Overcoming the Dominant Culture

Alicia Morgan, an esteemed engineer who later followed her passion and began working with youth in the nonprofit sector, considers what her grandmother's wisdom taught her in her talk on motivation.

She starts out by explaining her grandmother's love for gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and her rendition of 'How I Got Over.' As a child, her grandmother would sing the song to her and told her that one day she'd truly understand the meaning of it. She says that a big part of "getting over" sometimes means being a little uncomfortable and sometimes failing. For some time though, she didn't accept failure as an option, as she's always pushed herself to plan things in a perfect step-by-step way to ensure that things were never ambiguous.

Throughout her talk on motivation, Morgan explains how cumbersome getting into a specific mindset can be, as reason sometimes has the ability to hold one back. Instead, she encourages her audience to use their imaginations. She goes onto to highlight the growth one can experience through social and emotional learning, as it enables them to understand their challenges, so that they can be more aware of how and why they should overcome them.