#124 Reshaping Capitalism: A New Mindset for Economic Liberation

In this thought-provoking episode of Mindset Mastery Moments, Dr. Alisa Whyte sits down with Dr. Rachel Laryea, a Yale-trained PhD anthropologist and founder of Kelewele, whose work challenges the dominant narratives of wealth, power, and capitalism. Together, they explore what it truly means to reshape economic systems in a way that honors culture, community, and collective well-being.

Dr. Laryea shares her remarkable journey from Wall Street’s fast-paced financial sector to the deeply intentional world of anthropology and ethical entrepreneurship. She reveals how her Ghanaian heritage, academic research, and lived experiences inspired her to create a business rooted in community-centered economics — one that redefines success beyond individual achievement.

Throughout their powerful conversation, Dr. Alisa and Dr. Laryea unpack the complex relationship between race, wealth, and access, highlighting the ways traditional capitalist frameworks often leave marginalized communities behind. They examine how entrepreneurship can become a tool for liberation when built with cultural integrity, shared value, and an abundance mindset at its core.

This episode illuminates the importance of shifting from scarcity to collaboration, from extraction to empowerment, and from individual gain to collective advancement. Dr. Laryea offers a refreshing, necessary perspective on what ethical entrepreneurship looks like — and why cultural roots can be a catalyst for economic innovation.

🌐 Connect with Dr. Rachel Laryea

Instagram — Dr. Laryea
🔗 https://www.instagram.com/drlaryea/

Kelewele NYC
🔗 https://www.instagram.com/kelewelenyc/

Black Capitalism
🔗 https://www.instagram.com/black.capitalism/

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stakes
• 0:34 Introducing Dr. Rachel Laryea
• 3:37 Race, Money, And A Purpose
• 7:22 Immigrant Mindset And Nuance
• 11:20 Scarcity Versus Collective Agency
• 16:50 Curiosity As Career Strategy
• 22:30 Anthropology Meets Wall Street
• 28:20 Building Kelewele From Roots
• 34:10 Undercommons Inside Institutions
• 40:05 Consumer Power And Communal Capital
• 45:10 From Saving To Investing
• 49:40 Urgency, Unity, And A Playbook
• 53:30 Flip The Script: Doing It Scared

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Welcome to Mindset Mastery Moments, the best growth mindset podcast, recognized by million podcasts and ranked as a top mindset podcast by FeedSpot. We're proud to be in the top 1% on listen notes. Join Dr. Alyssa White as we explore powerful insights and strategies to elevate your mindset. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_05: 0:27

Hello, disruptors, and welcome back to another phenomenal episode of Mindset Mastery Moments. Well, today we're going to flip the lens. What if capitalism isn't something you escape? Hmm, but something you reshape for the collective good. My yesterday brings Wall Secrets, Ivy Lean Brilliance, and Cultural Roots together to challenge how we think about wealth, ownership, and freedom. She's proof that you can thrive inside the system without losing yourself. And I'm telling you, it's one of the things that keep me going. She is sparking a conversation that's urgent for our time. I'm honored to welcome Dr. Rachel Larley to my interest moment. Let me tell you a little bit more about her before you hear from her. Dr. Rachel Larry Larrier is an investment practice at JP Morgan Asset and Wealth Management, a Yale-trained PhD anthropologist and the founder of Kinley Willy, a culture-found forward lifestyle brand built around plantain. Her story began in 2014 as a broke vegan undergrad at NYU. She interned a Goldman Fast once multiple jobs, including a life live-in nanny in New York. She stretched her budget by cooking affordable plantain dishes. Now wait till we tell you what you can do with plantain. Started as survival food turned into a movement, from plantain brownies to ice skiing, to cookies, and even a plantain and blespen burger. Rachel turned her experiments into Kelewele, a brand launched at a plantain party in 2018 that raised just a few hundred dollars, but grew to generate over$200,000 in gross revenue by 2021. She secured partnerships with New York, NYC's cafes, and even test its own storefront in Brooklyn's decab market. She built all of this while pursuing dual PhDs at Yale and working on Wall Street. Today her story has been featured in form, spotlighted by Goody Sanchez and her forthcoming book, Black Capitalist from Penguin Random House, asked roll questions about whether black professionals can thrive within capitalism without replicating the very system that once oppressed us. Listen, we are going to be talking today. So scoot up your chair, get your favorite beverage, and listen, share this with someone so that you guys can talk about it after. Welcome to Mindset Mastery Moments again. Tell us who you are in your own words, what you do, and exactly why you are.

SPEAKER_02: 3:24

Yeah, thank you so much, Dr. White, for having me. It's such an honor and a privilege to be here and be in conversation with you. I mean a little bit about me. I think everything that I've been interested in, everything that you mentioned in terms of the work that I've done has always been at the nexus of race, social good, and ethical entrepreneurship. I'm someone who's always really been interested in race and money. And I think the stories that I've told about that in different mediums really share insights about that kind of critical relationship between race and money. And today, you know, I do a few things. I work at JP Morgan Chase, where currently I'm a wealth management researcher. My past role at the firm was an investment strategy. I continue to run Killy Willie as well. Also just, you know, published my book, With You Spoke To, Black Capitalist, A Blueprint for What is Possible. And then that work is really special to me because I think it really crystallizes so many of my experiences across academia, nonprofit, for-profit, entrepreneurship to really tell a story about how do we navigate this crazy thing, this crazy system called capitalism in a way that's going to be in service of us, really with an ethos of black consciousness and really with an eye towards economic liberation as well. And so I'm just excited to be here and to share that message.

