African infrastructure saw a raise in compound annual rate at 17%. Banking, Oil and Gas, and Telecommunication also showcase markets with astronomical potential.  The new BRIC are centrally located on the continent where all civilization, technology and visions began.

We trace Africa’s rise from informal ingenuity to investable scale, with Nigeria’s momentum, Senegal’s smart-city vision, and a people-first ethos that powers real markets. Along the way, we frame Afrofuturism as practical design for dignity, trust, and growth.

• Nigeria’s scale, GDP context, and entrepreneurial tribes
• Why informal markets are the infrastructure of daily life
• Startup capital growth and Fortune 500 attention
• Senegal’s smart sustainable city and crypto-enabled services
• Afrofuturism as a blueprint for practical innovation
• Integrity, purpose, and human potential as market drivers
• Partnerships across media, water stewardship, and hospitality
• Invitation to our virtual mastermind forum

Be sure to join us for our virtual mastermind forum at the Global I Am

Prosperity is a state of being, not a ledger line on your bank account.

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In Episode 2 of Global I Am, hosts Sebastien Celestine, Bill Huston, and Patrick A. Howell convene a transatlantic conversation on legacy, sovereignty, capital, and the evolving architecture of African prosperity and wealth.

From the enduring political fire of H. Rap Brown - the 1960s Black Power activist, SNCC chairman, and advocate for armed resistance against white oppression - to the cultural revolution ignited by Hip Hop, the dialogue honors movements that insisted upon dignity while reshaping global consciousness and finance.

The conversation moves across oceans with Mr. Sebastien Celestine to the GUBA Awards in Barbados and emerging corridors of transatlantic trade, positioning the Caribbean as a modern gateway between Africa and the West. Under the leadership of Mia "Amour" Mottley, Barbados signals a future defined by digital infrastructure, finance enterprise, capital market formation and direct diasporic flight paths linking Nairobi, Accra, and Bridgetown.   

Community crowdfunder Bill Huston reflects on the intellectual and economic legacy of the Black Panther era in Cincinnati. Two years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a young Huston entered school with the Black Panther's Head Start programs and helped launch a journey toward national leadership in equity and sovereignty through capital formation. 

Mr. Howell reflects that under Barack Obama, the U.S. economy contracted about 2.6% in 2009 during the Great Recession before returning to growth (roughly 2–2.5% in 2010), while the global economy fell around 2.2% and rebounded near 2.7%, supported by the approximately $831B American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, stabilizing financial systems and demand.  His presidency also served as the model for his successor, President Joe Biden's economic recovery from the Pandemic - a $1.9T American Rescue Plan. So, rather than merely the first black president, Obama is the greatest economic steward of American and global financial markets. 

Ultimately, Episode 2 is the story of a people engineering their return home - to Peace, Joy, and  our Prosperity.

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In this archival return to the early formation of Global I Am, we revisit a pivotal conversation recorded in 2020 — a year that fundamentally reoriented global consciousness.

Host Tori L. Reid convenes voices from what was then known as the Global International African Arts Movement, reflecting on the cultural, political, and spiritual convergence that followed the murder of George Floyd, the enduring moral courage of Congressman John Lewis, and a worldwide reckoning with race, justice, and human dignity. As Lewis urged, this was a moment for “good trouble” — not merely protest, but principled disruption in service of a more expansive democracy.

Moving fluidly across borders and ideas, the conversation considers the emergence of the digital nomad as a defining figure of a new generation — globally mobile, culturally literate, technologically fluent, and increasingly unbound by geography. This posture reflected a reality long understood within the African diaspora: that Black identity, African identity, and cultural influence have always operated on a global plane.

Tori is joined in dialogue with the author of Dispatches from the Vanguard, published by London’s Repeater Books — a work now regarded as both timely and quietly prophetic in capturing the emotional, cultural, and political temperature of the era. Some observers drew parallels between COVID-19 and the influenza pandemic of the early twentieth century. Yet the deeper inquiry explored here is civilizational: if the Harlem Renaissance gave rise to the Black Arts Movement, and later Hip Hop, what new renaissance was being gestated in 2020?

