We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dante Plush. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dante below.
Dante, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
I think I keep my creativity alive by continuing to pursue my interests despite my age. I’m 30 years old now and I feel like most people my age have this mentality of needing to act their age and acting your age at 30 to them means going to bed at 8pm, not going out for a night on the town anymore, and not being open to try new things, and because I refuse to embrace to that mentality, I think people often tend to look down on me as being “immature” or “extra”, especially when I propose big ideas. But I push forward anyways because I like accomplishing big things and I think that this consistent cycle of experimenting, doing, learning, and growing really just leads to compounded creativity in the future, but more importantly fun in the present. Another way I think I keep my creativity alive is by finding ways to incorporate my interests into every project that I do. I think that a lot of professionals often are looking to impress people by trying to lead elaborate, elite, by the book projects. I instead prefer to give me projects somewhat of an alternative or unique feel by making them my own through incorporating my influences and interests because I wholeheartedly believe that our creativity is lost when we go out of our way to impress everyone and appeal to the masses.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m a youth advocate with a concentration on underserved youth. It’s my mission to inform the public about barriers that underserved young people (especially youth of color) often face to getting a quality education. It is also my mission to provide underserved youth with opportunities to advocate for themselves because I wholeheartedly believe that the key to helping underserved youth overcome educational barriers is teaching them how to advocate for themselves. I think what’s most exciting about my work is how its very malleable: I can find ways to use my interests and passions to contribute to this mission. For example, I’ve done stand-up comedy on and off for years now and have made jokes that also hint at the work that my youth leaders and I are doing to make change in the world. Even now with my work at GivingTuesday, an organization with a mission to spread generosity around the world, I’m always thinking up and supporting initiatives and projects that focus on getting young people to participate in non monetary generosity. I believe that getting young people to do generosity, community service, and changemaking projects, especially non-monetary ones shows youth that they all have something to give, even if they’re an underserved kid who lives in the hood, and in turn is a form of teaching young people how to advocate for themselves. As well, just bringing up making initiatives accessible to underserved youth during partnership talks in general acts as a reminder to people in the sector that there’s a whole community of young people out there with potential waiting to be tapped, that we are not engaging. I personally feel that the best thing about my mission is that its all a big campaign of me paying it forward. I focus on helping underserved youth because I was one who even dealt with homelessness at one point, and many people helped me out along the way to keep me on track towards success, and now I feel like whenever I see that my work is helping at least one youth, that I’m paying it forward as a thank you to all those who helped me.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I’d say the most important qualities that have helped me on my journey so far have been creativity, charisma, and keeping myself surrounded by the types of people I want to work alongside one day. If you’re early on in your journey, I’d recommend that you pick what’s important to you and do things. Do things and document it all on social media, but make sure it’s in the format of a story that your audience can follow along over time, and not bragging one is doing to their fans for likes and clout. When you make people feel like they are a part of your journey, they will want to help you succeed, which is where they will begin going to your events, donating to your fundraisers, spreading the word about your work, etc. As long as you’re consistently doing work, doing it well, documenting that work, surrounding yourself with people just as positive, driven, and ambitious as you (because we are who we surround ourselves with), and watching your public image, opportunities to grow your work and progress in your journey will randomly pop up for you! Somebody is ALWAYS watching, so make sure you’re worth seeing!
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m always looking for folks to collaborate with! I’m mainly looking for people wo either would like for me to come speak with their students or staff about educational barriers, making change, youth engagement, etc. and lead service projects with them, or I’m also open to collaborating with people who would like to partner to sponsor or help put together one of my crazy personal projects like my philanthropic prom dance that I’m having for my birthday this year! If they would like to connect with me, they can either follow me on Instagram @danteflush and DM me there, or email me at [email protected]!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: danteflush
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dante-plush-a50617198/
