Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / Building a Team and Getting Into Knight-Hennessy | Jayson Johnson
Transcript
- Jayson: So over the past year we've been trying to build out and expand our team. So we have eight interns at Howard University who've been working with us last semester and they've been really helpful with like marketing, things like that, Malcolm: Yeah. Jayson: with coding and building the app and I Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Jayson: feel like it's been really great for me just to learn more about like working with other people and seeing kinda how like a business works and flows. and then now we hired more of our friends who were in the same like program at Howard with us, all trying to get their PhDs, to do a lot of the like managing and working on the app and trying to build that to other HPCUs as well. And so that's kind of what we're trying to do when we are in grad school because we know we're not gonna have as much time. And then we're trying Malcolm: Yeah. Jayson: to get more interns and get like campus ambassadors and things like that. So we're really trying to build. I'm really trying to work a lot better on like managing and things like that. 'cause I realize I can't have my hand in every single piece of the pie. Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Jayson: I think that's what they'd be saying. So I'm just trying to learn and build just like that, yeah. Thomas: That's that's dope, bro. That's dope. Yeah. I I think you know, I think and that's this is a great bridge. We're gonna have to learn more about about rooted. I think this is this is a great opportunity. It's a great thing that you're doing, that you and you and your team are doing. I'm excited to keep hearing how that grows. but I guess like with the the PhD stuff, the grad school stuff, so you are a knight Hennessy scholar, which we talked about which in the in the intro. I guess What like let the people know. I don't know how many people out there know what a Knight Hennessy scholar is or understand the importance of what it means, especially you being the first Howard alumn alumnus to be in the program. so can you I guess speak on that program, speak on what it comes with, you know, what you what you want to share, and then how you think the evaluating process went, you know, what you did to kind of be be a part of the program. I know that's a loaded question, but Yeah, just what's your experience with all that? Jayson: Yeah, absolutely. So I'll break it up into parts. So first the Night Tennessee Scholars Program is a program at Stanford University and it it's a leadership development program. So it has people from all over the world who are interested in being leaders, coming together to one space to just learn and grow off each other. it's for like post grad, so it's about people who are trying to get their degrees, in any s type of interdisciplinary field, so whether that be business or like law or engineering, way more. So many different fields I've never heard of That are just so amazing. And so it's all coming together just to learn about how we could be better leaders. They have a lot of like seminars so that we can keep training and then also Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Jayson: to travel around the world so we can get more interdisciplinary perspectives about what's going on so we can be better leaders in the world as well. And so for me it also comes with a lot of perks where you get to attend the university where they cover three years of tuition. and other things like that as well. And then they just give you a safe space to where you can like interact with a lot more scholars on campus, give you mentorship and guidance that you need. and also just like provide yeah, just provide that community and safe space. And so for me when applying it was really interesting to me and something I really wanted to do because At Howard University I was a part of this program called the CarsTem Scholars Program. And that's Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Jayson: like a pathways to PhD program where everyone in the program wanted to get their PhD and it provided such a great network of and a cohort of people that pushed me to keep going. And I feel like I was able to learn a lot of different perspectives which kept me going like I would have never graduated without these guys and these you know, these Malcolm: Yeah. Jayson: people. So it was really great for me and that's something that I really wanted, in grad school as well. And so I feel like that connection of having those people and having those like extra resources really helped me. and push me to want to do this. And so that's definitely what I'd say about that. Mm-hmm. Malcolm: So Thomas: That's dope, bro. That's dope.