#5 - Generation ALPHA

um i was yeah 2013 2014 around there um just simply by getting involved with somebody who was part of the organization i was an intern for them actually and then later on ended up going to events with them and simply i was attracted to the organization just because of the community that they offered for latino professionals it was very rare for me to see latinos in positions of power and positions of impact within the corporate space so to see latinos come together for something as simple as a happy hour or an event was really empowering for me and it really gave me reassurance that the further that i went in my career the more impact i could make um and so with that being said i ended up being part of the professional chapter of new jersey in 2019 no actually 2020.

um so i interviewed for the role in 2019 got the role in 2020 as a vp of student affairs because one of my biggest strengths and one of the things that i’m super passionate about is mentoring so i ended up from there getting a role on the national team as my full-time job so i serve the latinx community by way of my full-time job and a volunteer role within alpha both on the national level and the local level so on the national level what is because vp of student affairs is pretty specific for the professional chapter what do you do on the national level specifically so on the national level i’m the director of business development and partnership so overall i’m responsible for ensuring that we are creating partnerships with corporations and organizations that are willing to help us further our mission of impacting the latinx community and those that are allies to the community itself okay so that right there i feel like that’s where i come in you know if there was anything that i could kind of offer to this conversation it’s that student perspective because what um well alpha does specifically you know i’m a part of different organizations like the bearcats sports business club they really help uh students get into that uh the sports side of business which is pretty obvious from the title but again it’s that that specific group of people that are working with these students to get them into this industry it’s not just a club where you come and network with a bunch of random people like it’s not a career fair for a bunch of different organizations and um organizations yes but not industries and alpha i joined back in the spring of 2020.

my sister’s actually the one that that told me about it and i was i was kind of skeptical but i was going to a new school going to a new area it was kind of an opportunity for me to join something that i i thought would help me kind of integrate into the community and alpha was probably the best decision of my life honestly like the the first experience i had with him was we went to a general interest meeting and the the e-board or the the leadership of the club at my school chapter e-board stands for executive board of directors exactly so they came into the general interest meeting and they were like hey how y’all doing this is alpha if you don’t know about alpha and then they went through the whole convention stuff and how they got internships some of them got full-time roles into these big companies like microsoft google facebook you know like they’re they’re real life that’s pretty awesome yeah so it’s pretty cool so i said i’m in the club where i could get a job out of high school that most people wouldn’t get out of a masters you know yeah like people wouldn’t know how to get into these kind of spaces on their own and i first meeting off the bat i was really interested in joining so i joined and the pandemic hit so it was it was kind of it was kind of weird just wrecking everything yeah it was kind of weird how um we i joined the club and then over the the summer towards the end of the spring there was an opportunity for an internship with uh it was a partnership between multiple alpha chapters mostly alpha charlotte though and bank of america and you know of course i saw bank of america and i was like if i can get into this you know i i’m not i don’t want to really get into banking that that much but i also didn’t know what it was so i joined the internship and bank is actually matt interesting like there’s so much like banking is really interesting yeah there’s so much that there’s so much that goes into the system of banking there’s consulting there’s financial advisory like wealth management that kind of thing but then there’s the risk management side there’s also the technical operations the strategy and then obviously the the like face banking part of it i think one of the biggest strengths about community to your point um specifically alpha community or even um when you think about fraternal organizations is the exposure that you get to people that are in spaces that you normally wouldn’t have access to yeah um and learning about these things like all of the different variations of roles that you can get in an industry that you thought was just for you know finance people or accounting people or in an industry or group that you thought was just for women of a specific background in the case of opb there’s there’s so many things that go into understanding the nuances behind a community so i think just overall understanding how you can benefit from being a part of one of these organizations is the key to succeeding because for you you talked a little bit about it and it was you saw people in spaces that you knew other people couldn’t even break into with having high what we consider qualifications and privilege too that speaks to privilege because these organizations are allowing for students without any types of qualifications no type of family history to come in and just get their shot of course not everyone is going to be able to take advantage but there’s an opportunity at least for everybody to get a shot you get um people from all over the place all you have to do is be a student at the school and at the professional level all you have to do is be a professional like you just have to have a profession in something and it’s also helping they they were they started off mostly focused with latinos right and now they’re kind of opening up they’re opening up to just students in general because they’re they’re an organization as far as i know they’re the only ones really doing what they’re doing at that scale because with alpha you know there’s clubs like nabba and that stands for national association of black accounts yeah yeah and there’s also fbla future business leaders of america and there’s a couple organizations like that so to that point i think there’s sorry to stop you there but i think there’s something really important that i’d love kayla to talk a little bit about and as somebody that’s part of a fraternal organization i know quite a few and quite a few people in them um but i’d love for kayla to talk a little bit about that idea of working hard for something and how that translates to being part of a community such as the one that she’s a part of with omega phi beta and what that means in the end because i feel like for our students that are part of like the alpha community the harder you work so being a student leader being in front of these um organizations or corporations as a community leader is such an impactful piece but i think just that idea of working hard and being a latino and working for your spot translates to something bigger than that so i’d love to for kayla to kind of touch on that what it means to work hard and what you get out of working hard i think if you’re able to it’s kind of difficult like i agree you know i’m biased as well i’m a latina um i feel like our community is very hard-working but just because you can have that idea of the community doesn’t mean that others outside of it are going to give you the opportunity because you have that mentality in mind like oh i know that we’re all hard-working so we deserve this position we deserve this title we deserve this role this salary so i feel like there’s just so much more you have to prove and i feel like with our organizations i really appreciate the platform that they give us to have access to the opportunity um because i i honestly like sometimes you know i’ve been lost i don’t know what i want to do