Building an America where everyone can thrive is not a solo endeavor. It requires us to come together across lines of difference that have largely divided and fragmented us. At New Profit, we firmly believe that, if we are to create the transformational change we seek in our schools, our communities, and our economy, we must work together across racial identities, generations, and sectors.

We must also come together to share and understand each other’s ideas, experiences, and hopes. This is why we’re hosting a series of dialogues between social impact leaders: To lift up stories based on connection with someone with a different perspective. 

Shawn Dove, a Managing Partner and New Profit, has spent much of his career connecting with young people. For more than a decade, Shawn led the Campaign for Black Male Achievement, an initiative that has become the largest national movement to improve the life outcomes of Black men and boys. Shawn also served as a key advisor and organizer for the launch of President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, was the founding editor-in-chief of the award-winning Harlem Overheard youth-produced newspaper, and served as Vice President for MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership and Director of Youth Ministries for First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, NJ. In this series, Shawn will lead conversations with emerging leaders to explore their personal and professional journeys, learn from their experience, and hear about their vision for building a more equitable future.

Dillon Bernard, who has been part of the co-design process for New Profit’s annual gathering, The Well, recently spoke with Shawn about the power of storytelling for transformative justice. Dillon is a cultural strategist on a journey that he started as a 13-year-old content creator. Today, he is the Executive Director of Create for Change, a youth-led storytelling nonprofit building digital communications campaigns in partnership with 60+ social justice organizations. He has spearheaded social media strategy for movements that have organized over one million people in the streets and garnered billions of digital impressions. These efforts include the historic September 20, 2019 US Climate Strikes, March On for Voting Rights, and Earth Day Live.

++

Shawn Dove: I often talk about the paradox of a promise and peril for Black men and boys in America. I can’t be on a zoom with you, Dillon, without feeling promise. You’re an innovator, cultural architect and creator, and a social entrepreneur. How do you heal?

Dillon Bernard: Digital communications is go-go-go. It is very hands-on and it’s very reaction-based. So to take care of myself I’ve had to get separate phones for my work. I’ve had to limit my time and break for meditation.

Shawn Dove: I’ve watched you model that. I remember getting an automatic email from you: ‘I’m off the grid. I’ll check back with you in a certain amount of time’ — and I was like, Wow! That’s pretty impressive. 

Let’s get a little bit into your story. You’re described as a cultural and creative strategist. We know that since you were 12 or 13 years old, you’ve been creating storytelling content right? How did you know this is the path and the journey, and these are the gifts and skills that I want to share with the world?

Dillon Bernard: I was somebody who always wanted to see what was happening. I think that’s what spurred it. I was exposed to the power of being able to just create things on the internet. The internet allows folks to tell their stories on their own terms. In being able to amplify other people’s stories, I discovered my own story. 

I was usually the quiet one in the room. I was just listening and observing — looking at different people’s reactions and analyzing the room and noticing what’s missing. I think that’s really my super power. All my work has been focused on amplifying young, multicultural folks, and critical voices that are often missed or intentionally ignored or banned from conversations. So my focus became how do we amplify those voices? I think from age 13 to now, the jump has been an evolution to get to my center.

Shawn Dove: It’s one thing to be inspired to create content on different platforms and social media. But you’ve taken it to another level. You’ve created an enterprise around your mission and your purpose. You’re the Executive Director of Create for Change. What made you say, I want to create this enterprise?

Dillion Bernard: Storytelling is power. I saw this as I strategically helped move millions of people to take action online and offline. I often work with community organizers, and what I bring most to those conversations is thinking through the social media and cultural strategy tactics.I’m always asking: How do we actually make people talk about this online? My main focus has really been creating this storytelling incubator that centers those voices that had not been in the conversations. There is no blueprint that I’m following. I’m building and testing it out as I go.

Shawn Dove: So tell me a story, Dillon, about a mentor that helped give you mission fuel to do what you do today.

Dillon Bernard: Actually, our mutual friend Caitlin Johnson, the Co-Founder of the youth storytelling collective SparkAction. In 2019, I sent a cold email essentially saying: here’s all the stuff I’ve done before. I would love to connect. And she responded to my message. She hired me for a full time job when I was 19. It’s really folks like Caitlin who have been the sparks of the work that I’ve done. She was my first-ever client. Our work together fueled me up. I realized I can’t do this alone and I have never tried to do this alone. When I get asked about intergenerational spaces, it’s about a conversation. Caitlin was there when we needed her. She was the mentor in the room, and I think that is where the power lies — just being in conversation and available and then stepping back.

Shawn Dove: I’m glad you sent that cold email. Where does a 19 year-old get the courage and belief in his own agency to say, I’m gonna send this cold email?

Dillon Bernard: If I got a no or I don’t get a response, you know what that does? Nothing really. I’m so connected and determined to do this work that I refuse to wait for somebody else to give me permission. If somebody does give me support, the work will go a little faster and I will be hugely appreciative of it. But either way, I’ll still be on this path. 

Shawn Dove: You helped organize the Young People Address the Nation campaign which provided a platform for young people to respond to the President’s State of the Union. In your work, Dillon, what’s the story that young people are telling about America and the future that they see for America right now?

Dillon Bernard: Radical transformation and reimagining of business as usual. Young people are collaborating to reimagine every system. What we are experiencing now is not sustainable. This isn’t good for us. This isn’t good for our future or the folks who will come behind us. So let’s reimagine it, with them in mind and with us in mind, too. The biggest conversation that I see after ‘let’s change things’ is that everything is connected. 

Shawn Dove: You mentioned reimagining every system as a young social entrepreneur. At New Profit, we firmly believe that proximity is expertise, that those that are closest to the problems are closest to the solutions. What feedback or reimagining interventions do you have for the field of philanthropy?

Dillon Bernard: Reimagine who’s in those spaces. Bring them in early, when they’re in their twenties, or don’t even know that there is a career in this space. It’s a start for how we get more young creative people to do this work of controlling our own narrative.

Shawn Dove: I believe if you can reframe your failure, you can reframe your future. So it’s not only the stories that we are sharing with the world, but the stories that we tell ourselves. Maya Angelou said that there is no greater agony than an untold story inside of you. What’s the story inside of you that needs to be told that hasn’t been?

Dillon Bernard: I feel like I am doing my best in terms of working with what I have. I get proof every day that storytelling is powerful. For me, it’s about stepping into that power unapologetically. Here’s who I am. Here’s what I’m able to offer. Storytelling is about self empowerment and transformative justice, particularly when it starts to look at folks who look like us. We are all storytellers.  

Shawn Dove: How do you quantify hope? I have been exploring more and more the role of faith and spirituality in social change and racial justice, and how, not religion, but faith and spirituality are inextricably connected to social change.

Dillon Bernard: I often think about how I’m covered eternally by the sacrifices, prayers, and dreams of my ancestors. I have to have hope — there’s no other way. I got to this room by doing this work. This is all for a reason. So whatever that reason is it’s why I come back to this work. 

Shawn Dove: Thank you Dillon. I know the values of Create for Change are impact empathy, empowerment, and authenticity. Thank you for stepping into that and bringing more voices to the forefront of social impact.