SPEAKER_05: 4:56

I'm excited and then so happy to hear that you wrote the book. I mean, there've been, of course, a lot of individuals right somewhere in this subject area. What's unique, and I haven't read all of them, I read just a couple. And I'm still getting my my feet into navigating capitalism. But I feel like the premise that you are writing from resonates very deeply with me. I first of all, you're first generation American. We talked about this off camera. I am uh I legally immigrated a USA half of my life ago. And so I've spent the same time living in Gayana, South America and living in the USA. And I am built on covering the capitalism, what capitalism is and how it affects us. And I seem to be just uncovering it so much over time. The one thing though, an immigrant as a woman of color living in the United States, I have never um subscribed to that I am less than or that success is something that I won't have because of the color of my skin. However, I am I think I was also living in a world where I did not see quote unquote color. I did not under I know color and racism and prejudices exist, and I just like to say prejudices because racism is one of a prejudice, right? There's also the fact of being a woman, being an immigrant, and all this stuff. Um we're not gonna we're not going over on politics and all that. We're just going on what my experience is here, guys. So don't shut us down. I'm building up something here that Rachel is gonna help us address. Um what I'm learning though is there's all kinds of mindsets that we can have through a capitalist society. And one that you are speaking and encouraging us to is one that I firmly believe in is don't let it stop you from being and doing what you've put on this earth to do and be and have. And that's what I am getting from your work, from what you've written and what you stand for. If you don't mind commenting on that as deep or as high or wherever you want to go, you're you're you know how to handle yourself and and you're welcome to speak freely here at Mindset Master Moments to educate our listeners and viewers.

SPEAKER_02: 7:26

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I think what's really important to also comment on is you were kind of sharing your own experiences immigrating to this country and naturalizing and even kind of the mindset that you had around not feeling that you were precluded from any opportunity, right? I think that's so important because I think for a lot of I'm a first generation American. And so growing up in a household of Ghanaian immigrants, it was a similar ethos around if you put in the effort, if you focus on your education, specifically that was, you know, my mother's mantra, you can achieve. And so the mindset, I think, from that kind of immigrant lens adds a level of nuance that I can't say is something that is shared when you're talking about a global black community. The context is different, the context is different in the sense of we can have a shared kind of mindset and how we relate to capitalism or relate to institutions or structures, but say a black American perspective of a person who might have a longstanding intergenerational legacy in the US can be a very different context for how they might relate to institutions, relate to capitalism, relate to themselves, and what they might believe is possible for them, because that context of race is very different than what it was for me, for example. And so I think it's really important to name in the context of recognizing, even still, that despite the nuances within the black community intra-racially, there is still the same hopes and desires and motivations when we're talking about how can I make sure that I have financial security? How can I make sure that my, you know, my dreams and motivations are fulfilled in the long term. We all want that for ourselves. And so it then becomes about how do we do it together? Because I think what capitalism does exceptionally well is it breeds a nature and a behavior around individualism. It makes us believe that there are not enough resources for all of us to win. It makes us believe that in order for me to be successful, someone else has to be defeated. And it breeds this kind of scarcity mindset. Yeah. And so ultimately, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so the opportunity for us is really to notice what's going on in that kind of systemic culture and say, we're gonna do something different and we're gonna respond to it differently in service of the collective us rather than in service of the individual. And this is really around the kind of black consciousness piece that I think is so critical because it's not about saying that capitalism is good. We know and can point to all evidence of violence, exploitation, and extraction that is embedded in the framework and the creation of it, especially in a Western context. But it is about saying the system that we have in front of us is a system that's still going to allow us to have some level of choice and agency if we work together in order to achieve it. Yeah. And so that is where we have the playing ground to really kind of think through okay, how do we do this thing? How do we show up in the here and now in a way that's gonna allow us to exercise our agency in service of that kind of economic liberation that we're looking for in a way where no one gets left behind in this? Right, right. And so that's that's really the challenge. That's the call to action. Of course, there's challenges, there's nuances, but that really should be the North Star when we're talking about how do we engage in capitalism today as we move in service of something that's a little bit more equitable for all of us at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_05: 11:31

