ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews Justin Grant, author of “Company Men: A Wellness Guide for Black Men in Corporate America.”
Grant told Corie that the motivation for writing his book stems from personal loss and a desire to address the health disparities affecting Black men in corporate America.
“My uncle, Juan Simpson, he passed away of a heart attack unexpectedly over the Christmas holidays and he had been the chief financial officer for Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., that’s one of Johnson & Johnson’s surgical-device makers. So he was up there, and he was on the path to being in the C-suite at the parent company over at J&J,” Grant said. “He was my hero. He was covered by Ebony. He’d been interviewed by the New York Times. He was hopping on that corporate jet to go on golf trips to Ireland, right? He was doing things that was just unheard of for Black men; I mean, for anybody in corporate America, it’s rare to fly in air that high and he was doing it as a Black man before we even knew what diversity, equity and inclusion was, right? And so his death, he was fit, he in shape, so it was a total shock. It wasn’t like he was dealing with anything from a physical standpoint, he was only 48 years old."
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While stressors like office politics and job uncertainty are universal, Grant says they can have different impacts on Black men.
“They might affect us a little bit differently because of all of the things that we’re carrying with us into these corporate jobs. I’m corporate, I start that job and I have this mindset of, ‘Man, I gotta make this work, because if this doesn’t work, yeah, I’m gonna be right back in my childhood bedroom in my mom’s house. I’m trying to build a life for myself.’ So I’m feeling that pressure and when things don’t always go right, when you face adversity, it can feel a little bit existential when you don’t have that safety net to kind of fall back on from a wealth standpoint,” he said.
Hear the interview and more in Season 6, Episode 10 of “Black Men Sundays.”
Black Men Sundays talks about building generational wealth. Check out every episode in the media player below.
