Transcripts are edited for readability and clarity.

Nigel Prentice: Hello, my name is Nigel Prentice, and I am a Design Director at IBM. And I would like to welcome you to the It’s About time podcast. The podcast is coming from the Racial Equity in Design work at IBM.

Okay, and I am here with my guest this episode, who is guaranteed to drop some jewels and inspire us with his thoughts and his insights. And as always, I like to start off our conversations with a few thoughts from those who have come before us and who have thought about some of these bigger topics.

And so here we go. Firstly, “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life.” That comes to us from Marcus Garvey,19th-century political activist and leader of many important social movements in America and beyond.

Secondly, I have an idea from Michelle Alexander, a noted author, and civil rights activist. She says, “We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” Let’s think on that for a minute and connect that into the thoughts we have coming up. But first, I want to introduce my guest. My guest is the founder of the Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design. But before he was that, at age 17, he won a Reebok design competition for footwear. At 19, he was the youngest professional footwear designer in the footwear and apparel industry. One of only six designers to ever design Air Jordan’s for the Nike brand. Yes, Air Jordans.

After 33 years in the design industry, he’s still going strong. And in fact, he’s got a new provocation for us as he reinvents the industry of design education and doing it at an HBCU. He is disruptive. He’s bringing in brands; he’s bringing in corporations; he’s working with companies like Adidas, New Balance, Nike, Foot Locker, Asics, and more. He’s been covered by Forbes, Essence, Vibe, and more.

This brother’s a designer, an educational entrepreneur, and social provocateur. Please welcome Dr. D’Wayne Edwards. D’Wayne, how are you?

D’Wayne Edwards: Blessed, man. Thank you for the intro. That was lovely. Appreciate that.

Nigel Prentice: Of course, of course. Man, listen, I count myself lucky to be able to chat with you today, and together we can bring forward some thoughts that are not just eye-opening but can make a difference, man. So that’s, that’s my hope. You ready?

D’Wayne Edwards: Yeah, I’m ready. I was born ready.

Nigel Prentice: Of course, I know you are man. At drop of a dime, right. So, let’s talk about your background a little bit for folks who are just getting to know you. Yeah, talk a little bit about your early story. Where’d you grow up, and then quickly, how did you get into design.

D’Wayne Edwards: Yeah. I was born in a city that considered themselves the city of champions, which is Joliet, Illinois. And then, I was raised in another city that also considered themselves the city of champions, Inglewood, California. And both of them, you know, 2,500 miles apart.

But I feel like I was destined off to a great start being born and raised in the city of champions. For those of you who are not familiar with Inglewood — I grew up in the eighties. It was, you know, one of the murder capitals of the U.S. Heavy gang, heavy drug violence; that was my neighborhood.

Those are my friends in some cases; that was my brother’s destinies. My focus was designing, drawing at the time. I didn’t know what design was, but drawing was my way of staying out of the streets and being focused on, you know, just being safe. And I started drawing when I was probably 12 years old. Winning TV Guide design competitions when I was only 12. Fell in love with this idea of sneakers when I was 13. And started drawing, you know, my versions of sneakers and customizing sneakers in the eighties.

And that was my side hustle in high school. Thought that’s what I was going to do with the rest of my life. But people told me I was crazy, you know, no Black kid from Inglewood would become a footwear designer. That was fuel to my fire. You know, still to this day, I’m motivated by people who doubt me and tell me I can’t do something.

And that was really how I got my start in the industry, man. You know, I had people telling me I wasn’t going to do it. That made me want to do it even more. Got my first job, you know, as you said, at age 19, you know, designing shoes for LA Gear and working with athletes like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone. And then parlay that into another opportunity to work with a company called Cross Colours and Karl Kani, where [I] designed shoes, for now, hip-hop, royalty: Tupac and Biggie, Dre and Snoop and NAS, all in the early nineties. And then, I moved from my comfort zone of California up into Oregon. Even though, as you know, one state up, never been outside of the state before and come up to Oregon and, you know, the complete opposite of California, cows, and trees everywhere. And got my dream job at Nike.

And then I got a job I never dreamed I would ever even have. And that’s working in Jordan, and working with Jordan for, you know, almost 12 years. That was life-changing and really propelled me to do what I’m doing now.

Nigel Prentice: Man, that’s incredible. I mean, you say it so casually. My man, like yeah, Tupac, Biggie, Dre; work with Nas, you know, this really is the golden era, right. Of, not just rap or hip-hop but the culture. And, you know, I can’t even imagine —I mean, what it was like being in your shoes at that moment.

You know, I was certainly enjoying the culture as a consumer myself at the time. So, talk about what it was like back then. You’re on your hustle; you’re on your grind. You know, you’re rubbing shoulders with these guys, and you’re doing work with them. What was it like being Black in that moment and being a creator?

D’Wayne Edwards: You know that that moment was probably the most fun and the most pure of being a Black designer because there was no social media. There was no hype. Like we were just doing it because we loved what we were doing, we loved creating products, and we loved collaborating as creatives. We didn’t wait to post something and see if someone liked it.

Like we were just doing it because we loved it. You know, Pac, Biggie, and Snoop, all those guys were in Cross Colours Karl Kani ads for free. Like they weren’t getting paid to do those things. They were doing it because they actually appreciated another Black person trying to become an entrepreneur and being gifted at their craft, just like they were gifted at their craft.

Nigel Prentice: At that point, you know, and it felt like we were all in it together. From afar, you know, obviously, I wasn’t in your circle at that time, but I certainly remember the innocence and what it felt like to be kind of alive and do it for the culture in those sorts of early and mid-nineties.