Yes, I absolutely love that. I concur with that. One of the things when we created or everything about what I do with mindset, mindset master moment, mindset master 260, everyone knows mindset, mindset, mindset is what I talk about. Because when it comes to everything that's presented to us as humans, to humanity, I of course because I am a black woman, a black person, that's where my lens is always gonna be my area, and that's the the people who I'm gonna relate to most on the planet, our journey. And so I believe that mindset is the key to our success. It's the key to socio in the bottom, it's in the foundation of socioeconomic development throughout Western civilization, on the African continent, the diaspora, wherever we go, it's going to be how we think and see. And so that's why I'm so passionate about teaching how to mainly to attack the scarcity mindset, because scarcity mindset is so sneaky. It is one of the most sneaky things for adverse ways of thinking that sneaks up on us in all areas of our life, from what we drive to what we wear, what we eat, when we eat, who we spend time with, how we interact and communicate, collaborate or not collaborate with people is beneath that simple word of scarcity. So it's what we're gonna tackle a lot here. And Rachel has written this awesome book. I'm gonna tell you from now, if you're listening to this, get a copy of it. See, again, my guests do not come here asking me to promote things, but if they're on this platform, it's because their message resonates with not just our podcast. It's not good for ratings and downloads, it's actually what I believe in. And when I say it, you're gonna want to get a copy of this book and connect with what she started. Rachel, let's dive in a little deeper. You have lived two worlds, as we shared earlier. People rarely cross Wall Street and anthropology is a little bit of a like this girl is a BA, and at the same time, you are building a cultural blend with Plantins at the center. Well, when we go anywhere else, tell us when you look at that journey, what's that summon thread that ties it all together? Because a lot of things say maybe make sense, and it's this is how we are I call us unicorns. Um, this is how unicorns are born. Tell us how you did it and how what brought it all together for you.

SPEAKER_02: 14:05

Yeah, you know, it's a funny thing because I've always just let my curiosity lead me at the end of the day. And I'll be right now. Um because I remember my first job out of college was at Goldman Sachs. And you know, by any estimation, people are like, You got a job at Goldman, you're doing it. And I was like, you know what? I actually think I'm gonna quit my job to go do this dual PhD in anthropology and black studies at Yale. People are like, what are you gonna do with that? Why would you even make that decision? And that's just one example, but there have been so many times in my life where people are like, What are you gonna do with that? We don't understand it. I was like, you don't have to understand it. I just know that my curiosity is leading me to do this thing. And I think for me, some of the conceptual like kernels in my life have always been situated around what might it mean to be black and wealthy. Because growing up in predominantly white community that I did, not on account of my family's financial circumstance. My mom, she won a housing lottery through an affordable housing program that allowed us to live in the community that we did. And it was the case that every representation of wealth that I saw was associated with whiteness. And for me, growing up as a young black girl, being in these spaces, but certainly not of them, and occupying the kind of marginal spaces of the communities that I was in, I was wondering what are the depictions of black wealth and where are they and how can I relate to them? And so those were the initial questions that guided my curiosity that led me to make decisions that were nonsensical to others, but it made perfect sense to me. I think for that first role at Goldman, I didn't know anything about high finance, but I got recruited and it was actually my older brother who had advised me. He was like, just check it out, see what they have to say. It was an internship prior to you know going full-time there. He's like, just see what you know that opportunity is like. And it was the first time that I was able to really get exposure to black sociality in this context. And it ruptured so much of what I had learned in undergrad around, again, preconceived notions on how black people can or should relate to capitalism. And we're talking about Goldman Sachs, you know, a leader within the Wall Street community, and people would say that's the belly of the beast. Right. Capitalism. So here I was dealing with the sellout narrative, quote unquote, around like, oh, you're deciding to go here and work here, but I was like, it's so much more nuanced and complicated than that. Than that. So we can't resign ourselves to these reductions of what it means to show up in certain spaces and you know, leverage the resources in those spaces in order to create tangible, productive outcomes for yourselves and for your community. And I saw people doing that for the first time, and I was like, oh my goodness, I have to write about this, I have to study this because it was missing in the discourse that I saw when I was in undergrad. And I was like, surely, you know, I can go to grad school and really kind of tease this out because we need to see and understand this message more clearly. So I thought, you know, anthropology was the best way to do that. In undergrad, my favorite professors were anthropologists. And funny enough, though they were my favorite professors, I never actually took an anthro 101 class. I just happened to be trained by anthropologists. So I was like, oh, I need to get a PhD in anthropology because I love what they're doing, so I need to do that. And that was a very interesting experience because anthropology gave me the methodology around how do you interview, how do you really extract these kind of oral histories, learn from people, do participant observation, really put yourself in the context to understand deeply the systems, the phenomenon that you're trying to study, and ask the question why and how to really drill down into the individual level that speaks to people's beliefs, to your point around mindsets and their behaviors that are a byproduct of those beliefs. And so that gave me the kind of method, and I paired it with black studies because my my passion, my heart is for our people, and I needed to be really rooted in a black consciousness to then leverage and deploy the methodology to tell the story that was going to be in service of us. And so, but part of the curio curious thing was that you know, I went to the African American Studies Department at Yale, and here I come saying, Hey, I want to tell this story because I've got this evidence, on-the-ground evidence of how people are using the tools of this system in new and really profound ways that I think are really service of us. And people are looking at me scratching their head, they're like, don't know about that. You know, we don't know about you know, capitalism working for black people. We don't know about how you can think about these tools differently because that is counter to everything that we've discussed, everything that we've fought against. Right, you know, and so for me it was like I can stand definitively 10 toes down on this because I didn't make it up. You know, Andy gave me the method and the evidence of point to all these people's lives, point to how people are doing this every single day, and find a sense and point to the fact that you know we live lives that are complicated and contradictory. America's a contradiction. It's life, liberty, happiness, you know, but at the same time, yeah, life, liberty, these are things that are not guaranteed to people. And yet we persist, and yet people still pursue this American dream. Yeah. So when it comes to engagements with capitalism and how we can operate in systems that, yeah, they might not be designed for us, but we still persist. And in community, we still find ways to make it and you know, activate our dreams. And so that for me was the critical space that I wanted to work in and pursue this work, despite, you know, kind of counter thoughts. Um, and you know, doing that study at the same time for me personally. I always loved plantains. I'm a fellow plantain lover, yeah, such as yourself. And I felt like this was the best time to start a business.

