Get to know the Podcast (w/Atiya Sharmin)

Hi Tribe!

This is our first official episode of our first official season! in this episode, our first guest, Atiya Sharmin, will play the role of interviewer as she helps you get to know the history of this podcast's beginnings, as well as an in-depth look into the show's host, Shawn Blake.

Atiya Sharmin is a Bangladeshi native and Data Analytics expert. She currently works in the FinTech sector and operates The Finvested, a digital financial literacy platform, on her leisure. She is passionate about teaching her community financial tools for success.

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Peace & Love,
SB 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Welcome everyone. My name is Sean Blake and I am the host of the Afro healing podcast. Today is a very special day for myself, and I hope you all as well, because it is our first episode. And this episode, you will get the chance to learn more about the Afro healing podcast and learn a bit about myself and my background and whether this is a journey that you want to be a part of. And I hope you will, because I think that you'll learn from all the enlightening, invigorating and motivating conversations that we'll have with the many guests from many walks of life that I've been blessed to come across. So in order for you guys to get a gist of who I am and what the podcast is about, I have a co-host for today. My co-host is none other than my best friend, my sister, my R O D a T a Sharman at Tia Sharman is a Bangladeshi FinTech data analytics expert who has a passion for educating others about financial literacy, through the lens of cultural diversity and ethics, and her spare time. She volunteers by advocating on behalf of social causes as a former board member of rotary international. So thank you so much, uh, Tia for lending us your time today and welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Thank you so much for having me, Sean, I really appreciate getting to speak to everybody about who you are and what brought you to this journey and creating this amazing podcasts that will hopefully enlighten a lot of people out there. And it's been an exciting time to be best friends with you, go through life together. So I think this conversation will be very spiritually enlightening and fully introspective as well.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Absolutely. So I take it, you have some questions for ma um, let's jump right into it,

Speaker 2: 2:09

Definitely. And I think first and foremost, um, I'd love to kind of get your perspective on what inspired you to start this Afro healing podcast and what that kind of helps people that are listening in to look forward to.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Wow, what inspired me. So before I even get into that, I'll say that I never had the confidence to speak on a podcast. I had an insecurity about my voice, so I never really even thought of doing a pocket I'm like podcasts. Like I don't really like listening to myself, but then the pandemic happened, the Panorama Porsche happened and everything changed so much has changed in my life during that time where I really had to put on my big boy pants and just like step into my calling or step into my truth a lot more than I probably would've if I was in the old life. So during this pandemic, I've personally, you know, gone through quite a bit with, you know, the loss of my grandmother, the loss of a cousin, and then seeing other family members who are, you know, struggling to adapt to this new life and having witnessed to how mental health and mental wellbeing is so important and how it needs to be spoken about more. That influenced me to step up and speak out and speak up and share, you know, share the different perspectives related to mental wellbeing, financial literacy, physical health, sharing, all those different things that, those conversations and that knowledge so that people can, you know, take that information and do with it, what is best for their lives and elevate and adapt to this new life. So in brief, those are the things that inspired me to start this podcast.

Speaker 2: 4:02

Yeah, I think that is so intense, right? Those emotions that you're talking about, loss, fear, anxiety, these are reverberating emotions throughout the society globally on a global basis right now, you know, 2020 was not the year we expected it to be in 2021 is a year of uncertainty for us. You know, now a lot of people are getting the vaccine. What does that mean? Do we go back into society as if nothing happened or, you know, what have we learned through this time of, um, great, great uncertainty and despair? So, um, I would, I would kind of delve into what you think, uh, people can take away from this podcast. What is this podcast for and its essence, given that type of background and context?

Speaker 1: 4:51

Absolutely. Well, obviously, and the name of the podcast after healing, I am speaking to a certain group, my community of Pan-African people. Um, I am looking to unite us all unite, the pan African community, help us grow and elevate, um, help people reach their best potential, not their next potential, but their best potential. And that'll be done through them, gaining perspective through all the amazing conversations that will be had through all the knowledge that will be shared. Um, and in the broader sense, I want to unite us all the BiPAP community as well. You know, you're a Bangladeshi woman. We've been friends for years. You've taught me so much about your culture. You've taught me so much about what it means to be a Muslim woman. I'm not Muslim, I'm more of a spiritual guy and we have that understanding of who each other is. And there's a respect as well. And it's, so that's uniting we're family, even though we have such different lives. And I want people to understand that we can all be family, we can all unite and we can all elevate and we can all achieve those things that we want to achieve in life. If we, you know, get the right information and have the right conversations and really challenge some of the norms of our communities, in a sense, some things need to change. And I'm hoping that the African podcast can be a catalyst for that change, honestly, and help us get there.

