This is not a normal episode of The Shift. The camera is fine. Mark is fine. But the chair is flipped.

Season 2 opens with a special episode in the tradition of last season's two-part "How I Became the Professional Storyteller" series with Araya Baker, in which Mark sits in the guest chair while someone else asks the questions. This time, there was only one person he wanted to do the asking. It’s only fitting that season 2 concludes with the person who helped kick off the season, Darnell Lamont Walker. 

Darnell is a writer, death doula, Emmy-nominated creator, founder of Passport Required, and one of the most quietly essential voices in contemporary American storytelling — who came to this podcast as a guest and left as a new friend. A new friend who showed up to Mark's birthday party. A friend, Mark, slid into the DMs respectfully after seeing Darnell's book announcement and knew immediately he had to be on the show. A friend whose book Mark has texted about to what sounds like dozens of people.

Darnell interviews Mark the way a death doula would, not with softballs, but with the questions that only make sense when you've already thought about the end. What story about your life do you hope survives you? What parts of yourself no longer feel important? What are you still becoming? What has disability taught you about time?

What follows is one of the most intimate and revealing conversations Mark has had on his own show. About audacity as a survival strategy. About the freedom of no longer needing to prove people wrong. About representation and what it means to be the possibility model you never had. About grief, loss, and the Billy Porter song about time. About love and why you can't project-manage it. About crip time. About the lunch ladies at his university who pretended to swipe his student card when he didn't have enough meal swipes, and how he has tried to be Ms. Ebony to everyone he meets ever since.

Order Darnell's book. It's called Never Can Say Goodbye: The Life of a Death Doula and the Art of a Peaceful End. Mark's been telling everyone about it. Now you know why.

Guest Host Bio:

Darnell Lamont Walker is a death doula, Emmy-nominated children’s television writer, producer, and explorer. Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, he creates spaces worldwide for healing through storytelling, end-of-life care, and workshops on grief, resilience, unlocking the writer within, and radical empathy. He joyfully lives in the Chattahoochee National Forest of North Georgia.

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Order Darnell’s Book: Never Can Say Goodbye

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Disclaimer Note: The captions in this video are auto-generated, and while we try to ensure accuracy, you may notice a typo or error. Thank you in advance for extending grace.

Nick is Mark's business coach, the man who didn't renew his contract five years ago (we don't say fired here), and the same man who turned around immediately after and helped Mark launch The Professional Storyteller. He is, as Mark puts it, the one white straight man in his life he is fully committed to,  and this episode is the story of how an unlikely pairing across every surface-level identity marker became one of the most formative professional relationships in both their lives.

Nick's debut leadership book, Every Player Is Bigger Than the Program, arrives with a backstory nobody saw coming: a college athlete kicked out of school over a marijuana arrest in Kentucky, who experienced homelessness, drifted through states and odd jobs and self-medication, and eventually landed in a Boys & Girls Club role that redirected everything. From there: school social worker, high school basketball coach, and the architect of the fastest team in Indiana history to win a state championship, built from scratch, without a gym, in four years.

This episode marks the first time Nick has ever read his book aloud publicly. Bring tissues. Mark cried on page two, and he is not embarrassed about it.

Guest Bio:

Nick Reich is a leadership coach, author, and CEO of Abundant Empowerment and CoLab, organizations dedicated to developing full-circle leaders and high-trust, high-performance teams. His upcoming book, Every Player Is Bigger Than the Program, blends storytelling, strategy, and systems thinking to help leaders navigate complexity with clarity, courage, and humanity. With more than two decades of experience across the social impact, nonprofit, and business sectors, Nick is known for translating complex change into practical, actionable leadership. His work focuses on building cultures of trust, strengthening alignment, and helping leaders grow into more conscious, effective stewards of people and purpose. He has advised and partnered with organizations ranging from startups to global organizations, and has coached hundreds of leaders worldwide. Nick’s leadership philosophy was shaped both on and off the basketball court. As a young coach, he helped build a state-championship program from the ground up in just four years - the fastest in Indiana high school history - reinforcing his core belief that when people are developed well, they become the engine of lasting transformation. Today, he coaches leaders, facilitates retreats, and guides organizations committed to creating meaningful, human-centered work and enduring impact.

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Disclaimer Note: The captions in this video are auto-generated, and while we try to ensure accuracy, you may notice a typo or error. Thank you in advance for extending grace.

Mark met Amena Brown through Creative Mornings ATL, the community she led as chapter host for five years. From the moment they connected, it was, in her words, a handshake emoji. This conversation catches Amena in the middle of her book tour for her new release, Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl, days before heading to Essence Fest. But she made time. Because that's what real community looks like.

