I lost a brother before I ever got the chance to meet him. I was about seven or eight years old when my mother called my sister and me into my room. At first, I thought I was in trouble. She was speaking softly, asking us how school was going, but something felt off in the air. Then she started crying. She reminded us that she had been trying to give us another sibling. For me, that meant a brother. I had always wanted one. I only had my sister, who is autistic, and I love her deeply, but growing up, our connection looked different from what I had always pictured. She experienced the world in her own way. I spent a lot of those years feeling alone, wishing I had someone I could talk to, play basketball with, and just grow up beside. My mother told me, with tears running down her face, that I had almost become a big brother. I did not fully understand pregnancy loss at that age. I did not understand how someone could be real and gone before I ever got to meet them. She explained that she had not even known she was pregnant at first. She had been overworked and kept pushing through each day. By the time she got sick and saw a doctor, she learned there had been a baby. He had already stopped living. I cried, but not only because of what happened. I cried because of everything that would not happen. I would never teach him how to play video games. I would never show him how to shoot a basketball. I would never be the older brother who gave advice, took the blame for something stupid, or watched him figure out who he was. Even now, I wonder sometimes what my life would look like if he had made it. That loss taught me something I did not have words for then. Grief does not always grow from memory. Sometimes it grows from imagination. Sometimes you miss someone because of the future you built for them in your head, a future they never got to step into. It also changed how I saw my mother. As a child, I wanted a brother for myself. As I got older, I started to understand what it cost her to sit in that room with us, still hurting, and find a way to explain something that had no good explanation. My respect for her is rooted in that moment. I never got to be his big brother in the way I had planned. But he shaped me anyway. I notice people who feel alone because I know what that feeling sits like. I hold on to the people who are here because I know how fast that can change. And I understand now that even a life you never fully got to know can still leave something permanent behind.

My brand-new Love Island challenge would be called “No Followers, Just Feelings.” What I love most about Love Island is not just the drama, recouplings, or bombshell entrances. It is the moments when Islanders stop performing and start acting like real people. The best connections are not built from who has the best Instagram photos, who looks the most confident walking into the villa, or who knows how to say the perfect line on camera. They are built when someone feels comfortable being awkward, honest, funny, nervous, or vulnerable. That is why my challenge would strip away the influencer energy and test whether couples can connect in the real world, not just in front of a camera. The villa would transform into a colorful “Real Life Love Fair.” Instead of luxury dates and perfect lighting, each couple would go through three rounds based on everyday relationship situations. Round One: The Budget Date Each couple gets a fake $25 budget, a table of random props, and ten minutes to create a meaningful date for their partner. They could build a picnic, game night, spa day, homemade dinner setup, or anything that shows they actually listen. The goal is not to spend big. The goal is to prove you know what makes your partner feel special. Round Two: Meet My Real Life Each Islander pulls a card with a scenario connected to family, work, stress, or personal values. Questions could include: “How would you support me if I was overwhelmed with school or work?” “How would you handle meeting my family if they were protective of me?” “What does loyalty look like to you when nobody is watching?” Couples must answer honestly while their partner listens without interrupting. This round reveals emotional maturity, not just attraction. Round Three: The Unfiltered Compliment Each Islander has thirty seconds to compliment their partner without mentioning looks, money, popularity, or physical attraction. They must speak about character. They could mention patience, humor, loyalty, ambition, kindness, or how that person makes them feel. If someone cannot describe their partner beyond appearance, that says a lot. At the end, the villa votes for the couple that felt the most genuine, not the most perfect. The winning couple earns a private “real world date” with no phones, no audience, and no pressure to perform. This challenge would add excitement because it still has humor, awkwardness, competition, and drama, but it also brings depth. Viewers would see which couples are built on chemistry and which ones are only built on flirting. “No Followers, Just Feelings” would remind everyone that Love Island is most powerful when the Islanders feel like real people searching for connection, not just social media personalities chasing screen time.