Speaker 2: 6:17

Yeah. Can you elaborate a little bit more? How do you plan on developing this community contributing to this community in what kind of communities I would even say you see being created from this reverberating environment where it's a feedback loop, you know, you grow and we grow and listeners grow from learning from each other, listening to each other. So I guess what kind of communities do you see developing and how do you plan to contribute?

Speaker 1: 6:42

Absolutely. I would first and foremost say that the listener that I have in mind is someone who is either spiritually in tuned or has an inclination to be spiritually. And to many, they want to learn more someone who cares about their health and either wants to share or wants to learn more on how they can be more physically, well, someone who may be struggling with something mentally related and is looking for that extra push. So I think that this is something that can reach many different types of people within that community of Pan-African BiPAP. And I even welcome some of my white brothers and sisters, if you would like to be a part of the podcast, welcome, bring your knowledge, bring your perspective. If you're someone who is open-minded and you are not rigid in your thinking, this is for you because we will talk about things. We will go against the grain. At times we will talk about things that can be taboo, but those conversations need to be had. So if you're someone who's not afraid to have a conversation, this is for you, but how I plan to help the community, I would say in the very beginning, given that we're in the pandemic, we obviously can't do too many gatherings, but I see this growing so large to the point where we're having meetups, we're having conferences and we're bringing together the community. We're sharing entrepreneurship, we're talking about tech, we're really giving people the tools that they need to succeed. That's the bigger and broader goal of this all, but through, you know, the podcast itself, I think people can just take away from the many different topics that we'll talk about related to those, those things that I mentioned. And as far as holistic health, because that's what we're for, where we want you to be a well-rounded a well running person.

Speaker 2: 8:34

Interesting. Yeah, no, it's, I think it's a really interesting, um, viewpoint that, that you bring to the table, especially with this podcast, because it's around, you know, experiencing others, um, in really who they are and who they don't always get to let them on themselves show on a day-to-day basis. Uh, we all have something to learn from other, and it's interesting that I believe this podcast will show how we can always relate to each other in some aspect and as fish, especially through spirituality, you know, we're all more similar than we like to think our differences might be great in some areas, but the core of it, when you talk about, you know, spirituality, how that relates to religion, what both of their, I believe both of their, um, reasons for existing for this long and being, you know, passed down generations or generation in terms of cultural, um, practices, because we all know socialism and, um, wanting to be social in the right ways. That's, those are constructed, um, environments that we've created for ourselves and religion and spirituality is for me, meant to, you know, help us to be whole and whole, but help us to be more well-rounded individuals that respect each other and have a higher purpose than, than just ourselves. So I think one thing I would like to kind of get into is just more about yourself. Like what, what makes you, you and your journey very special, and that has brought you to this kind of juncture in your, in your life right now. Could you talk a little bit about where you're from as a start and delve into that? How was your journey so particular? Yeah,

Speaker 1: 10:16

Absolutely. Um, I think that me being a Bronx born boogie down Bronx, born New York, um, let's talk about that. That in itself lends to so much character, not just myself, anyone who's from the Bronx, you have so much character, if you were

Speaker 2: 10:38

Yeah. The cultural microcosm of all these different immigrants, you know, it's amazing. It's a really great melting pot.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Absolutely. So not only that, but at a deeper level, you know, I am the son of a grandparent. I was raised by my grandmother in time. We will go more deeper into that story, but that dynamic in itself is different. And then to have grown up in a lower income neighborhood and have escaped poverty, I was in poverty as a child, and I was able to escape poverty through God, through mentality, through my mindset, you know, and grit. Yeah. Those are things that are, I, I think that they can be learned, but I think that innately, some people are gifted with those things by the higher power, you know, and I give God all the praise and all the, um, recognition when it comes to, how did I escape poverty? How did I go from public schools in the Bronx, which we know are, you know, not getting their rightful, um, allocated funds so that you can give kids the resources that they need to actually, you know, grow and learn. How did I escape the public school system and then get to a private school and have that changed the complete trajectory of my life. So that in itself lends itself to how I can bring a different perspective to our listeners and allow them to tap into a different walk of life. And then, you know, obviously us being Bronx natives, that's how we met. We met at Horace Mann, which was the high school that we both attended first day. We'll get into that another time. But first day we met and we've been friends, brother, sister, 15 years, 15 years

Speaker 2: 12:41

Been so long, well, more than half of our lives, I would say that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 12:47

We know that, um, in our body oats or neighborhoods you'll come across many different types of people. You spoke about the Bronx being a hub of just multicultural, you know, people and many different immigrants from different walks of life and different places. And so in that, and being from New York, I've met so many different types of people and then going off to college and studying abroad. I studied in Spain, we both studied in Spain and we met so many different types of people. Did we? Not from all over the world and those conversations that we had and those things that we learned still stick with me to this day, they have shaped my em, they've shaped my perspective. They have shaped my character and this life that God has blessed me with is not one that is easy, first of all. But it's also not one that, um, has been kind of like monolithic or linear, you know, I've been exposed to a lot. And so in that I've gained perspective and I've grown. And I think I want to, I'm at the point now where I want to share these things, I want to share these individuals that I've met in life and allow you guys or listeners to grow as well.

