After The Nudge Podcast | Bringing Victory to the Village | Toyota
Hi, everybody. Welcome to After the Nudge. I’m Soledad O’Brien. And I’m J.R. Smith. So on this podcast, we chat with some of the nation’s most outstanding grassroots community organizations. We also give out a micro grant of $10,000. It’s like it’s a nudge, which is pretty cool.
Today we are chatting with Tori Cole from Victory Village Corp.. Now, Victory Village empowers underserved and unserved communities through immersive programing and workforce training. That’s welcome. Tori, Welcome to the show. Thank you. So nice to have you. Real pleasure. So you really began in corporate America and then you transitioned
To being an entrepreneur. I’m curious about how all of that kind of positioned you for what you’re doing with Victory Village today. Give us a little history. Absolutely. Well, I started off in corporate America, as you mentioned, as a computer engineer, and I really loved what I did.
So much so that I created my own business out of it. And I’ve created and founded multiple startups, tech startups. And so I, I transitioned out of industry because I felt a need to have our own spaces and own. And so what I did was
Take that experience and knowledge and translate it and transform it into what Victory Village is now and multiple startups are now. So that has really set a foundation for what we do here at Victory Village and training young people to do just as I did. A lot of business people get, you know,
Kind of caught up in their dreams and their goals and their successes. How did you stay focused in Houston and stay locked in and gravitate toward the community? Absolutely. So I once I I’ve traveled all over with business and consulting and technology startups.
And so once I moved back to Houston, which is my home state, I saw that the Harris County community and the different cities and school districts within Harris County were not really focused on STEM education and workforce training. And so I created it and started Victory Village and Code Excel program
From filling in that gap in need for that workforce training. Was there a specific thing or a young person or a gap that you said, You know what, I can do this? Absolutely. Absolutely. So I in my past experience with national organizations such as national Society of Black
Engineers, we hosted pre-college initiative programs. And during that, I saw that there was a tremendous need in the community for STEM and future skills training. How how impactful are companies like Toyota to a corporation like yourself to to give back And like, how do you see that impact in the community?
Do you see the impact within the business being our business, a business woman who’s running such a impactful corporation? Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me tell you this, Knight Grant has been instrumental to Victory Village and our programing. Without this grant, we couldn’t do a lot of what we’re doing
In the community through our Code Excel programing and training. We actually started on a 40 foot metro bus and we converted it into a mobile learning center and we would travel around to the different schools within Harris County. And now we are actually in the classrooms of one of the largest districts.
It’s actually my home school district. Galena Park is the and we are in the classrooms teaching and training students. And so without Toyota and this knowledge grant, we would not be here. Victory Village is such a positive, forward looking name. And you know, lots of nonprofits are kind of frequently named
Out of all the things people lack. Right. Like, it’s a list of terrible things versus I mean, I just love the name. Tell me about the thought process. How did you get to that name? Really framing the assets, I think, of the young people versus
Here’s a list of what what you don’t have and what you’re coming into the world with. Absolutely. Well, I grew up in that community very similar to the communities that we serve. Oftentimes, they’re underserved and they host a series of problems. And what we do is choose
To focus away from the problems and focus on the victory. And so that’s exactly what Victory Village is all about, bringing victory to the village. How do we do that? Well, we train and develop young people, middle school and high school students, to develop the skill sets
And training and help to take that training back to their peers. And not only the peers, but also to their parents, their communities, their churches, other nonprofit organizations to where it’s creating a a village centered around victory. God, I love that we’re how can more people because obviously we did
Give you were giving you a nudge and viewership is going to want to help and give you a nudge. So who’s got the shove? Well, so how do we how do they reached? How do they reach you and donate? Yes, absolutely. Well, we have our own website.
It’s WW W dot VB, Cork dot org. But also we are on every social media platform. You can think of. You just look up Victory Village, H, t X, and you will find us. And also you’ll find us on YouTube because we are live filming our training sessions.
And so you’re going through and you’re seeing our codec sales students actually doing the work and training and building computers from scratch, and we’re just giving them the materials and they’re building those technologies from scratch. And so you’ll actually see them learning in that learning process and even going through.
And we encourage other students to learn virtually as well. And so we not only have it to where they’re on site, but also students that cannot get on site or in one of our classes they can take from our YouTube channel
To be able to learn those technologies and how to build and develop those those coding those codes in computer science technology as well. There’s a ridiculously small number of black engineers and a smaller number of black female engineers, right? I mean,
My sister is a black female engineer and then there’s like some more, but not very many. How do you get over the psychological, if you will, obstacle of, you know, if you don’t see a lot of black engineers, if your dad or mom wasn’t
A black engineer, what would make you think, you know, I could be an engineer? How do you deal with that part? Absolutely. I had to overcome that fear myself. And thankfully, I had two parents that were professionals in the oil and gas industry down in Houston. But so many of our students
Do not have that representation in front of them. This is what Victory Village is all about, to take that fear out of STEM learning and learning how to succeed as both an engineer and a professional. And we train our students starting in middle school, how to do just that.
