Steven "TheProf" Cleveland: Using Storytelling to Change Narratives
Your Brand Amplified
Bleav + Anika Jackson
5.0 • 132 Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2021
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Steven was born into poverty in Birmingham, Alabama. His family eventually settled in the Bay Area, specifically Richmond, CA, which at the time had more murders per capita than anywhere else in the country. From these humble beginnings, Steven graduated from UCLA & USC in Los Angeles, the first of his family to go to college. College transformed Steven’s world-view by opening him up to the many possibilities that are available but when he returned home to his “ghetto”, he noticed a different message of hopelessness. He wanted to change that message by using film and education. After cutting his teeth in production on music videos for such artists as Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, and Mandy Moore, he was fortunate enough to executive produce commercials & music videos for the likes of the Old Lahaina Luau Company and Grammy Award Nominee Ledisi. He then began to develop a media-based service learning curriculum aimed at producing high-quality media by pairing professionals with youth. The marriage of cultural exploration via the arts served him well in both of his roles, i.e. filmmaker & educator. At Cal State University, East Bay, Steven is a Black Studies Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies, a Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) Professor in the Department of History and an African American (AFAM) Faculty Fellow at the Diversity and Inclusion Student Center (DISC). Currently, Steven resides in Los Angeles where he wakes up every day working to infuse Black Humanity into a variety of media projects.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Your Brand Amplified, the podcast where we interview marketers, publicists, and |
| 0:06.5 | brands to learn their stories, what makes them tick, and tips and tricks that make a difference. |
| 0:12.8 | Welcome back to another week of your brand amplified |
| 0:15.7 | and I am thrilled to be here with Sarah O'Bare. |
| 0:19.4 | Sarah, welcome to the program. |
| 0:21.5 | Thank you, thanks for having me. |
| 0:23.0 | Absolutely. |
| 0:24.0 | So you and I met and connected through a project that I have the delight and pleasure to work on with you |
| 0:31.0 | called Black Excellence. Before we get into your current work, |
| 0:35.0 | I'd love to hear your story. |
| 0:38.0 | Sure, gosh, where do I begin? |
| 0:41.0 | I was born and raised in Ingoa, California, which is a city within Los Angeles County to two very hardworking parents and a slew of brothers and sisters. There's about 11 of us total. |
| 0:55.4 | Oh my gosh. And yeah, you can imagine how holidays were. |
| 1:00.8 | So while my parents were days were just very hard working. They didn't have the opportunity to complete a formal |
| 1:09.7 | college education that they definitely wanted that for their children. So they're very highly |
| 1:16.1 | motivated, very driven, and they obtain success in other ways, of course. But so for me, I set out on my educational journey, but that same fire that they had and same motivation to succeed. So right after I left high school or finished high school I came to the Bay Area and early into my |
| 1:37.9 | college career however I became a parent so so here I am this kid who set out without this great ambition, a black woman, first generation college student and now a young mother, and just not sure how my story was going to unfold. I was afraid of becoming a statistic. |
| 1:59.6 | I was thinking I was going to have to quit school and go back and all the fears that someone at that age would have and at that stage in life. |
| 2:08.0 | But during that time that I was in college, I actually had crossed paths with who would be my supervisor who's also a black woman |
| 2:15.8 | the college employee who ended up being so much more than a supervisor. |
| 2:21.2 | She of course she was in an on-campus job that I worked on in a career center and so she really just turned into a mentor and a mother figure and her and her family just became family to me and my child. And so that kind of catapulted me into where I am today in the field of higher education. A lot of that shaped not just my |
| 2:45.2 | educational career but my character. I had you know amazing faculty that helped me |
... |
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