- Growing up in South Florida,
the only way to get out of there is through sports.
Going through the ranks of elementary,
middle school, high school.
It's a factory.
My mom was always strict on my education
because she's from the Caribbean.
And my friends, they would try to,
you know, hound in on me like, Vlad,
you know, you're such a nerd.
Education is not idolized.
Sports idols are.
Sophomore year, spring football,
that's when my scholarship started to roll through.
My mom told me you're not superman.
Football is not gonna be here for forever.
What you can have forever is your education.
So I chose to go to school in the state of Michigan.
I thought I had a slim chance of making it to the NFL.
I fell short.
I wasn't drafted.
I had a workout with the Dolphins,
that didn't plan out as well.
All of a sudden, I'm trying to define
who I am as a person,
because I can't go back to my community,
because if I go back to my community,
I'm considered a failure.
'Cause in my community,
all they see is what they see on TV.
Oh, you're not a NFL athlete?
Oh, okay, you're a failure.
I don't need to talk to you anymore.
I was felt that I wasn't going to be valued as much
if I went back.
Out of no where, I get a call from a college alumni.
They tell me, Vlad, we want to give the opportunity
to go to China.
I was like, what is a young black man gonna do in China?
I don't know Mandarin, I don't know the culture.
I'm going to be lost.
But you know what?
I said, what the heck?
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, let me take this.
'Cause I don't know where else I'm going to go.
I failed as an athlete.
I don't want to go back to my community.
I remember the very first time I was there
I couldn't speak the language,
my phone didn't work.
I had never felt so hopeless,
and I've grown up in a community where you had to survive.
So what I did was I immersed myself within the culture.
Six months in, I became very conversational in Mandarin.
They'll look at me,
the first thing that they would say athlete.
Oh, no athlete, drug dealer.
Oh, no drug dealer?
So what are you?
So one day I just asked my Chinese teacher,
I said, be honest with me.
What is the perception of black people in China?
She was like, Vlad, I don't know if you
really want to hear this.
She said, being black is synonymous with being poor.
Several months later, I have another conversation,
not with my Chinese teacher,
but with Chinese locals.
And as they sat down, they would tell me
a lot of their perceptions,
a lot of their unconscious biases come from.
They said it comes from TV, of course!
Movies!
We don't come across people of color
or black people all the time.
This is where I started to understand the perception.
How do I alter something
that has been embedded within culture?
It irritated me at first.
I didn't even understand
how they can get this perception of me.
But I had this own perception of myself, as a black man!
It was like being a black man
was synonymous as being bad.
So then it hit me.
I wanted to change perception.
I became very passionate on trying to destroy the stigma.
I feel like more inclusion can bring more progression,
and we all want to see that.
There's more stories that needs to be told that are not.
So when people see me,
they don't minimize me to one particular box.
See me as a human, first.
See me as somebody that you can value.
I feel like my purpose is to change that.
I wrote a book about my life.
I also started a brand called Not Just An Athlete,
because at the end of the day,
perception creates reality for me
and for people in my community,
and I want to change that.