A Journey of Resilience and Community Q & A with Ahmad
In this exclusive interview with Ahmad, we delve into a remarkable journey of redemption, reinvention, and the unwavering pursuit of education and community. Ahmad's story is a testament to the power of second chances, the transformative impact of support, and the endless possibilities that lie ahead when one commits to self-improvement and giving back.
Born and raised in Boston, Ahmad's life took an unexpected turn when, at the age of 16, he found himself entangled in a world of crime and violence, leading to his involvement in a homicide. Incarcerated at a young age, Ahmad faced the daunting challenges of adapting to a new reality behind bars, grappling with guilt, and seeking a path towards redemption.
During his time in prison, Ahmad discovered a deep passion for education and self-improvement. He pursued his studies relentlessly, ultimately earning a place at Columbia University School of General Studies. But Ahmad's journey didn't stop there. Upon his release, he co-founded "A Bright Future," an organization dedicated to empowering young black and brown boys through tennis, mentorship, and identity training.
Ahmad's transition from prison to a prestigious Ivy League institution wasn't without its challenges. He candidly shared his experiences of adjusting to life in New York City, navigating the bureaucracy of parole, and finding his voice within the Columbia University community.
However, what shines through in Ahmad's story is his unwavering determination and commitment to personal growth and helping others. He recognizes the profound impact of support, having received it himself, and he's now dedicated to being a source of inspiration and empowerment for the next generation.
Mychal:
I just want to make sure that it's good. So yeah, tell me who you are and how did you get here?
Ahmad:
Right, so my name is Ahmad Bright. I'm 34 years old and I've been in New York City now for, I think, just over three weeks. I came to New York to pursue higher ed. I transferred from a small communications college in Boston to Columbia University School of General Studies. And how I specifically got to Ignacio House was in fact where someone who was already kind of a part of the Thrive for Life community, or in fact already a resident of the Ignacio House, who had attended a coding bootcamp with me. He told me he knew that I had gotten into Columbia and that I was looking for housing options while I was studying. And then he introduced me to Ignacio House and the Thrive For Life community. And when I heard about it and heard just all the support they offer and the community building that happens here, I thought that it would be a great fit. So I applied and was fortunate enough to be selected.
Mychal:
Glad that connections were made! So tell me a little bit about yourself, where you're from, a little bit about your life and what's been going on
Ahmad:
Okay. Yeah, so I was born in Boston, Massachusetts and had been living there my entire life. My mother's side has been in Boston for a few generations. And my father's side is actually from the South. He was born in Nashville, but had come from a rural town in Alabama. They met after he had come up to Massachusetts for school. My father wasn't really around in my life, I would say, past seven or eight years old. I would see him infrequently, and by the time I was eight or nine, he had moved back to Nashville with his wife, who was not my mom and my three siblings. So at that point, I was kind of just with my mom, with my two older brothers from her previous relationship. And we were living in the inner city of Boston, as a struggling working class family, and really just trying to find our way. But one thing that, out of all of those challenging circumstances, one I would say is a crucial or life-changing for me, was the fact that my mom very much valued education. She thought that was something that she had learned from her parents and wanted to pass it on to us. So she found a way to get all of us, all three of her sons, into private schools from the time we were young. So even though we were, like I said, struggling financially and in the inner city where there had been lots of crime, lots of drugs, she found a way to enroll us in private school from the time I was in kindergarten. So from the time I was very young, I found myself in two different worlds, essentially: one where I was in the inner city, among these hardships and crime and poverty; but then at the same time, I would go to school every day and be around kids who were very well off and who didn't look like me and didn't have similar backgrounds and experiences as me. So that kind of duality, I think, has definitely influenced me and shaped me throughout my life. And I feel like it's given me a lot of gifts, but at the same time, it has also come with a lot of challenges because as far as fitting in and having a sense of belonging, I kind of struggled. I mean, I feel like in some ways, even now looking at myself as a formerly incarcerated person who grew up essentially from the time he was 17 to 32 in prison, to now being a student full-time student at Columbia University, it's almost like a continuation of that same story, which is…I don't know. I don't know how to think about that.
Mychal:
What were your ways of coping with that, with all of that?