What follows is a wide-ranging, warm, and often deeply funny conversation about ancestral resilience, containing multitudes, the complexity of interracial marriage in this political moment, what it costs to refuse to shrink yourself, and why "black girl" is both a noun and the most expansive verb in the language. Plus: the craft of reverse-engineering stage performance into written prose, and more. 

Guest Bio:

Amena Brown is a spoken word poet, author, and performing artist whose work interweaves keep-it-real storytelling, rhyme, and humor. A proud graduate of Spelman College and a former poetic partner for Tracee Ellis Ross’ natural hair brand, PATTERN Beauty, Amena is the author of five spoken-word albums and three nonfiction books. Her new book of comedic essays, Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl, is available at your favorite bookseller. As a stage performer, Amena turns arenas, theaters, and performance venues into living rooms where the audience and her readers can make themselves at home. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, DJ Opdiggy, and their dog Kane.

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Two Boricuas walk into a podcast. One is a Jersey Rican who grew up understanding Spanish but not speaking it, who moves his whole body when merengue comes on, who just went back to the island for his birthday for the first time as an adult and healed something deep. The other is a Nuyorican who got a 100 on his Spanish Regents exam and was still made fun of for sounding like a gringo, who found the language he was looking for not in a classroom, but on a dance floor.

Mark met Rodney Eric López through a Latinx dance leaders convening and saw his book teaser on Facebook. He stopped in his tracks. He felt seen. He knew immediately Rodney had to be on the show.

I Don't Speak Spanish, But I Understand Everything When I'm Dancing is Rodney's debut book, and it is exactly the book that needed to exist. Part memoir, part historical excavation, part act of communal healing, it traces the journey of second-generation Latinx people who were assimilated out of their heritage language, who were told that their Spanglish was a bastardization, who were never Puerto Rican enough, and offers something rare in return: not a fix, but a full release of the shame that was never theirs to carry.This episode is an act of reclamation. By two men who have every right to claim exactly who they are.

Guest Bio:

Rodney Eric López is an accomplished educator, artist, and non-profit leader. His diverse professional background includes successful tenures in teaching artistry in public schools in New York City and beyond, training, coaching and facilitation, corporate communications and public relations, and executive non-profit leadership. Rodney served as Executive Director of Dancing Classrooms in New York City, where he led program growth, supported new business efforts, oversaw training and professional development, and served as the face of the organization in stewardship of its 20 national and international affiliates. His teaching work with Dancing Classrooms is featured in the Paramount Classics hit documentary Mad Hot Ballroom. He is a master instructor of Latin and social dance and has taught children and adults the art of dance both for personal enjoyment and as a powerful tool for team and community building. Prior to his career in arts education, Rodney was a successful professional in communications and PR, serving in communications leadership roles at North General Hospital, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and BSMG Worldwide. He is the creator of the Generosity and Abundance Process online course and author of The Generosity Solution. He founded Currents RI, a giving circle dedicated to engaging men of color in philanthropic purpose. He has served on several boards and is a member of the Rhode Island Foundation's Equity Leadership Initiative. He is the author of "I Don't Speak Spanish, but I Understand Everything When I'm Dancing!", a new social memoir that explores the intersection of language shame, identity, and Salsa. Rodney holds a B.S. in Communications Studies from New York University, where he was a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar and a Certificate in Spiritual Entrepreneurship from The Glean Network and Columbia Business School. 

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Content Warning: this episode makes reference to sexual assault.

Dr. Josie Ahlquist is the blueprint. If you've spent any time in higher education — especially at the intersection of communications, student affairs, and digital leadership — you already know her name. And if you don't, this episode is your introduction to someone who was doing the work before the field had a name for it.

This is their first face-to-face conversation despite years of existing in overlapping orbits, connected through mutual friend and colleague Danielle. What follows is a wide-ranging, emotionally honest, and unexpectedly vulnerable conversation about what it costs to be a pioneer in digital spaces, about burnout culture disguised as hustle, about surviving something unspeakable and choosing six months later to share it publicly, and about what it means to communicate with integrity when the entire country feels like a crisis communication scenario. Dr. Josie doesn't polish things up and make them look pretty. And that, as she says, is very much the point.

Guest Bio:

Dr. Josie Ahlquist guides leaders, organizations, and students to practice purposeful digital leadership through speaking, coaching, and consulting. Josie’s work is grounded in grant-funded, award-winning research that has enabled her to train thousands around the globe as a speaker; provide consulting services to institutions and companies; and coach professionals in branding, voice, and positioning.