When people talk about bravery and sacrifice, they usually picture a battlefield. I picture my mother. A single Black mother who could not always afford a $2.99 carton of milk to feed her babies, yet still found a way. I picture first-generation students trying to understand college forms their parents never had the chance to fill out. I picture young Black kids filled with talent, creativity, and intelligence, but with no one around them showing them how to turn that potential into power. Sgt. Albert Dono Ware’s legacy of service, sacrifice, and bravery reminds me that courage is not only about what a person is willing to die for. It is also about what a person is willing to live for, fight for, and build for others. Those values have shaped my personal journey because I have always understood that my success is connected to more than just myself. Coming from an Eritrean and African American background, I grew up around high expectations, sacrifice, and the pressure to make something meaningful out of my life. I have balanced school, work, family responsibilities, and my own dreams because I know I am not just carrying my name. I am carrying my family’s sacrifices, my community’s hopes, and the example I may set for someone watching quietly. Service, for me, has not always looked like a title or a position. Sometimes it looked like volunteering in my community. Sometimes it looked like creating positive content online. Sometimes it looked like noticing the person sitting alone, making them feel seen, and helping them believe they still belonged. I have learned that service is not always about being the loudest leader in the room. Sometimes it is about being the person who refuses to walk past someone who needs encouragement. That same mindset shapes how I view the challenges facing the African diaspora in the United States. I do not believe our communities lack ambition. We have ambition everywhere: in barbershops, churches, classrooms, immigrant households, basketball courts, music studios, small businesses, and family kitchens. The problem is that ambition is often trapped behind lack of access. Many young people in the African diaspora are not struggling because they are lazy or incapable. They are struggling because they were never taught how credit works, how to apply for scholarships, how to build a business, how to network, how to access therapy, how to advocate for themselves, or how to walk into professional rooms with confidence. Too many talented people are forced to learn through trial and error while others are born with a roadmap. That is why one of the most critical reforms I believe in is creating community-based “opportunity hubs” for Black and immigrant youth. These hubs should teach financial literacy, college readiness, entrepreneurship, mental health awareness, career development, and creative industry skills. Students should learn how to budget, build credit, understand taxes, invest, apply for grants, create resumes, build portfolios, and connect with mentors. These are not luxury skills. These are survival skills. Another reform I believe is necessary is stronger mentorship pipelines between HBCUs, community colleges, high schools, Black-owned businesses, and professionals in industries like real estate, finance, entertainment, media, technology, and law. A student should not have to be lucky to meet someone who can guide them. Mentorship should be built into the community like infrastructure. Mental health also has to be part of the solution. In many African and Black households, strength is praised, but pain is often hidden. Young people are told to keep going, but not always taught how to process pressure, loneliness, racism, family expectations, or identity struggles. We need culturally aware counseling, peer support spaces, and community conversations that make healing normal instead of shameful. The key stakeholders must include HBCUs, local governments, school districts, churches, community organizations, Black-owned businesses, banks, mental health professionals, immigrant associations, families, and students themselves. Real change cannot come only from politicians or institutions. It has to come from the people closest to the problem working with the people who have the resources to help solve it. My long-term goal is to work in business, entertainment, and media, but I do not want to only build success for myself. I want to create platforms, stories, and opportunities that help young Black creatives and students see a future bigger than survival. I want to be part of building spaces where people from the African diaspora can turn their gifts into careers, their stories into power, and their struggles into purpose. Sgt. Ware’s legacy reminds me that bravery is not passive. Service requires action. Sacrifice requires discipline. Bravery requires building something even when the odds are not perfect. That is the kind of leader I am becoming: someone who does not just talk about change, but helps create the rooms, resources, and relationships that allow others to rise.

I once saved someone’s life with pasta. During my senior year of high school, I will never forget walking into the lunchroom by myself and seeing a kid named Isaac sitting completely alone. He was a quiet, nerdy kid with a Pokémon backpack (the kind that rolled on the ground). The rest of the cafeteria was loud and crowded, but he sat by himself at a table like no one even noticed him. I was on the basketball team with the typical jock build. In the movies, a kid like Isaac and a kid like me would probably never cross paths. But this was not the movies. I was curious, so I sat down next to him. He looked at me confused, like I had picked the wrong table. “Sup man, what you eating?” He told me his mother had made him a sandwich. We started talking about our moms’ cooking and how we both loved and hated it at the same time. I offered him a bite of my mom’s pesto pasta, and his eyes went wide. “Oh my gosh, she makes this for you every day?” We started laughing and cracking jokes. Then I asked him, “Yo man, how come you sit alone? You seem hella chill.” He got quiet for a second before telling me he did not have many friends. He said he mostly did his schoolwork, go home, play games, and watch anime. When I heard that, I said, “Bro, you watch anime too?!” His whole face changed. He lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. "No way, you do too?! What's your favorite—" Then the bell rang, and we had five minutes to head to sixth period. Before I left, I told him he could sit with me anytime he needed someone to talk to. After that, I started bringing Isaac around my basketball friends. We joked around, dared each other to talk to girls, and one day we actually got him to go get a girl’s number. You should have seen how excited we were in that lunchroom. At the time, I did not think much of it. It was just lunch. Then graduation came. After I walked across the stage, Isaac found me in the crowd. He looked me in the eyes and told me I was the reason he actually didn't take his own life. He said before, he had been so lonely and depressed since he had no friends. After I showed up, he became less shy over time and felt comfortable enough to be himself more. I did not save Isaac with a program, a speech, or a grand act of service. I helped save him with a seat at a table and a bite of pesto pasta. That is my uniqueness. I walk into rooms and notice the person nobody else is looking for. I make people feel like they belong, not because it earns me anything, but because I know what it feels like to need someone to show up. I refuse to be the person who walks past someone who needs kindness. I later won the Jonathan Award two years in a row, an honor chosen entirely by my peers. People I had never even had a full conversation with had been watching how I treated others. That taught me that impact moves in silence. You do not always know who is watching. You do not always know what a small moment means to someone until much later. So I keep showing up. That is who I am. And I refuse to be anybody else.

