Why My New Headshot Has Three Heads

I started my nonprofit career as a business communications teaching assistant in 2011, and back then, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I might appear to others in the workplace. My sense of self was tied to my own upward mobility (or the potential for it when the actual movement was lacking, at times). I saw myself in terms of my relationship to job titles, promotions, degrees, and leadership development programs. I wore a suit and tie to work everyday, and as a first-generation college graduate and the first person in my family to work an "office" job, I remember how strange I felt riding the "L" to work in Chicago. I'd see folks in coveralls on the train and feel like an imposter. I felt like they knew I should be dressed like them and that the other folks in suits sensed that as well. Over time, that suit became more comfortable, and my closet filled with different colors, cuts, and styles with bits of professional and personal flourish.

My understanding of what it meant to be a professional extended into the virtual space as well. I taught business communications, and the trappings of presentations, professional email etiquette, LinkedIn profiles, resumes, and cover letters were a part of my everyday experience. I taught hundreds of young people - from backgrounds like mine - how to look the part, both in-person and online. I spent a lot of time talking about headshots, about perception, and about how to get past gatekeepers by looking the part.

Over time, I became a full-time instructor, a program manager, a director, a regional director, and now, an executive director. Eventually, I thought a lot less about what my headshot looked like and a lot more about what my headspace looked like. I thought a lot more about everyone else's mobility and access to opportunity and realized that my pathway was pretty certain at this point. In other words, having "made it," I stopped being so selfish. Everything about my life has changed along this journey. In 2020, I left Year Up United after nine years, and with my transition to East Atlanta Kids Club , I also left suits behind as an everyday thing. To be fair, I didn't leave suits behind until the first day at EAKC. I was on the basketball court with a student worker from Georgia State University, and I was backing him down in the paint in my nicest suit when my pants split right down the middle. I suppose that was a freeing moment in a way (or two). I switched to more casual clothes so that I could meet our kids where they were each day.

I spent the last few years working hard in casual clothes, doing the sometimes grimy work of growing a small community-based nonprofit during the dark days of the pandemic. I delivered food to hungry folks, laid donated carpet in our classroom, scrubbed bathroom floors at our program site (a City of Atlanta recreation center), wrote too many proposals for funding to count, and scrapped constantly for resources for our kids and families. My new work grounded me in our immediate community. It exposed me to the needs of our kids and families. It moved me away from the work world where I taught young adults how to play the game to secure their own career advancement (the bag, as younger folks might call it) and into a world where kids are just trying find nourishment - both literally in terms of food and critical resources and also in terms of access to high-quality programs and experiences that develop their understanding of what's possible. It also re-wired something in my mind in terms of kids. Working with kids all day and seeing how possibilities or the lack thereof plays out for folks caused me to consider something I never really took seriously before for myself - having my own kid.

My wife, Allison, and I met when we were kids ourselves. We were seventeen when I asked her to homecoming with a voice that vibrated like an engine with a belt or two loose. She said yes, and the rest is history. We went to undergrad together, then off to graduate school, and into the world of work. We moved across several states, took our lumps in the Great Recession, and carved out careers that brought us back home to Atlanta. We grew up together. We never planned to have kids of our own. Like so many folks in our generational cohort, kids seems like an impossibility for so many reasons that have been unpacked by plenty of folks smarter than me. That all changed in 2021, though. We made the decision to give parenthood a try, and seven months later, we were parents.

That's not how that's supposed to work if you are doing the math. That's a bit of an expedited timeline.

Arlo came into our lives in January of 2022, eight weeks pre-term and full of fighting spirit. For four weeks, I went to the NICU at Emory each day and came home and did what work I could manage during the other hours. I was fighting to keep EAKC surviving and ideally thriving amid so many financial pressures, and Arlo was fighting a more visceral fight that put everything I have ever accomplished into perspective with every single passing minute of the day. He came home after four weeks, and the actual parenthood journey began. We have spent 100+ days at various appointments - some to be expected for any child and many that are unique to pre-term children. As the weeks passed, EAKC parents would stop me in the parking lot or in the lobby of our program site, and they would share with me how their kids - our shared kids - were also pre-term. I have learned so much about maternal healthcare and how it correlates to outcomes for our youth that begin in utero. My understanding of myself continued to expand as each day passed with Arlo, and my understanding of our work became more refined as well. I was finally prepared to lead an organization called Kids Club - or at least getting closer every day.

In 2023, we decided that we'd have another go, and our daughter Sabine arrived right on schedule in March of 2024. Now, we really have our hands full. While Allison works for a large corporate employer and had (emphasis on past tense) generous (by U.S. standards) maternity leave, I still find myself juggling parenthood and work each day. That's an unfortunate reality for too many folks leading small businesses - is the story I tell myself.

Here's the real truth, though: that's an unfortunate reality for almost every parent who sends their kids to EAKC. As a household, Allison and I earn 10X the average household income for an EAKC family. Read that back. It's not a typo. It's an indictment. I haven't given a second thought to how I appear on LinkedIn for years. I am not looking for a new job. I am looking for economic justice for our families, and I am looking for folks who agree with me that we have some fundamentally broken systems that put kids like the ones we serve at EAKC at a disadvantage before they are ever bathed in the fluorescent lights of the mother & baby room.

I was at a workshop yesterday for the Sage Foundation's Grow Program, though, and the topic of LinkedIn came up. We discussed how we might leverage our capital as thought leaders on platforms like this. That's the primary capital we have, after all. Nonprofit leaders live this work, and for most of us, our passion for our mission is inextricably linked to our lived experiences and the way we view the world - both as it is and as it might be.

So, with that in mind, I changed my headshot today. I didn't find one with a suit and a crisp white background. My hair and my beard are a mess. Arlo and Sabine are in it, though, and that's what matters to me. It matters to me because I lead an organization that cares deeply about equity for families here in southeast Atlanta, it matters because my kids make me a more empathetic and resilient person and professional every day, and it matters because I have the privilege to use a picture of me and my kids as my professional headshot and to not suffer for it. That last bit is critical.

We have to normalize seeing the people around us as whole people. We have to have hard conversations about why inequity begins in utero - yet persists in insidious ways for the rest of our days. We have to talk about the barriers we erect, the gates we keep, and the motivations that underpin them. I work in a field that is predominately staffed by women and here in Atlanta is predominately staffed by BIPOC women. We also need to be honest with ourselves that my headshot with three heads in it probably changes folks' perception of me as a leader in a way that isn't necessarily true for most of my colleagues in this work. I show up every day in support of our kids and families, and I ask myself, "how might we change that"?

I bring my kids with me to work. Sometimes, they are literally here in the park playing alongside our EAKC kids on our beautiful new playground, but they are always, always with me. They drive me to find solutions for our families, and they make real so much of what existed in my mind as theory for so many years. For all of the challenges that we face as an organization and for all of the barriers that our kids and families face, this much is true for me: three heads are better than one.