We recently connected with Cornell Wade and have shared our conversation below.

Cornell, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

In truth, I would change everything about the education system. From the generic approach to curriculum to the disciplinary practices, specific with Black Boys, that creates a breeding ground for prisons inmates across our country. The very institution fails to prepare students for a world void of grades, and bell schedules and lessens the student innate desire to learn while alienating students from the internal satisfaction in education. I have been in the education field since I was 19 years old. I have experiences from early elementary education through collegiate studies and these failures exist through the highest levels of our educational system.

While there are many stories I could share, I would like to tell you the so story of Devante ” Tae Dog” Berkely. Devante was a special young men, who simply did not have the desire to take part in traditional schooling. We attempted everything possible to motivate him for schooling his Junior year of High School, and we eventually found it… a work study program in a local grocery store. Devante had a modified work schedule and while he never excelled as a student, he completed his studies for the year and was on track to graduate and play collegiate football at the conclusion on his senior year. He wasn’t a great student, but he loved to work with his hands… the barbering program was also one of his favorites. In the Spring of 2020, between the advent of COVID 19 we were forced to close the doors of the Royalty Institute school program and he went back to his neighborhood school. He completed his senior year of High school, but made the decision not to attend college but Devante would keep his job at that local grocery store for 4 years, until I received a call from his mother on October 16th 2022, the message was simple… my baby is gone. Devante had been murdered the night before on a street in Washington DC. My world has simply never been the same… we failed him, I failed him and you just aren’t the same as a person after that.

I have seen over 40 young men go to college through the use of education and football. Justin Bradley, Steven Avents, Colin Dupree, Ashton Walker, and Amir Anderson are a few that come to mind. All young men who “made it”. My heart hurts for the many more young men I have seen leave the education system with absolutely no idea how to navigate the world, specifically as a black man. So if you ask me what I would change about our education system, I would say we should change it all… if we did, Devante may still be here… Long Live Tae Berkley!

Cornell, 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?

My name is Cornell Wade, I am the executive director of the Royalty Institute of Leadership and Innovation. We are a school and community outreach program dedicated to preparing the leaders of tommorow through leadership development and innovative skills training in a Christian and equitable environment. Our focus are African American and inner city youth and families. We offer multiple programs including, Summer Camp, Mentoring Programming, Youth Sports, Educational Conferences, Field Trips and more, with the ultimate goal of opening a school for black boys in our community

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I am a firm believer in going “All In”. With that said, I liquidated my public school retirement fund to start my program. We are now funded through multiple streams. including local grants, programming fees and small dollar donations which come together and fund our programming. We would not be able to have programming in our community without our supporters

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to “unlearn” was my greatest strength, growing up playing sports and watching my father in his career as a truck driver I had a strong “work harder” mentality. That said, as I have grown in my business the lesson I have had to learn is to work smarter, to allocate resources and human capital to projects based on external factors as opposed to the work until I can’t anymore mentality I began with. All that said, I would not change the “work harder” mentality that was instilled in me. It served as the foundation of everything I have done

Contact Info:

• Website: https://royaltyinstitute.org
• Instagram: royalty_institute
• Facebook: Cornell Wade
• Twitter: coachc_wade
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/1kdqCaJbv2I