We recently connected with James Gregory Jr and have shared our conversation below.

Hi James , thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I definitely wish that I would have started utilizing my creativity a lot earlier. Instead of trying to find a career in something that I’m not really passionate about just to make a dollar. It would have saved so much headaches and unnecessary stress in my life.

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

I grew up in a very small town in Virginia with around 500ish people and surround by plenty of forrest. Being a curious kid I would walk into the woods situated right next to my childhood home and have a blast exploring. There was a little creek that would flow when it rained and little crayfish would be swimming about and I was so fascinated. Through the years after that I continued to have that urge to just explore and soak in the vibrations of the natural world. At the time I had absolutely no idea about a thing called hiking as it really didn’t exist in my small town. I just knew that I loved to explore the outdoors and walk any trail that I could discover. Fast forward to more recent times where I discovered all of the many outdoor activities such as hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, and mountaineering I would notice one common thing. Being black I never encountered many people who looked like me on the many outdoor activities I’d partake in. This sparked me to start my social media account and my brand The ethnic explorer. I chose this name as a beacon to other minority explorers or anyone interested in the outdoors but felt it wasn’t for them based on race. I created this account to help inspire and create representation minority hikers as I felt that was something that was lacking across the outdoor community. My mission is to bring more diverse representation and to inspire a new generation of diverse explores. To get rid of the stigma in the black community that we don’t do anything outdoorsy.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is bring more diversity, representation and accessibility to outdoor spaces.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Definitely just go for it it, get started and keep doing research on the various ways to improve on the craft. Always remember it’s not a race and you don’t have to follow the crowd.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: The_ethnic_explorer
• Youtube: The ethnic explorer

Image Credits
Ember