The Creative Hustle that Strengthens Communities
with Change Maker Olatunde Sobomehin
Build the Bridge to Connect Your Community’s Gaps
Lisa is closing out season 2 with Olatunde Sobomehin (Tunde), co-founder and CEO of StreetCode Academy and co-author of Creative Hustle. Tunde believes that underrepresented communities should be participating in the upside of technology instead of being excluded from it. StreetCode's mission is to hack, hustle, and design the future to bridge that gap, starting in East Palo Alto and expanding outward.
Tunde started out experimenting how to uplift those underrepresented communities. He designed business computer camps in Portland, basketball programs mixed with tech education, and community organizing around music and technology. In 2014, StreetCode Academy took form.
StreetCode Academy has evolved over the years from a program that includes younger students, parents, and other disciplines like entrepreneurship and design. The tagline "Hack, Hustle, Design the Future" captures the mindset, skills, and access are the three outcomes they're building toward.
In this conversation, you'll learn:
Why tech education works better when whole families learn together
What college basketball and tech education have in common
How to map your gifts to your goals through principles, people, and practice.
Tunde is taking both StreetCode and Creative Hustle on the road to places like Hong Kong, Finland, Botswana, and cities across the U.S. If you're inspired, visit streetcode.org or creativehustle.org. Or reach out! As Tunde says, building community is how the work gets done.
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Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow starting today.
Welcome to the Season 2 finale of How We Future. To end our second season, I'm sitting down with someone who embodies everything this podcast is about. Olatunde Sobomehin is the co-founder and CEO of StreetCode Academy, whose mission is to hack, hustle, and design the future, starting with communities in East Palo Alto and beyond. Tunde's projects span from Stanford basketball collabs to community hackathons, always working towards bridging gaps and uplifting voices. In this episode, Tunde and I talk about how the tech industry is much more than just coding, how to channel your gifts to meet your goals, and why knowing the right people matters just as much as having the right skills. I'm so excited to finish the season with Olatunde Sobomehin.
Olatunde Sobomehin: Thank you, Lisa. Every moment with you is special, and the way you have framed the work that I do has even influenced how I see the work. I'm excited to have another great conversation with you.
Lisa: I love that. I want to start a little bit with the work you're doing right now as co-founder and CEO of StreetCode Academy. I think one of my favorite things about StreetCode is the tagline, "Hack, Hustle, Design the Future," shirt you're wearing right now. Tell us a little bit about StreetCode and how you came to bring it to life.
Olatunde: Well, there are so many stories. I think the origin stories are interesting. We get to choose them. I think there's a lot that are true about origin stories. I want to ground it and root it in a very timely experience that I had because Jesse Jackson passed away last week, Reverend Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader. I always and often give the origin story of StreetCode Academy from my perspective. I start with him because it was in 1998 when I came to Stanford from Portland, Oregon.
In '98, you had this tech boom where people were actually leaving school to go start businesses. For someone who came up, "College was the destination. How dare you leave school? What's more important than that?" That began to open my eyes for what's really going on. That had my eyes open and ready to receive an answer to that. It was Jesse Jackson's quote on the front page of a USA Today article that talked about this idea of the digital divide and it being a civil rights issue.
That was so powerful to me because it answered the two questions I was wrestling with. There was generations long, I would call it, but certainly a lifelong question for me about what's the civil rights issue of our day. I wanted to be Dr. King. I wanted to go to Morehouse. I wanted to follow in the footsteps. Here was Reverend Jesse Jackson, someone who had been passed the baton from Dr. King and was in this civil rights era, that was answering that question.
It gave me an answer to, "Yo, what's going on with all this tech stuff?" I'm not a tech person. I don't have entrepreneurship by definition in my DNA, per se. He answered that. A digital divide was a civil rights issue of our era. Black people needed to participate in the upside of all this technology, really, for the economic empowerment it provides. That began to seed. Now, StreetCode Academy obviously wasn't started in 1998. We're a decade-old organization and been doing programming for 12 years, but it did plant the seed.
