Last month, Sharif El-Mekki and I co-authored a piece for Sports Business Journal about what colleges and universities can teach us through the way they support Black student-athletes. The goal was simple: if intentional support systems can be built around Black student-athletes, those same systems should exist for Black students beyond athletics. Student-athletes are often surrounded by advisers, mentors, career support, and accountability systems. This infrastructure helps them stay connected, prepared, and seen. If it existed at scale, we’d have a very different country. At first, I wanted to create another initiative to address this gap. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized the work needs stronger connective tissue, not another silo. As a Community Architect, I believe the most effective use of my platform is not simply to build something new from scratch. It is to learn from the organizations already doing this work, like the Center for Black Educator Development, a...