Breakout

As the co-founder of Breakout, it is my personal mission working in predominantly BIPOC spaces, to lead from the back while elevating diverse voices, opportunities, and bridging my white peers into action. Breakout provides community leaders in over 35 cities a network of support, resources, and platforms to advance our impact together. Since 2014, our platform of multi-day experiential city events & award-winning original content has been recognized for its work in "giving underrepresented talent a voice (Adweek)." I also am the co-founder of the Breakout Foundation (est. 2017), which was created to make direct unrestricted grants to community focused changemakers serving as a bridge between institutional funding and grassroots innovation. Finally, I’m the co-host of The Honestly Speaking Podcast that tackles race, culture, and history and serves as a space for unfiltered commentary and discussion on our current social climate.

We are committed towards disrupting the imbalance of influence, power and social equity in rural and urban cities across the United States. This imbalance manifests in the lack of representation we see across funding, employment, public speaking, governance, boards, and in general access. This is what we have been working towards in building Breakout, a network of support, resources, and platforms. From convenings, original content, educational resources, and direct funding to support community leaders we know that only a holistic approach can truly tackle systemic issues. Our project elevates humanity because it serves as a scalable bridge between a diverse pool of leaders nationwide and at true scale globally to accelerate innovation and disrupt the traditional ivory towers of influence.

From traveling the country the past 6 years building Breakout, it became very clear early on that the people who were closest to the problems were often not the same people called upon for the solutions. We have consistently looked to ivory tower institutions to be our panacea when we have people who have lived through and combatted these issues despite lacking resources that we could be empowering to pioneer change. Most recently with the PPP, we saw almost 90% of women and people of color be boxed out of emergency funding. When it comes to the stories being told in Hollywood, people of color represent around 20% of leading roles across all filmmaking platforms. In venture capital, 76% of partners are men while only 1% are African American. This is despite the fastest growing demo of entrepreneurs being black women who have grown 322% since 1997. And when it comes to the top 20 largest companies in the US, not a single one has a black person on its board. The scale is global because inequity is consistent around the world. If you are prevented from being part of the conversation how do we expect things to change?

Breakout is a network of over 2,000 grassroots leaders & entrepreneurs that serves as a bridge between grassroots leaders and institutions. We’ve helped raise millions of dollars for our community members, seen new projects and businesses be created, press coverage, book & movie deals, and even seen community relationships accelerate systemic change at the enterprise and political levels. This starts with our flagship multi-day unconferences we've held in over 16 cities that activate young leaders at the community level both locally and nationally. We ensure authenticity by hiring local teams and spending months on the ground listening and learning to co-create a one of a kind experience. That trust and community building has subsequently grown into creating award winning digital content featured in festivals and online media platforms such as the Atlantic. To accelerate broader access to diverse storytelling, we’re launching on social media & YouTube our own channel that will be a one stop shop for all types of grassroots content. We are also rolling out a nationwide virtual salon series this summer and a 2 day virtual festival in September. Finally, our foundation has made over $100,000 in microgrants to date to 67 grantees.

Our project empowers grassroots leaders predominately within communities of color by providing a network of support, resources and platforms. Take artist, author, and entrepreneur from Baltimore Chris Wilson. We met in 2015 and he was 2 ½ years home from a life sentence which he ended up serving 16 years. He was building furniture, doing gang remediation work at a community center, and had started his business Barclay which hired other returning citizens to work with him on subcontracting jobs. Chris spoke at our event in Baltimore in 2015. He expressed to us that he was having issues with banks because he had to always detail his prior conviction status. The Breakout community helped him negotiate and file new bank loans. He said he wanted to get a book deal. The community helped him get a book deal that went on to become a bestseller and now being optioned into a movie. He told me one day when I was feeling overwhelmed that we could never give up on building Breakout because even if we didn’t always see it first hand, it has allowed him and countless others to grow exponentially creating far reaching impact within and beyond their communities.

