program director for the njt of trenton and an entrepreneur so welcome to the show thank you very much i'm glad to be here yeah no problem so usually i start my guess where they went to college so where do you go to school during of r c that is new jersey  good so let's go let's go back in time and go back into high school ok so when you were in high school when did you start thinking about tennis and going to college to play tennis as a freshman y senior year i actually started thinking about college overall through my sophomore year of high school i mean i actually came from another country so it was a dear friend experience my family weren't really sure what the process was like i kind of had to take it upon myself to figure things out my sophomore year of high school i went to my guidance counselor asking for help asking for any information i could  get he told me go and write a resume and bring it to me so i went that whatever i thought a resume will look like i came to him and he's like your resume is not diverse enough so he's like you know you need some sports or some extra curricular background you know what that's a that's perfect for me because i don't want you know to sit on the bench or you know be just be there or to be there you know for the sake of it so i went up to the coach ask if he needed any extra actually two days later was my first match i was really nervous i had no idea what the scores were like it was of insane but i liked the idea behind it because tennis really made me  and play as much as i could and unfortunately i discovered the entity of trenton who came to our school and transported us to mercer county park mercer county airport at that time that's where the tennis facility was and i met da favre rob holland in it was his from there i stick with it and a t l i had the opportunity to practice but not just that they gave an opportunity to teach so teach as a coach as a junior instructor and th really encouraged me to do more it helped move my leadership skills it just opened my eyes a lot more and that was it from there tennis became my pathway to college and from then i saw research in colleges base their tennis teams fortunately i reached out to dream diversity's coach jeff brant is at that time and he brought me over you know to just take a look at the college watch a few matches and i was so like a few sports largest tennis i played softball and read track as well so after of that in my resume then i started looking into colleges and i applied all over the country but i wanted to stay close to my family because we're very small family thought new jersey would be an ideal place to be so i applied to write a university culture in new jersey but those schools were too close to home cells or maybe something a little further and drew i just so i am i just i like the environment i think very well in that environment so i was just i was like you know this is it and i applied got in and i was like ok for the next step was how do i pay for drew and drew was the fifty five thousand dollars school at that time so i was just ok i need to do everything i can because my family couldn't afford for to pay for the school so expensive  huge just constantly looking for school when i was more of a you know i have to get it done kind of first i was very precise then so i didn't really have the opportunity to see a lot of coaches i did receive fifty four thousand which did you get out of all those those applications or you feel though so low that a fifty one at fifty one scholarships i receive are a say two thousand three thousand four thousand but they all added up some of them were from extracurricular activities i did and they will give partners your scholarship when you're done with that program so i had at that as they accumulated if it for for a one is enough where your parents didn't have to pay too much the first year right my parents and i paid anything at all because i knew they couldn't afford it and so either i could do that or i could settle for may have to mean the first year or the last second year came in more financial aid i spoke to the admissions officer drew more and my financial situation was not great so it as a minority was easier to get more scholarships now or that were grants just in state grants the fact that i went to school in new jersey helped a lot so and i just made my way from there and i got associated with morgan is asians like th a d three school and our conference is usually the army conferences in the spring so when i got to jury at that time our conference was in the fall kind of switched one year introduction into directory process where we introduce everyone and we have like a team dinner or something like that and the process is basically you practice throughout the fall we have some non conference matches in the fall and then our spring is the main seizing so spring starts around march practices from so tempered to november we have winter break and then we come back in february star practices again and then march start ok and then march until when it goes until march until may until depending on if you are consistent in your conference of year when a lot of matches you go into the end of may if you don't then you stop like early may and season's over ok and then in the summer term do you do anything in the summer or you just back to enjoy it you know hoping and teaching well during the yellow during the summer we need to do too much the summer is basically go back and try to get course wise so you're studying economics there what are you thinking about in college are you thinking i can do this professionally you have to school you're thinking i just want to get a good education and get a good so if i was a little number one player i wasn't like the number one player in our conference so i knew this was a great opportunity to do just like experience the sport and it became a passion so like for phil this passion but also education was my main priority at the time so my goal was finish college get a job and survive the physically i enjoy those four i enjoy the whole atmosphere the idea of it after college i went back and went to grad school for creative writing and global studies and while i was in grad school i was this is the coach and up to last tennis so now there's always a question that comes up with parents and the question is you know college is all about the sport it's never about the academics what do you say to parents on that wall first of all every parent has to sit with their children or child and kind of talk about their options so one conversation i would suggest your child sophomore year is when you start talking about college so giving them information on what the process is like for those parents who are not aware of the college process like my parents weren't i will reach out to a guidance counselor an afterschool program coordinator extra curriculum coordinate anyone my have information on the college process i will reach out to inches from will arise myself with the situation and then decide whether college is right for your child or not because in this then age college is becoming more interested in sports so rigid as those coaches you might not have too much information at the time because coaches are looking for juniors and seniors but there will they will take you and they will give you as much as they can give you at that time because you're not in the running school sixty percent of your time is spent with your sport the two pretty much are probably forty five the three is like thirty because academic is our number one priority and not the sport those spores  poor and we support and encourage the athletes to be just a seed per year academics at the end of the day we know you would like to do something related to the business or whatever other field that is not for certain tennis as a career and don't get me wrong there are some high level the three schools that where