I did a number of things that I'll just bullet-point out that led to StreetCode. One was a program called the Applied Business Computer Camp, where I went back to Portland the first summer after learning that, and created this business computer camp that would allow people to build websites. I did an alternative spring break trip my sophomore year that was called "From the Revolving Prison Door to the Evolving Digital Door," which explored how technology and technology education could be a solution for the recidivism that was so notorious in the African-American community, and then I did a lot of other things.
I ran basketball camps, but I brought technology involved in that. We called it "Hoops in High-Tech." I'd always been trying to explore how do we bring this technology into our community in a way that makes sense. There was actually a negative engagement that I had with the d.school that propelled it even further. I was at the d.school, and they were talking about creative confidence and a need for creative confidence in the ecosystem.
I'd been doing some work with an organization called the Mural Music & Arts Project, where young people were doing really cutting-edge community work using technology, using music production. I was like, "If you need, you as the industry, you as the d.school, you as whoever, need creative confidence, I have a lot where I'm at, and we're right down the street." Somehow, the industry is not seeing this community as a source for the gap that's in this economy.
I said, "Forget it. We got to do something strictly that nails it on the head. We're not doing basketball Hoops in High-Tech. We're not doing arts. We're going to call it coding. We're going to call it innovation." That led to the creation of StreetCode Academy, where we co-founded it amongst many people to create something where we offer free tech education to communities of color and try to be the solution for this diversity gap that has existed for so long.
Lisa: Thank you for sharing that origin story. I didn't know that about Reverend Jesse Jackson and the kind of impact he had on you. I think that there's something so beautiful in that long-term passion that's stirred in you and that framing, and how, when you have a framing like that, that's really pulling you forward. You don't necessarily know how you're going to get there, but it's something like a North Star.
You can keep coming back to it again and again. "Wait, oh, this didn't work. Oh, this didn't work. Oh, this didn't work." That belief that I feel so strongly in you, and I have had the pleasure of watching you in front of students, in front of your community, in front of various alumni communities, the basketball team, that clarity of the pull, and that invitation to join you in it is so strong.
I think we can lose it in this moment where we're feeling so overwhelmed by everything that's happening to us. I just love hearing that that's been with you for so long in these different manifestations. At every step, you're asking yourself, "What is, what could be? What is, what could be?" Even taking setbacks and saying, "Oh, okay, this just means we have to try this other way."
I've just seen what you've done in your whole career, but particularly in the last 10-plus years of watching StreetCode Academy grow, evolve, change, it's incredible. What I have experienced at every point was this idea. It's not just classes. It's community-building. It's capacity-building. It's unleashing the potential of everybody in the community in a variety of ways, as you said, meeting people where they are.
Olatunde: It's a powerful reflection. I'm just bouncing off the idea that I got from you just now, this idea that there's something so big, so compelling, that it can carry us through these rough moments. When I think about How We Future, how we hold on to a belief for what could be is by having something that you're so convicted by, that you're so connected to. It has to be big.
Oftentimes, it's connected to the past because I often am pulling on these stories about the civil rights movement leaders, of whom I'm pulling on stories of ancestors and even stories of my own family, and knowing that I'm just playing my part in something that's much bigger. It gives me strength to pull through moments where it feels like you're off course. It did and does come from a lifelong really passion for doing good in community, building community, and doing whatever the community needs at that time to be better.
Lisa: So true. Interesting. I just got actually off a call about the national civic engagement initiative we helped start to infuse civic behavior, civic engagement into student athletics. I felt, particularly when I was really trying to give it lift, this idea that we can help athletes be civic influencers on their campus. We could see them beyond performing in their sport. I was working until midnight, getting up early. This was a passion project. I believed in it so strongly.
I felt like it was my personal resilience strategy to everything going on. Again, that notion, when you have clarity, yes, you're working so hard, but there's something that's really life-affirming and energizing about it, that it's not about time. It's about energy. It's about pull. It's about passion. When you're doing it with others, there's something that is so communally resilient about that as you're moving forward. I really get that from everything that you're doing.
Olatunde: Thank you.
Lisa: I want to just make this even more concrete for folks that are new to StreetCode Academy. Maybe you could share just a little bit about the kinds of classes and who takes your classes and where they show up in the community.