And so with Victory Village, we not only train you out with your outward skills, but we train you inward and develop that know how that drive to where you understand this is how we become engineers. This is how we succeed professionally as a black engineer and take that drive throughout your career.
How can we ask the right way? How do I get from if I’m a I’m a parent, I have a daughter in Houston and just listen to you and see the way you’re lighting up is like, I want to see my daughter.
They’re like four for parents who are like me or somewhere on a fence. What would you tell them to convince them that, like, this is the right move for you, for your child? I absolutely just check us out online. And not only us. There are so many organizations, I would encourage them
To get with their school counselor on a dual degree programs to where they’re actually teaching and they can earn their associate’s degree while they’re still in high school in computer science and engineering. And so that takes the sting out of, I have to ramp up my skill sets
After high school versus, you can start now, start in elementary school, start as soon as possible in developing your child’s love for STEM. And that’s what I would encourage each and every parent to do. And you raise a good point because, of course, debt that comes back from from college. Absolutely.
Especially in the black community, is very, very high and only rising. And it seems like you’re really focused on you can leave high school and not just have a job, but you can have a career, a really high paying career. Yes, absolutely. And that’s what we encourage each of our Code Excel students
To follow in that path of the dual degree path to where you’re actually leaving high school with an associate’s degree. And if you choose to continue through to your your college degree, then that’s great. But a lot of our students do not. They choose to go out into entrepreneurship.
We encourage them, of course, to finish college. But if you want to become an entrepreneur right there after high school, after you receive your high school diploma, you have that option to do so. That’s awesome. North Carolina anti. But this is a lot of young black engineers
So we could be a pipeline in for you know, just you know the system with a lot of friends that graduated from N.S.A.. Yes. Did you know that Toria think I write about this. You’re a cancer survivor. Yeah. So I’m curious how having something that must be very scary and very overwhelming
Led you to want to really invest in your community and think about, like, what your legacy is. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. So that because Victory Village is a ministry for me, it’s a way for me to positively leave a legacy and give back to my community.
As you can understand, whenever you go through a life threatening situation, you start to really bring into focus what type of legacy you’re going to leave behind. And I believe that Victory Village is my way of bringing into the fold that legacy and that ministry and just giving back to the community.
And so I love what I do. If you can’t see it all over my face, it just comes through and I’m just excited of what? What’s the future of Victory Village? That’s great. Who’s the typical young person? I was going to say, Kid,
But I know they’re not all kids that you serve at Victory Village. Is there a typical. There is notable. We welcome everyone. We have home schooled students that parents are so excited to that we’re bringing this type of programing and training to their students.
And we have all the way up to AP honors students to where they’re excited to be challenged by our different projects. And they’re each one of our students eyes light up when we start talking about what is possible in the STEM science, technology, engineering and math arena.
And so we can meet each and every child where they are. And so we do not exclude any child from this program as long as they’re a seventh through 12th grader. We welcome them all out. That’s what I want to ask you.
How good does it feel to have such a huge impact in your specific home community to the school district you actually went through? Because like for me, like a lot of you know, a lot of people go on to have success and you can go different cities
And all that, but like coming home and being able to have that Stapleton at home, what does that mean to you? It’s everything. It’s everything to me. I am I graduate from North Shore Senior High School, and we are my parents. Home backs up to one of the streets
That has the most crime in the area and we still own the home. And I just believe that this program, this College Excel program, our organization, as well as our partnerships with the churches, the non other nonprofits, the school districts in the area that will help to uplift not only my community
But the communities throughout southeast Texas and even the state. And then we’re looking at national expansion moving forward. You got the nudge because you were selected, you’re nominated online, then voted on online. Yes. And you won. Yes.
I mean, that’s an indication of a real impact across a lot of a lot of folks. What does that feel like? It is tremendously humbling and I am very appreciative of all of our supporters and more importantly, our Toyota supporter. And just this night’s grant is
It has been a tremendous help and all of the support that our community has given us throughout these years has just been tremendous. We would not be here without it. We would not be here without the support of our parents, of the students,
And getting their child to what we started out on the bus, getting them to the bus each and every Saturday. That takes dedication. A lot of our students are athletes and so they go to practice and then they come and get on our bus and they put, you know, their athlete athleticism aside
And they they focus on our STEM education. And sometimes we allow them to bring in their athletic athleticism and what they know about sports into our STEM education. And we develop, for example, a sports game. I was going to ask. Yeah. And I would be aiming is very big, right? Exactly.
