Compton made me, so when I tell you Kristy Fercho came up out of those same streets and climbed all the way to the first Black woman ever on Wells Fargo’s operating committee, you understand what that distance really means. She helped run one of the biggest banks on earth and never once, in thirty years, asked what a job paid.

We talked just before she stepped away from Wells: about code-switching, about walking into rooms where nobody looks like you, about staying exactly who you are anyway.

Sit with this one. There’s a blueprint in here, and your name’s on it.