We’ve worked for years to bridge opportunities for individuals in overlooked cities and systemically neglected communities. Our events platform, social media reach, and original content serve to continuously elevate our nations most impactful local leaders to spotlight them funding, new business, strategic partnerships, and press. We’ve put in the time to connect, listen, and learn in the communities we serve. We are also elevating understanding  through our original content and the fact that our community is 75% millennial, 65% poc, 56% female, represents over 35 cities, as well as strong representation from LGBTQ, returning citizens, and those with disabilities.

Building Breakout has been an unexpected journey over the past 6+ year of understanding my role and relationship with race in America. We felt that people were too silo-ed in their particular industries and communities and wanted to “break people out” of their typical routines via multi-day conferences held in cities across the country. We believed strongly in convening in cities because we had been frustrated with the models we had seen replicated over and over in taking “leaders” to beach resort settings, private ranches, and mountain getaways with the aim of solving modern urban problems they seemingly were detached from. From going to high school in West Baltimore, I had seen first hand at a young age the two americas we lived in. It was important to me that a city like Baltimore could be a place for us to host in. We ended up having an opportunity in the fall of 2014 to visit Detroit where the inspiring work of the locals didn’t connect with the national portrayals of city decay and the idea crystalized for us. These were the stories that mattered.  

I’ve been passionate about equity since I was young sitting around the dinner table debating issues with my family. My mother and grandparents came to the US from Bolivia in 1965 when she was 12. I think subconsciously while younger and now more consciously, I’ve understood by being white presenting, our family while having a typical immigrant story was able to assimilate very quickly in this country. I’ve been afforded the privilege in opening up and sharing access while being keenly aware how structurally flawed our society is. My motivations have multiplied as my friend circle, enriched by building Breakout, has grown to a majority of Black & POC voices, many of whom have suffered greatly by systemically racist systems including our criminal justice system.

 In the new racial reckoning we are currently in where our country and institutions appear to be finally starting to begin the process of change, our 6+ years and thousands of hours in building out a community of thousands of community leaders in over 35 cities makes me feel like our time is now.

Equity work shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of people of color to solve as it wasn’t their creation to begin with. As someone who has been a chameleon his whole life in being accepted in every imaginable kind of rooms and situations, this is the role I was built for. Breakout is all about building bridges and elevating opportunities. As a lifetime ally, this is the role I have worked on my entire life. I am not looking to be the hero, I don’t need the mic, I simply want to build platforms and systems to accelerate others opportunities.

In building Breakout, I have put in the work spending thousands of hours in communities across the country understanding history, ecosystems, language, people dynamics, and more to create a 2000+ network of leading grassroots leaders across 35 cities. When it comes to the content we are creating, I have executive produced all of our films, worked closely with our editors, directors, and helped win us festival awards as well as achieve distribution in esteemed platforms such as the Atlantic. I further got us a shopping agreement with a renown production company (Oscar & Emmy winners) to produce a TV show. When it comes to our Foundation, I have led fundraising, strategy, implementation, and even provided 100s of hours in pro bono advisory to grantees. This isn’t just a conceptual idea, we have bootstrapped an authentic community that is thriving but and with additional support can truly soar.

In building Breakout, I maxed out credit cards, lived on couches, and persevered through sleepless nights of doubt that we could turn a passionate mission into an actual business. From being pushed to the edge, I’ve learned that in tough moments you have to not be distracted to try and solve for the short term. In our new existential threat of covid that wiped out most of our future revenue over night, we stayed true to our mission. We raised $30,000 in micro-grants. Worked bridging large funders and institutions with last mile food banks and community leaders to deliver meals, PPE gear, and helped get allocated over a million dollars in grants to impactful orgs. We co-created a free selfcare handbook on healing trauma with our community member and survival of police brutality, Leon Ford, for all to access alongside a short film featuring his mental health journey. Leon ended up being featured due to this work in a special talk with President Obama. And through patience in evaluating what was missing from the events space, we are launching a virtual festival alongside other online programming from partners looking to amplify the work of our community.