Talk professionally as a designer when you’re at work. You’re at headquarters; you’re doing what you’re doing. You know what background and what lived experiences you have. What was it like at Nike in those years in corporate America? Was it a culture shock at all? How did that feel?

D’Wayne Edwards: Hell yeah, it was a culture shock! I’m from Inglewood, man. I don’t know about Oregon. It was interesting because, in a lot of ways, and a lot of days, it was very surreal because my relationship to Nike was the mall. I didn’t understand it was a big corporation. I mean, I assumed there was a big corporation somewhere, but physically being up here and seeing it and being able to walk the campus. I mean, when you say campus, it’s really that big. It’s about three or three- or four-square miles. That’s how big it is.

It’s like Disneyland for sneakers. I mean, it’s definitely that impressive. But for me, I think what was different was I was a consumer of the brand before I had a chance to actually use the logo to create with. So, I had a different appreciation for where I was then, I say, probably most that were there.

And I was also one of the few Black people that were there. Ironically, I met the first Black footwear designer there. His name was Wilson Smith. He started in ’86. I started in ’89. And so, before meeting Wilson, I thought I was the only one. And then I meet Wilson, and then I start to meet E. Scott Morris, Jeff Henderson, and Andre Doxey, you know, all these other Black designers.

 I’m like, okay, now I’m able to piece things together as to, you know, our place in this industry, as it pertains to being a Black designer. And you know, what products we worked on and the things that we did from, you know, from being in the culture and being in the inner city, being the target customer that they’ve designed their whole company around.

Nigel Prentice: Gotcha. Gotcha. What was it that gave you the energy? Was it just that thing that you said a few minutes ago where somebody doubted you? Or were there some co-workers, managers, bosses that gave you some words of wisdom or motivation? What was the key to not just surviving but thriving, being the only one in that space at that time?

D’Wayne Edwards: I would say it’s a little bit of all of that. But I would say the big part of it, though, was I never felt like I was supposed to be there. What I mean by that is if you wrote down me on a piece of paper, I’m not even supposed to be alive. Getting to 18 in Inglewood is a win. Getting to 21 and I haven’t been to jail or shot like that’s also another major accomplishment. And so, I’ve always been conscious of that. Borrowing a Charlie Sheen reference, I’ve always felt like I’m winning. Like every day, I won because I woke up and I’m doing something that I love that I would do for free.

And on top of that, I didn’t come in the traditional route. Like everyone else went to design school, and they had all this other training and structure where I was just straight, raw. Like I learned on the job. So, for me, my college was working. Like I was doing it in real-time. And so, I’ve always felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there, which that created the chip. That chip was, I’m gonna prove to you that I’m supposed to be here. Even though I really had nobody doubting me, I was in my own head that, like, I’m not supposed to be here. Like I’m fooling somebody like I’m tricking somebody, but in actuality, I earned everything I’ve ever accomplished; I’ve earned it.

And that’s always been, my focus is Imma prove to you, you know, that I’m here.

Nigel Prentice: Right, right. Yeah. So, were you ever able to connect on that with some of those athletes? From what I understand and the documentaries we’ve all seen them about Michael Jordan and others, they might even invent chips on their shoulder.

D’Wayne Edwards: Oh yeah.

Nigel Prentice: So, were you able to connect with them on that level?

D’Wayne Edwards: Oh, dude, Mike was the master of making people up just so he can get psyched up to do stuff. He was the master at doing that. I remember we had a conversation. I was going to show him a shoe, and the thing about Michael is he’s like a world traveler. If he has a watch on, he went to the factory and made the watch himself. If he got a car, he went to the factory and picked out every element of the car. His level of product detail and design is on a different level. And so, I knew that you know, if I had to present to them, I had to come correct, like, cause he’ll call me out. Cause I’ve seen it. Like I saw it happen to some folks.

And so, with him, he doesn’t like to lose at anything. Like checkers, you know, walk-in, and I’m gonna beat you to the pole. Like he doesn’t like to lose at anything. And so, it was always a mind game. I remember going to present to him an Air Jordan, an Air Jordan 22, specifically. I knew I had to get him within seconds because if I didn’t have an emotional spark from him within seconds, I would be on the defense, and I’ll be trying to catch up, right.

Trying to prove to him. And so, I knew like he was an old-school hip-hop head. And so, I played this track called, I Ain’t No Joke by Eric B. & Rakim, and everybody knows — if your an old-school hip hop head, you know, this track within seconds. Like, you know it before the words come out of Rakim’s mouth. And so, I played that before I started the presentation.

He started the presentation; he was leaning forward, you know, and, you know, body language techniques, that means people are interested. And then as soon as I played the track, he sat up and then, you know, he sat up, and he started paying attention cause he was getting into the music within seconds, right. And then I asked him, I said, “When did you become a master?” And I left it there. And then he started to lean back, and I start smiling because I know I got him on the defense because he’s going backward.

I said, “So when did you become a master? When did you become so good that anything you wanted to do, you could do?”

Nigel Prentice: Hmm.

D’Wayne Edwards: And he just paused, silence. Then he like smiled and, you know, said a curse word at me. Cause he knew I defeated him within a minute. I had him on defense, right. And so that whole time he started talking about — he remembered the exact game. He said he was planning against Reggie Miller, Indiana Pacers, 1990. He said, all of a sudden, everybody was moving in slow motion but me.

Nigel Prentice: Wow.

D’Wayne Edwards: And he said, I knew what everybody was going to do before they did it. And he said that’s when, I guess if you call it the “zone,” that’s when that happened. And he said that every time he stepped on the floor, he was that way.

And he said it got, he got to a point where the game was so easy for him. He had to make up stats for his opponent just to psych himself up that this dude he’s playing against is better than him.

Nigel Prentice: Okay.

