Dorothy ended up in a twister, was knocked upside the head by a window shutter, and ended up in, Oz. Me, well, I was a spoken word poet, and photography student working at a small ad agency in my hometown of St. Louis, MO, and one day while assisting photographer, Pete Jones at Studio 612, I landed on a page of the PDN Magazine advertising this place called Miami Ad School. I took that page flip as a sign so I applied to Miami Ad School, flew down for my interview and was accepted. And not one house had to be dropped on a witch in the process. September 2002, I arrived at the doors of Miami Ad School, after driving from St. Louis, MO to South Beach Miami, FL in a packed '85 Toyota Tercel which had no radio, no air condition, and I with no mobile phone, and a plan to live in my car until I found a job—a poet who became a photographer that got this bright idea to be an Art Director. Then mid-November of that same year, this handsome guy casually approached me at a poetry set I'd just performed at on South Beach, asked me what I was doing that coming Friday, and if I would open up for Dr. Cornell West. I accepted then offer, and that same day I was discovered by an HBO executive, and in the winter of 2003, I took some time off from school to be the poet on the Unchained Memories Tour, hosted by HBO. Upon my return from tour and an honest talk with one of my teachers at MAS, I switched my concentration to Copywriting, for obvious reasons. Fast-forward to graduation day, March 2005, here I was free styling about how I didn't get into the game of advertising to sell folks a car with a song. At that moment, I decided I was going to be a storyteller, and I think I'm doing a awesome job at sticking to that mission thus far. When it comes to my work in advertising my mission is to pull a heartstring or few, provoke people to think, engage, act, and remember. In my career, I've been awarded a Silver 2008 Hugo Award for "History In The Making," Verizon, Cinema/Online spot featuring J. Ivy and an international honor from TED Ads Worth Spreading in 2011 for "The Clock Is Ticking," The Girl Effect, Nike Foundation. Throughout the years, its been great to work on brands like, Verizon, McDonald's, Toyota, Olay, Pampers, Allstate, The Portland Jazz Festival, Nike, Nike Foundation, Target, Coca-Cola, The American Indian College Fund, Earthjustice, Barefoot College, and 10,000 Degrees, and those years were made even better by the outstanding talent I got the opportunity to work with. While awards are great, and working on cool clients is always a plus, one of the most rewarding experiences of my advertising career was to serve as Curriculum and Creative Director of The Marcus Graham Project, from 2008-2013. What is all this for if we don't train up the next generation of communication arts leaders and thinkers, right?