So if you've heard the name of my guest today, Stedman Graham, there's a pretty decent chance that it's been offered in the same sentence with his longtime life partner, Oprah Winfrey.
What's not often told is Stedman's own deeply compelling personal story, his path from small town kid to basketball phenome who actually played in the european leagues, to executive and eventually founder of his own consulting firm.
Really, over the last two decades or so, Stedman has become deeply fascinated with the exploration of identity, how we discover it, how we validate and then build our lives around our identities and contribute to the world and become leaders from a place of deep personal alignment with our most essential selves.
And he's developed his ideas over that window of time into a teachable framework that's really pretty fascinating and that he shares in his latest book, identity, leadership.
In today's conversation, we explore Steadman's remarkable journey, his personal evolution and awakenings, and why he believes with all of his heart that we are at a moment in time now where we need leaders more than ever, and why leadership is very much an inside game.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
So good to be spending time with you.
So it's kind of interesting.
I did a little bit of research when I was looking up your background, obviously reading your latest.
So you grew up in a town in New Jersey, Whitesboro, New Jersey, which, going back, what I discovered was it seems like it was, the town was created right around the turn of the 20th century, like right around 1919.
Oh, 119.
Oh, two.
Almost as, like a refuge for communities of color from Cape May and from North Carolina.
Yeah.
Actually, Congressman George H.
White was a member of our family.
Oh, no kidding.
And which is why how we got up there.
My father got up there, my mom got up there, and relatives of ours, they first invited our family up there and then build it from there.