with my life or like what career i want to have but i have access to so many different women and and outside of my organization i have access to other people from other organizations and they can give me insight and that pathway or like guidance into like you know what i i have faith in you and i feel like that’s what this community allows us to or gives to us i should say that faith like you’re gonna do great i know you’re gonna do great so i’m gonna give you that um so i just it’s it’s definitely like you you’re walking on um a tightrope kind of with like i want to like prove that i’m really great but like not overdo it yeah um so it’s always been a struggle and i feel like at least knowing that there’s people who have done the same thing as you it makes it that much better to like i’m gonna keep going like i’m gonna do it i’m gonna fight for i’m gonna get that so would you say that part of your success is attributed to the mentors that you had in these communities definitely um i didn’t know it at the time so in high school like i my english teacher i we went we were like butting heads all the time like we were just not always there like as friends but as a like a person like i looked up to him as a professor like as a teacher and in the end like i learned so many lessons out of him and he taught me like you know you need to show your worth and he gave me access to things that i didn’t know that i could as a high schooler and so having that exposure at that age i was like oh like there’s people that can give me that leeway into a life that i didn’t know existed because you live in a box sometimes and then being in college and going away to college i went to suny plattsburgh if nobody knows that’s all the way up north that’s about 45 minutes into an hour from canada what she’s saying is she’s basically in canada basically and so like being out there and there’s not a lot of minorities and you know buffalo yeah no it’s just crazy like you there’s only a handful of latinos or there’s only a handful of african americans or asian americans and so you’re just you feel like another box you’re put into another box yeah um so when i found these organizations on campus i was like wow like there’s someone or there’s a group exactly yeah there’s a place for you i can fit here and then when they give you the opportunities to succeed outside of just being on campus in school it’s like oh why why wouldn’t i take that opportunity yeah and i think that’s a that sheds light on kind of the representation of fraternity and sororities that don’t happen in media because right when you when you think of a frat when you’re in high school or a sorority you think of parties and you think of you know sports games and of course there’s a couple every now and then where you see people in in suits or you see women in power uh in real life you see them giving like paying homage to their organizations but for the most part what we’re shown is that they’re just a group where people can come together and party you know they’re a group where people can this is the organization that you have to get into in order to to get somewhere else it’s not that community feeling of hey we’re here because we’re all trying to reach the same goal and we’re all trying to uplift each other and i think an important part of that community sense is that people we reward people that work hard and not not even like in the real world they say work hard and because in real in real life working hard isn’t all you have to do like you have to know people you have to have the skills you have to be be there at the right time you could have the qualifications you could have the connections but if they don’t have an open position you’re not you’re not getting anywhere you know like they can’t give you a position that’s not available so this organization in the college space doesn’t require a position to be open so you can have the qualifications and then you make the connections while you’re there you know so when you get into the real world now if there’s somewhere you want to go you have the connections that’ll tell you hey this isn’t available here but i know somebody over here and that wouldn’t be available if you didn’t get connected with them in the first place right but i would say to your point of creating to being plugged into available positions organizations that are designed to build community also create positions yeah for you within their community that help elevate you so for example let’s take alpha as an example alpha may not be able to plug you into a job that’s not open but alpha allows you the opportunity to be part of local chapters or your student chapters that give you that leadership role where you can gain the skills and the knowledge that you would gain from another job same thing with organizations such as um obb they give you the opportunity to be president or vice president of a chapter um treasurer or anything else that you’re interested in that helps you expand on your abilities your experience and your knowledge that then qualifies you more than somebody who’s just sitting at home waiting for that door to open yeah yeah okay that’s um that’s i feel like that’s what the lift program was that internship that i was talking about because it really um it was really i that was my first internship ever you know i’ve only had two so far but um i feel like from what i’ve heard about internships that that first internship was probably one of the best ways to operate an internship because we were sponsored by bank of america but we weren’t working for bank of america you know because when you’re an internship you’re kind of working for that organization low-key when we were here of course they’re getting um they’re getting a look into the next generation of graduates and they’re going to get their new hires and stuff and they’re going to teach us yeah they’re going to teach us the skills that they want us to have when we get there but for the most part they were their sole purpose of this internship was to give us skills that we need to get into the professional world you know i learned about tableau emotional intelligence leadership being on a team just things that kind of were you could apply anywhere it wasn’t just banking it wasn’t just things that bank of america needed it was also alpha inputting what they thought their students would need to succeed in the future in any space so that i think it was like eight week eight week internship was just a bunch of workshops and skills training networking and i think they hopefully they’re able to do it again but that experience that i had made me so much more confident of getting into that real world because i had no idea that i had no idea that professionals were so human yeah yeah as an as as a college student even if you know adults you don’t know them professionally right now you’re meeting professionals and talking to them on a daily basis and you’re like wow like i can do that i can get there they can they can help me i can help them and that’s the other thing like the mentors that we got were getting value from us they were learning from us and that was you know just double the reward yeah i think there’s a shift that happens in your mind when you see professionals in a light that is different from what you’re used to in media or what you’re taught in school i think for me that shift happened at a happy hour i remember being at a happy hour fresh out of college um it was probably like the first professional happy hour that i had ever been to and i was there with the sole purpose of gaining like leads for my sales job but it ended up being a very eye-opening experience because i had this random guy come up to me and start hitting on me and it was so foreign to me because for me professional settings were settings where people just talked business right communities where people just built their it’s just business revenue streams yeah profits and sales numbers like there was no natural human experience that happened hey how was your day yeah it was like very surface level and then that happened and i was like oh wait what this this is happening right now yeah this is okay yeah right and i was very confused and the older that i got and the more events that i went to and even hearing people’s experiences at like the