My style of leadership has been to pass the mic and let others take the stage. As a society, we have a prevailing hang up with hero culture. In the first few months one of growing Breakout, we were in Detroit prepping to see if we could create an event there in the backdrop of the bankruptcy. Detroit is 80% African American and has experienced false promises & systemic disregard for decades. We thought our group of young leaders could be of help but we quickly recognized besides the problematic nature of “help,” who the hell were we to think that we could just come in and tackle systemic issues. Many of our new friends set us straight. From Sebastian Jackson, a local barbershop owner, Amy Kaherl, the founder of Detroit Soup to Lauren Hood, the founder of Deep Dive Detroit and an expert on racial equity and civic engagement. They knew the pain points of their neighbors. From that point on, we made sure that every event we held was created with & by local leaders. Those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions. This sentiment to this day is our most cherished principle as an organization. 

What makes our work unique is that it's not based on capital but people. We aren't investing in tech, we are invested in fostering people that foster growth. We've spent every waking hour learning, unlearning, and listening with community. Instead of trying to scale our team fast by the quickest means of growing revenue, we focused on authenticity in building a truly diverse grassroots based nationwide community. We are 75% millennial, over 60% poc, 56% women, comprising individuals from every business discipline imaginable, and those hailing from large -- medium -- small ecosystems. This is not a network that could have been built from the ground by venture capital. It had to be built by grit, time, commitment, and consecutively showing up. 

As movements and calls for equity have been sweeping the nation, we have been receiving an uptick from organizations and communities asking how we've built such a unique community. It's been our commitment to the process and trust we've created. Because of that is the reason we are able to create events, original content, educational programming, and a foundation to get grants out to community. The through line in all of it is the focus on people and the unique trust we have created with local changemakers who have the highest detection levels for bs.

The testimonials we've received to our work are what keep us focused to why our work creates a chain effect across our community. In the words of Kate Atwood, Executive Director of ChooseATL who brought Breakout to Atlanta: "The relationships that formed among the Breakers and Atlantans in just that one weekend (2017) are today still a part of the impact and growth we are experiencing in Atlanta. And it is that ripple effect of intangibles that come from any Breakout experience that make this community so special." In the words of Brandon Oldham, program officer of GKFF who we've worked with since 2018 in Tulsa, "Hosting Breakout in Tulsa has impacted the way Tulsans interact, the way our foundation champions the change makers in Tulsa, and how Tulsan's champion our city."

Our flagship multi-day events serve as the initial spark to accelerate relationships, connections, and impact locally and nationally between those who gather. Our internal communication via our app and other social products allow our community to stay connected and continue working with each other outside of our programming. The content we create continuously serves as a beacon of the work to a larger audience. And the Breakout Foundation serves as a way to fuel projects directly. Each one of these components serves in a daily, weekly, and monthly capacity to amplify as well as supply tools and resources to our nationwide community for the impact to continuously scale.

Our project currently serves hundreds of people per year through our events while our content year to date has been viewed approximately by 100,000 viewers.

In one years time our event through the scale of virtual will be engaging thousands of people and our original content will continue to grow into the hundreds of thousands.

In five years, our online content and virtual programming will be viewed by millions annually and our live event programming will engage thousands.

For our for profit, we are immediately focused in the next year in accelerating our growth in our online content and social media to engage a wider audience with stories and educational material on the impact being created around them. This will help accelerate partnership opportunities as well as the awareness of our community leaders allowing their work to exponentially scale. With our events, we are excited to launch our first virtual festival this September opening up a much more scaleable platform. 

In five years, our goal is to be our own studio // content channel creating original shows and full length films in house and by our community. We see our multi-day events scaling from 2-3 a year to 1 per month, virtual programming weekly, and to be active in both urban and rural communities across the US.

With the Breakout Foundation, in the next year we are looking to raise funds to to allow us to bring on an executive director and increase our monthly online grant making via our instagram challenges to $25,000 a month. In five years, we hope to be operating a multi-million dollar grant making vehicle that not only makes micro grants but also allows us the ability to make larger follow up grants to our changemakers. 

