Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Emmanuel Glaze. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Emmanuel, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I was covering the Tour Championship in 2018 and while I was at the 18th green watching Tiger Woods win his 1st event in 5 years, I saw a ton of people surrounding him, but I felt there wasn’t enough students from the area enjoying the experience. So I decided at the point to create a program that would allow me to work with students who may be under exposed to events such as this. So in January 2019 I created Optimize The Vizion. A program that is working with under exposed students by taking them to high school, college and professional environments that will visibly show them the possibilities and opportunities that are available to them.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Emmanuel Glaze is the Founder and CEO of the nonprofit Optimize The Vizion and the media company OTV Media LLC. Optimize The Vizion’s mission is to help enhance the vision of student’s futures by exposing them to the countless possibilities that the world can provide. The program works towards its mission and motto by taking middle and high school students from the Metro Atlanta area to different sporting, business and entertainment events around the city. The idea is to expose them to these events with the goal of showing all of the work that makes each event and program happen. In its 1st year in 2019, Optimize The Vizion visited over 14 events in the city of Atlanta from events such as Nascar, Football, Local News, Tennis and Golf just to name a few.
OTV Media LLC is a media company that was created in 2020 with the purpose of having programs that create healthy conversations with individuals from all walks of life. Emmanuel has a show on OTV Media called The EGlaze Chronicles where he has one on one interviews with leaders in the community. He is also the Co-host of the popular sports talk show The Crush Sports Talk. The Crush Sports Talk has one mantra that they work tirelessly towards: to consistently be “The Dopest Sports Show On Air”. Like any good “point” on the hardwood, his vision and keen insight into the nuances of the show keeps it running like a well-oiled machine.
Emmanuel Graduated High School in Lincolnton, Ga and received his degree in Mathematics from Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Ga. While at Morris Brown College he lettered in both football and track and met his wife of 20+ years Jennifer there. Emmanuel has two beautiful daughters that are a huge motivation for him and when asked how he continues to break the mold of what people think a guy from Lincoln County, GA should be able to accomplish, his reply embodies his quiet faith: “You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.”
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Through this journey to create a non profit that will service the community, a lot of it has been done on a minimal budget. We haven’t received a lot of donations or grants over the last few years, yet we have still been able to host 30+ events both virtual and in person. We also have increased our student participation from 8 members to currently 15 with the goal of getting to 20 in the next year. We have also went from a middle school only program to a middle and high school program. We were able to do this with our community support, our parental support and of course the resiliency of our students.
We are really building our program on the idea “You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.”
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
My program Optimize The Vizion was built on the focus of taking our students to different events and locations around the metro Atlanta area. In 2020, when the pandemic started our whole operation was on the verge of shutting down. Me along with my board had to find a way to keep the program going while also continuing our mission of exposing our students to greater opportunities. So in an effort to do this we created a virtual series called “OTV goes virtual”. A series that introduced leaders from all over the country in the sports, business and entertainment industries to our middle and high school studetns. This pivot allowed us to keep our students engaged, allowed them to meet some wonderful community leaders and exposed them to different profession and opportunities via the virtual series. We were able to turn a possible program ending situation to a program building situation.
Contact Info:
- Website: OptimizeTheVizion.org
- Instagram: OptimizeTheVizion EGlazeOTV
- Facebook: Optimize The Vizon Emmanuel R Glaze
- Linkedin: Optimize The Vizion Emmanuel Glaze
- Twitter: @OptTheVizion @EGlazeOTV
- Youtube: Optimize The Vizion
Image Credits
Dope Shots Photography LLC