SPEAKER_04: 21:20

Well, I'm in the throes of grad school is like this is a time, and I thought that's the craziest time to who starts a business in the middle of grad school.

SPEAKER_02: 21:31

Right? But I thought it really from a strategic standpoint because I was like Yale, place that is very well resourced, and they do not just care about me as a student, but they care about me as an entrepreneur as well. Yeah, and so I am going to use these six years that I have with almost unlimited resources at my disposal to make the most of it, you know, and so I was at the entrepreneurial center, I was talking to all of the advisors, I was getting all the grants because I was like, this time is so crucial. And so I'm going to make the most of it. And so I think just having a very strategic framework was also intentional for me to make the most out of any seat that I found myself in. Um, and so that was huge. That was huge, and that's what led me to start Killowilly really focused on cultural familiarity, but also doing something that was innovative and unique. Cause I think for me, I, you know, transitioned into a pre primarily a plant-based diet when I was an undergrad. You know, plantains came to the fore for me because I was like, wow, you know, they're meat-free, they're meat substitute, they're dairy substitute. So I was making all these dishes and I'd like to.

SPEAKER_03: 22:49

I did not even know that.

SPEAKER_02: 22:51

Yeah. And I'd go to the grocery store and I'd go to the vegan aisle and I'd see nothing was resonating with me culturally. I was seeing like beyond me, impossible, and all these other things, and they're all well and good, but I wasn't seeing anything that reminded me of growing up in my mom's home making me Ghanaian food. I didn't see that, you know. And so I needed to see something that reflected me. And so that was really why I started Killowilly. And, you know, it's existed in so many different ways now. We just recently this year added a hospitality element to it. And so we offered travel stays actually on a beach lodge in Mafia Island that I was able to acquire this year, and it's beautiful, and it's a way to really get people back to the continent to get everything, I believe, has to be situated in roots, it has to get back to the source of whatever the thing is. And so that's been a great way to just bring the business back home on the continent. And, you know, I think anytime you're talking about food, it conjures up memory, belonging, identity. And so it was really important to create experiences that spoke to that as well. Um, yeah, and so that became part of the grad school journey. And then towards the end of it, going back into finance, it was really with this super nuanced and refined thinking about okay, if I'm going to be now at JP Morgan Chase, be back in, you know, the belly of the beast, if you will, it's really about what is the role that I'm playing that is in service of black consciousness, that is in service of community making, in a way that's going to help, you know, our people and move the needle. And so that's always front of mind for me around how can I use the seat that I'm in to make a positive difference when you're talking about economic liberation. Yeah. And so that's been the through line, the journey. You know, for some people, they're now starting to get it, which is funny because you know, when I first had that leap to leave Goldman, they're like, What are you doing with this? And now looking back, they're like, Oh, we see what you're doing. We're seeing right.