Dr. Josie was selected as a 2023 NASPA Pillar of the Profession, one of the highest honors for student affairs. Josie is a three-time LinkedIn Top Voice in Education and has for six years been recognized by Ed Tech Magazine as one of the “Top 50 Must-Read Higher Education Technology Blogs” and her podcast, Josie and The Podcast, has been featured by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. Her book, Digital Leadership in Higher Education: Purposeful Social Media in a Connected World, was listed as an Amazon #1 new release for college and university student life.

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Mark has met Oprah. He's met Dr. Brené Brown more than once. And yet when he turned around at a book event in Atlanta and realized the woman tapping his shoulder was Morgan Harper Nichols, he cried on the spot. That says everything you need to know about what today's guest means to him.

Morgan Harper Nichols is a bestselling author, award-winning artist, poet, musician, PhD student, mother, and one of the most quietly revolutionary creative forces working today. Her words — those short, luminous quote graphics you've been sharing for years without always knowing whose they were — have reached millions of people across the world. Her initials, MHN, have appeared in countless captions and reposts as a kind of shorthand for that feeling of being seen when you didn't expect to be.

This conversation covers how a single journal poem posted to Pinterest in 2016 changed the trajectory of her life, what it means to protect intimacy when your work reaches a million people, what she's learning in her PhD research about health narratives and art, and what it felt like to be in your early 30s with a thriving creative career already built,  to finally receive the diagnosis: autism. ADHD. Sensory processing disorder. This conversation is an invitation to be still and breathe. 

Guest Bio

Morgan Harper Nichols is a bestselling author and award-winning artist whose work explores creative storytelling through visual art and the written word. Her books, including the bestselling All Along You Were Blooming and other collections of poetry and illustrations, have found a wide, international audience.  She has built a creative community of over a million followers on Instagram, where she shares her art and reflections on creativity, healing, and connection. Morgan is also the creator of the Storyteller app and founder of Garden24, a platform for her visual and written work.  In addition to her creative practice, Morgan is a PhD student in Communication Studies at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on using arts-based methodologies to communicate health narratives. She serves on the Board of Directors for To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) and is actively involved in community-based mental health initiatives.  At 31, Morgan was diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, and sensory processing disorder, an experience that continues to inform her work and perspective. From and based in the Atlanta, Georgia metro area, she continues to connect art, research, and community in ways that highlight creativity as a space for understanding, imagination, and meaningful connection.

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Shop at Garden24 + buy  MHN’s art and  books

Website 

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Disclaimer Note: The captions in this video are auto-generated, and while we try to ensure accuracy, you may notice a typo or error. Thank you in advance for extending grace.

He's back. Obella Obbo — therapist, wellness specialist, CEO of The Radical Empath, and one of Mark's dearest friends — returns to The Shift as what may be the first guest to appear on both Season 1 and Season 2. A lot has changed since they last spoke: Obella got married, survived one of the hardest years of his life, and has been in the thick of holding space for clients navigating a world that feels like it's unraveling in real time. This conversation goes deep on joy as a practice, the psychic weight of the current political moment, what it means to truly care for the healers in your life, and why radical empathy might be the most revolutionary act available to us right now.

Guest Bio:

Obella Obbo is a therapist, wellness specialist, space curator, consultant, and creative artist. As the CEO and founder of The Radical Empath, Obella draws on his background as a Black, queer, Ugandan-American man to decolonize toxic belief systems and reframe them to empower people toward their most authentic selves.

His career spans college-prep programs in low-income communities, domestic violence organizations serving both survivors and alleged perpetrators, respite sites for children with behavioral disabilities, multicultural affairs centers at predominantly white institutions, and DEI consulting for corporate clients across urban planning, technology, and more. In every space, he brings a fierce commitment to operational foundations that reflect the moral imperative for care and belonging.

Obella is also a speaker represented by Mark. He is available for:

• Mental health workshops and workplace training

• College campus talks on identity, intersectionality, and wellness

• Orientation and conference keynotes

• Organizational consulting rooted in radical empathy

📩 Book Obella: [email protected]

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Questions or comments?

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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

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Disclaimer Note: The captions in this video are auto-generated, and while we try to ensure accuracy, you may notice a typo or error. Thank you in advance for extending grace.

This episode is one of Mark’s most personal conversations yet: a sit-down with his neighbor, his chosen family, and one of his favorite humans on the planet, Rigness Rush. Known simply as "Rig," Rigness is a health-centered space designer, social justice advocate, and visual artist whose fingerprints are on rooms you've walked into, campaigns that moved you, and communities that held you, even if you never once heard his name. That's by design. Rig has always preferred to be felt more than known. But today, he steps into the light.

