Eboni

Ebony Morgan is back on the Canadian Business Women Podcast to talk about her work and background. She was born in Edmonton and later moved to Toronto with her family. Despite feeling pressured to go to university right away, Ebony took a gap year to figure out what she really wanted to do. She eventually pursued sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University and discovered her passion for uplifting black women. During her time at university, Ebony was involved in student leadership and joined the Caribbean Students Association. She also studied abroad in Barbados and maintained a blog as a creative outlet. Her blog eventually turned into a business, connecting her with women across borders. Ebony now works at the university's registrar's office, supporting incoming students. Welcome to the Canadian Business Women Podcast. My name is Esther and I have the honour of having Ebony Morgan back. She was interviewed as part of a panel in episode 11, so I recommend you go back to get more information about the community building she's doing there by creating a black retreat. But today we're going to just focus more on Ebony and the other work she's doing. How are you today, Ebony? I'm great. Thank you so much, Esther, for having me back. I'm happy to be back. How are you? Welcome back. I'm good, thank you. And I wanted to start, again, you did talk a lot about your background in the previous episode, but I wanted to go back a bit and talk about your life in, I guess, were you originally born in Edmonton and then moved to Toronto? Can you kind of tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So I was born in the West. I am a West Coast girlie, so I was born in Edmonton. I stayed there for the early stages of my life and I was actually back and forth between Edmonton and Toronto for quite some time into teenagehood. I actually graduated high school there and from then I moved to Toronto and have been living here continuously since then. Did you originally move here to start school? It was actually because my mom was starting school. So she wanted to switch over and have us all start new in Ontario. And she also had family there that we wanted to be able to connect to. And so moving to Edmonton was really honestly because she wanted to be able to shift us into this new environment, this new understanding of family and community. I think originally you went to Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson. Tell us a little bit about that. What was your journey and your goal when you were starting school? Such a great question. So when I started my journey towards post-secondary, I was actually very nervous. I didn't know what I wanted to do and it was a looming question that I never had the answer to. And my answer was just always, I'm going to be a lawyer because that's what my family always convinced me to do. But deep down, I knew that I had a different want for my life. I just didn't exactly know how to translate that into a post-secondary program, into university. So the more research that I did, I actually applied to NAIT, which was Northern Alberta Institution or Tech Institute, I think. I applied there for business. I paid my fees and didn't even go because it just did not resonate. I was like, there's no part of me that's green with business. That wasn't what I wanted to do. And then I actually applied to Toronto MetU that same year, didn't get accepted, formerly Ryerson. That's what it was when I applied. I applied to York, I didn't get in. I applied to U of T, I didn't get in. And so I was left with doing what many people here call a lab year or a gap year, like doing another year of high school to bring your grades up. But what it really did for me was give me some time to actually figure out what it is that I wanted to do. And it was so taboo. Everyone was like, if you don't go to university right away, you're never going to go, you're never going to get your degree. And it was scary. My sister and I did the same thing. And we were both kind of like the odd ones out. But I'm so much better off for it because during that time, I realized that what I really wanted to do was to learn about people and to work with people. And sociology was the program that I ended up graduating from Toronto MetU. And it was such a well suited program for what I wanted, because I wanted to be able to understand more about communities, more about social groups, cultural groups, why our society understands people the way we are. And the more that I did that program, the more I realized that my niche was, of course, Black women, which leads me to where I am today. It was just so apparent in every class that I took and in every chance that I had to explore academically what I was interested in, that it went back to Black women, back to my community, back to uplifting us. And the many ways that that takes form in sociology because of that program. But yeah. And so during that time, I really appreciate you talking to, being honest about taking a leap here. I actually didn't even get a degree. I did a year in college. And then I was like, this is not for me. And there's nothing I really want to do here. And I'm not just going to go to college to say I have a degree. But I definitely, and it still exists, but definitely of the generation where the only financial education you got in school was you can take it alone to go to school if you don't have money. That was like the most information we were given about money in high school. And the pressure of like, you have to go. If you take one year off, you'll never go back. But I don't think that we should be, I don't think everybody needs to go to college. But I also don't think people should be doing it at 18 when you barely have had any responsibilities. How will you know? It's an expensive experiment. So I'm hoping that people are becoming more lenient and open-minded. Ontario government just announced that they're starting to fund, I think, what's it