I built the community I needed.

I was raised on Burnside Avenue in the Bronx. My mother worked nights. My father was around in flashes. The men who shaped me weren't always related to me — they were the older guys on the block, the ones who saw something in me and called it out before I could.

Brotherhood wasn't theoretical there. The men I came up with held each other to standards. They sharpened each other in public. That wasn't a program. That was the air.

I'm mid-30s, Dominican American, Orlando-based for the last five years. Father of two daughters. Husband. Marketing leader by trade — built campaigns and teams for organizations that move billions and ones that move neighborhoods.

I moved to Orlando to build a life for my family. I did that. And the whole time I was doing it, I was alone in a way I had never been alone in New York.

The brothers who could have sharpened me weren't in the room. The men I knew here meant well but weren't running the same race. I built a marriage, raised daughters, ran businesses — and made too many calls alone that should have had two other men in them.

I'm not the founder of Men of Excellence the way founders usually mean it. I'm the first member.

The community I needed didn't exist. I looked. The closest thing was a network. The next-closest thing was a Bible study. Neither one is what a man needs at this altitude — a room of brothers running the same race who will not flinch at the truth he tells, will not offer advice he didn't ask for, and will not let him drift past a standard he set himself.

So I'm building it. The Beta Cohort is the first 20 men deciding together what this becomes. You're not joining my program. You're building it with me.

Because the experience of building something as a man of color is its own thing. The wins don't translate at the dinner table the same way. The road wasn't walked in front of us by anyone in our families. The men who could have shown us how weren't in the rooms we were in.

Men of Excellence isn't closed to anyone — it's built by a Bronx kid from Burnside Avenue for men running a particular kind of race. If that's you, you'll know.

I'm faith-led. I won't quote Scripture at you on every page. The cohort has men who pray and men who don't, men who are sure and men who are working it out. The brotherhood is wide enough for both.

If you grew up in a house where men didn't talk about anything that mattered, this room may feel uncomfortable for the first month. That's the point. The discomfort is the work. Stay anyway.