Wakanda Forever

This post is being written with a heavy heart. I ask that you tune into the ABC showing of Black Panther in honor and memory of Chadwick Boseman. My brother, may you rest peacefully knowing that you moved this world in a way that will never be forgotten. You're portrayal of Thurgood Marshall, James Brown, Jackie Robinson, and of course your epic role in Black Panther will live long and inspire many for generations to come. Wakanda Forever

I'm know Black Panther or Luke Cage...I just use my everyday skills uplift myself and hopefully you. My everyday skills continue to see a nation that is hurting and in need of re-engineering.  A different and newer term used in my profession is transformation and I am a lead architect in transforming business and cyber security operations for companies across the world when they experience "issues". So you can rest assure, you are not alone...even countries and companies have issues and need someone to help.

I find out why things are broken and often challenge my stakeholders to lead me to the "root cause" of the issue. This exercise can be enlightening, humbling, and even embarrassing depending on people's personalities and what may have been overlooked as we uncover the issues affecting a team, department, or company.  We may summarize our analysis in a technique called a SWOT analysis --- which documents the (S)trengths  (W)eaknesses  (O)pportunities  (T)hreats of the entity being reviewed.

I have a fiduciary responsibility to my stakeholders so I come in as a independent party that has to be ethic and honest in reporting what I find. In the business world we have learned that only an "independent authority" will things get cleaned up. When I look at critical issues that African-Americans are facing with police departments, there is often no independent authority --- completely removed from the police department that can objectively weigh in and hold officers accountable. If you have immunity, it does not matter what I find in my analysis, and I suppose it does not matter what a cop does because immunity negates accountability. 

I often summarize what I do as being a Detective, Lawyer, and Psychiatrist. I'll breakdown why I have 3 different roles:

As a Detective, I have to accurately and even record all my interactions with my stakeholders. I find it strange that in my profession, all accurate interactions must be accurately logged yet we still have many police departments across the country that can't, won't, and don't securely record, log, and document all their interactions. If I chose not to do this I would get fired, why are police forces not held accountable like I would be in the corporate world?

As a Lawyer, I do have to advise my stakeholders when it appears they are in situations that are non-compliant with the law and the intent. But again, I find it strange, that there is a haze around the "baseline" conduct of how an officer must interact with it's stakeholders so that persons like myself can review how well they are complying to the baseline. We do things such as a lookback analysis. If you did a lookback analysis the my corporate methodology could quickly deduce that African Americans, particularly males are being negatively harmed by police forces across the country at a disproportionate rate to other classes of people. A lookback is a scientific way of identifying harm or abuse and we use it in the financial industry as research has shown that elderly people are often the targets and harmed by financial crimes. So if we can protect and prosecute elderly harm...why are African-American males not afforded the same protections.

The shooting of Jacob Blake and murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd are simply a small sample of my lookback analysis and the data is grim. There is no one taking any action with this clear and factual data which means by doing nothing...our politicians and our citizens are complicent if they do nothing with this data.

Finally, as a psychiatrist I listen to those I am working with to understand the entire story. I want to know what's working, what's painful, and what works well. When I see Portland, I hear the pain of a system that is broken. When I heard Doc Rivers question "Does this Country Love Us", I think he raised the question so many African Americans and a growing number of minorities are feeling. You just have to listen...and many people are not good listeners. Doc, I've have written over the years the contract that America has with African-Americans and it's people of color is a bad contract that needs to be re-written. It's the driving force as to why I will continue sharing my pillars. Love, Spirituality, Freedom, and Volunteerism are the paths forward. But in the US, if you are not financially, spiritually, mentally, and physically healthy and organized then the toxicity of wealth and leverage of those in power will try to snuff you and your voice out...like they did George Floyd. 

As a security expert, I use tools like: Cyberark, Zscaler, Crowstrike, Splunk, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, NortonLifeLock, Tenable Holdings. 

However, I remind my clients that tools make you more efficient they hardly ever solve the root cause of who is responsible, what was the target goal and how do you measure progress, and finally how do you hold someone accountable?

Stay Balanced, Stack Your Chips, Get Organized and Let's use our Leverage --- to truly effect change.

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Portfolio Summary:

Collectors Universe Hit new all-time high of $50. - So your boy finally did it. Some of my shares are officially considered a 10 Bagger. That's when they increase 10 fold. If you'll recall, I bought Collectors back in 2008 so some of my shares bought at $40 finally reached this status first described by the great investor Peter Lynch. Still Holding

Sprint Finally Sold -  Here is my sale of 50% of my Sprint stake for roughly $5K in profit. I wish I would have held on until 1 full year for it to be considered a Long Term investment for tax purposes but that's another class for another day. I grew up with not much so I'll take these blessing and put them to good use.