We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Greear Webb a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Greear, thanks for joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

My parents did and continue to do a lot right. From a young age, my parents instilled in me the importance of education, a spirit of loving those around me, and a willingness to courageously and compassionately challenge those standing opposite justice and peace.

My parents, and family at large, are a large part of why I am currently pursuing a law degree and continue to work with SIDEKICKS Academy to fulfill its mission of securing widespread equity and compassion among youth. My parents are people of deep faith, and planted those faith seeds in my siblings and me from birth. My personal faith has now become an important aspect of my life, and one of my favorite Scriptures is James 2:26: “Faith without works is dead…” This reminder propels me forward as I strive to serve others, and especially strive to serve as a mentor to those younger than I.

This desire to use my gifts and skills to encourage and support those I encounter stems directly from lessons my parents taught me in my younger years. I can remember sitting around the dinner table and listening to my parents harp on the significance of serving others—whether by volunteering, defending a peer at school, or respecting my grandparents and making their lives easier—as my parents were teaching us that helping others is part of our duty as people living in community.

I am and will forever be grateful for my parents—not only the lessons they taught me as a child, but the ways they continue to show up in my life and support me in ways that might change year-to-year, but are always exactly what I need as I continue to learn, grow, and serve.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

SIDEKICKS Academy was established in Durham, North Carolina in 2019 to positively impact Durham public school students and provide Durham’s youngest leaders with compassionate mentors. “SIDEKICKS” is an acronym for Students Involved in Discipline Education, Keyed Into Claiming Knowledge and Success. At SIDEKICKS Academy, I serve as Senior Advisor to the Executive Board and to SIDEKICKS Academy Founder and CEO, Grandmaster Freddie McNeil.

SIDEKICKS Academy is a unique-to-North Carolina behavioral-health intervention program that takes the components of academic success, mental health support, and social justice teaching and combines them with the learning of the Korean martial art of Taekwondo. SIDEKICKS Academy currently operates in multiple Durham public schools, sending mentors into the schools during the day to serve as supportive coaches for students, and conducting free, weekly Taekwondo training sessions for students seeking to learn a new skill and release any pent-up emotion.

SIDEKICKS Academy is most proud of our trauma-informed model of teaching and mentoring that has allowed us to reduce the suspension rates at each of our partner schools (year-over-year) while increasing rates of academic achievement. We are also proud of our trailblazing social justice program, which aims to expand the knowledge of our students of color by supplementing Black and Brown history lessons unable to be integrated into yearly curriculums.

I am dedicated to ensuring SIDEKICKS Academy accomplishes its goal of growing compassionate, community-centered young leaders from whom North Carolina can learn and follow. SIDEKICKS Academy is truly a game-changing program for North Carolina youth, and I’m grateful for my Raleigh, NC roots which instilled in me the importance of acting upon the old adage, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met SIDEKICKS Academy Founder and CEO, Grandmaster Freddie McNeil, totally by coincidence in January of 2021. We were placed in the same “Zoom Room” during the Triangle Martin Luther King Jr. Committee’s Annual MLK Day Interfaith Prayer Breakfast—held virtually in 2021 due to the continued spread of COVID-19. I attended college at UNC-Chapel Hill with Mr. McNeil’s son, but did not know Mr. McNeil or his family at all. Now, they are like my second family.

Mr. McNeil initiated a conversation with me in our virtual chat room as we awaited the main program to begin. We began discussing our shared love for North Carolina and our shared commitment to initiatives supporting children and youth. Later in the virtual program, I received the Triangle MLK Committee’s John Lewis Student Activist Award, becoming the inaugural recipient of the award. It was a great honor. Since that day, Mr. McNeil and I have worked hard to bolster and expand SIDEKICKS Academy’s impact and reach, prioritizing faith, justice, and compassion in our mission to empower North Carolina’s next generation of community leaders.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

From April 2022 to June 2023, I served as SIDEKICKS Academy’s Social Media Director. I learned so much in this role—primarily, the best ways to consistently and authentically engage with and deliver content to a large audience. SIDEKICKS Academy has grown its social media presence tenfold since we prioritized social media (and, really, all media) as an organization, and our social media posts have afforded SIDEKICKS Academy the chance to bring in powerful speakers, expand our reach , and educate thousands about our program’s offerings. SIDEKICKS Academy also employs social media to push out local news feature stories about SIDEKICKS Academy and other community-centered organizations, as we believe local news matters and that North Carolinians can always stand to hear and see more positive news stories.

If I had any advice for those just starting to build their social media presence, whether personally or professionally, I would encourage you to 1) Stay Genuine—though sometimes creative license is appropriate, it is important to always stick close to your personal or professional mission and vision(s), 2) Trust Your Content—social media is just a tool to help execute a plan to motivate, inspire, or support so remember that your continued actions in pursuit of your goals is what should remain most important, and 3) Don’t Be Afraid to Fail—at SIDEKICKS Academy, we are the first to say we often do not get anything completely right, but we always strive to learn and improve, and social media is no different. At SIDEKICKS Academy, we stay consistent with our social media postings but also take risks, believing that one post might change our program in ways we could have never imagined.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sidekicksacademy.org
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/sidekicksacademy919
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/sidekicksacademy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidekicksacademy
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/skacademy19
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIPy1AktuudtnoSOjvNpAfw
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sidekicksacademyinc?_t=8YQS7lKAYBf&_r=1