Olatunde: Just one deeper dive into the origin story. We started off wanting to be a bridge between this community, East Palo Alto, which also Jesse Jackson called the Selma of this big civil rights issue. Selma, for those that know our history, was really pivotal in ensuring that there were Voting Rights Act in America for all the people who could vote and were left out of voting based on the color of their skin or prejudice of who people assume they are.
Selma was a small community that showed that disparity. Then because they overcame it there, it became an inspiration for the rest of the country. Well, Jesse Jackson thought the same thing about East Palo Alto. Hey, we're a small community that really show the gap, right? We're a community of color, self-governed, powerful, diverse, justice-oriented, and left out of the technology economy, and left out of the tech education, and left out of the tech investment.
How do we bridge that? That was the original goal. When we started StreetCode Academy, that was the goal. Let's create tons of jobs. "Let's Motown the industry," was the slogan we had at the time. Motown referencing the way Black folks did it in Detroit to bust into the music industry, and then change the entire landscape of music industry. We wanted to do that same thing in tech. We started with a boot camp. It was for 16 to 21-year-old folks who were trying to get jobs into the economy.
That's how we started. We noticed a couple of things. First thing we noticed was that we needed to start a lot younger. Right now, our core audience is middle-schoolers. We also noticed that their whole family needed to be involved, that the way to first change what we now call "mindset" is to allow whole families to understand where people fit in. We understand where we fit in with bits and parts of culture. We understand where we fit in, perhaps in certain sports. Where do we fit in this technology ecosystem?
If I don't have an uncle where, now I may have an uncle that played in the NBA, or I have a friend who played college basketball. Well, if I don't have an uncle who started Meta, or I don't have an auntie who works at Google or is a software engineer, where do I learn that? We learned we had to start early. We had to also open up to the whole family. We had to squash the notion that this tech ecosystem is all about coding. We had to open it up. That's where "Hack, Hustle, Design" came from.
It included entrepreneurship and included design much more than just coding. That was our first couple of years, opening up, really broadening. That meant that we had to give different experiences. Sometimes there's one-hour experiences. Sometimes there's 60-second experiences. I just see something on that alerts me. Then there's longer, there's 60-hour experiences where people are really going in. That's our classes.
We see it as a bridge. On one end are people who are new to tech. On the other end, it's this whole beautiful innovation economy. On that journey, we have three particular outcomes that we want to see. One is mindset. The other is skills. The last is access. We see the first step in this is expanding your mind to see things that's possible and things that you didn't know. We have programs that build mindset. These are things like the programs that we do at the basketball program, right?
We have a partnership with Stanford basketball, where, before you enter into a game, you have a chance to experience how technology is influencing the game of basketball. We have AI folks that are showing how stats are being tracked. We have people who are looking at how tickets are being distributed. We have folks that are helping you build skills. They're using AI to track the ball and how fast you pound it. Those things may open somebody's eyes. For me, I really love basketball. I didn't know there was this whole other field of how technology is influencing it. That's a mindset shift. Then we have skills.
Now, we have programs that deal with skills. Those are programs in schools that are helping you learn the fundamentals of coding or the ethics of AI or how you use storytelling to advance good policy and technology. Those are all building skills. Then we have access, programs that give you exposure to jobs, exposure to the different fields, and give you real-world experience in that. That entire bridge, if it's done in community, if it's done with culturally relevant experiences, that will bring somebody who never knew about tech into the innovation economy.
Lisa: Incredible. I just want to say, when I hear all that, you know what I hear? How We Future.
Olatunde: How We Future.
Lisa: That's How We Future.
Olatunde: When we think about those of us who are counted out, who say we don't have a shot, our elders often are in that realm. They often say, "I still have more to give." Who's to say your time is up? We like to anchor and like to focus, and we need to have some primary audience. That remains middle-schoolers because we know there's such a big lifetime. We also can't count out what happens when a grandmother gets pride in a particular thing. Can you imagine how many middle-schoolers are now then inspired? Can you imagine how many times somebody says, "My grandmother introduced me to that? That's why I love that. It's because my grandmother taught me that."
If a grandmother is now teaching a seven-year-old or encouraging an eight-year-old to, "Hey, you need to pick up that microphone because did you know that there are podcasts that are being made now?" If a grandmother knows that, that seed is being planted in their grandchildren. That's the things that these programs that we have in our schools need to latch onto. It starts much earlier than just some of the programs that we have. That community-based approach, that integrated approach you talked about, is very fundamental to our success, we believe.
