I used to think this notion of preaching to the choir was a problem, and we kind of use it in a bit of a pejorative sense... but I've actually grown to adopt that perspective that the choir needs good preaching - they need good information. They need good tools and insight.

I've made tons of mistakes over the past years, but if there's anything I've done well, if I see an opportunity, or if I see God moving or going in a direction or opening a door for me, I try to take it; I try not to hesitate.

Adults who loved and knew me, on many occasions sat me down and told me that I was black. As you could imagine, this had a profound impact on me and soon became my truth. Every friend I had was black; my girlfriends were black. I was seen as black, treated as black, and endured constant overt racism as a young black teenager.

I was in high school when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about his relationship with Lewinsky. We didn't have social media back then - hell, we didn't have a computer with the Internet in our home - so the details of it all escaped me.

The promise of America has always been that if you worked hard, had the right values, took some risks, that there was an opportunity to build a better life for your family and for your next generation.

The lessons I learned from my mother and her friends have guided me through death, birth, loss, love, failure, and achievement, on to a Fulbright scholarship and Harvard Business School. They taught me to believe that anything was possible. They have proven to be the strongest family values I could ever have imagined.

People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read.

Sometimes I'll be sitting on Facebook at home and see all these people getting married, having kids, having that life that I was told I should have. And sometimes I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Am I the stupid one here? Am I not doing what I'm supposed to do? And that's also equally as stressful.