Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kit Cummings. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kit, appreciate you joining 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.

Over the past 15 years I’ve been in over one hundred prisons, jails, and detention centers across the nation and around the world. From working with cartel members in Mexico, to death row prisoners in Louisianna; from prisons in South Africa to prisons in Ukraine. I’ve negotiated peace between some of the most notorius rival gangs inside the U.S. prison industrial complex, and now I specialize in working with youth gangs in prisons and on the streets.

That work set the stage to become a conflict resolution and violence prevention specialist, and that risk changed my life and the course of my work forever. Taking my dream into the most dangerous places definitely paid off.

Kit, 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?

After a long and successful ministry career, preaching and leading churches, I found myself burned out and out of gas. I went through a painful divorce and faced many personal challenges, but it led me to my purpose. Then I prayed a prayer that changed my life forever: “If you ever let me preach again, I’ll go to the ones that nobody wants to go to: the “least of these” and the “harrassed and helpless.” That set me on a course to take me around the world and laid the foundation for my mission: to take peace to those most removed from it.

I designed a program in prisons to bring rival gangs together forty days at a time, and help them learn to live and work together peacefully. The program became very effective and took me to more and more prisons and schools. From that platform and the recognition I received, I launched programs for schools, churches and corporations around conflict resolution and team-building. I also began to write and have published six books, and I’m working on my seventh.

I was honored to be recognized with the MLK “Living the Dream Award” by the NAACP in 2020 for my work with prison reform and underserved and at-risk youth. This year I hosted the King Center “Beloved Community Global Summit with the King Center as a part of their MLK Day Holiday Observance Week. I am currently under contract for a documentary film, and also a dramatic feature film around my life and my work.

This week I’ll be in San Antonio, TX speaking at a corporate conference teaching “The Importance of Empathy and Compassion in Sales” to the management team and sales force of a cyber security/IT company.

If I can bring Crips and Bloods together (literally) in dangerous maximum security prisons, what could I do with your team?

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I was working in a dangerous maximum security prison to bring peace to the twelve hundered men residing there. Although the project was going well and violence was declining, I was apparently interfering with some of the gangs’ ability to carry on business and make money. A “kite” (which is a tiny piece of paper with a message on it) was sent to a prisoner to deliver it to me. It read: “Tell the Peacemaker to watch his back.” There was a credible threat, and whoever sent the message had the motivation, means, and opportunity to carry it out.

So I was faced with a decision. Because of the severity of the threat, would I shut down my program and conclude the work there for my safety, or would I continue on and fight to win their respect? I chose the latter and made a bold move to take my message personally into every dorm on the compound the following week, where I new my enemies would be. I won their respect and their trust with that move, and peace came to that facility. My reslience paid off, and that prison went from worst to first that year (2011) and won “Prison of the Year” in the State of Georgia.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

My work has forced me to look at people differently. Because I have worked with those who people would call “the worst of the worst” I’ve had to become very good at finding the best in people, and searching for the good in them. That has become a way of life. I am not trying to bring God to them, but rather trying to find God in them. That has made all the difference. People know when you are looking for the good in them and searching for the best parts of them, whether they know it or not. They instinctively know that something is different about you, and they long to see you again. Imagine if more and more people learned this art in today’s world. However, you cannot fake this; love must be genuine. Those who I work with can smell a fraud a mile away, and can even become dangerous if you are not authentic. This gift and skillset has made me very effective in coaching, teaching, training and mentoring clients, and it is something that I could not learn in a book or a class– I had to live it, and that has made it invaluable.

Contact Info:

• Website: KitCummings.com
• Instagram: KitCummings88
• Facebook: Kit Cummings and the Power of Peace Project
• Linkedin: Kit Cummings
• Twitter: @PowerofPeace88
• Youtube: @KitCummings
• Other: PowerofPeaceProject.com