D’Wayne Edwards: He played all these mind games with himself, just for him to be motivated and excited. And he says something to me that I never forget, and I practice this every single day, every time I get ready to actually design something. Before he played, he said, he realized there was somebody in that arena seeing Michael Jordan play for the very first time. And he said he wants to make sure that that person goes home satisfied, win or lose.

They’re going to go home saying, “Man, he gave me everything tonight.”

Nigel Prentice: Hm.

D’Wayne Edwards: He said his goal was to be the best whenever he was on the floor. So, he said, first quarter, I’m only focused on the first quarter. I’m only focused on the second quarter, third, and fourth. He said he never looked past beyond wherever he was.

And that’s how I approach design when I’m about to design something. That blank piece of paper and pencil to me, like that’s heaven. Like I’m in heaven when I see a blank piece of paper, and I have a pencil in my hand cause I know I have an obligation to do something special on that paper.

Nigel Prentice: Wow, and now you’re designing more than just sneakers. More brands for sure, but more than just sneakers, but that is an incredible story, man. I mean, how many people are going to be able to say, I played Eric B. & Rakim for Michael Jordan and made him sit back in the seat.

D’Wayne Edwards: Absolutely.

Nigel Prentice: Right?

D’Wayne Edwards: And had him on defense.

Nigel Prentice: And had him on defense because, I mean, Mike is a lockdown defender. Like I said, we’ve all seen the documentaries; nobody ever got anything over on Mike. You know, those famous gambling stories or pre playoffs, and golfing stories and all that kind of stuff, man.

That’s crazy. I know those lyrics from Eric B. or from Rakim, really. In my head right now, the e-m-c-e-e don’t even try to be.

D’Wayne Edwards: Oh, dude, he was prolific. He still is prolific to this day. But it — the theme of the song is called, I Ain’t No Joke. And you talking about how, you know, he is so good on the microphone, you shouldn’t even bother.

Nigel Prentice: Right. I hold the microphone like a grudge.

D’Wayne Edwards: Yes! Yes, dude. He said he’s “trapped in between the lines as ink sinks into the paper.”

Nigel Prentice: Right. That’s his craft because that’s his craft. He’s so into his craft, and he’s a maker like, you know, telling a story. And that’s what we do in design a ton of times is be storytellers. You know, arguably one of the best of all Time, Rakim. Then plus, the beats were amazing. I mean—

D’Wayne Edwards: Which I found out later, Rakim did the beats, too. Like, what the hell did Eric B. do? Ra did the music and the rapping. He has an amazing book called [Don’t] Sweat the Technique, where he narrates the audio version of it, and it was amazing. Like he would talk about how, if he, you know, if he got in a writer’s block, he would start writing left-handed, and he would start going backward. Like he would just do stuff that was not the norm to spark him to do something great.

Nigel Prentice: That’s incredible. Man, that’s incredible. Something else you said there is really sitting with me, and I’d love for you to touch on this a bit more. You talked about achievement. You said, “everything I achieved, I earned.” That’s something that is important to me as we talk about racial equity in design, and as we talk about social justice, it’s always been important for me to articulate that, hey, listen, what we’re talking about here is not a handout. What we’re talking about here is top talent at a return. We’re not lowering any bars. We’re not saying that this is about altruism. It’s not; this is about a business outcome that most of corporate America has been sleeping on. It happens to come from the underrepresented minority group, from Black folks. And in fact, because of the unique history that Black folks have had to experience in this country, there’s a responsibility for corporate America to pay attention to these ideas that you and I were talking about.

D’Wayne Edwards: Especially if they sell products to Black folks, yes.

Nigel Prentice: Especially. So, talk a minute about achievement. I think we don’t talk enough about it. How does that unlock a person’s potential, no matter what, but especially for Black folks?

D’Wayne Edwards: You know, I even go back again to Rakim’s book. He called rap a serious hobby. Like, cause a hobby, you know, you just do it for fun. You waste time, or you get lost in it, right. But he said he loved it so much. He took it serious, but he always had a perspective that he loved it, and he would do it for free.

D’Wayne Edwards: And that’s why I called it a serious hobby. I think when people start finding their serious hobby, that’s when they get to the spot where they suppose to be. And I know for me like I would do what I’ve done for the last 33 years for free.

Nigel Prentice: Gotcha.

D’Wayne Edwards: Easy, hands down. I will absolutely do it for free because, one, I didn’t even know I could get paid to do it. So, once I found out I could get paid to do it instead of me resting on it, I had to keep proving to myself that I need to continue to get paid to do it. And that has crept over into me as an educator. I think it’s a little bit of a different mentality because, in design, there is no such thing as tenure. Like in design, every time you do something, you proving your worth.

Nigel Prentice: Yeah, every time.

D’Wayne Edwards: Every Time. And I wish that they would change the — I wish design had a bar association like attorneys, right? Like I wished that every year you had to take a test to earn that title of a designer. You know, how many less people we would have to have the title designer if you had to earn it every year?

Nigel Prentice: Right, right.

D’Wayne Edwards: And because of that, it’s gotten bastardized. I think the term “designer” has gotten bastardized because there’s no guidelines around what it means to be called a designer, so the idea gets filtered and watered down. And then people start coming up with design thinking so they can relate because they couldn’t draw, right. And I’m like, okay, whatever. I know you just want to hang out with us. That’s cool; I get it. But no, like I take it very, very seriously. This is a serious hobby for me. And so, for me, I look at the people before me. I wasn’t the first one to do, you know, footwear. I wasn’t the first one to invent stuff. We have a history of Black excellence. Our story isn’t told enough as it pertains to the creativity that our ancestors had, that are still being used today, done in the 1880s.

Nigel Prentice: Mm.