Ahmad:
So one thing I didn't mention is in addition to school and where I lived, by the time I was five or four or five, I had started playing tennis. My mom got me into tennis. It was something that my oldest brother had done years before me. He's nine years older than I am. So he had already kind of been on this path of playing tennis at the only black tennis club in our neighborhood in Boston at that time. So playing tennis, although it's this kind of an elite, often white sport, my early experiences playing tennis was very much so a safe place for me, where I could learn a sport that I eventually fell in love with. And over time, I had developed a community of peers who in a lot of ways reflected that duality or those struggles with the duality that I was talking about before, because a lot of my peers in that space came from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. So even in that space, I was still maybe someone who came from more of a socioeconomically challenged family within that group. Even so, it was the one place that I really felt like I belonged to a community as a kid. So that was one way I coped. Eventually, I got really good at tennis. By the time I was 11 or 12, I had got recruited by this big hotshot coach in the region. So as a result of that, I ended up leaving the club in the inner city that I grew up in and started training at a predominantly white club where the level of play was higher. But at the same time, I lost that kind of community. I had grown to probably rely on it subconsciously to some extent. But nonetheless, I got really good at tennis. I became one of the top players in New England, and earned a spot in the top 30 in the country from my age group. So I was traveling all around the country, competing, doing all that. I was in love with tennis at the time. But around 13 or 14, probably just as I was getting ready to go to high school, I started having this identity crisis, if you will, because my middle brother, unlike my oldest brother, was kind of on the straight and narrow path. My middle brother had gotten involved with street culture, involved with drug culture, drug dealing and stuff like that. So even just within my household, I had those two different influences, those two different kinds of influences. I looked up to both of them, given how much older they were than me and how tight knit my family is. So like I said, around 13 or 14, my oldest brother wasn't really around as much. He had moved to DC and my middle brother had more of a direct day to day influence on me. And I kind of gravitated towards the things that he was doing, which was getting involved in street culture and drug dealing and stuff like that.
At around 14 years old, freshman year I was in prep school, but at the same time, by that point I had basically rejected the whole prep school and tennis thing. That’s when I started getting involved in a life that was tied up in street culture and rapping and stuff like that. So it's again, that whole kind of duality that just did a number on me. That ultimately led me to find myself in a situation where as a way to protect some sort of perceived honor in the streets, I got involved in a retaliatory crime motivated by revenge. As I said, my brother was heavily involved in drug dealing and I was kind of starting to flirt with it. Someone we knew had a friend that had stolen both money and jewelry. He had broken into my brother's apartment, stolen money and jewelry from him. And once we discovered that, then there was just like this “revenge mindset” that set in. He was 21 at the time, I was 16. We weren’t thinking rationally; we were just thinking stupidly to put it simply. So yeah, I found myself involved in the revenge plot, and that was the worst decision of my life. So literally that moment where I was involved in that crime, it totally changed the whole trajectory of my life. Even though, like I said, I was in this stage where I was flirting with criminality. But even so, I was still between two worlds, looking at schools while also finding myself pulled in another direction. For example, when my warrant came out, I was in Atlanta visiting colleges. Literally, when I learned that I had a warrant out for my arreest, I was in Atlanta visiting colleges. I was 17 at this point.
When the warrant came up, my oldest brother came down to Atlanta to then ferry me back up via Greyhound to Boston. My mother was so worried, as I had just turned 17 a month before, and literally my whole life changed. This path of prep school and tennis suddenly turned into facing prison time. I was the youngest kid on my cellblock for probably the first year or so of incarceration. And yeah, I just literally got introduced to a whole new world and quickly had to adapt to that world and find a way to survive and ultimately try to thrive in that world.
Mychal:
What were some of the things you struggled with?
Ahmad:
While inside? Initially, I struggled with just “the code,” understanding the cues and codes of prison. So I made mistakes early on where I was thinking people were cooler with me than they were. But that was just one thing. As far as that mattered, just really kind of coming to terms with what I had done and what I had been involved with was something that I struggled with for a while. I had a tough time figuring out how I was going to make a life for myself while inside. Even though I was looking at life in prison without the possibility of parole, I always knew I was going to come home. And so my mind had become centered on how I could give myself every advantage that I could while incarcerated. By advantage, I mean: how can I just work on myself so that when I come home, the gap between where I need to be versus where I was be as small as possible?
Mychal:
So take us to when you came home, what was that like?
Ahmad:
Yeah, I mean, so coming home was kind of a seesaw of emotions. Lots of highs, obviously, just to be reunited with family. The simple pleasures of just being able to walk around and be free, not having to constantly be monitored by cameras and having to stand for count, simple things like that. But at the same time, it was really good to be able to resume my studies, specifically my college studies at Emerson College. While inside, I had started my college education through the Emerson Prison Initiative. But because the last three years of my sentence was in a minimum security facility, they did not offer that program. I was literally in this kind of education desert for my last three years. So I was very happy to be able to go home and resume my studies with them on their Boston campus, this time as a regular matriculating student. But beyond all that, it's very much been a challenge for me personally to kind of get acclimated to society in a lot of ways. I had always kind of struggled with sharing about myself and struggled with feelings of shame and inadequacy. And I feel like, in a lot of ways, in some of the spaces I find myself in since I've been home, that kind of gets exacerbated, those feelings of inadequacy or shame.