Lisa: Well, what's so beautiful about it is that you're really showing that you can always learn, you can always evolve, you can always grow. Now, there's a different kind of conversation that's happening between the generations that's not just transactional, "Tell me what happened today," but, like, "What did we learn today? What did we build today? What are we bringing forward today?" Gosh, that's missing so much. Particularly in this world where everything seems faster and tech-based and through an intermediary of a phone or something else, this is like core.
I just think that it's just so foundational to what we need right now to be of the earth, learning together, connecting together, building together, finding pride together. It's it. It's everything. That stays with you. Particularly when we have communities that are so dispersed, this loneliness epidemic, I think, like, "Yes, we can send a lot of money. We can do all these programmatic things, but at the end of the day, why don't we just give space for people to be together, find joy together, grow together?" I just see you doing that at every step.
Olatunde: Beautifully said.
Lisa: It is magnificent. It's just magnificent. Let's talk just a little bit more about this partnership that you referenced with the Stanford men's basketball team, just because I think it's emblematic of something from nothing. [laughs] Sometimes we feel like, "Oh, well, that has never been built before, so I don't know how to do it," but that's not you. That's not your style. You're like, "You know what? Here's what I'm noticing, and here's an opportunity."
Olatunde: "Here's an opportunity."
Lisa: Yes, so just share a little bit about some of the work you're doing and who you're doing it with, because I know, again, you're building a community around it.
Olatunde: There was so much beauty that came from your last reflection around, particularly in this age of what we're seeing, increased access to technology and technology tools and an increased epidemic of isolation and loneliness. We're seeing how the two are connected, right? How do we want to make sure that community is still a part of us building in technology and advancing in technology? Because we need that two to go together, and it's better that way.
I think the other piece that is so fundamental in our effort to try and get communities who are not often involved in technology and the innovation economy into it is relationship. Part of access actually is the network. We need access to network. I just want to surface that before we go in, because it really was this whole partnership with Stanford men's basketball. It really is symptomatic of relationships.
Me and Coach Reveno, who is now the general manager and the associate head coach of Stanford men's basketball, is a dear, dear friend of ours. We know that he, too, is somebody who is a futurist, and he also is a doer. This is somebody who, like, "I'm ready to do." We could talk all day long, but I think Coach Reveno, one of the beautiful things about him is that he's ready to move. There was an opportunity for us to showcase our program, particularly on the night of Nerdball, where Stanford basketball is known.
Coach Kyle Smith is recognized nationally for the way in which he takes in statistics, he analyzes data, and then has won everywhere he's been, including at Stanford. We just got our 19th win yesterday due to the fact that how he's using math and statistics and all that. They were able to use our program to showcase. At that time, it actually was the North Carolina game. We were able to do so many other things.
I think that was the real win. We were able to bring new people into the Stanford community. By bringing StreetCode in, we purchased 100 tickets and brought our community in. That brought new energy into the community, right? Stanford basketball is long. It's historic. Oftentimes, you want new inputs of community, parts of them, to bring that diverse experience that can happen. We brought 100 kids from our program. That was inspirational, right? We also said, "We want to do our own tribute to players on the team."
We brought a tribute to Ebuka, who is just setting records. He had a historic game. We did things our way. We had a really fun engagement before the game. It wasn't just a static "learn about StreetCode." It was "experience StreetCode." Our community was able to come. We had Mike Wu, who's the founder of Hooper, an AI app. We had all this complex, you call it the integrated experience. Stanford basketball was like, "Man, we want more of that. Whatever we just did, let's do that more," and so we were able to do it four more times.
Lisa: So much to love about that story. One is, you didn't focus group your way there. You weren't like, "Should we just do a survey of the community with that?" No.
Olatunde: We're from the d.school. You got to learn by doing, and you got to prototype.
Lisa: No, you got to learn, but you're also like, "I wonder if," right? It's worth saying right now that even at a place like Stanford, well-resourced, well-funded, well-known, the landscape of college athletics is incredibly fraught. It is filled with transactional incentives that actually don't put athletes at the center. We can have a whole separate talk on that. I know just enough to be dangerous to say that there are some trends happening right now that are making it a very uncertain landscape for everybody, for the players, for the coaches.