alpha national convention and how they found their like um life partner at yeah i’ve heard that so much right it is it’s mind-blowing to people that don’t know it’s like loki a hookup spot wow is it really i’ve heard that i make jokes about the alpha love connection because i feel like people really do go to like but the national convention think about it when it comes to that you you are you already know that your value is somewhat aligned right like i’m i’m gonna try to break this down and see if i can understand this so you already know that uh professionally and maybe even background wise your values align you might be latino you might be a minority there of course we have caucasian people in the organization but for the most part the foundation is minority impact and you might be coming from maybe a middle class family sometimes so and you’re like looking to climb the ladder so you already have that connection you don’t even have to talk about that you get in there you’re like oh this person has a nice vibe wow they’re oh they’re in this industry i’m kind of interested in the industry and then you start having conversations and you already have like i guess when you’re dating you already checked off let’s say the first three boxes just as an example so it speeds up that process and you can get right into knowing that person for who they are and where they want to go it’s almost like if you created like uh okay like there’s a dating app called the league right and the league is literally dedicated to just professionals and it’s literally like they check your linkedin and everything before you’re accepted into the league community today kayla’s like wow i gotta check this one like they actually like ask you for your linkedin information because the whole idea behind it is that you’re meeting like-minded individuals who are focused on their career but also interested in love so it’s that same kind of idea where once you’ve walked into like a convention for an organization such as alpha you’ve you’ve already checked certain boxes whether it be romantically or friendship-wise yeah there’s certain boxes that you’ve checked or like pre-filters that they’ve gone through meeting them in this space that you’re like all right i don’t have to ask these questions because it can be assumed yeah that you’re an ambitious career goal-driven individual yeah so that’s it that’s not even how that doesn’t have to be mentioned right yeah and as the thing i would say the difference between that and the greek letter to organizations is that a lot of time the greeks are separated by by gender by sex whatever like it’s usually a bunch of dudes or a bunch of girls and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing because you do need that space to be with within your own masculinity femininity whatever you want to call it but i also think that there’s a lot of value in having those communities where it’s mixed for a specific purpose because i mean that’s part of community you know romance the relationships that you get out of it not necessarily romantic but that’s that’s in there you know that’s a part of the subset of i guess the if you if you want to build a community that’s gonna that’s gonna be a good thing that comes out of it are those relationships but to your point kayla just brought something um up about co-ed fraternity yeah i didn’t i didn’t know that yeah there are some coed there was actually um a co-ed organization that was brought to my campus when i was there um and it was definitely different because i’m used to the only male or female organization so i was like what’s that like how is that going to work right and it’s funny because they actually you know they benefited from each other i didn’t get to experience that but at the same token i didn’t feel like that was my route that was my path like i felt like i needed to be with an off you needed that yeah yeah yeah i needed to like be with women who were like-minded who were as you said goal-driven and career-oriented and like they we all had this like end goal like it wasn’t just and the women that i’ve come across it wasn’t like i’m just gonna join this greek organization i’m gonna do the stigmas of like or the stereotypes of drinking and doing like partying partying and any of those crazy things like this was a real thing um and i wanted to be part of something that was real and they gave me that opportunity to be real and like like reach for those things and give me the opportunities to learn like it’s crazy with joining the organization something as simple as writing an email yeah you don’t think that that’s a big thing yeah and let me tell you writing emails is a big thing like that’s there’s proper email etiquette and some people can’t yeah and you don’t even think that that’s a thing until like i graduated and i got into my jobs and it was like the it was wild like yeah i couldn’t believe that me fresh out of college could write a better email than someone who was in their 30s yeah yeah yeah i mean that that experience i also i was pretty privileged with the high school that i went to and we got a really good education like i i would also say that i was you know i enjoyed school really great education because i think central prepared us and allowed us the opportunities to prepare ourselves for things that even great even good schools didn’t have yeah okay yeah like during enrollment a lot of good schools have but your ability to select you can you have like three schools there’s like three or four schools around the area that you can do enrollment well at least when i was in high school right but at central you had the ability to pick your career track in high school wow yeah like you could pick your high school courses like we’re talking basic like general education courses based on the career that you wanted to take so like if you wanted to be more stem focused you would take more math sciences um if you wanted to be more creative focused you would take more art but like they prepared you from the moment you walked into the high school really great opportunity yeah but when i was when i was in school they had um the apollo program where you could literally build your high school path through the use of project-based learning so if you wanted to go the music route you would be in a bunch of music type classes of course you still had to take the generals but you would do a project on you would make a song for a project or you would if you were an art you would do a portrait or if you were into photography you would do a collage like they just had so many different ways that you could mold you can construct your own way to learn basically for for high school at least that was that was mind-blowing it was it came it was mostly popular in my junior and senior year so i didn’t really get into it and i’m also not i’m not i wouldn’t say i’m really an arts type of person because i was at least when i was there seemed more like an arty thing but um the fact that central was able to cater to so many different students and me specifically i would say that i got the writing out of it of course i got all this everything but what what i really was surprised with was the the lack of writing education that there is in just in older older communities i guess or in less less privileged education systems because in middle school i shout out to ms wimsett because she like she made me fall in love with language arts like writing i would go so hard you know and of course you know she was kind of cute so i was trying a little harder but um it was um the the skills that she gave us were ridiculous she made us do um i think they were called weighty words or something or it was something words you know like a vocabulary thing and every person got a word to study what it meant and to create a story out of this out of that word you had to use the word correctly and you had to present it to the class and we i don’t i remember i forget how frequently it was but i got a word xenophobia xenophobe i’m in eighth grade and i’m out here researching xenophobia you know and that’s interesting that you as a dominican a male got the word xenophobia like there’s so much that you can unpack there yeah well i mean i didn’t get the word you got to choose your letter but you the uh i don’t know i don’t