Mychal:
Fast forward to, let's say five years from now, what are you working toward? What would be the idea of the right position?
Ahmad:
So, fast forward five years from now, I would hope to be a Columbia grad with my BA. Another thing is to continue. I would hope that the organization that I co-founded, Bright Future (which is a youth, sports-centered organization that provides financial support, mentorship, and fraternity to young, black and brown boys in Boston who are navigating the world of tennis) continues to grow. We've been around for four years now. I would hope by then that the organization, which is doing great now, is still doing well and perhaps even bigger. This has fueled my interest in entrepreneurship and I'm still kind of in the process of figuring out in my head what that looks like long term. But, I hope to get through school and maybe through internships and mentors, be able to acquire the skills and exposure to provide a product or a service that can help people and at the same time be of value for people in the market.
Mychal:
What inspired you, how did that come about? A Bright Future?
Ahmad:
So yeah, a bright future. I didn't choose the name by the way. I always like to point that out. But it really was born out of conversations with my mom. She and I would have these conversations while I was incarcerated, specifically about my time in tennis, because it was really when I decided to leave tennis that the downward spiral kind of accelerated. When I decided to leave tennis, I really started to dive head first into street and drug culture. So she and I would think: what would you have needed at that time to have kept you in tennis? And really the answer to that is what became the building blocks of Bright Future.
Mychal:
Tell me a little bit more about it. Does it work?
Ahmad:
Does it work? Yeah,for sure. So currently we have a board of seven now. We just added a board member recently, and we have one full-time employee: my oldest brother Chad. It's kind of like a family operation. He's our first full-time employee. And then we also have a part-time employee.
We have four pillars of the program. One is financial sponsorships. So we have about eight or nine young boys ranging in age from seven to 14, who provide financial support for them, including private lessons, group lessons, tennis clinics, sports, tennis equipment, which includes rackets, clothing, et cetera. So that's the financial support piece. Then we also have the mentorship piece. We have a core group of about, I'd say seven to nine mentors, all of whom are Boston-based men of color, who actually grew up, for the most part, in the same tennis club that I referred to earlier. So we have a strong network of black and brown role models who've come up through the same places that these kids are coming up, and all of them are doing well for themselves. So having them there as an example to the boys of what they could become is really important. The interactions between the mentors and the kids is something that I feel, but something that I know that both sides really do value.
So that's the second component. The third component is we have my mom, myself and my brother Chad that crafted a curriculum focused on identity training. We had the opportunity to learn from a Boston public school educator, who helped us put it together and set some parameters around what we were doing. It focuses on identity training that helps the boys be able to think critically about race identity, who they are and where they fit in, and how their race and identity exist in the social context that they are living in. We try to package it in a way that’s digestible for a group of seven to 14 year olds. But at its core, that's what we're trying to do. Just give 'em the tools to be able to think critically about their identity, about their race and the social context in which they fund themselves. That process follows our eight week curriculum. And the last component is just fraternity. There's not really too much structure to that. We just more or less feel like everything that we're doing is promoting this sense of brotherhood and fraternity amongst the mentors, amongst the students. That even extends to the board members. We often have outings and stuff like that where we go bowling or go to the movies and stuff like that. But we're also just trying to really foster an environment in which these kids are going to be friends with each other over the long haul; lifetime friends that have forged lifetime bonds with the organization.
Mychal:
So, you're not just providing a service or support, you’re cultivating community relationships.
Ahmad:
Absolutely. That was, like I said, what I really dreamed about doing. It's like the whole idea of community and belonging was always at the forefront for me because I know just through my own lived experience that that was literally the only time when I was playing tennis in the inner city at the club that I grew up in. That was probably the only time where I didn’t need to question whether or not I belonged, if that makes sense. So we try to help recreate that energy for this next generation coming up.
Mychal:
And how would you describe what you're after? What do you want? What's your mission? Post-incarceration? Given everything that you laid out, you had this potential, you had this interest in tennis, and it could have been this kind of pathway somewhere, but then as life twisted, you got shifted to a different direction, and now it seems like you're back on track. But you're here and you are on your path, but what's motivating you? What's driving you, and how is that connected to your overall vision of what you want is about some change in the world?
Ahmad:
Right. I mean, it's funny you said that, right? Because I mean, I feel like in a lot of ways, I don't know, I feel like in a lot of ways, if one is true, the other one it follows kind of, I don't know. I mean, I definitely see myself on this track of just self-improvement, and I feel like that's going to be a lifelong thing for me. I do feel though that the extent to which I'm able to improve myself is going to determine how big of an impact I have. So it's like, could that be a case where it's like, yeah, you're doing something life changing in whatever arena, or is it something that is having a smaller impact? I can say that I know at this current point, I don't have a limit on the potential impact I would like to have.
