We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sean Tory And Nick Mathews. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sean Tory and Nick Mathews below.
Sean Tory and Nick Mathews , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Nick: Sean and I created King of Jewels to create an organization that engaged, empowered and encouraged young people to be the best versions of themselves by surrounding them with positive role models who can help them realize a pathway to success. We grew up in a community that was riddled with community violence, lack of resources, and low academic achievement. Many of our peers that we attended high school with were more likely to spend time incarcerated than they were to graduate high school. Thankfully for the mentors and positive role models in our lives we were able to overcome the challenges we faced in our lives and become college graduates, successful professionals, loving husbands, fathers and business owners who make a positive impact on our community. That’s important to us because so many of our young men of color especially don’t get the opportunity to grow up with a positive male role model that looks like them. So the mentors that poured into us helped us to become great professionals, yes, but they helped us become even better young men.
That’s what we strive to do with our program. We help young people who have been doubted, criminalized, ignored and overlooked see just how valuable they truly are. In recent years, a young man has been killed at each of our old high schools, Mojave and Canyon Springs, on school grounds. Our youth are so traumatized that they believe they must resort to criminal behavior just to survive and have a place in our world. Unfortunately, so many of our young people don’t believe they can be anything more.
In this climate, me and Sean became excited to create a program that celebrated marginalized youth, provided them with support, encouragement and personal and professional development that combats the negative influences that they face everyday. Our program focuses on helping our youth find and develop their strengths rather than simply beating them down for their mistakes. We fill the gap by being an empowering force in a world that constantly tries to bring our youth down.
Sean Tory and Nick Mathews , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Sean: I was born and raised here in Las Vegas, NV. I Attended Canyon Springs Leadership & Law Preparatory Academy during high school and was a part of the magnet program there for Leadership. Nick and I’s friendship started in High School, however, he went to Mojave High School. We met through a mutual friend who I happened to be in the same youth mentorship program. The mutual friend and I were in the Alpha Men and Divas of Tomorrow youth organization guided under Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated. I later became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Nick was in the Kappa Leadership League guided by Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Incorporated. This is where our mentorship journey began because we would be at the same community service activities and events representing our organizations. This is where our friendship grew and has continued to grow all the way to adulthood.
As we departed from high school, I went to thee University of Nevada, Reno, received a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Development and Family Studies and became a Trio Scholar. Nick went to attend the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on a full academic scholarship, he is the first Black valedictorian from Mojave High School. After graduating from The University of Nevada, Reno, I received my Master of Science Degree from UNLV in Marriage and Family Therapy. After completing my masters program I went to work for Nevada Partners Non-Profit organization where I worked with youth in school, out of school, and in the juvenile judicial system. Nick was working at Nevada State University as the GEAR UP Ambassador, providing services for middle and high school youth to get into secondary education. Nick approached me with the idea to do a conference with our student populations, he wanted it to be impactful. Nick wanted to provide our students with self identity, mental health, leadership development, workforce development, and entrepreneurship conferences that were different from the conferences we attended when we were in high school. Filled with excitement I was on board. Our goal was simple, create a safe space where youth can truly take a good hard look at themselves and ask the hard questions; Who am I? What’s my why? And lastly what do I want to change? Those are the questions at our first conference that changed our lives and the youth we mentored forever. We started seeing our youth have an interest to discover what they really wanted in life by taking the journey to learn who they are and who they want to be. After the conference the youth wanted to meet with us on a regular basis, this is where Nick and I started brainstorming a critical mentorship program. In 2016, King of Jewels was born and we’ve been mentoring youth in Las Vegas and across the United States since. In 2018 Nick and I decided we were going to engage in the mentorship space for our careers, as Nick went to attend UPenn for graduate school and I at UNLV for my PhD. We made a promise to each other the graduate degrees we seek will be to add benefit to the youth and families we serve.
A little bit more about myself, I am currently a Ph.D Student at UNLV for Curriculum & Instruction with a concentration in Cultural Studies, International Education and Multicultural Education. Sr. Management Analyst at the City of Las Vegas. I am happily Married, father of three beautiful girls. Sr. Management Analyst for The city of Las Vegas, Co-Founder & Vice President of King of Jewels, Co-Creator & lead facilitator of The Men’s Room, Volunteer & Educator Facilitator for Know Your Rights Camp, host of The Business Information Buffet Podcast, Sr. Business Analyst for NVGrow at CSN & lastly a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
What I would like readers to learn about King of Jewels is that we are to engage, encourage, and to empower our youth to see past what they currently see in front of them. Have access to all the resources that are available to them, and not be limited on their options for a career path. King of Jewels mission is to provide access and opportunities to youth and families who don’t often get to see what’s past their neighborhoods. To provide a positive experience that will positively impact them for the rest of their lives. Lastly to dream big, strive for change they want to see.
Nick: As Sean mentioned we both grew up in North Las Vegas and were able to reach a level of success that seemed out of reach for many people in our community. While Sean attended Canyon Springs, I attended school 5 minutes down the street at Mojave High School. My graduating class had a 42% graduation rate whereas more students dropped out of school rather than successfully getting their high school diploma. This environment helped me see the systematic challenges my peers were facing such as poverty, classism, lack of representation for minority youth in school personnel, and low expectations that made many of my peers feel like academic achievement was not possible for them. With support from my parents, mentors, and hard work, I was able to graduate high school with a 4.7 (weighted) GPA that afforded me to attend UNLV free of charge, as well as many other perks such as steakhouse dinners with my school principal.