remember how it’s structured but i think you chose a letter and then there was like a word that you wouldn’t find out what it was until you chose your letter okay but still the fact that you yeah as a dominican black male got xenophobia like there would if you were as aware of your dominican heritage back then as you are now there would have been so much to unpack there yeah it would have been a whole different story but yeah and so from that point on when i i’ve always kind of been the vocabulary type of kid i loved words but after that experience i would not write a paper without a thesaurus i every time i wanted to use a word if i once got to the next sentence or next couple sentences and that same word came up i would go into the source and be like nah different words sorry that’s a dub i’m never using that for the rest of paper you know yeah and i went a little hard so it seemed a little extra but that helped me grow my vocabulary and when i got to late high school early college this is what really surprised me because i took the enrollment when i was taking classes with 20 some 30 some year olds and their papers at least grammar grammar wise vocabulary wise was like mine mine was better you know i’m just gonna say my vocabulary and my grammar was at a higher level as a junior and senior in high school i was like whoa like this is real life school like i’m learning because you know when you’re high school you’re like ah this is all bs whatever but i’m really i’m really seeing the results of what my teachers were my my teachers were really teaching me things that i was going to use in real life and i also think obviously kudos to the teachers in the central system because they go hard for their students there are some teachers that kind of just give you whatever they give you the curriculum but you also have to understand that teachers really are passionate about teaching their students so they’re not just there for a paycheck all the time they’re not just there because they want to that’s the only job they got you know it’s hard being a teacher i feel like teachers don’t get appreciated and they’re they’re like they’re i would say they’re a foundational piece of a community it’s teaching the next generation yeah i would say that the emphasis that we put on teacher appreciation week is the emphasis that we should put on teachers all year round that’s like black history month women right yeah you know i feel like teachers set the foundation for who we become as people because i’ll say yes for example in the last episode that i was on i talked about um the subliminal messages that i learned from miss hogan from miss hogan tilger’s class and it was one of those things that i didn’t realize that her class really taught me to view life not just media but life from a lens of what you see in front of you has so much behind it like so much and there was a level of emotional intelligence that i think coupled by mr hodges class so i took two um like when i tell you as a high school student i unpacked more about my childhood traumas than most people unpack in their life in an acting class yeah without direct knowledge of what i was doing was insane like you would get on stage and do an improv and somewhere down the line mr hodge would stop you and he would be like what is holding you back or why did you make that decision or he would just ask you basic questions yeah yeah where you would just be like why did i do that right i got it i don’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse that i didn’t dabble into that because what at the end yeah that i was on the improv team in high school oh my god one of the only regrets i have is not doing a senior year really yeah that could be because at first you know when you’re in high school you’re like oh i’m busy i have a bunch of stuff i was in sports i was in a couple clubs but in reality i did have time it was just i told you what you want yeah i told myself that i didn’t have time and but they when you do improv you go into a whole that’s a whole nother community you go into a whole different space a whole mindset where you have to go with the flow but in a structured manner you have what you’re gonna what happened we should do it hold on i’m curious so we should do a quick exercise i remember doing this in one of the classes where one person started the exercise it wasn’t it was in mr hodges class where one person started the sentence by saying a word okay right and then i had to think of whatever word came to mind based off of what you said the next person would go and you would learn so much about people in the way that their brains process [ __ ] without all right so let’s go let’s go go ahead camera podcast perspective oh wait a minute okay okay see this is one of those moments where you gotta take a pause why perspective i just feel like there’s so many different approaches to like podcasts or even just on life like you’re talking about things you’re giving insight into your personal life and it’s you like you are giving a part of you and a part of your perspective yeah like you’re making yourself vulnerable and you’re letting everyone know like this you’re getting everyone into your life yeah like this is how i look at this and you’re opening that conversation to like what is your perspective on the same topic yeah it’s so interesting by the way kayla over here is thinking about starting a podcast so if you’re listening to this and you’re like yo i would definitely listen to her podcast hit us up all right shameless plug you were saying it’s so interesting that you said camera i said podcast camera plus podcast equaled her perspective math quick maths right but when you think about it she just broke down podcasts and why she said that yeah but what she didn’t probably process immediately was that her brain took camera camera angles camera lenses so many things that go into camera yeah coupled it with podcasts which was her immediate thought because that was the most recent thing that she heard yeah and came up with perspective yeah but i like how you broke it down too your camera lens your camera angle is your own perspective exactly how you said that you’re making yourself vulnerable yeah and opening a discussion to be like hey what do you think because it’s kind of insinuated when you’re listening to a podcast and people are talking through their points they say something and then in your mind you think of what you think about it right you contemplate what would i say in that situation or how am i reacting to this information so yeah that that’s crazy i do want to go back though to something that she said about perspective and going back to the shameless plug of kayla starting her podcast because i feel like so taking a step back knowing kayla personally how i met kayla was very different oh yeah i don’t know how y’all met how did y’all meet oh god okay i mean it’s i think it’s only one side yeah there’s only one side like my ex-husband introduced me to my ex-boyfriend oh and it’s funny because i’m talking like my position now is from a greek organization okay he was part of a greek organization and so was her ex-husband so they were part of the same greek leonard organization okay so i met her ex-boyfriend way before i met her i met her ex-boyfriend maybe almost four years before i met her what and were they dating at the time no no so so let me break it down so you are with a man right or we’re with a man who was in this organization she so wait hold on you were with him and then you met her boyfriend no so no no she was with him okay wait no we was in the organization with my ex-boyfriend yeah but we can’t even take it back so my sophomore year of college i met a friend who joined this organization because my friends were part of this organization i ended up going to a party where i met my ex-husband who then because my friends had joined this organization at the same time as her ex-boyfriend same semester and everything i met him oh because they were going in together yeah kind of they didn’t know they were going together they met around the same time point of the story is that all these people were connected to then later on add another one of our friend’s ex-boyfriend’s birthday so there’s another friend with another ex in that organization he’s part of the same