This episode traces the energetic roots of Global I Am — not merely as a platform, but as an emerging intellectual and cultural movement grounded in Pan-African consciousness and the enduring human impulse to create meaning in moments of rupture. The discussion touches on living life as art, building global movements, ancestral presence and healing — including reflections on Patrick Howell’s father, Dr. Bing P. Howell — and the responsibility inherent in cultural stewardship.

What ultimately emerges is a portrait of an idea before it fully declared itself: Global I Am — an understanding that culture, capital, entrepreneurship, spirit, and creativity are inseparable, and that the African diaspora has long stood at the generative center of world culture.

Both time capsule and foundation stone, this archival conversation reminds us where the signal first gathered strength — why it mattered then, and why its resonance continues to expand now.

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In this episode of Global I Am, we sit down with Patrick A. Howell, Bill Huston, Kate Washington, and Max Rodriguez for an open conversation on identity, culture, creativity, and capital. Together, we explore personal experiences, perspectives, and the ways these forces intersect in how we create, build, and move through the world.  Nexus' Nicole Hernandez-Colin Executively Produces. 

“The Culture, Our Capital”

Global I Am — the Global Independent African Arts Movement — is a cultural, visionary, and capital formation vanguard advancing the creative, narrative, and economic alignment of the African world in a shared humanity.

Born, in significant part, from the traditions, spirit, and legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and the Harlem Book Fair, ‘Global I Am’ (or, ‘I Am Global’) is the next-generation ecosystem and global catalyst of Black cultural capital, connecting artists and entrepreneurs across continents — the U.S., the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and South America (we are global!) — to harmonize and contribute to a spiritual ecosystem brilliantly aligned with our collective humanity in literature, arts, storytelling, innovation, finance, media, and community wealth.

From music and dance to spoken word, paintings and photography to film, from poetry to novels and screenplays, from diasporic traditions to future economies, this is an energetic and inspired movement; a platform to seed cross-cultural partnerships, elevate underrepresented voices, and expand our collective imagination about the role of capital in powering and shaping a beautifully humane future.

Call to Partnership 

We invite each of you — founding and prospective partners — to lend vision, capital and capital formation, voice, and strategic energy as we formalize our council, refine our initiatives, and scale Global I Am into a global energy and institution.

Together, we are building the next renaissance.  Together, we are the next renaissance.    

Contact [email protected] with comments, suggestions and opportunities to collaborate

A Kingdom Re-remembers Itself

This is indeed a dark brightening hour, when Black souls take flight,
As empires of white magic crumble beneath hulking sins.
This is the hour when melanin marks the excellence of our skin,
& we reverse the voyage home by digital, Transatlantic lights

Here ~ new harmonies rise: a Cave Canem choir,
Drummed in iambs, in hexameter fires of griots,
Conducted deftly by our Black Cornelius, bronzed Derricotte,
From mothers’ midnight dreams ~ breath | love |    power

Our blue's ancestors foretold it: brand-new days, new themes,
Eras of trillionaire kingdoms  ~ Benin… Mali rise supreme, 
Canem built castles of Black word, Black philosophy, 
Inlaid with golden crowns - Baldwin, Amiri, Giovanni & Langston’s dreams. 

From this Time of the Fool, a brand new era awakened,
“Cave Canem,” we sing - now the call is: come home.
But, beware the big dawg - Brooklyn prowler, roamed alone,
Sniffing, barking, growling through our age of Gangster Poets.

You see? Pulitzers bloomed from grandmothers’ funeral prayers.
At Cave Canem, laureates remember sovereignty.
Elders paid, endured, and now invoke total Liberty.
Book Award finalists kneel & now rise as the Kingdom’s heirs.