I believe that black mentorship is an important key to being a black entrepreneur. If you don’t know how to lead and connect to black people, you can’t create jobs for them. Howard University has offered me countless ways to experience black mentorship from diverse perspectives. This year, I was a Team Leader for the Howard University School of Business, a Head Coach for the Quad Step Team, and a volunteer for Alternative Spring Break. Through these positions, I’ve started to make great steps toward being the leader I want to see in black workspaces. As a Team leader at the Howard University School of Business, I assisted first-time SOB students with everything regarding professional development from corporate dinners to what to wear to an interview. For their first year, I personally made it my priority to help them succeed. I trained young professionals in hopes of one-day hiring people in their same shoes. Through mentoring my team of 19 Freshmen I learned how to show them what it means to be a black professional in a space not made for you. Black people have to work twice as hard in the workplace to show they’re worthy and I want to change that for my people because I know we are worthy. I aim to create more job opportunities for black professionals through the many businesses I want to own. I will be the change in workplace environment and for me, that starts with mentoring young black professionals. As a Head Coach of the Quad Step Team, I took on mentorship in a more personal way. I assisted all 18 young women through perfecting a craft, forming a sisterhood, and balancing school. However, Alternative Spring Break allowed me to experience mentorship in a way that was very different from my roles on campus. I was assigned to help youth in Detroit and expected to tell some children about Howard and college life. Upon first interacting with the 9-18 year olds my first impression was attitude. One little girl in particular, not only had an attitude but wanted to fight everyone including her friends. She needed help with her homework, a fill-in-the-blank worksheet. I watched as this 3rd grader struggled to pronounce 2nd-grade level words like “balloon,” and “party.” She couldn’t read a complete sentence, let alone write her own which made her so upset. She constantly got frustrated doing her homework because it was so hard for her. Without knowing her, it’s easy to stereotype her as another angry black girl but she is so much more. She’s more than the 47% literacy rate in Detroit that she was trying to pull herself out of. She is a little girl whose education system is failing her. How was she supposed to write her story if she couldn’t read someone else's? How was I supposed to convince her to go to college when she felt like she could barely get through the 3rd grade? In that moment I realized that black mentorship matters more than just telling someone they should go to college and get a job. From the children who came from abusive households to those being left behind by the education system, black mentorship means letting black youth know they are worthy enough to complete even the smallest goals. It means empowering them to fill in even just one blank. Howard University has given me the opportunity to donate my time to demonstrate that change is possible for me and my people. My education is a crucial part of the change I am making.