so what i’m thinking is that organization is not great at producing boyfriends i wouldn’t say that it just i would look at it as it helped me it brought to my life really great friendship well actually i can’t say that because i know a couple i know like one or two couples that are like super strong oh yeah you know what i mean so i’m not i’m not going to generalize the organization of course there’s there’s a lot of there’s a lot of variations but it’s just this coincidence is pretty funny it is but if i just i look at that um as a blessing because i met jennifer and then i was able to meet you as well and are the friend um so we just met at the um the third guy his birthday party the third guy yes okay her ex-husband my ex-boyfriend and then their friends yeah yeah so we all met there um and yeah it was yeah it was funny it’s just very interesting hey but community right right that’s all that’s all within the community right so we built this community of and actually that even goes further so when you think about latino greek letter organization or even black lettered organizations i don’t know much about the asian ones but for example black lettered greek organizations are considered part of what they call the divine nine which are you know it’s a community of black women and men gathered like the premier organizations kind of sorry i repeat that the premier organizations like the top dogs well they’re the only ones that exist so the divine nine are the only ones they are the black organization oh they’re the only ones yeah the divine nine are the nine black letter like black oh wow three letter organizations there’s nine they’re the foundation there’s only nine of them i mean or they were the ogs the ogs and then and then you have stemmed from them okay after them i should say nice okay so then you have the nalfo organizations of the national association of latino fraternal organizations which is part of um right um which is also part of the fraternity the fraternity in which we’re referring to these men that we’re a part of they’re also part of that general organization so you take it back to the idea of community and you have this overarching organization that connects all of these smaller communities of people divided by gender but creating one whole mission to impact the latino community as it relates to social lives yeah and the college development process yeah right that could translate to professional development later but we go back to community me and kayla wouldn’t have met if neither of these three men were part of this community i mean granted you know if you believe in god or the universe whatever you believe in i believe in god but i think if god had a purpose for me and kayla to meet sure we would have met somewhere else but this community made it but i think you met the way you met on purpose right that’s the thing because i also you know for me there is some sort of at least if it’s not a deliberate like literal hand at work there is something that brings us together as humans in within the universe whether that’s god because i believe in god as well or just um the energy because there’s the thing is when it comes to community there’s just unspoken uh i guess goal to get to uh to to get to that higher purpose everyone has their own definition of it but at the end of the day nobody wants to get worse and nobody wants to stay where they’re at so it’s just kind of when you get because there’s a lot of different communities there’s some communities out there that are not you know they’re not it you know there’s there’s terrorist organizations there’s but see that comment is subjective because yeah i’m a terrorist and i’m joining a terrorist organization something about that community okay serves my purpose and is driving like think about for example people that look at um terrorists like as far as like middle eastern culture right and the united states when we think of middle eastern terrorists in the united states it’s very problematic but i also i also think we got to specify right i’m speaking about like al qaeda i’m speaking about organizations the nazis the nazis right okay so the nazis are al-qaeda regardless of what you think for us who are knowledgeable about race ethnicity and then nuances we understand terrorism is not defined by your ethnicity your race your cultural background it’s your actions right but that community of terrorism and what we define as terrorism has given a bad reputation to another community that is defined by ethnicity background and race who happened to identify with that right with that same yeah exactly because i guarantee you if you go back to organizations that have been founded on basic principles and i can’t give an example of one right now because i can’t think of one but basic just principles off of their religious beliefs or their emotional beliefs or whatever you want to call it they did not start as organizations that were going to terrorize other people that they themselves would then become demonized for well that’s subjective but yeah yeah for the most part they started off to get to achieve a certain goal that didn’t involve what they’re currently doing exactly that’s that’s a better way to put it yeah and i think that’s an important thing to look at even going back to the examples that we’re referring to as like fraternal organizations we look at things like the netflix series of um was it called burning sands is that you seen it no i have not oh okay i’ve never seen it so i’ve heard of it don’t think it’s on netflix anymore but if you get a chance to watch it you see the hazing that happens i heard that’s crazy yeah yeah no it’s really tragic because it’s based on real people’s experiences it’s it’s not bs it’s not something they made up we you i guarantee if you went across every single fraternal organization no matter what the racial background is some sort of hazing happened yeah whether it was to them or to somebody they know yeah is happening i’m glad alpha didn’t haze me i’m just saying now you know i’m not with that i would have been like nope sorry you know that hazing part of the definition of hazing is like if i give you a pin to wear really yeah if i give you a pin to put on that’s hazy just the p and it could be like the letters what that’s hazing that’s hazing yeah i would i would do that all day yeah put on like a little badge of honor yeah i’m trying to join this group what’s up so not like the the you know the paddling and the yeah so drowning and all that stuff yeah no yeah like there’s a lot more involved in hazing than just what is shown in that okay wait wait but let me define hazing because i think it’s important for us to define hazing by way of the dictionary so then we can unpack things like wearing a pin how that’s translated to hazing quote unquote when by definition hazing as defined by oxford languages the imposition of often humiliating tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training and intimidation okay also yeah also defined as humiliating and sometimes dangerous initiation rituals especially as imposed on college students seeking membership to a fraternity or sorority but if we take it a step further and define haze hayes is a force to perform strenuous humiliating or dangerous so it’s always humiliating or drive while on horseback okay i don’t think i don’t think because i think that might have been like a slang term or something back in the day but that brings me to my question yeah do sororities haze and what is that process because when you when you think of hazing you always think of the dudes you know you always think of the the all the movies and and all the news stories are always about some guy getting brutally hazed but i’ve never once in my life maybe they like i’m sure sororities do but i’ve never once in my life heard of some girl in a sorority getting hazed at least not outwardly not publicly so going off of her the definition i feel like that in itself is very subjective as well um like i said if you’re wearing a pin so when i was in on campus my greek director from campus wrote the like that book like what defined hazing for all organizations she was part of that group of like the e-board of like what to find hazing what didn’t like what that entailed um and if i’m wearing a pin and that’s