I want to build a school. Not the school you are thinking about. I am not talking about private schools hidden behind tuition walls or public schools that teach you how to pass a test but never how to survive after graduation. I am talking about something that has never fully existed for the communities that need it most. A free institution built entirely around the knowledge the traditional system has always left out. Do you know what the number one thing people say schools should have taught them is? Financial literacy. Not calculus. Not the periodic table. Money. According to surveys, 83 percent of Americans believe personal finance should be a required class in high school. Yet here we are. Millions of young people graduating every single year with no idea how to file a tax return, build credit, or read a contract. The demand has always been there. The system just never answered it. That is exactly what I am building toward. But the way it gets taught is what makes it different. A couple months back I stumbled across a TikTok video about a monkey and bananas. Someone was explaining how credit cards work. Monkey needs bananas. Monkey gets bananas from the bank. Monkey must pay bananas back or monkey pays extra bananas as punishment. I sat there genuinely amazed at how simple that was. I watched it twice. Then I thought about every young person in my community who has been destroyed by credit card debt and asked myself why was this never taught in school. Something that complex broken down that simply in under sixty seconds changed the way I thought about education entirely. That is the model I want to build around. Teach it like you are explaining it to a five-year-old first. Build the foundation. Then add the layers. By the time the detail comes the student already understands the core and everything clicks naturally. I know this works because I lived it. Working at Xpert Tax Financial I watched clients sit across from me completely lost because nobody had ever broken down the basics for them. Earned Income Tax Credits going unclaimed. Families overpaying the government every single year simply because the language felt too complicated to approach. One simple explanation changed everything for them every single time. The information was never the problem. The delivery was. This school fixes the delivery. Financial literacy, life skills, business ownership, tax strategy, credit building. All of it broken down simply first and built up from there. Free. Accessible. And built specifically for the communities that have been left out the longest. That is my legacy. A generation of young people who finally understand how the game works before the game gets a chance to use that against them.

If it wasn't for my mother, I wouldn't be here speaking with you. My name is Naiel Michael. Born in Oakland, California, and raised by a single immigrant mother who worked to give me everything she never had. I grew up watching my father destroy his life with bad financial decisions. That pain became the fuel behind everything I am building now. As of today, I am the first-generation HBCU student in my family studying business marketing. Not for the title or the money, but because I refused to end up standing in the same spot he did. Before today, I was unaware of who Camari Hunt was. After researching his story, I realized the world lost someone we unfortunately need more of today. Camari was 23 years old, in his final semester at Martin University, when he was tragically killed in a shooting on Indianapolis's west side. He coached young Black males through Evolve, a mentorship program built around education, entrepreneurship, and community leadership. What struck me most was not just what he was doing. It was how he was doing it. Those who knew him described him as someone who carried himself with honor and virtue, someone who made others feel seen, valued, and supported. That connected me to him personally. As a young Black man, I know what it means to grow up in spaces where nobody comes back to pour into the community. Camari went back. He used his voice and his time to lift up the same young men the world overlooks. That is not just leadership. That is love for your people. I commit to carrying that forward through the free financial literacy program I am building. No subscriptions. No gatekeeping. Just real knowledge handed directly back to the community it came from. His legacy is not separate from my goals. It is woven into them. Living independently while pursuing a four-year degree is not just a financial challenge. It is a daily negotiation between survival and focus. I pay for electricity and Wi-Fi while helping my mother provide home care for my special needs sister. Most people do not realize how much attention a special needs child requires. It is more than a full-time job. Every dollar I spend on bills is a dollar pulled away from textbooks, certifications, and the networking events that build the future I am working toward. This scholarship is not just financial assistance. It is the difference between me getting into the rooms where lessons are taught or staying outside of them. Clark Atlanta puts me inside one of the most powerful Black business and entertainment networks in the country. With this support I can stop splitting my focus between surviving and building. I have already proven I can navigate hardship. During COVID my grandfather was diagnosed with dementia and walked out of the house one day and never came back. He is still missing to this day. What made it unbearable was not just the loss. It was the absence of closure. No funeral. No answers. Just a ghost. We were not searching for him. We were the ones who were lost. That experience broke something in me that no amount of planning could have prepared me for. But I came back. I am not asking anyone to carry me. I am asking for the support that lets me carry others. Camari Hunt did not get to finish what he started. I intend to finish mine and do it in his spirit.