D’Wayne Edwards: Like if you remove Black people from America, the contribution of America, it would be nowhere near the country it is now cause we’ll have a lot of less amazing inventions and medicines and other things that we’ve contributed to. We’re just not celebrated enough, or let me say, enough of us are not celebrated.

Nigel Prentice: In every aspect of life, right? I mean, from politics— I mean, we only talk about really two areas, right. Entertainment and sports which is really kind of the same. You know, we play sports and sell tickets. So, it’s entertainment as well.

D’Wayne Edwards: And that’s the only one we’re not a color, by the way.

Nigel Prentice: Oh?

D’Wayne Edwards: Today, no longer a color. Today, we’re not Black when we play sports. When we entertain because we’re entertaining them, right. And so, we get a pass, but if you remove us from entertainment and sports, were not nearly respected as a professional versus those two professions.

Nigel Prentice: Right.

D’Wayne Edwards: And that is the part that absolutely needs to change. And they’re slow. They’re slow things happen in here and there, but not enough.

Nigel Prentice: Well, and I feel like that’s the legacy that you are picking up and that you’re turning upside down. I think that’s a great connection into this next idea because why don’t you say a little bit about your transition from professional full-time corporate footwear designer into Pensole Academy because now we become less about the dollars you’re making for the corporation, which is the reason for all of our employment at a large corporation, and now you begin to move into mission-driven outcomes for human beings at an individual level. So, talk about Pensole.

D’Wayne Edwards: Yeah, man. It is the school I wish I was able to attend as a kid. It’s the school I would hire from If I was still a director at a company as a designer. It’s a destination that I didn’t get a chance to actually see. Meaning, I didn’t go to college, couldn’t afford to go, so I made it free. I didn’t have access to the people I wanted to be like. That’s 100% about what the school is about. You’re being taught by people who have done that job that’s in front of you for decades on a high level. That was what I was seeing was missing when I started to teach at traditional colleges, where I was seeing that they weren’t telling our story. We have a lot to do with design, but we were never the kids that I was teaching or the schools that I was teaching at; they never gave examples of Black designers.

They never gave examples of any of our history in design at all. So, what I want to do with Pensole is actually open that box, okay. No, here’s D’Wayne Edwards, here’s Wilson Smith, here’s E. Scott Morris, here’s April Walker, here’s Karl Kani, here’s Maurice Malone, here’s TJ Walker, here’s Brian Thompson. Brian, arguably, I would call Brian the most celebrated designer or artist in the world — in the history of creation of products because what he created, everybody wants. A hundred-dollar bill. No one knows that Black men did that.

Nigel Prentice: Dropping jewels. Dropping jewels right now.

D’Wayne Edwards: When I went off to do Pensole, I wanted to show these kids who were just like me, who love sneakers, buying sneakers, did whatever I need to do to get them, all legal. But then I started to see kids do illegal stuff to get sneakers, and I saw people kill each other to get sneakers.

And that hurt man. Cause I was designing some of those things that some of these kids was beating each other up or killing each other for, and I wanted to show them there was another way. And the corporations weren’t doing it fast enough; they were only telling this kid one side of the story. That side of the story is the same one they’re being told now; it’s the same one I was told in the 80s. To be successful and Black, you either have a ball or microphone in your hand because that’s what companies invest billions of dollars in; athletes and entertainers sell their products to us and others, right. So, then that becomes a one-sided story.

And I just want to tell the rest of the story, where it’s like, ’hey bro, did you know Black people designed Jordans, too?’

Nigel Prentice: Right.

D’Wayne Edwards: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That brother designed LeBron stuff. Oh, that brother — you know Karl did that. Oh, April, one of the first Black women ever to design apparel. She had her own brand. We weren’t getting those stories, and because we weren’t getting those stories, people were growing up with no perception of what was possible.

Nigel Prentice: And that’s what strikes me about your work now is that you’re taking — you’re very aware of the one-sided transactions that have existed in the social and economic structures in America. And what I mean by that is, you know, Black folks, either in the inner city or in the suburbs, doesn’t really matter, have been looked upon as a revenue source for major corporations for a long time. And so, they have designed a way to extract as much revenue from these communities without the balance coming back the other way. Most transactions, there’s a balance. There’s like, I’m giving you something, you’re giving me something that’s fair play, you know. What we’ve seen is like the wool being pulled over our eyes for generations. I really want to get into that conversation in just a second because I think your institutions are poised to redefine that one-sided transaction. You have Pensole, and just for people listening, it’s P-E-N-S-O-L-E, so Pensole Footwear Design Academy. And then here recently, you’ve been garnering a lot of press because of the Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design, both of which you have founded.

Talk a little bit about what you went through to get the rights to acquire an HBCU, and what is your aspiration for a design and business school at an HBCU?

D’Wayne Edwards: So, for me, I think it was kinda simple. Where we are talented and gifted, born that way, and we’re not in traditional colleges and universities. And then, when we have all these amazing other institutions that were designed for us because we weren’t allowed to go to traditionally White institutions in the 1800s, we created HBCUs so we can showcase our skills and showcase our talents. HBCUs have been phenomenal institutions that have produced some of the greatest minds, you know, in the history of America. From, you know, the legal profession, I think more than half of the Black judges or attorneys are HBCU graduates. Same within finance and business and science.

The area that HBCU really haven’t focused too much on is design. And so, what I wanted to do was really shine a light on our strength as it pertains to design because Black design history, the majority of it, is still alive. Like all those people I named earlier, they’re all still alive. And to imagine what it would be like to have your son or your daughter being taught graphic design by the man who designed a hundred-dollar bill.

Nigel Prentice: Mm.