defined as hazing to you i don’t feel like that’s hazing yeah i’m choosing to wear the pen i’m choosing to um wear this outfit i’m choose like it’s all a choice yeah you can do it if you want exactly and i feel like i don’t i don’t know like it’s it’s very subjective to say if you’ve been hazed or not okay um yeah i have a question but what if i as an indiv like i have an alpha pin right alpha isn’t part of a greek lettered organization well there’s hazing in everything though it’s not just it’s not just right greek letters but i have an alpha pen that i’m not required to wear right but in some instances my chapter could say hey everybody needs to wear their pin for this particular event so that everybody knows that you’re a part of the executive board for this particular event which could be the same in some greek letter organizations of like hey you need to do x y and z so that everybody knows that you’re a part of this organization in some way and you as an active participant choose to do that but in the greek world that would be considered hazing in the professional world it’s not considered hazy well when i was in football there was this little weird ritual that you couldn’t change your socks right i’ve heard of that so if you’re if you’re winning it’s all subjective depending on the team depending on the situation who whoever is leading the team but um there there is sports of course i don’t know how it works for women but the locker room talk for dudes is super that’s when all the the masculinity comes out you know that’s when all the the i’m the top dog alpha stuff comes out in our situation it really wasn’t that bad but in other schools or other teams it could be like a legit you know take his pants off and stick something up there okay it could be like for real sodomization hold on before you continue i have to say i don’t know if that’s a word wasn’t that bad because you didn’t experience it and also because i i know that it could be worse but to somebody else because then we get into the conversation about sexuality sexual abuse and a lot of other things that go into that because for you it wasn’t that bad but you didn’t experience that but like i said no no no but imagine being somebody that’s never been touch in that way yeah in that way and that is your exposure to a sexual feeling as an individual yeah like like i said oh that i just want to say that that didn’t happen at central to my knowledge but i i’ve heard stories of other football well just sports in general as like i said before hazing is was a much bigger part of that environment i think it’s interesting though that you had said that that was the experience of that one kid yeah but to you yeah that wasn’t as bad as what you know could would what would basically be worse than that like you know that there’s worse than what that experience was for him um and i feel like that ties back to your question about like what is the experience for a woman and i think it’s generally like what is the experience for just any member who’s joining a greek organization uh what do you define as like being too much like is you know if you think that like with burning sands like they do workouts like is working out hazing like working out to me i feel like that’s that’d be lit yeah i’m getting my body fit and like i’m gonna be healthy and a healthy diet like that’s okay to me but that could be totally bad for someone else um and i feel like it could be seen as fat shaming to somebody exactly yeah so i feel like as you said it’s very subjective to like what do you define as like hazing and what is not hazing because literally anything can be hazing i can tell you jennifer your hair is ugly that’s hazing i think you can take it a step lower than that you could tell me jen your ponytail is higher than we would like it to be for the purposes of what we’re trying to do imagine imagine if somebody said that to you like if somebody really because that seems like some very when you’re in a community that gives you that indirect like not insult but just what they like suggestion oh you know and they’re they but they’re like hey um it’s not a big deal or anything but if you have your ponytail like that you can’t come to this event or you can’t be seen with us okay that’s so take it let’s take it to the example of a professional organization such as the one that we’re a part of kayla says to her interested member you can’t wear your hair like that because it doesn’t align with the image that we as an organization want to put out there right we as a professional organization say to students you can’t show up to an interview like that because it’s not an accurate representation of the professional profile yeah we want associated with our organization yeah are we not saying the same thing yes yeah but the thing is yes the thing is when you think about it like that you also have to think about who they’re where they’re trying to get these students as far as our organizations i’m not saying it’s different but what i’m saying is you also have to look at why they operate in that way you know sometimes when you think about hazing for a greek letter organization or sports team it seems totally unnecessary right it’s like there’s no reason for you to pants that kid in order to be on the team you know or there’s no reason for you to spank that guy with the paddle to be in the organization but when they’re telling you to wear to dress up for an interview that’s because wherever they’re gonna interview most likely is gonna want you to dress up or they’re gonna prefer you to dress up but i’m not saying it that’s because even for example paddling if you were to dive into the history of that and why that happened i guarantee okay but what i’m saying is nowadays no no no no but but see but see that’s that’s problematic in itself because you’re assuming that because of the way that it’s perceived now it didn’t serve a purpose no i’m not saying that what i’m saying is that people that do it now don’t all understand where it comes from and and that motivates them to do it right some people just do it because they’re totally same ideology behind dressing in a certain way for an interview for example i’ve worked both in the advertising industry and in the corporate space in the advertising industry i could show up with jeans and a t-shirt and still get the job okay as a creative you could show up like that as long as you’re working for the average job you can just show up in jeans and a t-shirt actually and and this is and this is where i beg to differ with you on the way that you dress it’s the way that you represent yourself but we know that because we’re in the professional space i’m saying that when you’re catering when you’re trying to teach somebody who’s not familiar with the professional corporate world because we work mostly corporate we like you wouldn’t tell them to dress nicely but nicely is subjective but nicely right now is suit and tie i’m saying yes for professional nice it’s something with a collar or something with the tie or something with the jacket business cash yeah that’s that’s what i’m saying i’m not saying that no i’m saying my statement is subjective if you told somebody dress nicely no objection but it’s i’m saying that of yes there’s subjectivity but what i’m saying is when you’re generally just picking a group of kids college students we’re speaking our organization specifically now when you’re getting a group of them together and you’re trying to show them how to transfer into the professional world you wouldn’t suggest that for the most part they should wear something business casual but see you would teach them what business casual means to you but this no not to me because this is for example daddy’s generation our father’s generation their business casual did not exist no because they used to wear a tie to go to the grocery store yeah so that’s what i mean the purpose behind why you tell people to do certain things but back then you didn’t have to tell somebody to dress for an interview like that because that was just the way they did it that’s my way they dressed yes but they dress like that for a certain reason especially as minorities so when you take things to consideration like you’re talking about paddling and things like that in greek letter organizations those