Here you are going, "You know what, but there's so much here we can build on." That has nothing to do with transactions, but it has everything to do with relationships. Here you have a generational talent, this freshman, Okorie, coming in, putting new life back in. You are bringing middle-schoolers and high-schoolers that are celebrating him, that are honoring him. As a freshman who's 18 years old, that's a lot to take in for a freshman to have all this attention on you.
You are reminding him of the impact he's having by how he shows up, by how he steps on the court, by the kind of poise he has, the kind of player he has, giving his all, not having the best game every game, but coming back from resilience. You're reminding him that it's not just about this transactional play, but it is about the relationships and the aspiration that he's fostering in these young people in the community.
That, to me, gives a whole different lens on how to look at the privilege of playing at Stanford, what it's like to be in this community, and what's possible. So much of what we're trying to do with this podcast, as you know, all my work is about amplifying bright spots so that we can build the capacity that we all have to unleash our creative prowess to say, "That doesn't exist yet. That doesn't mean it can't. Why don't we try? Why don't we try?"
Again, all that risk aversion, I'm like, "Well, let's just do a focus group." No, no, just try, and then learn. The thing that's so magical that I've seen you do that I certainly try to do is that once you feel it, you want more. "Oh, I didn't know I needed that. Oh, I needed that. Now what? Let's do it again." It's not necessarily a ton more money. It's just different intentions, which I think of as design.
What choices are you making to help deliver emotional engagement, some kind of functional gain of utility, of connection, of knowledge? Gosh, when I was at that game, I felt less lonely, and that was everything. I felt joy, and that was everything. I felt excitement, and that was everything. Now, I want more. Now, we know. That's the humanity. Congrats to everything you've done.
Olatunde: Thank you. Thanks for that reflection. I think it's meaningful for the world to hear it. I think it's meaningful for the various stakeholders to hear it because you're right. You're so right. You landed that in terms of where we are with college athletics, and how we can really bring and highlight the pieces that are there, that are about the things we love about the game, right?
The coming together of community, the bridging of these communities, the celebration of players more than just what they do on the court, and celebrating the fact that Ebuka Okorie doesn't just want to have an impact on the court. He also cares about this. There are so many things that you laid out. This just highlight on it. Leveraged it. We tested it. We did it. I think there's a lot to learn from it, so I appreciate the highlight.
Lisa: Well, I want to talk a little bit about this notion of this is how you go through life. You had the chance to actually articulate that in this fantastic book that I love looking at-
Olatunde: Thank you.
Lisa: -dog-eared. For those that are just listening to this, I'm holding up Tunde's incredible book called Creative Hustle that he co-authored with another dear friend of ours, Sam Seidel.
Olatunde: Oh, I love Sam, yes.
Lisa: This book is beautiful. I want to spend a little time talking about it and the growth that this book has had because it's been out now for a couple of years. My goodness, what a journey you've been on with it. Maybe start a little bit, and tell us the origin story behind Creative Hustle.
Olatunde: Well, it is beautiful. I want to just quickly shout out Hope Meng and Jori Tytus, both of whom did the custom lettering and a lot of the custom art. Then, of course, our good friends, Khristopher "Squint" Sandifer, who told me, "I need to give you a bear hug." He also did so much for the book, including being the chapter one, and we built on his Creative Hustle, but then gave us so much about his art in the book. It is a beautiful book.
The origin story behind that is similar to what happened with Coach Reveno. It started with a relationship. At the time, it was very budding, but Sam invited me in to experiment and to go. He showed a ton of heart, as he often does in everything that he does, when he first met us. The way in which he would express was he said, "This is meaningful. Thank you for giving me a chance to share this." We've been around Stanford.
I'm a graduate of Stanford. 2003, I graduated. I was class of '02. That's 20-plus years that I've been around Stanford, including the four that I was there, five that I was there as a student. Stanford has had this relationship with East Palo Alto that's always been tense because East Palo Alto feels the community. Not to speak for them generally, but often many of us in the community feel like, well, it's lopsided. There's papers being written. There's campuses being built. There's money being generated.
