Drake Johnson (NLC Maryland 2025) – First Gen, Front Row

In 2018, a former Texas State Board of Education official publicly questioned whether Drake Johnson’s Harvard acceptance was based on “merit or quota.”

Drake was valedictorian. Student body president. World champion cheerleader. National Honor Society. He listed his accomplishments and kept moving.

The moment was a window into something much larger. Black students have faced racialized scrutiny over academic achievement for as long as American higher education has existed, questioned, second-guessed, and held to standards of proof their peers never had to meet.

Drake graduated from Harvard with a double concentration in Government and African & African American Studies. A first-generation college student and member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., he went on to join the Office of Governor Wes Moore, one of the most watched governors in the country, starting as a Policy Assistant and working his way up to Special Assistant before taking on his current role as Governor’s Liaison to the Board of Public Works.

Some people spend entire careers trying to get into rooms like that. Drake got there before 30.

Rashad Dudley (NLC Detroit 2025) – Building Detroit One Boy at a Time

Detroit is a city where 82% of public school students are Black, yet only 13% of Michigan’s mandated K–12 curricula includes meaningful Black historical content outside of slavery and civil rights. In a city with that much Black brilliance, that gap is a policy choice.

Rashad Dudley is doing something about it.

As founder of Black Boys Empowered, he builds opportunities for minority youth in Detroit through programs rooted in restorative justice, education, and real community investment. He holds a bachelor’s from Morehouse College and a master’s in Youth Development Leadership from Clemson, and is currently pursuing an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Wayne State while running a nonprofit simultaneously.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, he wrote a book.

Dear Black Boy: A Guide to Self-Empowerment and Building Healthy Habits speaks directly to Black boys ages 8 to 14, on identity, resilience, self-love, navigating peer pressure, and finding footing in a world that makes that harder than it should be. It’s rated 4.7 stars on Amazon. That number represents something real: a generation of young readers and the adults in their lives responding to a book that finally speaks directly to them.

At a time when Black children are being actively erased from curriculum nationwide, Rashad is putting the right words into their hands.

Regan Farley (NLC Atlanta 2025) -Running the Room They Said Wasn’t Hers

Women hold nearly 73% of all PR management jobs. Black women hold 10.7% of those roles. In an industry where women already run the show, Black women are still largely locked out of the top. Regan Farley has been doing this work since 2011 anyway.

As CEO of the Regan Farley Agency and co-founder of The Kredo Group, she’s worked with the NAACP, UNCF, Harvard University, Def Jam Records, Fox Broadcasting, NBCUniversal, CBS Television, and more. A career built with consistency, strategy, and forward motion across 14 years.

The first Black woman to own a PR firm in America was Inez Kaiser, who opened her doors in 1957 with $13,000 in debt and a one-line resignation letter from her teaching job. It took that kind of audacity to crack the industry open. Regan carries that same energy forward. She created Hustle Sold Separ8ly, a motivational lifestyle brand. She contributes to BlackEnterprise.com. She partners with the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles & New York, and she publicly shared her own experience with epilepsy following a serious car accident in 2016.

In a field that has historically asked Black professionals to shrink, Regan Farley has spent 14 years taking up exactly as much space as she deserves.

Kode Ransom (NLC Tulsa 2025) – The Man Who Keeps Greenwood Alive

Before it was destroyed, Black Wall Street was exactly what the name suggests. The Greenwood District in Tulsa was one of the most prominent concentrations of African American businesses in the United States in the early 20th century, with hotels, law offices, movie theaters, newspapers, beauty salons, a hospital, and a library. A fully functioning, self-sufficient economy built by Black people who turned segregation into sovereignty.

On May 31 and June 1, 1921, white mobs attacked the Greenwood District, burning 35 blocks, destroying 190 businesses, and leaving 10,000 people homeless. No insurance claims were honored. No one was ever prosecuted. For decades, the massacre was barely mentioned in Oklahoma schools.

Kode Ransom is a historian, storyteller, and cultural educator from North Tulsa who leads walking tours through the Greenwood District and presents on the legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre with a depth that goes far beyond what’s in any textbook. He walks people through the actual ground where it happened. His work centers on preservation with purpose, the kind of truth that changes how people understand themselves and what they believe is possible.

Within ten years of the massacre, surviving residents rebuilt much of the district, despite the opposition of white political and business leaders and punitive rezoning laws enacted to prevent reconstruction. Kode carries that same spirit forward. Greenwood was rebuilt once by people who refused to let it disappear. He makes sure the world knows it.