MENTOR SESSIONS | Chatting with MY BIG BROTHER TO THE KNIGHT, CHARLES THOMAS
**These are notes from a conversation with a mentor in late 2016.**
Charles Thomas photo from the Leadership Charlotte webpage. Thomas is the Charlotte Program Director for the Knight Foundation.
By Kia O. Moore
The Knight Emerging City Champions micro-grant funding and the credibility of the Knight Foundation halo that came with it allowed me, Kia Octavia Moore, the chance to take my first steps toward becoming a Hip Hop Social Entrepreneur.
The Knight Foundation gave me validity; 8 80 Cities gave me a starter kit of tools; the Arts & Science Council’s Culture Blocks program allowed me to cut my teeth in community music programming, small event coordination, and budgeting. On top of that, a growing Hip Hop Orchestrated ensemble was pushing me into an uncomfortable position of leadership that I needed to be in. This position helped me grow into a leader as I learned through trial and error. Much like the tales of the Hip Hop Moguls I loved learning about.
By December 2016, I was still in the mental mode of asking permission to make things happen. I was, and still am, in the middle of combating the feeling of imposter syndrome in this new role.
The seed funding of K880 Cities was gone, and I had to really understand how to pull in the sponsors and create revenue models that would make Hip Hop Orchestrated a sustainable venture and not a one-off, pop-up project. I had to really jump into the social entrepreneurial shark tank and learn how to swim and survive in the deep waters of business. On top of that, I had the added challenge of swarming culture vultures ready to take my idea, pick away at my idea, or claim it as their own as they attempted to hedge me out.
By the time December 2016 came around, I needed to see a metaphorical marine scientist with years of understanding and navigational experience exploring the social entrepreneurial waters of the Charlotte social venture marketplace.
Lucky for me, the Charlotte Program Director of the Knight Foundation was the personified metaphor of my social venture marine scientist. The always busy schedule of Charles Thomas had a rare lull right before the Holiday Break. So on a December day in 2016, I made my way from K-town (Kannapolis) to Uptown for a Knight Talk with Charles Thomas.
If you want to know what we talked about, check out my Creative Loafing article >>
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