SPEAKER_05: 25:06

It takes a minute, it takes a good minute for people to catch up. I love the main point that you said. You said, I first of all, you lead with curiosity. I believe that's one of the biggest things that you can do with your life and your mindset is we a lot of us have these shoulders in you should be or you're supposed to. And a lot of times when we're functioning under those frameworks, it's not our own. And that's kind of kind of just to get off course of your own true North Star or off-purpose or your own why. And that's what leads to a lot of the dissatisfaction that a lot of folks find themselves in, whether it's later in life or throughout life. And so that's one thing I want to point out to our listeners and viewers. The other thing is, you know, it sounds really wild to uh put yourself in the belly of the beast to be doing starting a business while you're in grad school. This all this stuff about what you said is so phenomenal. Everything that you said was and hearing that how can I mindset, right? What can I do while I'm here? And if I can point out, a lot of times Americans have asked, will ask me, well, Elisa, what is why is it that you know, an immigrant, why are immigrants comfortable just coming over here and letting these people pay you whatever? Or letting them treat you and talk to you however. One of the things that comes with being an immigrant is we know dollar for dollar, dollar is a dollar wherever you go, but at the same time, whenever you're in the US, a dollar translates to so many dollars from wherever we come from, right? And so we do the math and we know that over wherever we are, there aren't as many jobs. So whether we're wiping the floor, clean tables at McDonald's or cleaning schools at the end of the day and picking up, you know, stuff off the floor that no one wants to touch or smell. We know that that if they're giving us minimum wage, if it's$7 an hour, it's equal to so many thousands of dollars where we come from. And then we're going to be able to live in a very small home, a low-income home, or share home with multiple family members, different generations that creates a support system for kids to be able to drop off the school, get meals, be safe, still be in the village and in the community that we're so used to. And then we're going to help pay the bills together, which cuts it by so much, and then we're going to pool our money together to buy another home and build a home or establish a business for family members that is in another country. And I can go on and on with the story, but it's all we're thinking as immigrants is how can I get ahead? And it's how can we work together so we can get ahead. When when Rachel got on here, she started talking about instead of we already have capitalism, we're not gonna move it out at all. It's working around it. So, Rachel, here's one thing I love that you said I had to share that story because a lot of people asked me that question, and I wanted to give people through my perspective, again, I'm not speaking for all immigrants, what generally, even from speaking to so many immigrants, what our market is and how we approach coming into the USA, not understanding capitalism at all, but approaching life as a village. And we and I'm telling you, I've looked across Dominican, Mexican, you know, all the immigrants, different from different places from Africa. What I just described is a thread that we use through our cultures. A lot of living in the USA is the reason why you would see uh uh one of us driving um a catalog, but we went and bought it from a buy here, pay here place. We probably cash for way less than what it it's worth. It looks really nice and shiny, but we all can fit in there. And so we we're we we might look like we just got the nicest car, but we bought it because it can fit everybody in there and it's reliable. So just understand. So this is what Rachel says. She says that you you really it really, really just stopped me in the trap. And that's what correlated with what I just said. Capitalism isn't something to escape, it is something to reshape. It sounds radical because it makes us uncomfortable. Like, how the heck do we reshape capitalism? What does it actually mean in practice when you talked about it, Rachel?

SPEAKER_02: 29:46

Yeah, great question. It really means first understanding how capitalism works, understanding what it is and what are its primary outputs. So I think as I Spoken to people even in the development of this book. Um, people have wildly different definitions of capitalism, and some of those definitions are more emotionally led than definitionally led, right? And it could be, oh, it's the root of all evil, or it's this thing designed to keep us down. Um but capitalism is really an economic system that prioritizes and focuses on private ownership and profitability in excess. That's what it's really about: private ownership and profitability. And so for me, I think it's important to understand how it drives at those two things, ownership and profitability, through some of the things that we talked about before. That notion of individualism, that notion of scarcity mindset, competition, exploitation, because it's if I can exploit and extract someone's labor, then I can sell the byproduct of that labor in excess as the capitalist to make excess profit, right? Um, and so those become like the core tenets of capitalism and understanding how it functions in that way. Then it's okay, I've got the understanding. How do I then relate to it? Because again, I think, and this is where it gets nuanced. It's not to say that the idea of owning things is bad. People have entrepreneurial dreams, people have dreams to own a home, own a business, whatever it is. And people also have dreams to be profitable, to have more discretionary income or passive income that exceeds the money that you need to live your day-to-day life. Okay. But then it's how do I strive for these things in a way that doesn't reproduce the harms of capitalism? How can I strive towards being an owner, having more discretionary income in a way that's not going to be exploitative or extractive, violent, or harmful? And so then the question really becomes if you think about capitalism through a communal mindset, a mindset focused on collective social good, on a kind of black consciousness, what changes in your beliefs and then subsequently your behaviors? And I think there's so many examples of how this starts to show up. So for example, and people will say, Well, I'm not an entrepreneur. And a lot of people, especially within the black community, historically we've been consumers because we haven't historically owned that much in an American context, especially. And so some might say, Oh, well, there's limited agency within that. And I would say, actually, you've got a lot of agency when you're operating and thinking in community, because we oftentimes feel most agentic when we're voting. And that's something that happens on a not so regular basis, even though it's predictable. But I would say we actually vote every single day, multiple times a day with our start to think about collective economic power, how it then leads to political power, it demands you be in community with people. When you think about, yeah, I might feel like my greatest contribution to capitalism or my greatest relationship to capitalism is through a consumer lens. But when I start to think about that in relation to other people too, think about, hey, do we have shared objectives about how we want our community to look like? Then we start thinking about those organizing principles about where are we going to spend our money? How are we going to pool our money together in a way that allows us to have more capital collectively than we otherwise would have had individually? What decisions do we then get to have available to us? What options open up when we start thinking and moving in that way? That's an incredibly powerful position to be in. But it requires and demands you be in community. I think another example, you know, for folks who might be corporate professionals, they work in different institutions like myself. And again, you might think I'm in this big institution, I don't really have agency in this context, system wasn't designed for me, built for me. What is the what is the agency in that? And I would say there's actually a really powerful pragmatic theory about how we can think about institutions and our relationship to them. And it's called the undercommons. I got that theory from scholars Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, and they talk about the undercommons in the context of academic institutions, but I would argue that you can transpose them to other ones. And they say that you can't accept the fact that institutions are a place of enlightenment. You know, you can't be naive enough to believe that, especially if they have structural biases. But you can't ignore the fact that institutions can be places that have significant resources that you can benefit from. So for example, let's put this in the context. I work on Wall Street. I'm not going to be naive enough to say, oh, Wall Street is for me, black women, as we are seeing unemployment rates skyrocket amongst black women in corporate America. I'm not going to sit here and say that it's for us. I'm not going to be naive enough to do that. But I am going to say that there are resources, well, the ones of us who are in corporate America, you know, that we can tap into. How do you do this? Again, community. And so they make the case for how you can build an under-common space. It's a space whereby professionals come together, they recognize that, okay, we're in this space. These spaces are not perfect, but how can we work together, pool the resources that we all have as being part of this space, and really think about the different forms of capital we have available to us? And I'm not just talking monetary capital, but what's our social capital?