After graduating from Mojave, I earned my bachelor’s degree from UNLV in Psychology, where I also became the president of the Theta Sigma Undergraduate Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. I’ll come back to why my fraternity is an integral part of my journey momentarily. After graduating from UNLV I worked in higher education for about half a decade before going on to pursue my master’s degree from an Ivy League Institution, the University of Pennsylvania. Today I hold two master’s degrees from UPenn in Counseling and Mental Health Services and Professional Counseling, and I am a full time therapist who works with undocumented, uninsured, and underinsured individuals and their families.
It has been my personal goal to poor into disenfranchised youth who remind me of myself and my peers who grew up in an environment that seemed to be truly hopeless. Today, me and Sean and our team help to provide hope, encouragement and skill development that helps our youth realize the future of their dreams. Of course we both have created a niche for ourselves helping minority youth, with a special expertise for working with young men of color.
My experience has garnered me the opportunity to testify in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on behalf of college access programs to advocate for a 317 million dollar budget to eradicate the achievement gap for youth living in low income communities. I have been awarded mentor of the year, post-secondary champion of Nevada, and many other accolades that I cherish because I know how difficult it is for people to succeed where we come from.
My purpose has always been to be a positive role model for black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) youth and helping to bridge the gap between wherever they are and where they dream to be in their lives. That is why joining Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc., was so important for me. Kappa Alpha Psi, Inc. is a black greek lettered organization started by 10 black collegiate males in Bloomington, Indiana in 1911, during the height of racism in the home of the Ku Klux Klan. 10 black collegiate males came together and created an organization that stressed achievement in every field of human endeavor all while living in fear for their lives on a daily basis. This mentalist resonated with me growing up in North Las Vegas, attending a school with a 42% graduation rate, and growing up in an environment where my existence alone seemed to be against the law at times. Being a member of this organization is an example of how I have overcome systematic oppression, community violence, and low expectations to become the young man that I am today. This is why I work so hard to help our youth realize the best version of themselves no matter what they have faced along their journey.
Today our program, King of Jewels, provides mentoring, youth development, and professional development training for both youth and professionals who work with young people. Our primary focus is providing positive role models and network of support for youth with a special niche for working with young men of color. We provide mentoring for Upward Bound youth in partnership with UNLV’s Upward Bound program, for approximately 150 youth. We have a mentorship program that is solely for young men of color in the Las Vegas area that we meet with on a regular basis to engage, empower, and encourage. We provide workshops to help with professional and personal development and we take our young men on regular career exploration tours where we introduce them to career opportunities they may not have thought about. For example, we have visited Gas Station Studios, 33.G Art Gallery, Vibes DIY Studio, UNLV, CSN, Nevada State University, Bellagio Resort and Casino, and more to help expose our young men to as many career possibilities as possible. Our next trip is going to be to Los Angeles to introduce our young Kings to the video, film, acting, and clothing industry.
We help our young people believe in themselves in a world that works so hard to discourage them. We refer to our young men in our program as young kings and the young women as young queens. We do this as a way to reinforce the fact that they matter, and that they should see themselves as well respected, revered, hard working leaders who can create their own reality while also making a positive impact on their community. We believe that once a young person believes in themselves, has a healthy network of support and is surrounded by people who help them grow then they can be healthy, happy, and successful individuals.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Sean: Our start at Nevada Partners, Inc. and Nevada State College helped us start our reputation. It was the relationship with our prospective supervisors, the parents and youth we worked with back then, they trusted us with their own kids when mentoring them. I know for me, mentoring youth has blessed me to grow in my professional career from non-profit to higher education, and now local government. The more youth we impacted the more parents kept telling other parents about us. It landed us on Good Morning America this past February, and we have been truly grateful for the trust we built with the Las Vegas Community.
Nick: Sean is right. We were fortunate to start our careers in spaces where we were able to exercise our creative freedom to bring new best practices to youth engagement work in Las Vegas. Me and Sean were afforded the opportunity to learn from great youth development experts and always thought, why don’t kids in Las Vegas get to learn from such great minds!? We did our best to bring everything we learned back to our community and help set us apart from other mentorship programs in our community. We have traveled the country and learned from some of the most engaging, intentional, and impactful change agents in the world and they have helped us bring that same level of development right here to our own Las Vegas community.
I think our participants and their families can feel how much we care about them and their success and that keeps them coming back and sharing about us within their networks. Our efforts have helped us be recognized by Good Morning America, Clark County Commissioner’s Office, National Council for Community and Educational Partnerships (NCCEP) just to name a few. The most impactful feedback we receive are from the mouths of the youth we serve. There is nothing better than when a young person tells you how much they enjoyed working with us and how they plan to use the jewels (nuggets of knowledge) they have received from our programs. Especially when that same youth had no problem telling us how much they thought they would hate our program before attending.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
Sean: The most effective strategy for us has been collaborations, tapping into our network, and lastly word of mouth. Our collaborations with Nevada Partners, Inc. Nevada State University, UNLV, CSN, Clark County, and various small businesses in Las Vegas has helped us grow tremendously. During our conference we take our youth on a tour local minority owned businesses so they can see what is right here in their own backyard. We expose our youth to all the industries that are available in the city and out of Las Vegas, so they know their options. Between our prospective fraternities, personal networks, people are so willing to connect us with their network. However, none of this is possible with our youth and parents continuing to recommend us to other parents and youth.
Nick: I’d just like to add that providing intentional, culturally relevant, and engaging programming has set us apart from other youth engagement programs. It is rare to have black men who take the time to pour into youth in our community outside of athletic settings such as football and basketball. We bring our authentic selves to this work every day and the people we serve appreciate that. We like to have fun and create a space that fosters growth in a welcoming way that most youth don’t get in traditional school or community organization settings. We keep it real; we have fun, and we make sure our programming can help set up our participants for a lifetime of growth and success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kingofjewels.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kingofjewelslv
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-tory-2501b741/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-mathews11/
