I spent years trying to build the cultural connection I always wanted.
I grew up knowing very little about my Dominican and Jamaican heritage. My family was estranged. We had a few visits and a few family dishes, but not the relationships or the knowledge needed to pass our heritage on.
As I got older, I realized that if I wanted that connection, I would have to build it for myself.
I wanted more than information. I wanted connection.
- Growing up
I grew up in Cleveland, disconnected from my Dominican and Jamaican heritage. I only learned some of our family history later. My great-grandmother left Jamaica in the early 1900s and became one of the first Black nurses at Harlem Hospital. The truth is, I’m still learning.
- Howard University
Howard changed a lot for me. I felt more grounded in my Black American identity and became even more curious about my Dominican and Jamaican heritage.
- After college
I moved to New York City to be closer to extended family and a larger Caribbean community. I lived in Washington Heights, IYKYK, and took a job working within the Dominican community at the Community Association of Progressive Dominicans.
For the first time, I was not being questioned about who I was. I asked questions, listened, learned, and intentionally began reconnecting with this part of my heritage.
- Motherhood
More than a decade later, I became the mother of an Ethiopian daughter. I wanted her to be proud of who she was and where she came from. I knew what it felt like to want to belong to your heritage and not know how. I tell her, “You may not always live in Ethiopia, but Ethiopia will always live in you.”
How can something so central to who we are be so difficult to access?
As I began talking with other people, I realized that the desire for deeper cultural connection was not unique to me.
Some people were trying to reconnect with parts of their own heritage. Others wanted to make sure their children had access to a culture or identity they themselves had grown up distant from. Some knew a great deal about where they came from but still wanted a stronger relationship with it.
The challenge was rarely a lack of interest. People often did not know where to begin. Family knowledge was incomplete, resources were scattered, and migration, adoption, language loss, distance, silence, and pressure to fit in could all shape cultural connection.
There was plenty of information about discovering where we come from. There was far less guidance for how to build the connection itself.
So I decided to do something about it.
Decades of experience. One growing body of work.
Across education, nonprofit leadership, entrepreneurship, and corporate work, I have designed learning experiences that help people navigate culture, identity, transition, and belonging. That work has included youth, families, asylees, refugees, immigrant communities, and multicultural families.
It began in New York, where working within the Dominican community became the start of my own intentional reconnection.
Then came UrbanLEARN, where I built youth workforce and business-mentoring programs, including case studies featuring business owners and managers of color that young people could see themselves in.
Later, I founded Mully Lingua, which offered face-to-face and virtual cultural experiences through language, history, food, dance, rituals, and storytelling. Mully Lingua is now the parent company for my Heritage Reconnection work.
The thread is the same: creating ways for people to build a meaningful relationship with their culture and carry that connection into their lives.
MBA, Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhead School of Management
BBA, Howard University
Your heritage is yours.
“No matter how much or how little you know, or what percentage shows up in your DNA, your heritage is yours.”
- Heritage is your birthright. Your connection can be interrupted, but your heritage cannot be taken away.
- You can preserve, reshape, and practice your heritage in ways that fit your life now.
- You do not need the whole story to begin.
- There is no one way to reconnect.
- It is never too late to reconnect.
- Reconnection does not require reverence. You can inherit a story without inheriting its values.
- Your relationship with heritage can look different at different points in your life.
- Preservation matters. But not everything we inherit needs to be kept or passed on.
Because there is more to me than the work.
- My mom chose the name Tami because it was simple, unlike her own long, traditional Latino name.
- In my kitchen, I call our cooking EthioCarib Soul: Caribbean, Ethiopian, and African American flavors that sometimes end up in the same dish.
- My Ethiopian daughter has made it very clear that she is the “real African queen” in our house.
- And in 2021, I left my life in Washington, DC, and moved to Mexico with my daughter, a lot of dreams, and more hair products than either of us needed.
- When I moved to Mexico, I sold about 95% of what I owned. Turns out, I may have taken minimalism a little too far.
Your heritage is your birthright. Your relationship with it can keep evolving.
You may be reconnecting, deepening an existing connection, or deciding what comes next. Wherever you are, there is a place to begin.
Explore Heritage Reconnection →Explore Speaking & Programs →