Speaker 2: 14:09

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. I think, you know, we've had a really similar upbringing in that. We've definitely created the life that we have now just through, you know, perseverance, grit, networking, um, you know, and a lot of what we gained through networking is what helped us. Um, as you were saying to kind of have all these different experiences, we can always learn from the experiences of others. There is a quote that I'm not going to quote verbatim, but the essential gist of it is that, you know, w a wise person learns from the stories of others. They don't learn from, you know, experiencing something that they could, um, gain knowledge about, or just through the experience of others. You know, because if you think of time, it's our really big asset. So through that, those conversations that you've had, what are some qualities that we can, um, be in lane two in terms of like, how you describe yourself?

Speaker 1: 15:08

That's a good question. The way I described myself or would describe myself, I am spiritual. I am passionate. I'm an airy. So we are leaders by nature. Yes. Bring the fire. We bring the heat, we bring the, have no qualms about spicing up the place. And I am someone who is open-minded. I am someone who just loves different types of people and things like I'm not someone who is so rigid in the types of people that I'll know the things that I'll experience. I may not want to like go and jump off of a plane today, but who knows down the road, I might want to jump out of a plane

Speaker 2: 15:51

Before. Right?

Speaker 1: 15:53

Exactly. Exactly. So, um, I'm someone who's growing and learning too. I'm not perfect. And I think that part of, you know, being in this space that I'm in is understanding that you don't have to have it all together to take a step into your light is take a step into your truth, walking in your purpose. It doesn't mean that you have to be perfect. There, there are qualities about myself that I'm also working through, but at the same time, I feel that what I radiate or try to radiate, even when it's not easy is love and welcoming energy. Um, and those are the qualities that I hope my listeners have or will have by the time that they are done listening to a podcast. And outside of that, we are both go-getters. I, I didn't mention that, but that's, it's such a given at this point, but for obviously the listeners, I want you guys to know who I am. I'm a go getter. Um, you know, if there's something that I want to do, I will go out and, and figure it out. I will meet people. I have no issues putting myself out there, even though I am an introvert by nature, but when it's time to, you know, get into that business mode, I have no qualms about doing that. So I also have a background and the entertainment industry,

Speaker 2: 17:02

You've been a part of commercials, like for large events, like the Latino VMAX, I believe you've been really active and pursuing your passions while at your, you know, day job in finance as well.

Speaker 1: 17:15

So those are the ways in which I would describe my qualities and the qualities of the listeners that I hope will be tuning in.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. All very exciting, you know, ways that you're definitely pursuing a lot of the dreams that you have, um, within your life. And you've definitely gained a lot of relevant information that would be incredibly important for other people to know about. Um, I think, you know, that also kind of answers the question around, like, what are you passionate about? And, um, I guess around that, yeah, of course go, go, go.

Speaker 1: 17:48

You know, that we've spoke about the pandemic and how that inspired me. And I would say prior to, I felt that my passion might've been like more on the visual content side, and while I'm still a creative, I still enjoy videography and making, putting together stories and telling stories. I think a lot of my purpose now, or what I would like my purpose to be is to inspire others, to motivate others, to uplift others and unite the community. You know, those are my biggest passions right now, because in this time that we're in, it's so divisive, right. There's rhetoric bringing the world apart. And so if I can unite people or allow someone to change their perspective about someone or something, I feel like I'm doing my job. If I can motivate someone to see a potential in themselves, I feel like I'm doing the job that the higher power has put forth for me

