The #NextInLine Movement
GENERATIONAL
INHERITANCE*
One of the most meaningful things I ever inherited was a ring. My grandfather (aka PopPop) gifted me the ring that my grandmother wore for their 64 years of marriage.
I think he knew he was coming to the end of his 90+ years on this earth. And I was in the right place at the right time.
Yet, PopPop had passed on so much to me already. I remember watching a young Tiger Woods dominate in the early 1990s, my first thought was - he plays golf like you PopPop.
PopPop just did things that made me think it was possible for Black people to do, aspire, and achieve certain things. He ran a construction business, he had a second home, and he didn't take any shit. And for that I am grateful. It is an inheritance that is more valuable than gold.
As a tribute to Black History Month, Camelback is declaring February Generational Inheritance month. Tomorrow (Feb. 9) we will officially roll out the #NextInLine social media movement.
Take part and declare your legacy to the world. When Camelback first started, our goal was to build a community of people committed to diversifying entrepreneurship. We know, though, that our work is about more than putting new faces to old problems. It is about how we can grow a community willing to use their assets to pass on a future that can work for everyone.
Some of those assets are about money. When I quit my job to take the leap to entrepreneurship, my law school friends gifted me $5,000 for my 30th birthday. That $5,000 is long gone, on a company that does not exist. But that money was the investment that made Camelback possible.
But it is about more than just money.
It is the mentor who let's you in on what your white peers are charging their clients so you can stand on firm ground when you charge $100,000 for one engagement.
It is the foundation executive who may have inherited policies that create massive disparities in who gets funded, but refuses to pass that on to future grantees.
It is about the policymaker who works with state governments to create lower-priced paths to a post-secondary education so that more people have the skills needed to get a job.
It is the six-year-old whose dad runs a nonprofit for homeless women and children that decides during the holiday toy drive that black and brown kids receiving peach faced dolls is not good enough. So he unwraps them all, exchanges them at Toys R Us for brown faced dolls, because representation matters.
It's about what we pass on for those who are the next in line.
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