things were started because they served a person but that’s not what i’m saying a lesson which now we look at as hazy but that’s not what i’m speaking to you yeah yeah please so um a little bit about what you were saying and right now what you said jen um that back in the days like you had to go to the grocery store with a suit and tie or like a a tie because you were a minority you had to show face that like you looked a certain way and you represented yourself a certain way um i feel like not that i’m shaming alpha um but i feel like that’s what greek organizations do as well they tell you or suggest not even tell but suggest i recommend you dress this way because i know from my experience this is going to get you to the position you are looking to get to so it there doesn’t just because you’re joining a greek organization doesn’t mean you have to be hazed what i feel like the organizations are doing in itself is just giving you that platform which i think is the most important part is that they’re giving you the platform and that segway to get to the professional world that you are looking for and honestly i don’t agree with business casual it’s very confusing to me yeah yeah you never know exactly you could be too casual or too business and it’s like there’s too hazy yeah so it’s recommended you dress professional because why you’re giving your best you’re putting your best self together to the real world every single day it’s funny how you say hazy yeah i’m gonna say something about it but i was like i’m gonna just let her keep going but no no you’re yeah i understood what you’re saying no it was just a nice connection yeah because it’s just i just feel like unfortunately a lot of the times you look at greek organizations and you think of the bad stuff yeah yeah but like it’s it’s tied to you literally think of greek organizations and you think of hazing like that’s not what we are we are a platform open to minorities and you know the majority you know because it’s just like they’re giving you the opportunity that you never thought you had yeah and i feel like coming from that same group and that same organization i see i’ve witnessed firsthand how how much you could benefit from it so it’s like i’m i’m on the opposite spectrum of y’all in the sense of like the title of the organization we’ve joined so it’s like i have to fight my own battle with what greek organizations are yeah but you have a stigma to fight against yeah yeah but i feel like it’s just there’s what the opportunity alpha has given you is the same that i’ve gotten yeah and the many that have joined greek organizations have gone as well it’s just honestly what you utilize out of the resources that you have right yeah so would you say because for example i’ve heard of student alpha chapters being very exclusive to a certain type of personality in order to get on the executive board that’s happening but the thing is alpha’s also not new but it’s growing it’s becoming more um if we were talking business-wise it’s becoming a public publicly traded stock right so now it’s becoming more available because i have no i had no idea what alpha was before you told me about it and a lot of people still don’t really know what alpha is even if it’s after school but what i’m saying is now that it’s growing it’s becoming they’re getting chapters all over the country they’re they’re getting their organizations are becoming bigger it’s going to become that greek letter type of size where people go to a school and they’re like hey i’m gonna join alpha because this side in the third but see that’s how so greek letter organizations have a fame as a collective of being we have greek letters to represent the name of our organization all right but they’re not new no they’re they’re they’ve been there for a minute but neither neither are organizations like alpha because there’s a matter of aarp and there’s other organizations that are membership based organizations that serve to advance your professional career in some kind yeah but alpha itself is newer right but latino organizations have been around for about the same time as alpha but they don’t but it’s not the same yeah right they don’t they serve but my point was they serve different communities but they still but they still have a certain stigma so where i was going with this was the stereotype behind the general community translates to the stigma behind the individual community so alpha being a professional organization in spaces that are membership based just similar to any other you know greek letter organization or other organization that’s membership based has a perspective and has a stereotype of being more socially accepted because they serve a certain purpose that is foundationally based in your career however greek-led organizations that started with the same similar mission of impacting a certain community because of the fame that they’ve gotten being associated to just that portion of their name that’s greek lettered has given them a fame that surpasses their mission in the public eye and has made them and because they serve more of a social aspect this is all in my opinion it’s given them an overshadowing perspective where people look at them as something of a negative or like have a negative connotation to them yeah but in all reality if you were to take the communities and looked at them as communities similar to what you just said they give you the same thing yeah yeah you’re just not wearing the greek letters on your channel yeah yeah and i gotta i do have to give a shout out to lul because the the from that fraternity the the dudes that i know professionally at least from their their what they do um as career-wise and where they how they treat the people around them like publicly because obviously i can only go off i don’t know their their private lives but that organization just interrupt just so that everyone knows that’s lambda oops non-lambda yeah yeah sorry that it’s the only fraternity that i’m really personally familiar with but the the the men that they produce out of there are very um because they’re latinos you know they’re for all the dudes that i know and they’re latino they they they give that um corporate education or that that space for them to learn how to get into the professional world you know it’s not just a bunch of you know dominican cuban puerto rican el salvadorian mexican guys getting together and partying or it’s not just a bunch of them getting together and being together because they’re hispanic or latino like it’s them getting together in order to learn how to be better members of society what whether what they do personally i can’t really speak to privately because every person is different but there are there are i just want to identify that there are greek organizations out there for the most part and most of them do have that better side but as people we are we’re always attracted to the negatives you know we’re always attracted to you know the hazing and what they do or the news stories or the partying and what they show us in movies but these greek these greek organizations do have higher purposes they do have a reason to exist right but it goes and i think if we dive deep into that we get to the point of community and giving a community to those that don’t have a community because i guarantee you if you went back to the founders of organizations and i think um kayla’s specifically such an interesting organization because while they’re part of a latino coalition they serve so many different ethnicities like most of my close friends are part of two organizations yours being one of them and understanding how they differ and the people that they attract is very important because community is subject to the people in it right but the people in it build the impact right and i think understanding how they work together is what shifts that nuance of are we going to focus on the negative for example organizations such as greek letter that are social focused and organizations such as alpha that are predominantly and almost entirely professionally folks yeah but that you know that that is a whole another thing to unpack because um historically i’m talking back to when we were living as nomads and blah blah humans had to be able to deter what i would have been a gatherer gatherer