Speaker 2: 18:45

A hundred percent, what you can also kind of allude that to is just the politics. You know, the politics are really the reason behind these cultural divides. Like you see in France, the hijab ban, you know, in, in America racism against blacks, it's really driven by politics. So, um, all that perspective around just kind of coming back together as a community and realizing where that's viewing from and combating that is really going to be, um, great. Um, you know, I think around the kind of past that you've had and grown up with, you know, name, name one particular struggle, I think you'd like people to understand about you, that, you know, you face this and you've overcome this and you've grown and learned from this. And why, I guess that that then trickle into like the holistic perspective that you have to wellness.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Yeah. I can say that, you know, just being honest and candid, one struggle that I've faced was as a child, not having the complete presence of my parents around. And I know that there is a Bronx kid out there and elementary, kindergarten, middle school, who's going through exactly what I went through, where their parents, you know, weren't in the picture to a full extent. Now, let me be clear. I know who both of my parents are, God rest, my mom's spirit love her to death. And I am best of friends with my dad in this present moment. Like he is my rock. So we've come a long way, but obviously growing up as a child and not having them around and having my grandmother instead, who I love as well and God rest her spirit as well. Um, you know, that in itself shaped me to be a certain kind of person who had to learn how to love, who had to learn, how to be open, to love, who had to learn how to really go out and get it because no, one's going to do it for you, Sean. And I know for a fact, because mentored students and the Bronx, and I've seen what it's like in this present day, what's going on, and these kids do not have any role models. These kids do not have parents that are looking out for them or these kids do not have parents that understand or have resources and tools to provide their kids and networks to provide their kids so that they can be as successful as the next child of, you know, a wealthy family. So I think that that struggle in itself is a perspective that through time and these, these episodes we'll be able to talk about, and hopefully someone who is healing from those types of situations, or maybe you don't have that situation, maybe, you know, someone else who has a situation, maybe you can, you know, share the podcast with them or understand them a bit better in how they are and how they operate. So that is my personal struggle. And I don't expect everyone else to have that struggle. Um, but I've healed from it, or I may still healing from that and growing from that. And I just want to let people know that it's possible to heal from anything

Speaker 2: 21:53

It really is. And that's a really important message during this time where depression is at an all time high and amongst the community. Um, a lot of people don't have access to basic health resources. And then we talk about therapy as a, you know, a human right, but also it's very expensive and it is a privilege, um, of, you know, wealth, uh, and you know, I think socioeconomics that creates it to be a privileged. So it's a really important fact that you bring up that anything you are dealing with any struggle is something you can overcome with introspection and reflection and doing the work as they say. Um, so that's, um, a fantastic message to kind of just come away from this, with, um, in, in alignment to holistic wellness, uh, that definitely fits well. Uh, lastly, I think what, what we'd like to know is, you know, this is called Afro healing podcast, and we talked about spirituality a lot and just like wholeness as a person, um, to your community. But can we talk a little bit about what that means for the African diaspora and how you want to bring that perspective into all of this, just to round it out?

Speaker 1: 23:05

Yes. Um, and that is the perfect question to close out this segment because yes, my mission most importantly, is to bring awareness to the Pan-African community, to bring us together. As Pan-African African individuals, I am a native new Yorker. I identify as being black, but I also identify as being African because through research, I know my roots, I know I'm Nigerian. I know I'm Ghanian. And so I'm looking to learn more about those cultures and that healing, the healing aspect comes in through the enlightenment of who I am, what my is. So for a lot of black Americans, we don't have that. We lack that understanding of identity that is so crucial to us, really being in the right level of consciousness, the right level of alignment. We have to do the work to really understand who we are. And I want to put that out as something that people hopefully take away. Maybe you do a DNA test. You don't have to, but if you don't do that, maybe you do some type of research to, to understand your roots a bit more, or maybe you go to Africa and you connect with the people that are there on the ground. I've been to Africa twice, and I've connected both times. I love it. And I can not wait to go back later this year. So that is a big part of the healing is getting our black Americans connected to their roots and getting native Africans connected to the broader, um, Pan-African community. Because there is a divide between us. We have different ideals, we have different customs, we have different beliefs, and there's going to be a bit of shaking the table in that, you know, there is going to be a bit of talking about things that are taboo, that we don't have an agreement on. So there's healing and that happened. But, um, also for all of us, you know, AF at the African community, the pan African community, the BiPAP community, the, the broader community as well, I think there are any topics that we need to discuss in order to have a better understanding, a better perspective, and to hopefully heal and move forward from those things, you know, and we'll talk about those things later down the road. So I think that this podcast will touch upon things that maybe don't get spoken about in the media or other people are a bit afraid to speak about because, you know, it can be a bit taboo. So, you know, that's, that's my spill. And thank you so much, uh, Tia for your time. You asked the best questions, um, and the best way, and you add your perspective as well as a banquet that she woman, and, you know, as a Bronx native, as well as a finance expert. And this has been such a great time on our first podcast. And I just want to thank you so much from the bottom of my heart and you are my family.

Speaker 2: 26:06

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm hoping that everyone has learned a lot about you and what they can take away from this really great initiative that you have here with the Afro healing podcast. So thank you again.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Thank you. And you know, to close it out, guys, I hope that you subscribe to this podcast, definitely hit that link. Give us a rating on what you think. And if you want to provide me some feedback, you can also provide me some feedback for free to reach out at Afro healing pod on Instagram, where you can find us or acro healing pod on Twitter and give your feedback, suggestions, or other topics that you'd like us to discuss. And I'm definitely looking forward to this journey. There's so much that we have ahead with so many special guests it's here. We'll be back. So you'll get to learn about the things that she's doing. So please guys stay tuned and take care of.