D’Wayne Edwards: Have your son or daughter being taught by the pioneer of streetwear and Karl Kani or Tj Walker or April Walker. Being taught by Wilson Smith or myself or E. Scott Morris how to design sneakers. Like you can’t replace that anywhere. You can’t get that anywhere. And to be able to provide that outlet and have it be either free or severely cost-effective.

Nigel Prentice: To be clear on dates, we’re recording this in April of 2022. You’re in startup phase now, and where’s the school physically going to be located?

D’Wayne Edwards: The school is in the Blackest city in America; Detroit, Michigan. And it will open on May 2nd [2022].

Nigel Prentice: This is now starting to get into the disruptive piece. In the introduction, I talked about a design educator who’s disrupting the industry, and that to me is where we get to watch you, and many of us help you and participate with you and co-design with you, a new way to teach America how to engage in education.

And how to simultaneously engaged in corporate America and rewrite the rules about who’s on the inside and who has access. We all know that design is one of those professions that — I don’t want to use the word privileged but — has the— yeah, as an output of being a designer, one creates the very reality around us.

D’Wayne Edwards: Yes.

Nigel Prentice: And as such, there is responsibility. That’s the word I like. We have responsibility, and what I like about what you’re doing is that you’re packaging up that responsibility and delivering it in a classroom, but ultimately, you’re doing more than just being an educator. When we’re talking about the programs that you’re running, you are going to the corporation to drive innovation, not to the ivory tower of academia.

Can you talk about that a little bit and what sparked you to go that route?

D’Wayne Edwards: Well, I mean, to me, it begins and ends at the corporation because that’s the end goal unless you want to have your own business. If you don’t want to have your own business, then you’re destined to want to work for someone else. So why not start at the end? And get the people who at the end involved in the beginning?

And that was really the disconnect that I saw with education. Starting with corporations and colleges, they don’t work well together. Corporations do very little on the high school side, and that’s where it begins. It begins by planting the seed of what’s possible for that kid, of what possible career is available to them.

And we’re blessed with a tool that the kid loves and idolize, which is sneakers and clothes. If we’re going in and we say, ’Hey, did you know, you can design shoes for a living and get paid for it and get them all for free?’ Who would not sign up for that one? So, what we do is go to where we know the kid has an interest in an industry, and then we partner that with the corporation that has an interest in that kid as a consumer and as an employee. They just focus on the consumer part. So, what we’re helping the corporations do is talk to that kid through the lens of, ’Hey, you can work for me versus you don’t have to just always buy from me.’

So, we’re changing the conversation that corporations have with their future consumers and their future employees. And so, because both sides need each other, we just come in the middle. Like, all right, this kid doesn’t have the money to go to college in order to earn the knowledge they need to work at your corporation.

So why don’t you give them the ability to go to college for free, with the idea of them becoming your future employee? I’m not a scientist. I don’t even think I’m that smart, dude, but that kind of makes a little bit of sense. All I did was take the athlete model that other corporations have used for 40, 50 years and transferred it over through the lens of design.

They know who they want. They know they need that person every single year. So, corporations breed their future. Corporations do the same thing with trying to figure out how to make money, but they never figure out how to actually hire the right people every single year, as much effort and energy as they put forth making money.

And so, all we’re doing is really marrying these two worlds where one person needs the other person just as much as they need each other and bringing them together. That way, our kids learn how to work the way their future employer wants them to work while they’re learning how to get that job.

Nigel Prentice: That’s fantastic, by the way. I love the model. I think it is absolutely disruptive. You’re beginning with the end in mind, right? You’re partnering with those who are in control of the design industry. You’re saying, ’Hey, large brand who hires designers every year, I’ve got what you need even if you don’t know how to access them. I’ve got the keys to the kingdom.’ It’s a go-to-market plan that — it’s just absolutely fantastic. I imagine that many of the decision-makers in these corporations — and we’re talking about Fortune 10 companies on your roster, right.

I’m imagining there’s not a lot of Black folks in these conversations whom you’re talking to, maybe there but correct me. 

We talked about Inglewood a few minutes ago, and I didn’t say it at the time, but Ice Cube said, “In Inglewood up to no good,” right. So, we’ve got that image, and now you’re saying, go work for XYZ corporation. How does XYZ corporation trust that you can prepare them? What does that conversation sound like?

D’Wayne Edwards: So, I was spoiled. I was spoiled. We talked a little bit about it earlier. I was supposed to work with Michael Jordan. I didn’t just idolize him as a basketball player before I started working with him. Then I found out the rest of him is that competitiveness that breeds excellence. So, once he got to the top, he stayed at the top.

There’s all these debates between who’s the GOAT, LeBron or Jordan, right? I always end the debate here. I end it here. Michael has won, I think, a minimum of six defensive player of the year awards. And he’s won at least six scoring championships sometimes in the same year.

So that means he’s done both. He controlled the whole court. If you look up the history of the NBA, you probably have never seen a scoring champion win one defensive or player of the year award. He controlled both. He learned how to do both, and he’s 6-0 in finals. LeBron is like 4-8, I think, or something crazy. It’s not even close. But when I say I was spoiled, I was spoiled to understand what makes this man tick and what aspiration and excellence looks like. So, when I leave Jordan, I’m leaving at the highest position in the whole sneaker industry.

Nigel Prentice: Right.

D’Wayne Edwards: My pedigree carries over into the education. So, because of where I worked, and they saw what I produced, I proved to them that I can do it.

Nigel Prentice: Gotcha.