Often, that is lopsided, right? It comes to Stanford. Oftentimes, it doesn't come to East Palo Alto, and yet we're participating in the work. Sam really just floored me with his invitation. He said, "Well, if we were to do a class at Stanford, of which I'm teaching, could half the students be from StreetCode?" I said, "Man, we've only been given one slot or two slots at a class." He offered for half the class to come in and to participate in this notion that we would co-teach.
We co-taught a class called Creative Hustle. We had nearly 100 applications from across the campus, law students, medical students, undergraduate students applying to participate in this pop-out called Creative Hustle, and then we brought half our students. We had 30 in there. We chose 15 of that 100. We brought in 15 from East Palo Alto. We had this experience, this two-day experience. At the end of the experience, you didn't know who was who.
You didn't know who was coming from the law school, or who was an undergrad, or who was a student at StreetCode. It just literally was this blend of people who all felt like, "We're on a journey to create our own path, our own life. We're struggling to figure it out, and we all could help each other out." It was just this beautiful community learning experience. A couple of years later, when the d.school was thinking about this source of books, this collection of books that was going to redefine what design is in this modern stage, they asked our class to be a part of that book.
Sam and I spent time really during COVID over Zoom, writing and thinking and uplifting stories that motivated us. Started with Squint, who was a key person for us in terms of defining what it is. It went on to Bryant Terry, who also was part of that first class. It has so many good stories in there. Nine stories that are uplifted around people who are making work in the world that matters in their own way and blazing their own path, as we call it.
Lisa: It is such an extraordinary book. I've reread it a number of times. Each time I find a new layer, it embodies everything that you were talking about at StreetCode. It's about a mindset. You are a creative hustler, and to put a spin on that, and you don't shy away. For example, from the fact that hustle doesn't always have a positive connotation, but you're leaning in. It's a mindset, some skillsets for how to think about it, and access through these stories that are often overlooked. God bless you for getting Squint to actually tell a story.
Olatunde: Exactly.
Lisa: One of the most talented people behind the camera who refuses to be in front of the camera. Good on you for making sure we all know who he is for his genius. The whole book is really about, as you say here, "intentions intention," and to, again, as we talked about earlier, find that purpose beyond the noise. I did my own little cheat sheet of one of the core frameworks that you have in this class.
Olatunde: Oh, I love it.
Lisa: Again, for those friends that are listening in the audio and not looking at the video, it's this incredible, very simple, but very generous and generative framework of how you go from your gifts on the left-hand side to your goals on the right-hand side. In between the bridge here is thinking about principles, people, and practice. I know, Tunde, this is something that you actually do in your practice, that this is something that really helps you with all of the things going on, stay centered on how you want to take your very abundant gifts to goals on the other side.
Olatunde: The viewers will be able to see what a blank one looks like. Now, you can see what a complete one looks like. I look at this all the time, right? This is something that grounds me. Right behind my monitor is what I look at. You're right. I often do these because they shift. My life shifts, right? What gifts I'm in tune with. The way you've centered me as a futurist today, the way you've articulated the work.
Those things should end up on my gifts list. It should end up that those are gifts that I'm now in touch with, and then there are goals. There are goals that evolve, and life changes. It happens. My goals evolve. I'm often doing these. I have a 20-20-6-1 that I look at, and ones that are very seasonal for me. Yes, I practice that. Writing it was a chance to bring access to folks that we don't always understand as futurists, or as creative hustlers, or as designers. These are labels that we don't always know about ourselves.
One of my favorite stories in the book is Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, who is a community organizer who is powerful. She was well-known. She was Forbes 30 Under 30 before we wrote the book. It just was fun to surface a lot of her work on the why she built the app that she was recognized for, to recognize some of the work that doesn't even exist in the app. During COVID, she raised millions of dollars to help people pay their rent, and she's a community organizer.
To surface that, because it's easy to highlight perhaps somebody who's making $1 million or the Jay-Z who's running multiple companies, but it's interesting to look at her as someone who we uplifted as a creative hustler because she embodies everything we're talking about even more than a lot of these entrepreneurs who may have their face on the front of Forbes. She's somebody who I think deserves all the accolades. That was fun. Sam and me getting to choose who do we think are the creative hustlers that we want to start off with in this book. Squint, Sarahi, and so many others, I'm happy we chose them.