And they not only now, they not only know how to play the sports games and the video games, but they know how to develop the video games and it’s actually helped them throughout their their sports career in that now they know the different the different sides of physics and how to go about
Using that knowledge to improve their game. So it’s really helping them all the way around. And we are just excited to, to, to have them to where they’re learning and they are trained on, on, on getting things done performance wise within all of this.
Like, obviously we know how important education is and in teaching our youth well, how important is that message of continuously getting them to feel self-motivated, continuously empowering them to where they want to do it on their own with not somebody dragging them? How does that feel? Absolutely.
We do it by two different ways. First, affirmations. Every time they come to us, we affirm them. We we tell them they can do it. We take again, we take the fear out of of what you can’t do.
And we tell them what they can do, and then we show them how to do it. And that’s basically the recipe for success. And that’s how I’ve operated throughout my successes in life is, first of all, I I’ve been affirmed by those
Who have been mentors in my community and supporters within my community, and also how they’ve showed me how to do it and how to be successful. And that’s what we do at Victory Village. How long has Victory Village been? Around? 2017 is 173.
What have been the biggest lessons that you learned from that first day when you launched in a bus on the street to today? Yeah, absolutely. I would say resilience. You know how to keep going when you’re just starting off, you know, and I pulled in, you know, my experience as a startup entrepreneur,
How to keep going when, you know, you don’t necessarily have the name or the brand or the support right then and there. How to be resilient. As a black woman engineer, you have to understand how to be resilient in all that you do in order to reach a certain level of success.
And so that’s what I’ve pulled all into Victory Village in not only myself and my development as a leader, but also I’ve trained these students, our Code Excel students, How to do the same. What do you want to go? What are your goals? How many more nudges do you need just seeding that?
If anybody wants to say yes, absolutely, absolutely will bring all the gadgets possible. But our growth expansion plan is to first of all, get outside of the now that we’re in the classroom, get outside of the classroom, get our students outside and actually into these corporate sponsors on location
As apprentices and in internships and actually learning it on the job training. So they’ve been trained in the classroom. They know how to develop the code, they know how to do the engineering and the construction. And now we’re actually looking for our corporate sponsors to host our students for on the job training
And also expanding our reach as far as virtually making sure that our systems are up and running with up to date virtual feeds so that we can provide more to students that are outside of the Harris County area. I was curious about why it matters. I mean, it’s a it’s a obviously
Rhetorical question, but like, you know, why does it matter to invest in young students of color? Why does it matter to make sure they’re learning STEM when the entire world is now going digital fully? And if they don’t have those skills now, they’re going to be even further behind? Absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, I definitely believe that if you expand your mind, you expand your potential and you expand your community and you can bring those resources back to your community to uplift it. And that’s why we we do what we do at Victory Village is basically in order for them
To go out and expand their territory, expand their horizons, they must first be trained on how to do that. And we do that, and more so in uplifting the students. We uplift the parents, we uplift generations, we uplift those that come after all of us. And in bringing that to the forefront.
And so these students must be trained on the skills of the future in order to, first of all, go out, have new experiences, and bring those experiences back and help train and reach others behind them. And that’s exactly the path that we are setting forth for them at Victory Village.
That’s what I’m doing. And I tell each one of my students, If you want to pay me back, you take this skill set and not only training, develop yourself, but you reach back like I’m doing and you set forth that legacy, that Victory Village
Legacy of reaching back and training others to do the same story. Your story is incredible. The work that you’re doing is so impressive, and I love the legacy that you’re sowing, not just your legacy, obviously, but for your entire community. It’s really, really great. We’re so proud of you.
I’m very proud and appreciate appreciate having you for one and to listen to your stories. It’s really amazing. You’re doing tremendous work and please keep it up. Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you for having us. Of course.
And a big thanks to all of you for joining us for the After the Nudge podcast. And until next time, never underestimate the power of a little nudge.
In this episode, Tori Cole of Houston’s Victory Village Corp talks with J.R. Smith and Soledad O’Brien about the power of exposing underserved youth to STEM education, tech job preparation, and entrepreneurship. Cole, a former computer engineer, left the corporate world to give back to her Harris County, TX community. See Terms & Conditions at AfterTheNudge.com: https://www.toyota.com/content/dam/toyota/after-the-nudge/after-the-nudge-term-and-conditions-2023.pdf
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In this episode of the After The Nudge Podcast, Soledad and J.R. Smith meet with Tory Cole.
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