D’Wayne Edwards: And then I started working with the best cause once you get, sorry, working with the best, it sucks when you go to two and three and four. I’m not saying that bragging at all; I’m just saying you get a taste of what that feels like. You want to stay up there, right. And so, when I started to teach, I started teaching at University of Oregon but immediately went to Art Center, number one product design school in the country. Then I started teaching at Parsons, number one fashion design school in the country. Then I started teaching at MIT, the number one engineering school, if not the number one school in the country. So, I’m hanging out up here, like, ’Oh, this is what excellence in education looks like?’ And I know I can make it better. That’s what Pensole is; I have the homework from the top three schools on the education side and then have the pedigree of the people I used to work with on the corporation side, and now bring those two together. Then conversations come to me instead of me going to them where I could tell you, dude, to this day, I have never asked a brand to work with us.

Nigel Prentice: Oh, really? It’s all been just sorting through the demand that comes in the front door.

D’Wayne Edwards: I’ve never asked a brand to work with us. They saw proof of concept.

Nigel Prentice: Right.

D’Wayne Edwards: They saw the results, and then they asked, ’Hey, can we get some of that.’ I mean, they didn’t say it like that, but that’s what I mean, right. And that’s what I noticed about school did not do, they didn’t really focus on that person when they left, what that person was going to do onto the world when they left because it’s a factory.

Nigel Prentice: Ohhh.

D’Wayne Edwards: I care about what happens to our kids when they’re being educated and where they go when they leave because I know those are seeds. All we did was plant seeds in different organizations across the nation, and those seeds they start showing results, and they start banging out the best design work. They have the best attitude. They’re the most professional there. They are already networking. They’re already mentors. I mean, just one year in, our kids are built different. And so, the corporation starts to see that, and they’re like, ’where’d you go?’ And then they see Pensole on their resume.

Nigel Prentice: Gotcha. That is the clearest articulation of how to disrupt education that I’ve heard in a while. Now, let’s turn to what we would call it at IBM in design at IBM, the human-centric side on who you serve. You’re serving students; you start connecting with them in high school. Who is it that you serve at these high schools? What does that person look like? I mean, you know, behaviorally, educationally, socioeconomic, and what’s the conversation that they and their families need to hear in order to hook on to Pensole?

D’Wayne Edwards: I think the biggest carrot I have is I’m actually serving my former 17-year-old self.

Nigel Prentice: Okay.

D’Wayne Edwards: The president of Art Center, the president of SCAD, and the president of whatever, they can’t say they were that kid. I was that kid. And so, I still think through that lens of what didn’t I have. So, I can get into the mindset of how they think. Now they have a whole lot more than what I had. I had the Yellow Pages, bro. I didn’t have a phone. The phone I saw was like a brick. It came with a long extension cord and the curly thing, and you held it with a handle. That was our cell phone when I grew up. Where I think the reason why I resonate with the parents and the students is because I was once them. And I understand what it’s like to be broke. I understand what it’s like to not have visibility to opportunity. I understand what it’s like to actually have talent but no outlet to express it. I understand what it’s like not to have mentors understand all of those things. So, I become all of those things to them, and the rest of our staff is the same way. And so that’s really, I would say one of our biggest advantages is we were that kid at one point, and we never lost sight of who that person is and who we were because they’re the same person to this day.

They actually have more advantages than we have. But with those advantages, they also have more distractions. As I said, we only had the Yellow Pages. They got Instagram; they got the internet. And then you layer in Instagram and Twitter and all these other things. Those are all distractions. So, we have to fight through all of those distractions to show them something good.

And that’s hard cause I’m not a social media person. I’m not really on social media at all. I’m only on LinkedIn. That’s the only social media platform on, but I view social media and people’s phones like a Vegas slot machine.

Nigel Prentice: Okay.

D’Wayne Edwards: Where somebody posts something. Well, you know, if the number come up and they might see it. If not, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff coming to them every second, right. And so, it’s like, okay, if you show up, then they might pay attention, but these kids need to slow their world down. And what we try to do is just meet them where they are. Again, the beauty of what we do is sneakers. Well, part of the design that we do is because we were expand to other areas, is that they’re already interested in what we are trying to sell them because they are already buying it. We’re trying to sell them on a career on something that they already actually worship. What we have to do is figure out a way to get in front of them so they can see; I can have a career doing that. So, we meet them where they are, if they are on a StockX, or if they own a footlocker.com, we show up there.

Nigel Prentice: I see, okay.

D’Wayne Edwards: We show up where they go. They’re not going to the library. They’re not looking up stuff that’s going to be about their future when they’re on their cell phones. So, we try to meet them in their comfort zone of entertainment. Entertainment is shopping. Entertainment is different people they follow. Creating events and activities, competitions within their schools, afterschool programs. Like we show up in all these places to kind of surround this kid to where at some point they’re going to run into us. And when they run into us, now it’s our job to keep them. If we can get their attention, now it’s on us to keep their attention. And it’s getting so bad, bro. Like we have to pay high school kids to take afterschool programs because it’s for them.

Nigel Prentice: Wow.

D’Wayne Edwards: But we have to pay them because if not, they got to figure out how they’re going to make some money, and they’ll be happier if they go to McDonald’s and get that McDonald’s check versus ’Nah hang out with me for two hours and learn about sneakers and have a career in this industry.’ They ain’t trying to hear that, man. They trying to hear where that paycheck at?

Nigel Prentice: Right, right.

D’Wayne Edwards: So, we got to pay them in some instances, minimum ways. Like, okay, I’m going to put you on this program, and the brand’s going to pay you to learn at high school cause they ain’t trying to hear too much other noise.

Nigel Prentice: I would say that anybody that critiques that model is operating from that one-sided transaction point of view that we’ve been trained to live with, by, you know, this American sort of model — let’s face it, only exists now because it took advantage of our ancestors for several hundred years. And I know that’s a big claim, but there’s never been a time on this continent when the American economic system did not have an unequal exchange of value with Black folks in this country, right. I dare anyone to disprove that claim with evidence.

