A Dream Grows in Brooklyn...

When I imagine my dream workplace, I see a space built with intention. I see my space, my creation, shaped by the kind of clarity I used to only whisper to myself. I’m the boss of my dreams. The headquarters sits in Brooklyn with high glass windows, warm wood, and clean lines. It feels modern but rooted, new but familiar. Inside, there’s a production studio for cultural storytelling and film breakdowns, a writers room for long form projects, and an open creative floor where ideas can breathe. My office is quiet but alive. Bookshelves filled with Black American history, literature, and filmmaking texts. A large desk facing the window. A wall covered with the next ten years of projects, partnerships, and global goals. And in the corner sits an ancestral altar, the place where I settle myself when my mind gets loud and the ideas start rushing faster than I can catch them.

My company creates Black cultural storytelling and narrative production. Films, series, visual essays, and community centered media that explore the nuance of Black life, love, history, and identity. Some of our work is playful and rooted in everyday Black life, and some of it goes deep into generational truth and historical trauma. The workplace is both hybrid and global. Some days the team gathers in person and the room fills with conversation and strategy. Other days we are spread across time zones with producers in Los Angeles, researchers in Ghana, and partners in London. The communication never loses its clarity. Everyone knows how to speak directly without being harsh, because honesty is not optional when you are telling stories that carry this much weight. Even disagreements feel useful. If two people bump heads creatively, they pause. They acknowledge the tension. They talk it out from curiosity instead of ego. Everyone understands this work is bigger than us.

My cultural background shapes everything about this environment. I’m a product of Black American history and Pan African thinking. I come from the soul of the sixties and seventies, from Hip Hop and R&B, from movements that told us to study ourselves and honor where we come from. That is why this workplace centers Black culture not as an aesthetic but as a foundation. We create media that holds our stories with depth and dignity. We mentor young Black artists through internships and creative labs, offering access many of us never had. Our work travels the world, but our responsibility stays rooted in the community that raised us.

A few life moments created this vision. As the child of addicts, and growing up in the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, I was taught what accountability really looks like. Working in the NYPD showed me exactly what I never want. A workplace with hierarchy but no humanity. A space where curiosity was treated like disrespect. That experience made it clear that my future company had to feel different. Then my video about choosing stability over love went viral and three million people responded to something I said in a moment of honesty. It reminded me that my voice carries reach when I don’t dilute it. And when I watched the film Sinners and felt something in me break open, I understood my work needed to speak to both the global and the neighborhood level. The ache in that theater told me our stories deserve more care than the world has been giving them.

A moment that always comes back to me when I think about my dream workplace is Khadijah James running Flavor Magazine on Living Single. Khadijah showed me early what it looked like to be a Black woman running her own media space with pride, pressure, creativity, and joy all wrapped into one. She wasn’t just an editor. She was a cultural force. Flavor Magazine was small but mighty, and it felt like a blueprint for the kind of intimacy, alignment, and cultural grounding I want for my own studio. 

Unit 9 also helped me see why I want a small team. In the video What Is Organizational Communication they explained how big organizations lose clarity because messages get passed through too many layers. People start hearing different versions of the truth. I lived through that, and I don’t want it anywhere near my studio. I want a team that stays intentional and connected. I don’t want to become the micromanaging boss from Office Space, and I refuse to create any of the toxic patterns in those workplace videos we watched. I want to hire people who believe in the mission, who care about clarity and culture, who want to create work that actually shifts something in us.

This workplace is a seven figure media operation because the work has substance. We create films, narratives, cultural pieces, and analysis that change how people think about love, history, and identity. We collaborate with companies like Proximity Media, A24, MACRO, and Outlier Society. While the world watches the work, the community feels it. That balance is intentional.

This dream workplace matters because it reflects who I am becoming. My communication style is honest and culturally aware. My personality thrives in spaces where creativity and structure support each other. My values, accountability, truth, cultural responsibility, and community shape every decision I make. And the life I want is one where my work moves people, affirms young creatives, and honors the history that formed me. Imagining this workplace helps me see that my future is not random. It is intentional, cultural, global, and mine to build.