Mychal:
It's not like a definitive point in your journey, right? It's lifelong.
Ahmad:
Exactly.
Mychal:
But you do know at the center of it, you care about getting better.
Ahmad:
Yes, getting better…being open to growth. And for me, it can be measured by how big of an impact I have and how much I can help others. For me, part of getting better is inextricably tied to the extent to which you're able to help others.
Mychal:
Why is helping others so important to you?
Ahmad:
Maybe because I'm someone who always wanted help or felt like I needed it. I'm someone who knows firsthand how impactful help can be to someone's life because of the help that I have received throughout my life. And at the same time, I know firsthand how more or less how devastating it can be for someone who faces challenges and doesn't have help and doesn't have access to help.
Mychal:
Yeah, I get that! That feeling of not having a need to and not getting it is what animates you now once you're on the other side, because you know what that's like. So it kind of motivates you to want to go be that help for somebody else.
Ahmad:
Because the thing, it's so, it's so easy to just only focus on the positive, and if you're someone who maybe had a lot of positive things going on for you, it doesn't mean that you still can't be derailed, or that you have other things or other issues that you need help with. You need certain things reinforced. I'm getting that help through different ways just by being in those spaces. But at the same time, I'm also a kid from a single parent household who, like I said, struggled with this kind of inferiority complex, and at times it felt like no one was there talking to me about this. I wasn't getting therapy, I wasn't speaking about it. I didn't even have the language as a kid to speak about it. So at some point, it takes over who you are. You just have these layers and layers of trauma that you don't even recognize as trauma because it set in at a point before you were even able to intellectually understand what was happening.
Mychal:
What year did that shift from tennis to street culture happen?
Ahmad:
What is the actual calendar year? Yeah, so I was probably, like I said, probably 2003, 0r 2004…I'll say 2004. Actually, I got arrested in 2006, then I got released in December, 2021.
Mychal:
And you started A Bright Future?
Ahmad:
In 2019. While I was still incarcerated.
Mychal:
Okay. Now, 2024, you are here with Ignacio House. How is that going for you so far?
Ahmad:
I think I've said it to Father Zach before, maybe a couple other people who live here, but it's just like…I feel like I couldn't have landed in a better spot given my circumstances. And beyond that, the supportive community that exists amongst the residents of Ignacio House and just the broader community of Thrive for Life have really been a source of inspiration for me. I would say the mutual support that exists in this community is such that I know I'm among good energy because I know two that I'm amongst people who genuinely want to see me succeed, genuinely care about my wellbeing. Just to be in that sort of environment day to day as a default, especially as I'm coming to New York from a new city, is honestly a godsend.
Mychal:
Talk to me about some of the challenges adjusting to life in the city, adjusting to community, and adjusting to the university at Columbia.
Ahmad:
So challenges. I mean, anytime you move to a new place, well, I don't know anytime, but for me, moving to New York in a lot of ways was a relief. It was a place where I could start over and leave my past behind, so to speak. So I would say in terms of the city, I don't really feel like I've had any hardcore challenges so far. I mean, just besides maybe dealing with parole and navigating that kind of institution. So that's probably been a bit of learning process for me. And the other challenge would still just be bureaucracy, maybe just dealing with HRA and stuff like that. But that's all minor stuff. In terms of school, I've always been someone who's kind of a little reserved. So even now, just with the first week of classes coming to an end, I still have to find myself, find my voice, find my community in that space. But it's something that I have to just kind of gradually. And I know that I recognize that I have to do it because I want to do it.
So that, I would say, is probably the closest thing to a challenge: getting fully immersed and acclimated to the Columbia community.
Mychal:
What are you excited about being at Columbia? What are you most excited about studying at Columbia?
Ahmad:
I've been telling people I'm deciding between two different majors. Let's say this semester or next semester, I might end up just double majoring, but I want to either pursue economics or political science. So I'm really looking forward to studying any courses that are in those two disciplines.
As Ahmad embarks on his academic journey at Columbia, he dreams of becoming an entrepreneur, leaving a lasting impact on his community, and continuing to bridge the gap between opportunity and adversity. His journey from incarceration to inspiration is a testament to the transformative power of resilience, community, and the relentless pursuit of self-improvement.
Stay tuned for more updates on Ahmad Bright's journey and the incredible work he's doing with "Bright Future." His story is a reminder that no matter where life takes us, it's never too late to strive for a brighter future and make a positive impact on the world.