Nigel Prentice: It speaks to why Nike and other shoe brands sponsor all the field renovations. All the gymnasiums, all the —

D’Wayne Edwards: All that. Yeah.

Nigel Prentice: High school uniforms, right? Because they’re building a customer base for life.

D’Wayne Edwards: Yep, absolutely.

Nigel Prentice: The kids and these parents who might not have a lot, or do have a lot, doesn’t matter; they’re paying for the right to be marketed to for the next 50 years. Isn’t that something? 

D’Wayne Edwards: That’s the way it is.

Nigel Prentice: How do we build a business model where people will pay us for the right to buy more stuff from us for the rest of their life? It’s a crazy model. But what happens is you’ve got Blue-chip high schoolers. They turn into, you know, one-and-done ballers at a college level. And then they’re rookies in the league, but they’ve been wearing Jordan’s since they were 10 years old.

D’Wayne Edwards: Yep.

Nigel Prentice: And that’s their whole world, right. And that’s not an accident. Let me ask you, I’m not the expert; you are. Am I right in understanding that what I just described is one of the business models that Nike and other brands live on?

D’Wayne Edwards: As by design, yes.

Nigel Prentice: Yeah, and it’s by design; it drives their economic engine. Is that right?

D’Wayne Edwards: It’s by design. Yes, sir. This happened for decades.

Nigel Prentice: Happened for decades. They’re harvesting revenue from our youth, in other words, right.

D’Wayne Edwards: Absolutely.

Nigel Prentice: How was that different than a shoewear brand putting their product in the gymnasium and putting their brand and their logo and their mark on the shoulder pad of a high school kid in any city in America. It’s not any different.

D’Wayne Edwards: Nope, and it’s actually now legal; officially, it’s called NILs.

Nigel Prentice: Oh, right, right. So, the students can now be sponsored.

D’Wayne Edwards: High school kids can get paid now and keep their amateurism, which the whole NCAA thing is a joke. Now everything that’s happened in sports illegally for decades is now legal.

Nigel Prentice: Illegally?

D’Wayne Edwards: Let’s think about— oh, it happened for decades illegally, you know? No, it was always a cash business. No checks, no credit cards. It was all cash.

Nigel Prentice: Wow.

D’Wayne Edwards: You can’t trace it because then the kid will forfeit their collegiate rights if they violate their amateurism laws, right. But think about it from this perspective, tho. So that’s been happening for decades, right, with Black folks. Guess what industry is the most successful for Black folks? Sports and entertainment! The two areas that we get exploited quote, unquote, exploited, earliest.

Nigel Prentice: Wow. So, you’re saying there’s some intentionality there, right?

D’Wayne Edwards: Oh, of course, there is because they know in order for that cycle to continue every single year, you have to make that investment early, so that farm system doesn’t get interrupted. But imagine if you had a farm system like that for like doctors or designers or electricians, like, can you imagine if they had a program in high school where you paid people to learn about how to become a doctor or an engineer or a scientist?

D’Wayne Edwards: Do you know that we would go from the bottom to the top in STEM professions?

Nigel Prentice: Overnight.

D’Wayne Edwards: Because we’re at the bottom right now.

Nigel Prentice: Oh, yeah.

D’Wayne Edwards: Because it’s not sexy and it’s not interesting to these kids.

Nigel Prentice: So, you say a farm system, and for those who weren’t into sports metaphors, that’s this idea of lower-ranked, younger, usually athletes, who are semi-pro. They’re learning how to be that professional ballplayer, whether it’s baseball — now we’ve got the G League and other leagues.

Nigel Prentice: And so, the farm is — you know, on the job training type of scenario to become professional athletes that you see on TV. It’s almost a metaphor for how the Pensole Academy is going to market.

Nigel Prentice: How many students and young people have you worked with over the years?

D’Wayne Edwards: In 12 years, we’ve had about 1500 students.

Nigel Prentice: Oh, that’s amazing.

D’Wayne Edwards: 700 of them are all employed right now.

Nigel Prentice: 700 employed in the program and domain that they went to school with you for, that is amazing. That is amazing. Do you have any case studies or any particular individuals that you’re particularly proud of?

D’Wayne Edwards: Oh bro, the best ones are the ones who have a great career, retire, and teach.

Nigel Prentice: And you’ve already gotten that far with them?

D’Wayne Edwards: Yup.

Nigel Prentice: Man, that’s amazing.

D’Wayne Edwards: Couple of them have already retired; now they’re going to work with us.

Nigel Prentice: That’s what’s up. So, tell me a little bit about the next few years with the university with Pensole Lewis School of Design and Business. We’ve got programs kicking off already, right now. What are the next couple of years have in store for the school?

D’Wayne Edwards: So, we’re going to grow outside of our sweet spot. Definitively, you know, still, be footwear apparel accessories, but we’ll start adding packaging design. We’ll start adding furniture design. We’ll start adding UX design. We’ll start adding gaming and all these other disciplines that the kid is naturally interested in on a daily basis.

Like everything, I just mentioned to you, that kid experiences on a daily basis, and we basically want to become kind of a career college. What we actually call ourselves is the “culture college.”

I want to say culture college because the topics that we teach are culturally relevant to this kid. And so, when you sign up to our programs, or if you sign up to our website in the next few years, you will start to see all these super relatable topics that they know what it is in simple language, right. Not necessarily a professional language, but in more simple language so they can connect those dots on their own.

But as we grow and develop, we’ll start adding more of those careers. Our strategy is really to focus on any company that creates a product to be able to teach that kid the business side of that, the design side of that, all the way to the manufacturing side of that. No college can you go from the beginning all the way to the store. And we’re taking you from the financial forecast for the quarter, all the way to what shows up on the store.