oh my god but um so going back to that time period you had to be focused on the negatives you know you had to know as a gatherer ma’am you had to know what plants were gonna kill you you know what what grains were gonna kill you what water you could drink and as a hunter you had to know what animals you could handle what animals were what predators were after you you know with the with with with that lifestyle and this is you know science based i’m not just making this up with that lifestyle humans are naturally wired to be looking for the negative in something because of survival you know we’re we’re looking for the thing that we have to run away from we’re looking for the thing that’s going to be our downfall so now that we’re in a world um somewhat peaceful compared to then it’s peaceful like people from back then would be like oh you are living the life um we have to start making that shift into identifying the positives identifying what we have to build on identifying what we can just accept as good you know yeah so it’s you know that’s a whole a whole thing to impact though but we’re you know we’re getting we’re getting to that time so the any any final remarks that y’all want to make i kind of want to know if kayla would be a hunter or a gatherer i feel like she would be a gatherer yeah i think i would be a guy why i am a softy at heart so i can go out and actively kill animals yeah but i can make sure we get all the fruits all the herbs and all of that and we’ll be set um yeah what about you me mm-hmm um dang i don’t even know if i would be either for real i might be i might be the organizer was that it was that like a navigator maybe maybe a navigator or maybe the bro it’s a hunter manager you’re either applying things you can’t oversee me yeah you know just because just because um like kayla i don’t know if i could find myself going out and killing animals but that’s also because we live in a society where that’s not necessary right so if that were necessary maybe i would be like yeah whatever you know this is part of life but um i couldn’t be a gatherer because i feel like i would be really annoyed yeah you know i it would be just such a tedious thing i would want i would i would i wouldn’t do the best job that i could so i think if there was a position where i had to kind of allocate the necessary food supply well where it was like this man just brought in a sabretooth tiger that he killed you know i’m like okay we’re gonna use this for that we’re gonna use this for this we’re gonna store this for like you know a couple a couple maybe a day or two just so that we have something for tomorrow just in case he can’t bring nothing back and then caleb brings in the the blueberries and she brings in a couple strawberries maybe a coconut or two maybe some herbs i’m like okay we don’t really need all of it right now but for this you know so i i don’t know if that made sense but i feel like if there was i would just like to point out that you can’t get strawberries and coconut from the same place you can’t get blueberries and coconuts from okay anyway but like i just would like to say that this is a prime example of like we’re utilizing our members to benefit our community yeah yeah yeah that’s how it is you know everybody serves everybody yo for everyone listening out there you serve a purpose in your community all right if you don’t know what it is all you got to do do some experimenting do some talk to the people around you and figure out how you can better serve your community i also think you need to have more confidence in yourself and your ability because a lot of times we’re serving our communities we’re doing the good work where you know putting our skills and our strengths at work but we don’t give ourselves the credit to see we don’t give ourselves the impact that we’re making i don’t think we give ourselves the the appropriate credit cause there’s some people that give themselves credit for things that they should be doing anyways or things that they really didn’t do but i also think on the other side there’s those people that you know could count their blessings a little more often and they should because it helps it helps you get up and you know get up in the morning and keep doing what you’re doing and to touch base on that i feel like if you are questioning it i think it’s really important to reach out to those people like hey you know am i doing the best that i can do you have any insight can you give me guidance yes because that’s what we’re all here for i may know something that you don’t and that might really benefit you yeah and you as well and you won’t know that until you ask ask yes yeah ask and you shall receive to that point i think it’s very important to always note that no matter where you are in your journey of life no matter where you sit on your journey of life you are always a student of life okay nobody is ever a teacher of life we’re all students we’re all learning we are yeah you could be the dictator or the president of the world i guarantee you you’re gonna wake up one morning and realize there is something that you don’t know yeah there’s um there’s a greek philosopher i forget who it was honestly but there he said that it was foolish to think that you know everything the why it’s something like the wise man knows he knows nothing right there’s a whole quote to that and somebody that i looked up to as a child i’m not even gonna lie with solomon in the bible because this man god presented to him that he could have whatever he asked for basically he was like hey listen manifest you know i wanna he god said i wanna bless you you know what do you want and he didn’t say i want to be rich or famous he didn’t say i want to be the most powerful ruler i want to be the greatest king no he was like just make me wise enough to lead your people give me the wisdom i need to lead your community and god was like bet he’s like i’m going to make you the wisest man on the planet and i’m and then he was like uh the thing is also when you ask for something that is actually i guess um beneficial to the people around you you get more than what you ask for because you get what you you know you get what you give out it’s that whole karma thing god was like yo i’m gonna give you that wisdom but i’m also gonna give you the riches and the power that you need in order to make that happen you know it was like an added bonus but at the same time you realize that yes he asked for wisdom but now he needs something to put that in action and so that’s that whole thing is something that really molded how i operate i think it’s important to understand wisdom from the perspective of the value that it adds to not just your life but everybody else’s life because sometimes we want to be wise to get ourselves out of a situation yeah or to elevate ourselves not realizing that the wisdom that you have maybe for someone else yeah exactly actually we were just talking about this we were we were we were just talking about it uh kayla i need last remarks thank you for having me i really appreciate it thank you thank you jennifer for being on definitely look forward to making some some more content with y’all yeah so thank you you know this has been another episode of the sandbar uh let me know you know for people out there what is your community you know what do you think a community is what do you what do you feel like your impact on your community is or what do you want to how do you want to make an impact in your community let us know you know i’m gonna put kayla’s information i’m gonna put jennifer’s information and i hope y’all check out kayla’s podcast when it drops because we’re manifesting that sure when you when you get your podcast out there i’m gonna have you back on here and we’re gonna talk about that we don’t we’re manifesting that because we believe in kayla’s ability to flourish and grow because she’s just like for those that don’t know caleb personally some of y’all that are listening to this may but if you don’t know kayla personally she’s okay yeah honestly if i had to pick my friends in ratings she would be top five i’m not gonna list them all cause i have a lot of amazing friends but like definitely one of the most amazing people that i’ve met in life so y’all need to check out her podcast when it pops bruh you.