WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FOR YOU AS A BLACK MAN TO GET TO WHERE YOU ARE TODAY?
Travis: I’m in a profession where it’s not very diverse. In D.C, it’s a little different. In many ways, a Black male in the legal profession outside of D.C is not by any stretch of the imagination a majority. Even when I spent some time at my first internship at Goldman Sachs, which is pretty diverse, you can still see there was a “token” component. I worked at FINRA, which is the other side of investment banks as a financial regulator, and there, there was only one Black person per department in our office. The people there are great, and they are driven, but a lot of the hiring occurred through who they knew.” Communities are very segregated up until today. In fact, New York has the most segregated school system in the country, even more so than Texas. When I moved from Hempstead, I moved from a predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhood, to a predominantly White neighborhood. I was the only Black kid in my class. The students were like, “Can I touch your hair?” They had never interacted with a Black student prior to meeting me. As we got older, there were more Black students but it was still a big disparity. For me, navigating as a Black man has been easier for me because of my Dad’s foresight when he moved us out to a safer neighborhood with a better school system. Diversity is really key because it opens doors and we see this more than ever in this country. When people keep to their camps, there is misinformation on both sides. I think that’s the biggest challenge. For me, it hasn’t been as bad because I grew up exposed to it. Some of my other brothers weren’t used to the demographic shift, which made it somewhat harder for them to adjust.
WHAT SEPARATES PEOPLE WHO HAVE MADE THEIR DREAM A REALITY FROM THOSE WHO HAVEN’T?
Travis: I think that one portion of it is luck. I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t get lucky. My application for the White House Internship could have landed in front of someone that had no interest in my resume. Even the law school I went to. I was visiting different law schools and Villanova hadn’t offered me any scholarship money. My dad was like, “don’t waste your time visiting that law school and just head back up to school.” I was taking off time from college to look at some schools. Something told me to go there and I met with the academic advisor and the head of Financial Aid. I told him I really like the school. They didn’t have a tour guide, but they asked a current student and she offered to take me to her next class. It was unplanned and it was great. I met the professor and he later ended up being one of my recommenders on applications when I was in law school at Villanova. I told the Asst. Director of Financial Aid, ‘I love this school, but I can’t afford to come here.” He asked me how much the other schools were giving me and when I said $60,000, he said, ‘if I give you the $60,000 scholarship would you consider attending Villanova?” I, of course, said yes. I told my Dad and he was shocked. You have to drive and the push for it. I saw that it was important to knock on all those doors because when you do, you don’t know what doors are going to open up. If I had limited myself and said, there’s no point in applying for the White House internship, I would have never gotten it.
