Today we’d like to introduce you to Andres (Dre) Martin.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My calling started in my interaction with my college guidance counselor telling me, “With grades like these, you won’t even get into community college.” That comment damaged any type of self-efficacy I had as a high school senior and sent me into a depression. With moving to Dallas with my aunt a few months after my high school graduation and not being enrolled in a college, my Aunt took me on an HBCU tour and that’s what began the birth of my advocacy for HBCUs. The type of love, acceptance, and dedication Grambling State University had to a young Black scholar was refreshing. I made a complete turnaround when becoming a part of campus clubs like the History club, Writing services, and evolved with the teachings of the curriculum, and the help from the faculty and peers.
HBCU Night started from me advocating from seeing the lack of HBCU advocacy and awareness in the corporate setting in 2015. That’s when my calling began as I put in a lot of overtime hours on a special event in which I wanted educational and celebratory of HBCUs and philanthropic with creating awareness for alumni chapter fundraisers, to recruitment for prospective scholars as well all other presentations that encompassed HBCU excellence.
I’ve been running HBCU Night laps since 2015 with my start as an Account Manager with the Brooklyn Nets. This evolved into peer reviews and collaborations with other teams/sports franchises, corporations like Google, nonprofits like TMCF, UNCF, National Urban League, and more. Partnering with HBCU Buzz for tours was helpful as a good friend and board member, Luke Lawal also became dedicated to the mission. In 2019, I decided to turn the multifaceted event into a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Ever since then, we’ve amplified efforts with getting scholarships and HBCU acceptance letters into the hands of Black and Brown high school scholars. And increased efforts with collaborating with HBCU recruitment offices and alumni associations. Currently, we’ve partnered with 87 HBCUs and counting and we have captured over $113+ million dollars in scholarships for our prospective college students who registered and participated in our HBCU Night programming (virtually/in-person).
My own experiences at HBCU Night also inspired me to write a children’s book (HBCU Night), which is now a #1 Bestseller.
I am excited because we have some much in store for the future of our nonprofit’s mission/programming.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The biggest challenge we faced was funding. We had a lot of prospective sponsors ghost on us. Funding is important because we have operating costs that are necessary to help us execute programming and reach our impact goals.
As you know, we’re big fans of HBCU Night. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and multifaceted event looking to continue advocating for HBCU alumni associations, Divine 9 organizations, and Black and Brown prospective college students. We are continuing to strive to put scholarships and HBCU acceptance letters, and laptops into the hands of Black and Brown prospective college students. We want to help underserved youth from lower socioeconomic upbringings know that they can be their ancestor’s wildest dreams and their tough upbringings don’t have to determine the trajectory of their lives.
Some services range from panel discussions, HBCU Alumni fundraiser collaborations, HBCU Fairs, creating awareness for scholarships, workforce development, and educating the masses who may not know of our amazing culture HBCUs have to offer.
I am most proud of our scholars. We create awareness of the life-changing curricula HBCUs have to offer, scholarship opportunities, HBCU culture, and they put the work in!
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
There will be tough days ahead of you. Reflection is important. We are human so us feeling down about failures and losses is normal. But if your calling touches your soul and you see it helps others directly, just remember your work, your services (or products) are bigger than yourself. Your motivation should come from the impact you leave on others. Buckle up and try to balance along in this process because anything great you are striving for won’t come easy. There will be a lot of challenging moments but those all will build character, bring life lessons, and a story to inspire others.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hbcunight.org | www.hbcunightbook.com | www.seatsbydre.com
- Instagram: @hbcunight | @seatsbydre | @hbcunightbook
- Facebook: @hbcunight | @seatsbydre | @hbcunightbook
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seatsbydre/
- Twitter: @hbcunight | @seatsbydre | @hbcunightbook
- Youtube: @hbcunight
Image Credits
Izaiah Wright Christianna Cox Bernie Pochet Joe Swift