Lisa: It reminds me of something I try to teach in my classes and try to bring forward in conversations like this, that when you learn practices of futures and design, this idea of understanding both where the world is going and why and the world you want to bring to life, and then the choices you make to help make them true, to actually use Creative Hustle, to go from an idea to a thing, to a concrete action.
By telling these stories, you're helping other people learn about what's possible. That is, in and of itself, outsized leverage. Earlier in our podcast, we had Jennifer Brandel. She is an incredible community organizer, a civic entrepreneur. Lately, she's really focused on this idea of community interstitium. The folks that are often unseen and overlooked that are actually doing the connecting, the glue that is building community resilience.
I think these stories are just a great example, again, of the often overlooked, undervalued, underfunded folks that are making our neighborhoods go, that are ensuring that the invisible work is happening. This book really honors them in beautiful ways. The fact that you leaned into gorgeous type and gorgeous photographs and that it's beautiful to hold and look at. Listen, I don't think it's a secret that when Hakeem Olajuwon came to the d.school, and I gave him a copy, he was like, "Hey, I'm in. I'm in. I want a part of it."
Olatunde: I love that. That was a treat, too. I'm Nigerian myself. To meet him was an idol. I appreciate the way you advanced it.
Lisa: Well, it was so exciting. I love being people's unpaid PR. Before I let you go, because I know you have lots of pulls on your time, how can more people learn about StreetCode, about the work you're doing, about Creative Hustle? What's the best way? I know that you're growing. You're not just in East Palo Alto anymore. You're impacting other communities, and you're expanding the web. Tell us a little bit about that and how we can help.
Olatunde: Well, thank you. Of course, our website and social handles are all there, @itscreativehustle and creativehustle.org are places to see Creative Hustle. Then @streetcodeacademy, and then also streetcode.org are the places for StreetCode Academy. Then we're on a tour. We're going to Hong Kong in two weeks for Creative Hustle. We've taken that across the globe. We're doing the same thing with StreetCode Academy. We presented at several conferences. One in Finland, one in Botswana, several places across the country here.
We're doing our tech tour, our tech tourney tour, doing the kind of exhibits that we've done and piloted at Stanford basketball across the country as well. We think that's a model that can move. Yes, if people are interested, we want to hear from them. We want to stay in touch. We want you to follow our moves on social and through the website. Then yes, no matter where you are, you have access to our programs. You have access to log in. We have virtual classes. We have in-person classes here in the Bay Area, so we would love to just build a community.
Lisa: Tunde, I can't think of a better way to end. If I think about where we started this conversation, about you reflecting on how the digital divide was one of your core motivators, and you're leaning in with relational connection. In some ways, the exact opposite, right? Digital, relational, divide, connection, how you're living your life, how you're uplifting communities, how you're inviting everyone to be a part of it. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful to know you. I'm so grateful to share your story. Thank you so much for being on How We Future. I just can't wait for that big old bear hug that Squint told you to give me because it's got to happen soon.
Olatunde: Yes. Lisa, I can't thank you enough. We talked about Creative Hustle being a place to surface these stories. I will never forget that moment on the d.school site that was followed up by a beautiful article you wrote about StreetCode Academy and myself. You have positioned our story so many times beautifully in the way that you've talked about it today. I just want to thank you for the way in which you're uplifting, and you're shining a light on the work that's out there that can inspire others. I'm so blessed to be a part of your circle. That is just a gift of mine. Thank you, Lisa. I'm all in on the How We Future.
Lisa: I am so inspired by Tunde's energy, enthusiasm, and warmth. Here's something he's inspired me to try this week, and I invite you to do the same. Reach out to someone in your community who's doing work you admire. Thank them. Tell them that you see the work they're doing and ask them about their story. Simple moments like that bring our community together.
You can learn more about StreetCode Academy at streetcode.org, and find Creative Hustle wherever you get your books. If you're inspired by what Tunde and his team are building, reach out. They welcome collaboration from wherever you are. Thank you for joining me for Season 2 of How We Future. What a journey it's been. I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and we'll see you soon for Season 3.
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