its students go on to become professional players but if that's not a child's goal as coaches we focus on your education as much as we focus on your back your your  ok so now you graduate from college you go into the answer to your did you become the program director right from the year ago or is there some steps before that and how did you end up being also an entrepreneur well i started off that i was seventeen with injured so i was a junior coach supervisor and just you know i was with in the organization for nine years so after i graduate college i was still involved i came back i went to the gallows i you know i volunteered i worked a lot physically when i had the time so i was still like a part of the family and when i graduated and the  organization was transitioning and they were just like looking for someone to fill that position and with my background i was given the opportunity to do so now what do you do as a program director while we run i personally i run create programs different programs and we have three different programs we have are our outreach program where we is a basic tennis instruction so we reach out to students who have not had the opportunity to experience tennis and we have our ace program which is on the educational side it was created by so the u s d a and now it's all a nationwide program and so we teach children math literacy and we focus on learning more than testing because these days a lot of schools are focused on tests that we try to get the kids minds out of testing in just enjoying the whole the whole idea of learning and then we have our ash program which is a selective program where we  students from outreach an ace component and bring them into ash where we provide college scholarships mentoring we basically follow them from grade third to twelve and then after college we're provide college scholarships fly thing that i'm doing i'm associate with them way which is a nationwide company and you can you're allowed to kind of buy into the corporation to become an independent business owner so u have a lot of nutritional component to it so i thought with that experience or having that background i can go into something related to the nutrition side so i am way sells nutritional products  laws management products and a lot of healthy things a lot of our products are from the rain forest and they're all organic so i think that is coming from a sports background thing that something to  challenges did you have when you got here one yes i was born in liberia and i travel i had the opportunity to travel a little bit because my father was a pastor so we wanted to different countries build in churches so i already had so i wasn't used to just the atmosphere i come from a very structured background and it was a little of it was a laugh free i guess you say here and so there are too many opportunities and there are too many things and you just don't know which one to go through the like you needed i needed to come back to like that structure place and kind of figure out which path was good for me so when did you actually go here when you were a teenager when i was thirteen i was way thirteen when i got here and it was another world for me fortunately i lost my father one year after i got here so it was pretty much me finding my own way through because my father was here six years before we got here and he was like the pathway to to get here and kind of find our way through and when he passed away it was just like an eye opener and we had to figure everything out on our own so fortunately it worked out i mean i think everything happens for a reason  so i think i'm the person i am today because certain negative situations happen and i turn it into a positive situation there so now is when you were in high school what are the challenges that you have in high school  i it's just the environment was very different is known for violence and things like that but i think it depends on the person at the person the child and also depends on the family  because i came from a good family my my that work was not to follow a bad crowd or you know go the wrong way i i had a goal i set a goal for myself my parents never go for us and that was our way to get out of it and yes sure that has a bad reputation but i think there are a lot of good people in trenton who are working hard to make sure that these kids have a good pa and one is and it is what we do our job we service twenty eight hundred students from ages twelve and ages five to eighteen and our goal is to try to give them good opportunities where they're distract in their kids can get involved in well there are there are a lot of different organizations out there right now you have like we partner with the boys and girls club we have the y m c a we used to have the  but there are so many after school programs and our new mayor jackson is doing such a great job you know just make sure that he shows his face at every program so that kids are seeing a positive role model out there that there's really trying to make the city a better place so any detail is one of them and i always say that the boys and girls club the y m c a all of those organizations are doing as much as they can't to  were like college where it's at the high school or anything like that yeah we had college nights we had field trips where they took us to a different different school well it was like a lot of schools came to us but for me i was more i was more involved in like the honor societies and the a p classes so we had specific programs that were available to us for example my sophomore year i interned  and that's when my eyes really opened and i was a wow i can actually be in business in these opportunities are available to us so that there are several companies that are working with the high school intra and you hamilton and so opportunities are there the idea is how do you we get ours kids to actually utilize those opportunities that's the main problem because if you're if you're illiterate and you don't know what's available to you how can you get there so and that i think that's the part all of these organizations play in our in the children's lives by kind of gear like staring them towards those opportunities so do you find when was so busy after school i had a match or practice i was busy doing things related to the sport but also doing things with later after school programs  i wasn't sure so i i was able to really get into the bad crowd it was not an option for me really just focusing on those all of those different activities were t home what advice you want to give them well again and i think i said this earlier first have a conversation with your child and make sure this child wants to play those four or would like to pursue a certain spore or a career because i find a lot of parents forcing their children into things because they want to in the past and now they will like to live through their children and that's not ok because the kids come and they're miserable as a tennis coach i know th see this firsthand so i encourage you to talk to your child first and see if that child would like to pursue the sport and then just reach out to the coaches the coaches we have a way to reach out to reach the missions office if we really like you do more give you pointers on how to improve the child skill in order to have he or she make the team so just have a conversation reach other people who are available to give information and don't give up just some kids sometimes it's hard the process is hard you're not too sure where you're going but i was completely unaware of what i was doing and i didn't really have that much behind support behind me but i did anyway unfortunately it worked out so  if you're behind your child i commend you one hundred percent reach out to us if you're in the trenton hamilton ewing area and it feels right there we have enough information to provide even just ask questions do not