SPEAKER_05: 36:07

Human resource capital. What class do we have access to?

SPEAKER_02: 36:11

All of that, right? And cultural capital. And how can we just create pipelines of access for that under common space, that kind of sub-community within the bigger institutional body to give us access to realizing the dreams or goals that we have. And so even at JP Morgan Chase, there's an organization called the African Alliance that I'm a part of. And that brings together hundreds of people on a monthly basis. And we collect ourselves on Zoom. We sometimes do in-person activations. It becomes a safe space. Right? Right. People connect, they learn, we just have real talk. I even found my current job through connecting with a woman in the undercommons who referred me for the seat that I'm in now. So these are just examples of how you do it. And I think even from an entrepreneurial lens, you know, being someone who's in a really powerful position to create the culture of a business. Come on now. You have to be asking yourself the question of how do I do this? This thing of okay, I am an owner of something or private owner of something. I certainly want to be profitable because again, the bottom line is profitability for business. But that overlay of social good, what changes in your ethos and your behavior as a business owner when you're thinking that way. So at the cultural level, it's how do I create a culture for my employees, for my team, where they feel valued for their intrinsic value, not just for their output, you know, and really making that collaborative. And these are hard questions, you know. I'm not saying any of this is easy, but that's the standard that we have rise to. Um, and it's possible. And I think that's the hopefulness of it, because there are so many examples of how people do this in a way where you can use the tools of capitalism, but create new outputs within it.

SPEAKER_05: 38:18

I love it. I love it. And technically, what I described opening to leading into the question that you provided is if you listen clearly when I talked about how as Emirates again generalizing, we survived coming from our home countries into a new world and coming into a capitalist society, what are we aware of what that is, even I was not. You know, I had some insight coming from school, but nothing prepared me for what it looked like in reality in a in a more developed country, in a third world country, to haves and the have nots. And, you know, it's funny, I people thought I was a have and definitely were not. But when I looked at how we survive it, we're technically on to something. And that's why I brought it up and described it because a lot of us as Americans born and raised here who don't have an immigrant bloodline or pattern, immigration pattern to the United States question, how do you all do it? Like I went to college, I went to Yale. How is Rachel going to Yale different from me going to Yale? Well, there's a mindset that was embedded into her without her knowing it. And that's why I think you're the best, one of, you know, one of the best, if not the best, to teach on this reshaping of capitalism for our benefit as a peak, black and brown people as well. So here's a question when it comes to wealth power and legacy. What are some of those traps that a lot of us as ambitious professionals often find ourselves in when it comes to building wealth in the system that wasn't designed for us? I mean, this is the reality. Again, like you said, you're not saying these things are easy. If you think it's hard, then it is. If you think you can do it, then you can. So just understand, we are trying to open up your mindset. Where are those? What does it look like?

SPEAKER_02: 40:12

Yeah, I would say that um it's such a powerful question. One thing that immediately comes to mind that I am super passionate about now and even trying to work on here at JP Morty and Chase is how do we encourage and inspire people to move from a savings mindset into an investing one? Because I think that there, you know, there's so many dynamics at play that make the idea of investing very scary, I think, for a lot of people, because when you've worked so hard, you've labored so hard for the money that you've earned, the fear of losing it, you know, can prevent you from investing it. Yeah. And I think just when it comes to even like at a technical level, in order to maximize your growth, maximize your wealth potential, investing is necessary. And I think the upside of the world that we're living in now is that you know, knowledge around financial literacy and wellness is becoming more and more democratized. And so there's access and different channels to learn about how to invest. But there's I think that leap of faith that still has to happen around okay, I might be saving all of this money, but again, you're missing out if you're not allowing yourself to actually be invested in the market.

