Meet Michael Coleman II: Co-Founder & CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Coleman II and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Michael and Rickey met in college, and we both shared a love for mentoring, education, and youth development. We were talking one random night about the BET Awards Show, “Black Girls Rock”, and thought that it would be impactful to start a similar, “Black Boys Rock” show. We wanted to find a way to highlight black boys and men in our community, sharing our successes and spreading positivity. After more conversation, we eventually concluded that God wanted us to do more with this idea. How could we make a deeper impact in the community around us? What is a gap that we can work to fill? Crowned Scholars emerged from this, and we began the work to create this organization that was going to intentionally serve young black kings in our city.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Crowned Scholars has a mission to holistically develop young black boys in Dallas, specifically middle school-aged black boys. We decided to focus on this particular age group because we identified a gap in programming for middle school students in our community. Most empowerment groups and organizations are focused on high school or college students; however, students are becoming more and more impressionable at younger ages. Crowned Scholars wants to step in to provide educational, personal, mental, and professional growth for the students we have the opportunity to impact. Our program is two-fold: Academics and Healthy Habits (life skills). We focus heavily on mathematics with our Scholars, seeing that there is a high need for students to be “Algebra Ready” by the time they reach high school. Also, we love to expose our Scholars to life skills and new experiences that they likely don’t receive in the classroom. Our overall goal is to nurture the growth of these young men, and make sure they know that they are Kings. Crowned Scholars is important, and unique, because we are unapologetic about who we serve. Black students, specifically black boys, are underserved in our schools and in need of more support. Within our schools, black male teachers make up 2% of the teacher population nationwide, despite the fact that many of our public classrooms are occupied with black and brown students. Representation is important, especially when we discuss education. Crowned Scholars aims to address that issue by not only implementing our culturally aligned programming to our Scholars, but also pairing Scholars with a black male mentor from our community. Sometimes our boys just need to know that they belong, they are supported, and they have a future to look forward to pursuing. Also, we meet our students where they are. Crowned Scholars operates within our partner schools, which eliminates the need for our Scholars to worry about transportation. Our program is also 100% free to our scholars and their families. Access is a huge issue within education, and Crowned works to eliminate those barriers as much as we possibly can.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
First and foremost, our Co-Founders Mike & Rickey are Spades champions in Dallas! So anywhere there is a Spades tournament, that would be #1. Other than that, we would recommend so really good establishments such as Southern Classic Daiquiri, Harris House of Heroes, Val’s Cheesecake, Pangea Restaurant, The Cookie Society, and Rudy’s Chicken. We love and support our fellow black owned businesses!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We want to shoutout our parents for sure, as they have been a major support before, during, and after to creation of Crowned Scholars. Also, Stephen Santa-Ramirez and Brandon Nelson are great mentors of ours that continue to guide us on our journey as well. Lastly, our Crowned Scholars Board and Team! We cannot do any of the work that we do without the support of our village.

Website: www.crownedscholars.org
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crownedscholars/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crowned-scholars/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrownedScholars
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crownedscholars
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQm9c3uq72L0t8cVHKLq5g

Image Credits
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