called, trades again in high school. I heard something about that, which is awesome. So I'm hoping that people are expanding their definition of success. So you went in, you finally had more of an idea when you did get in. And even when you were there, though, you didn't wait till you graduated. You were involved as a leader amongst the student body. Can you kind of tell us the activities you were involved in at that time? Absolutely. University was, I think, my moment to learn more about who I was as a leader. It really helped me shape that. So in my first year, I was so excited to be at university. You look at all my pictures, there's this big, silly grin on my face because I was like, okay, I finally made it. I'm here. I'm doing something I want to do. And it was difficult as the first year of university is for most students. You're brand new to the concepts that you're learning. It's very much the introductory work of what the rest of your degree will look like. And I learned right away that I wanted to be able to connect to other students so that we could very much talk about what our challenges were and how we were going to overcome them. So right away, I had my group of students and joined the student union for my program, Sociology. So I was a representative, first year representative. And it really gave me the opportunity to hear what students were saying and hear what they were advocating for in the program, while also being able to relate to them and have that sort of pull up. Okay, I can bring this up to the chair, to all of the professors that we're working with so that they can actually hear what we want. And I think that that really let me learn about my voice. It helped me learn about my voice. So that kind of kicked things off. From there, I ended up joining the Caribbean Students Association and I really wanted to explore marketing. So I did their social media at a time when Instagram was in chronological order. So that was way back. It was a good time. And even that experience allowed me to connect to my community, my people, right? Like, that alone was so cool. And being able to throw parties and to connect to other institutions who had students who had the same, you know, feeling about wanting to connect the community. It also granted me the opportunity to go to Barbados for a semester. So I studied a semester abroad. And that was an amazing experience. So my paternal side of the family is from Barbados. So I got to stay with family, learn more about my heritage. And that even opened up more education wise, because I learned that even the ways that we were learning in Canada were really with one scope. It wasn't as expensive as learning somewhere else and learning what their social problems are and what their culture is like. So it was such an opening for me. And then once I got to my, throughout all of this, I was blogging. So I kept up my blog, and it was like sharing those those experiences online. And then once I got to the end of my university career, I actually started working at the university in the registrar's office. So all of those bits and pieces brought me to almost a full circle moment of being able to support incoming students as an employee. I'm glad you mentioned your blog, because I wanted to ask you where how that fit into your story. Because here you are doing something really academic, all about the books, you know, how and then you're doing your blog, which is a lot more creative, a much more creative space. So how do you kind of, you know, look at that, the work you're doing on the content side, was that something just as a hobby that you did not take it seriously, I'm gonna get a real job, and it's gonna do this for fun. Like, how did you, those two worlds meet, if they did? What a good question. I'm so glad that you asked that. Because, to be honest with you, throughout the time that I started blogging, it was just an outlet. Like it wasn't what influencer, content creator industry is now. It wasn't really something that was like, okay, I can do this and make it my profession. So I just did it because I really thought it was fun. And it was a creative outlet. And of course, the internet being the internet, I was able to connect to women who were across borders, in so many different places, having similar experiences to me, while I was growing, and learning to understand my hair, which I also look at as a bit of a metaphor for how it was to grow in my life and understand more about who I was. So that kind of came into play as more of a business while I was in university. I didn't quite realize, I want to say that this was maybe second year. So 2016, 2017, was also the time that I was like, okay, if I want to continue doing this, I'm seeing people starting to get really big. I'm seeing the mega influencers and what they're able to do and who they're able to connect with. Maybe this is something I can pursue. And it kind of was always in the back of my head. But of course, I was in university. So that was always what was a priority for me. And during that time, I was also working. So it was more like whenever I had the time to be able to put out that creative work, then I would do it not like, okay, I'm going to batch content create and put all of this together and have a whole calendar, which is totally different than what that's what you see now. So I think in that sense, it was a really authentic way to run my business because it was fun and it was freeing. I didn't really feel like I had to crunch numbers so much and try to have this big following because I was just having fun with it. It was just nice to connect to other women. And I kind of feel that way about social media now. I understand so many people want to be influencers and content creators. And I think that's great. I think that everybody has their niche and their way to really connect to other people using the internet. But I also wanted to just connect. And I constantly try to remember that. That's all I