Nigel Prentice: That’s amazing, and your accreditation is on its way.

D’Wayne Edwards: It’s on its way. Right now, we’re accredited through CCS. So, CCS is our education partner. They’re— you know, well-respected design school, one of the best in the country. We fundamentally teach the same type of design. That’s why we’re able to leverage their accreditation while we’re getting our own.

So, we have to teach through their system and have graduates, so we can prove to the education board that we know what we’re doing. For the first 12 years, we chose not to go down the accreditation path because our accreditation was coming from the corporations that were sponsoring our programs. So, we didn’t need a middle body to say, ’Hey, you know what? You’re teaching the right thing.’ Well, no, the corporation is telling us we teach them the right thing because they’re paying for it, and they’re hiring our students.

Nigel Prentice: Right.

D’Wayne Edwards: For me, that’s the highest level of accreditation, but our system in the United States is a little backwards.

Nigel Prentice: Well, sure, sure. And that’s part of what we do in design, right, is find clever ways to not game the system but work the system. To get to the goal that we needed to get to. For those listening and those who want to get involved or might even have a student that they’d like to send your way or is a designer or an executive who wants to get in touch.

What’s the best way for folks to get in touch with you, and how can they help?

D’Wayne Edwards: So pensolelewiscollege.com is the website. I guess I’m only on LinkedIn, so you can hit me on LinkedIn directly, D’Wayne Edwards. My team is going to be mad at me cause I don’t know the social handles, dude, cause I’m not on social media. I’m sure it was one of those things you can, you know, it wouldn’t be hard to find us, but two ways to catch me is on LinkedIn or pensolelewiscollege.com.

Nigel Prentice: Right, and that’s pensolelewiscollege.com. On Instagram, you are at Pensole Lewis, and then Pensole Lewis College on Facebook. So, I encourage folks —

D’Wayne Edwards: Thank you.

Nigel Prentice: I got you, bro. I got you. I encourage folks to reach out and get connected, have conversations, and do the work. Listen, this has been an amazing conversation. One of the absolute best times I’ve had creating and working in this podcast. This is what comes to mind for me when listening to you, knowledge of self. We talk about knowledge of self.

We kind of throw that phrase around a lot, but you have what it takes both in the craft in business and as a human being, making a difference in this world. And it’s this knowledge of self that I hear you punctuate in almost every story you tell, every business idea that you talk about, and every outcome you’re driving towards. It doesn’t matter what profession a person is in, and it doesn’t matter what station in life or where someone’s family background is, or where they’re going. Wouldn’t you say that knowledge of self is something that has served you well in your life? It really feels like it has; is that true?

D’Wayne Edwards: Oh, absolutely. If you don’t know anything, you better know yourself.

Nigel Prentice: and that feels like it connects to your students so well because they may not have that, right. None of us do at 14, 15, 16; we’re all still, you know, knuckleheads trying to figure out the world. Having a big brother, an OG, like you come in and say, ’Nah, bro, this is the way to think about it.’ Let’s talk about these kicks. Let’s talk about the video games or the cell phone. Yeah, of course, we’ve got all of that. But then, let me show you the light — peek behind the curtain. Let me show you how the world really works. And then it almost feels like you Jedi Mind Trick folks into moving in the way you move. Is that right?

D’Wayne Edwards: Oh, absolutely. We trick kids into learning all day long, man. You know, I would say that the one thing that we try to drill home to future designers is you need to own something, and that is: it’s your fault. You own that statement, and you’ll be all right. For designers out there who may be listening, you’ll resonate with this one because it’s probably happened to you, or it will. You do a great job, you created something, and it sells really well, and then all of a sudden, everybody wants to stand right next to you and take credit for it too. And then you create something, and it sucks. You’re all alone. There’s nobody standing next to you. The middle ground is just own it. So, when you own it, you put everything into it.

If it didn’t work, oh well. If it did work, oh, fantastic. But don’t look for the appreciation of others for your existence as good or great, because you’ll always be disappointed because when you need people the most is when things go wrong. And most of the time, that does not happen. Just in life in general, but especially as a designer, when something goes wrong — who designed that? They never say, oh, that was a bad strategy. That was a bad engineer, or, well, maybe the engineer might get it too, but they never say that that was a bad sales job. Or, you know, you didn’t move those numbers the right way. It’s always like, that was a bad design. Well, don’t, you know, like there was a whole bunch of other people involved in the process of making this thing come to life?

Nigel Prentice: Right.

D’Wayne Edwards: But I get the blame for it. So then that way, if you own it, you accept it, it’s your fault, you’ll be straight because you won’t be sad or happy. You’ll be consistent with your emotions because you knew you put forth your best effort to do whatever the result looks like; whatever that is, that’s what it is, and you’re happy with it. If you get credit for it, great. If you get blamed for it, great. Take it.

Nigel Prentice: Well, listen, man, absolutely amazing conversation, man. I love the jewels you dropped from beginning to end, and I appreciate this time together.

I appreciate you. And thank you for spending this time with us on the It’s about time podcast. I can’t wait to continue to figure out how we’re going to continue to work together, and no matter what, I’m going to be watching the Pensole Lewis school. And I know that there’s going to be some amazing outcomes, and I invite everybody to join me in supporting your efforts.

Have a good one, my brother; I appreciate it.

D’Wayne Edwards: Thank you. Appreciate you, too.

Nigel Prentice: Thank you for listening to It’s about time. I’d like to thank Alisha Moore, our producer, and David Avila, our audio engineer. And thanks to the entire Racial Equity in Design workstream here at IBM for making this possible. Everyone, be safe and be well.