If I had been asked this question 3 months ago, I might have felt stronger about cultural barriers but I finally feel optimistic that things are beginning to catch up to the conversations we have been championing for years. We were traditionally viewed by large corporations as something that seemed interesting but not necessary and best relegated to budgets stemming from their CSR and D&I budgets, which is to say small. And every large partner who has every began working with us has always made the initial caveat that partnering with our type of work while exciting would be a first to them. For our work to scale faster and achieve our goals, we need programmatic funders to quit thinking equity work falls into charitable buckets. Our community are culture movers. If there has been a time for corporate and philanthropic endeavors to get on board, it is now.  

The world of corporate and philanthropic funding is quite insular. While it is hard to access the individuals in the positions to make large funding decisions, we thankfully now have partners in prestigious organizations who believe in our work and are stepping up to champion us to their industry peers. It is important for us to continue creating case studies and content for them to share. We also know the time is now for us to increase the awareness of our story in the press and we are in the process of engaging a PR firm to help us source press to help shine a light on the work we are doing to new audiences.

We are community partners with BMe Community, a national organization of black leaders. We work to highlight each others work, advise on each others projects, and their Founder & CEO Trabian Shorters formerly served as a board member for the Breakout Foundation.

We are also working with the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in activating our flagship multi-day events in cities such as Tulsa, Philadelphia, and Newark. We work together to amplify and catalyze the work of local leaders in these communities while connecting them to our national network.

Our business model revolves predominately around our events (live & virtual) and original content. We sell tickets, brand partnerships, and offer consulting services. Attendees buy tickets to our programming because of the knowledge, know how, and experience. Also, because our programming is engaging, fun, and interactive: brands and foundations partner with us all levels because we are a bridge to grassroots leaders they are looking to work with and learn with.

We have bootstrapped Breakout for the last 6 years. We started with a membership model as a means to sustainability but quickly moved away from it due to its inclusivity barrier and thus have focused on scaling ticket sales, partnership deals for events and original content, and consulting. We see our content as a compliment in brand awareness that elevates the value of our events and vica versa. While many of our events are not meant to be grown in size, we are excited about larger national partnerships that help us grow our team and ability to scale programming in more communities across the country.

While we typically have a large percentage of our expenses around our multi-day events such as hotels, meals, & transportation, this year the majority of our expenses are payroll related.

I am applying to the prize because this would allow our team to finally grow and work more strategically as opposed to our small team working on more functionalities than is efficient. While we are expecting revenue growth we don't have the immediate funds to grow the team that would allow us to grow our visibility and start additional projects. We know a big part of that is finally bringing on someone full time in a marketing capacity as well as someone focused on content/social media. It is truly the classic chicken and the egg conundrum. We currently are a team of two full time along with a diverse freelance team (located in Tulsa, Newark, Philly, Chicago) that work with us on specific projects throughout the year. We would love to look within this immediate group along with our extended Breakout family to grow our team. 

Also, as someone who strongly believes in network effect, I recognize its an endless road of learning and would gain valuable insight from the mentorship and peer group that would be accessed from the prize. 

We believe in our revenue model but because we have spent so much time in community, we are only starting now to make in roads to funders who would align with our project. Having allies who can help connect those dots for us would be immeasurable.

As someone who strongly believes in therapy, the natural jump would be coaching services which I have yet to engage with. 

I have been in search for an adivsor(s) when it comes to strategic partnerships and original content to help me (us) think through this important part of our growth trajectory.

While we gained press early on, it was always specific to our events and our people and not our journey and larger mission. Gaining that story in the press is an important goal of ours in 2020.

We currently work with large philanthropic orgs & brands. We'd like to continue working with orgs of this reach and magnitude who can help us scale much faster but also by working with them we can influence the way they look at working with grassroots community leaders and the issues they champion.

When it comes to original content, we are looking at building out media partners who can serve as larger distribution channels for our content to reach a broader audience.