wanted to do with social media. I didn't necessarily think of being the biggest content creator if that happens or if it happens in the future. I would absolutely love to be able to reach and to connect to a community so large. But I don't think that that's the basis of what I wanted at that point or now. I agree. I actually, for a long time, resisted all kinds of social media. It took a long time to get onto Facebook. It took a long time to be on Instagram. And when I would be on there, it would just be to promote whatever project I had going on. I didn't understand going on there just to talk about myself because I was like, I'm pretty boring. I don't understand that side of it. But now that there are more people talking about the strategy behind it, the coaches and that kind of thing, the coaching and other aspects of monetizing it, I'm like, okay, I understand that. It's just a tool. It could be a place where you go and yell at people. Or it could be a place where you go and connect and build something that benefits you and other people. So it's nice to hear the origin story, the original pioneers. You definitely were one because you guys had to deal with the... And it's still there, but it's not as bad with the judgment because a lot of the early influencers were what? Beauty, lifestyles, frivolous, female things that aren't taken seriously. And now, again, everybody's doing it, selling every kind of thing. So I'm glad that's kind of changing. So at what point now you've graduated, what was your goal when you graduated? Did you think, oh, my blog is doing well, I'm going to get serious about this? Or am I going to get a real job? At what point did you realize, I can do this content thing and do my own thing and follow my own path? Yeah. By the time I graduated, I definitely thought to myself, okay, let's scale, let's build this. Because truth be told, during that time, the money that I was making from creating content was helping me pay for school. So I saw how it could really help me out if I was to scale it. And I was like, okay, I have the capacity now. But I also still wanted to be able to do work. And I don't, I try to refrain from saying real work, because I think there's so many different types of work that people don't recognize as work, if it's not like an exchange of money, going into a 401k or a RRSP, you know, like, I think it's all in perception and all in your perspective. But I knew I wanted to be able to still have that creative side and scale my skills and start to leverage what I had learned in university and build them. So that should I decide to build out my blog, or maybe do something different, maybe then start to venture in entrepreneurship, because blogging did give me that idea, did plant that seed, was that I wanted to be able to approach it professionally from the point of industry professionalism. So what does that look like? So from there, working at the university kind of happened to fall into my lap, I was working there as a student, and they hired me full time, it worked out great. And then I started to learn about the different roles that it takes to build the university, it is a very big operas, like, huge, there's so many different moving parts. So I kind of learned the different ways that I could apply the skills that I had learned, and eventually scaled that to working with the specific community that I think mirrored what I was doing in my creative work. So I always wanted to connect to the black woman in my blogging and creative work. But then I was able to work with black students, like undergraduate students, specifically in in higher education institutions. So I was really realizing, here continues my purpose of showing up for my community and being here for my community in different ways. So I went from working in the registrar's office, pretty much in their call center. So supporting students with admissions questions, whatever else. And then I moved into student advising, academic advising for students who were in the business management program, which was funny, because I could have never seen myself in that program. But I was able to still really support those students and help them with curriculum sort of pieces in that sense, and guidance. And then I shifted into working more specifically with black students. And since my shift out of Toronto Metropolitan University into University of Toronto Scarborough campus now, I still see that that trend of, okay, it's really for showing up for the community where now, there's still the support of undergraduate students, but also middle school and high school black students in the East Scarborough area. So it kind of showed me again, there's still that seed that's planted there, you're still approaching everything with the professionalism that you've learned in your career up to this point. And the difference is now I have a book. So before, it was just a blog, something that was a kind of online space. And now there's like this expansion of, here's the professional work that you do in higher ed institutions, here's the work that you do with your writing, here's the work that you do with mindful movement and yoga. And so it's kind of like this flourishing moment now of where all of those things have manifested and grown. I like how you speak about actually getting a job part, because obviously, I just, you know, kind of talked about earlier that I don't think everybody needs to go to school, but you do need education. And it can come in different forms. It might be formal education, it might be you picking up a book, joining like, small workshops, that kind of thing. But also just getting a job that teaches you a lot, too. It's important. There's a lot of young people who now think I just want to be a content creator. They don't have the same expectations as we did that you guys go to school and it's bad or nothing. But getting a job is good too. That's, that's, that's not the end of the road. It's, it's so enough. It's