We recently connected with Corbin Jenkins and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Corbin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I was born J Corbin Kenneth Jenkins on October 15th, 1990, to my mother Sharrion Jenkins and Father Robert Lee Jenkins in El, Paso Texas. The birth was difficult and rendered my mother bedridden for 10 weeks. During that time, I was almost adducted by a group of people posing as doctors. They told my mother she was too sick and may pass soon and needed to surrender her child. She refused and sounded the alarm. I was safe, but it’s a shame to say that 3 other children did not get that opportunity. Life was difficult for a mother of a military husband as she wandered around Texas looking for a forever home. Luckily, she stumbled upon a quiet place in Texas called “Georgetown”. It was there she found a fixer upper home and started her home improvement journey and company One Designing Diva. I like to joke and say that “I could swing a hammer before I could walk,” but it was not far off. From the age of 10 I started to help with projects around the house and got a knack for it. At the age of 18 I decided to go to the Historically Black University Prairie View A&M. It was there that I enrolled in their Architecture program. I started two online architectural product websites and began selling to students a faculty. I stayed through graduate school and got a master’s degree in architecture. From there I went to Zurich, Switzerland where I had a one-year internship with E2A Architecture. There I perfected my model making skills, as well as gained a new perspective on life, art and culture. After, I found myself at Austin Community College. There I started teaching at the Gardener Betts Juvenile Center where they hold college level courses for the students. I stayed for 2 years teaching courses like Green Building, EPA Environmental standards and General Apartment Maintenance. Then went to the LEED certified ACC Roundrock campus where I still teach to this day. During my stent at ACC, I was afforded the opportunity to build the set for Lenard Bernstein’s Mass. Currently the largest set to be erected at the Long Preforming Arts center in Austin Texas. That being said, it is one of my single greatest achievements alongside my newly formed J Corbin Designs Art Collative in North Austin Texas.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
TikTok is one of the single most influential platforms in the social media arena today. If you can utilize it properly you can gain an enormous following in a matter of days. I started TikTok in 2019. The plan was to become a social media presence and eventually use the platform to promote the grand idea I would come up within the future. The hardest thing that I had to do was get out of my own head. I needed to get comfortable with my voice and what I looked like on camera. So, I did what came naturally and began making skits based off of my teaching career. I wrote down ideas as they came to me and studied other creators that were making the same videos I was trying to achieve. I posted three videos a day all with the same theme but with different camera angles to see my response. After 2 months of constant uploads, I started to see a rise in followers. People I have never met before are following my journey. Now, I have over twenty-six thousand followers and I am currently enrolled in the TikTok creators fund.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Contact Info:
- Website: Jcorbindesings.com
- Instagram: Cobojinx
- Facebook: Cobo Jenkins
- Other: email: [email protected]