SPEAKER_05: 41:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 41:40

And so that's I think a really crucial piece. Um, yeah, honestly, you know, you talk about mindset, and we're just I think so in locks up when it comes to this because I'm so anchored on beliefs and how that just makes a real, real critical difference in how you I think show up in life, show up when it comes to uh wealth intergeneral, right intergenerational wealth and creation cycle for yourself, for your family. And I think it's also around just beliefs around what an individual an individual feels that they are worthy of as well. You know, and I think it's it's a harder thing to ask oneself the question of what can I do? How can I show up? What can I learn to make a difference? It's so much harder to do that than it is to say capitalism doesn't work for me, there's no opportunity. And I would just challenge us to do the harder thing because I think that especially when maybe the idea of homeownership or, you know, when it's some of those critical indicators of wealth, homeownership or business ownership or some kind of financial health, financial literacy, you see within the racial wealth gap how black, Hispanic, and Latino people fall behind in comparison to their white counterparts. There is still opportunity, um, even if that doesn't feel accessible, if again, we're anchored in a kind of communal mindset of how we can do it together. Okay, because if it feels individually inaccessible, surely it's possible at the communal level, but it really has to be rooted in that in order for it to be kind of actualized. And so, yeah, but it starts so much with like opening the paradigm and shifting it around what we think we are worthy of, what's available to us, and what's the strategy to activate it?

SPEAKER_05: 43:39

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 43:40

Yeah, so those are just some thoughts that come to mind around some of the maybe hurdles to how we think about wealth and how we access it as well.

SPEAKER_05: 43:50

Absolutely. Wow, very well said. I mean I mean, I concur with all of it. In your book, Black Capitalist Um Rewriting, I want to make sure I say it correctly, the blueprint of what's possible.

SPEAKER_02: 44:04

A blueprint for what is possible.

SPEAKER_05: 44:07

A blueprint for what is possible. That's giving us solution, it's not just commentary and research. You take head on black capitalists. You in that book, you take on the insight that you give. You just went head on with believe is urgent for us and right now. Again, a lot of what I talk about is always now. The belief system, shifting that power line. Tell us a little bit more of what you hoped that your readers would get in terms of understanding the sense of shifting their belief and taking that sense of urgency to the right now.

SPEAKER_02: 44:43

Yeah, I think that we are living in an unprecedented time. I think we are living in times where it's become very clear that the Calvary is not coming. It is up to us to create the present and future that we want.

SPEAKER_05: 45:01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 45:02

And so it's really about how do we do that? And I think that for so long, especially within the black community, we have been debating the issue of capitalism and economics at the intersection of race for a long time. And everybody's got their own economic identity. Some people say I'm a capitalist, some people I'm a socialist, some people I'm an anti-capitalist, whatever it is that has been the core of debate, and so much of the reason why we haven't been able to align. You know, and so for me, I think the greatest hope, the greatest call to action is unified action. Even the times that we are in, we cannot afford to keep debating and arguing.

SPEAKER_03: 45:49

Come on now.

SPEAKER_02: 45:50

We have to put that aside and say, what is the strategy? Because again, as we were talking about earlier, we've all got the same general hopes, dreams, and wants. Yeah. Okay. So we need to do an assessment of what is the landscape? What are the tools available to us? How are we going to action against the unified objectives that we've collectively agreed are in service of all of us and those things that we collectively want together? Then how what's the playbook? How do we activate that? That's the conversation I think we need to be having rather than capitalism is good, bad, or whatever, you know? And so I think that's that's the hope to get us to movement collectively.

SPEAKER_05: 46:35

Yes. Oh, I love it. Man, time goes by so quickly on your we have not even uncovered some of the tenants. And so I would love to have you back and a couple. So I'm gonna be reading the book too, which will help us really dive in a little bit more. But on the show, Rachel also does a segment that's called Flip the Script. It's where our guest shares a moment where you have to completely shift your own mindset. And of course, I feel like you've shared one with us and how I changed the trajectory of your life.

SPEAKER_02: 47:09

Oof, goodness. See, a time where I flip the script. Yeah, I feel like I've lived a few lives at this point. I'm I'm I am agreement with that. I'll tell you what, I probably right now. I think, you know, after the launch of the book, and it was kind of it was funny because my agent, my literary agent, before I published the book, she kind of foreshadowed, she was warning me, she's like, you know, you're gonna have to fight if you're gonna publish this book. And I left it off. I didn't really think too much of it. But now that it's published, and now that I've seen the spectrum of responses to it, I see exactly why she said that to me. You know, it has been really a shifting in my own self around how can I show up for this in a way that's going to, you know, really just continue to serve the purpose that I know I've been called to have when it comes to this work and the message that I think that is so important for us to anchor on and move on. And I am truly an introvert. I'm someone who, you know, loves to just be in my own space. Um, and I feel most energized by that. But this has really called me to show up, yeah, speak up, you know, really be out there in ways that have felt truly uncomfortable. You know, so I am playing with my own kind of comfort zones and extending them and stretching them and just really anchoring on the why as I do that to give me the energy, you know, and the resilience to keep showing up for that. So yeah, I'm I'm in my own kind of personal journey of growth that's requiring a lot more of me than I in the past. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05: 49:03

After all of this, Goldman, Yale, JP Morgan, Killy Rele, how do you define success now for yourself?