actually the beginning because that's like, you're not meant to love every job that you work. And I think that's the misconception is this content creation looks like this big, fun, exciting thing. And it is, like, don't get me wrong, being able to build to this point has been amazing. But oh, my goodness, I have gone to meetings, I have had clients who are like, we're so grateful that you're actually professional and can show up in this space as a professional, because we work with some content creators who don't understand what it is to have professionalism in this space. And it always, always comes back to benefit you in the end, because now, now you stand out. And all I did was go to work. All I did was learn these skills. And see, my phone is even thumbs up. So yeah, there's so many ways that you can help your business grow. That doesn't have to be YouTube, doing it all on your own. Like I had a mentor. Pollyanna Reed was the best mentor that I had at that point. She, she helped me. She was also the one who said, you know, there's never, never any shame in building that professionalism. She also was working and ended up working at the Forbes magazine while she was scaling her business. And it was such an inspiration to me to realize how you can balance both and really make them both work for you. Yeah, I agree completely. And so it's not that you aren't busy enough. But then you've also written a book, and you created the Black Girl Collective. What, what came first? Black Girl Magic Collective? Which, which kind of came first? Or was it something that was kind of organically together? Like, what was the process of that? Good question. So the book came first. So that was November 2021, as the book was published. And what I really wanted from the book was for it to also manifest into something to support the readers, to support the actual women who were taking this book, reading it, going through it every morning, every evening, whatever the case may be. I wanted it to expand into an actual collective of sisterhood. So from there came the Black Girl Magic Collective. I wasn't able to hold a book launch in 2021, because of what I will not name, we all know what's happening in 2021. So it didn't happen then. 2023, last year, I actually was able to host the launch for the book. And that was when the Black Girl Magic Collective was born, to create a day of Black Girl Magic. So it was a celebration of Black women, an opportunity for us to all come together in that sisterhood, from just connecting over these words, connecting over wanting more for ourselves, wanting more for our sisters, our community. And so it's been almost a year since that's been, been created. And I've now incorporated it. So I'm now looking to really build more, more opportunity to connect, more opportunity to uplift. I really want to focus in on well-being. I think a year of Black Girl Magic, my book really does already focus on that. So just continuing to remind Black women that we're worthy of being healthy, like we're worthy of being well and living a well life. I think we've been kept from that for so long. Yes. And just, I don't know if we had mentioned it, but your blog, just for anybody who wants to know, is Ebony Curls. And then your book, the idea of Black Girl Magic. And through that, we're going to your Black Girl Magic Collective now. So what are you trying to do with that? Is that like a non-profit? Like what, what, what is your goal with that? Yes. So I am building into a non-profit. What I really want to do is again, show up for community. And I know that that is very broad. I've seen a lot of folks start to run programming. And I think to have a space specific for Black women, when it comes to having these events, when it comes to having these celebrations is vital. I see a lot of spaces that are for BIPOC women, and I love being able to enjoy being with my BIPOC sisters. But I think because Black women have experienced so much, even in those spaces, so many challenges in those spaces, to really have a collective space just for Black women is what I wanted to build. And so the way that I envision it moving forward is a non-profit that offers mentorship, that offers wellness resources and supports. I know Black women also don't have supports. Oftentimes they don't have access to these resources and supports. And so creating sort of a hub where, where all Black women can come to this space and know you're taken care of, you're loved, your sisterhood lives here. You're able to really become and grow into yourself as you, as you care for yourself with intention and with, with community. I think community is healing. And we've all, I think, come to learn that, especially now having been held away from each other for so long. And I really want Black Girl Magic to emulate the collective, to emulate that and to be able to uphold that for us. That's a great mission. I'm happy to support that. Is there anything else that you wanted to share that I haven't asked you today? I will plant a little seed because I won't say too much, but I have started writing my next book. I have been working on it for quite some time. I've been keeping it very quiet because it's something that for me has been some deep internal work and things that I have had to work through. So it's, it's coming. It's happening. It's coming. I'm excited about it. That's great. We look forward to that. I'd love to have you back to talk about that as well. But for now, if somebody wants to reach out to you to get to know your world, what's the best place to reach you? Best place to reach me is the good old Instagram. So at Ebony Curls blog, I'm on TikTok under the same handle. My website is ebonycurls.ca. And anywhere that you go, you will see me and I will connect with you. I'm excited to get to know y'all. Thank you so much for being here. Make sure to include all your information in the notes. Thank you again and have a great day. Thank you so, so much. You as well. Take care.