This conversation travels through spirituality weaponized against a boy just trying to bloom, through the documentary Speaking Out, which dared to hold a mirror up to buried pain, through the quiet revolution of designing healthcare spaces that greet people with dignity rather than shame. It moves through chosen family and biological wounds, through forgiveness that doesn't excuse and love that doesn't look away. And woven through all of it: the question that anchors this whole conversation: what does it really mean to resist, to endure, to show up proudly, scars and all?

If you've ever had to fight just to exist in a room, in your family, in your body, in your identity, listen to this episode. 

Guest Bio:

Currently, Rigness helps design health-centered spaces and creates engagement activations rooted in social justice,  health literacy, and equity.  He continues to emphasize the importance of fostering community insight, which translates research and scientific data into social marketing initiatives. He combines empathy,  intuition, and creativity to retool programs and efforts, making them more culturally informed, sustainable, and profitable.   Recent campaigns he has driven include the Stand Against Hate Campaign, aimed at fostering accountability and action through disruptive messaging, and the We the People campaign, which bolstered inclusion and equity by creating space for honest engagement and alignment across cultural, racial, and equitable lines of division.  Outside of work, Rigness travels the world constantly learning and engaging with people. He strives to develop a heightened sense of global awareness and activism, built on a foundation of empathy and LGBTQ visibility and representation.

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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

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Disclaimer Note: The captions in this video are auto-generated, and while we try to ensure accuracy, you may notice a typo or error. Thank you in advance for extending grace.

Mark sits down with Dr. Norman Kim, a psychologist, DEI scholar, UN expert affiliate on LGBTQ rights, and co-editor of a new Oxford University Press book on anti-blackness, for a wide-ranging conversation about what resistance really looks like in this political moment. They dig into the model minority myth, what authentic allyship demands of people of color, the limits of Western medicine's approach to healing, and why community — not the tools of oppression — is the only path to collective liberation.

Guest Bio:

Dr. Norman Kim is the inaugural Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer for the Center for Practice Innovations at Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, an adjunct faculty member at New York University, the co-founder of the Institute for Antiracism and Equity, a social justice-focused consultancy, and an expert affiliate on LGBTQ rights to the United Nations. He completed his B.A. at Yale and his Ph.D. in Psychology at UCLA. Specializing in examining the impacts of racism and discrimination, minority mental health, social determinants of health, and psychiatric complexities, his research and clinical interests span the application of transdiagnostic frameworks for eating disorders and anxiety, evolutionary approaches to shame and psychopathology, autism spectrum disorder, and the developmental course of bipolar disorder. He is a regular national and international speaker, educator, and passionate advocate with a particular focus on health equity, systemic racism, and anti-Blackness. He advises health tech startups in the UK and the US, professional organizations, and providers, and was the co-founder of a national eating disorder center. His co-edited book, Antiblackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies: Lived Experiences in the Fight Against Institutionalized Racism, was just released by Oxford University Press.

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Questions or comments?

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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

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Disclaimer Note: The captions in this video are auto-generated, and while we try to ensure accuracy, you may notice a typo or error. Thank you in advance for extending grace.

What does it mean to show up as a deeply loving, emotionally intelligent Black man in a world that wasn't designed to see you that way? In this rich conversation, host Mark Travis Rivera sits down with entrepreneur, speaker, and podcast host Sheldon Gay to explore neurodivergence, Black identity, radical self-love, and the power of community in a world that often asks us to fragment ourselves. Sheldon opens up about arriving in his early 40s without realizing he was neurodivergent, how representation finally made it click, and why he calls his life's purpose "leveraging technology to create a more equitable, just, and joyous world." This episode is a love letter to every Black and melanated person who has ever been told their way of thinking was a problem — and a reminder that your "brain sparkle" is a gift.

Guest Bio:

Sheldon Gay is an entrepreneur, speaker, and host of the I Must Be Buggin' podcast — where B.U.G.N. stands for Black, Underrepresented, Unidentified, Gifted, and Neurodivergent. He is a leading advocate for gifted and neurodivergent people, especially those from melanated and marginalized communities. His lived experience empowers him to help people become curious about their minds, foster community, and experience peace and joy through authenticity.

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Questions or comments?

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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

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License code: SQK0ZY8P3EBIUZYY

Disclaimer Note: The captions in this video are auto-generated, and while we try to ensure accuracy, you may notice a typo or error. Thank you in advance for extending grace.