SPEAKER_02: 49:11

Success, it's definitely doing the scary thing. Um, yeah, I don't I don't have like indicators of, you know, if I have achieved this goal or no, it's just if something's in my heart and it terrifies me, but it's where my curiosity is leading me to, I say, all right, Rachel, gear up. We're gonna do it. It's gonna be terrifying, but we're gonna do it still. And when I can be on the other side of it and say, I did it, did it scared, did it terrified, like that's success for me.

SPEAKER_05: 49:49

And it sounds very much like a big part of my definition of success. I just managed to take out If I didn't take it out, it's just what feels right with me. It resonates that what I'm called to do, I'm committed to it, it I do it, whether I feel like I am afraid, whether I'm wounded or emotionally distressed, whatever that looks like does not change the fact that this is what to be done now. And if I can't do it now because physically I can't, I will rest and I will be back in everybody out of the party regardless, right? So I kind of I can see that. I think that's why I always ask, what is success for you now? Because I could talk to you a m a year from now, a month from now, and it might feel a little bit of a variation of the definition that you have. But it's always so wonderful to see how we as humans define success so differently. And if we do define success so differently, that means our focus can be different, even though we might be working on the same thing. It just to me it opens up space for us to be like, to we're not I'm not gonna fight you on what success is for you, right? But someone might be like, well, that's hogwash. And I'm like, if you're fighting with what someone does, right, that's what you need to do your work. And I just I just feel like we're gonna have a whole lot of show where we just bring all the definitions that our guests have gone over because it's so it's so powerful. Here's the other thing that I have to ask you. Let's talk a little bit about Killy and where it's at right now. Uh, I know that's not the only thing on your hand. Where is it at right now? And what what can we benefit from? What do you want the world to take away about Killy Willie? And how does it base in all the work and things you're doing right now?

SPEAKER_02: 51:40

Kellowilly, where is it at right now? It is ever evolving. I think, you know, such such the life of an entrepreneur. You're always evolving, always shifting the business to, you know, meet life, where you're at and everything else. You know, it started really focused on plantains and the different service offerings, whether it was through the brick and mortar, our e-commerce business. And so now it's focused on the e-commerce business as well as our wholesale partnerships with a couple of cafes here in New York City. But through the e-commerce, we're able to have nationwide shipping for some of our products. And we do also, you know, catering events as well. But I think when I talk about the shift is really the incorporation of the on the continent travel experiences that has gotten me really excited. Um, to have the opportunity for people to come to um, you know, our lodge in Mafia Island, which I went for the first time and had such an incredible experience. I was just, again, some of those placed in my heart around have to figure out how to make this available, you know, as an offering of Killowilly. And here we are now, and it's an offering of Killowilly. And it's just a really beautiful way, again, to continue and pull that thread of how do you tell stories at the intersection of culture, food, experience in a way that's gonna be meaningful. I think, you know, when people, you know, think about food brands, it's it's not just about the food, it's about the experience. What is the story? What's the like richer context that you're offering? And so that was always really important to me. And so now to evolve a business in this way is huge. And we're planning on working on um, you know, a similar stay in Ghana. And that of course is super special to my heart because being, you know, Ghanaian, it's how can I get back home and share home with others as well. And so that's on the roadmap for next year, and we'll see. I I treat it really like a huge experiment, you know. I just you know, think about what's the curiosity, what's the angle, what's the opportunity, and lead with that. But that's where it's been today. And um, yeah, I think to the point of how can people engage with it or what is the message, it's really on cultural connection. You know, I started Keller really with the hope that I can be West African, the next person from Latin America, the next person from the Caribbean. We all have a shared understanding of plantains. Sure, we prepare them differently. We might even say the word plantain differently. Yeah. We all know what we're talking about, you know.

SPEAKER_05: 54:34

Come on now, love that it's ripe, half ripe.

SPEAKER_02: 54:38

Right. When it's weak, when it's green, what you know, and so that becomes a point of cultural connection. And so at the end of the day, it's always about how can we be in community with each other in different ways. And so, yeah, that's that's the through line. It's always community, it's always connection and engagement.

SPEAKER_05: 55:01

All right, guys. So if you're watching us, Rachel, Rachel's website is rachelaurier.com. All of it is in the description. You can get a copy of her book. We'll have the link directly to uh her website where I can purchase a copy of her book, and then also we do have the website for Kalawalaynyc.com where you can learn more about travel and all you can order. I did see that yesterday where you can order some of the delicious. Go to her Instagram. We have it also here in the description where you're watching and listening to the episode. Delicious needs of food went to our Instagram. So Rachel has to go, but she will be back for another episode with us, I'm pretty sure. Rachel, thank you so much for being here. You're just phenomenal humans. Great spirit. Thank you for reminding us that we don't have to run from systems, we can reshape them for something greater.

SPEAKER_02: 55:54

Yes, yes. Thank you for having me. This was the highlight of my week, my day. It's been a gift. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05: 56:00

Yes, guys, and we are going to Ghana. We'll let you know you'll see some adventures of us because you all know how passionate I am about the African continent and the Africans in the diaspora. So more to come from Rachel Larway. Keep in touch with her. Until next time, keep mastering your mindset. Keep leave with now. Thank you so much. I know you have to be