ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews Dr. Ian Buchanan, an award-winning educator, CEO, author and executive coach whose M.O. is empowerment.
Native to East St. Louis, Illinois, Buchanan would become director of strategic partnerships for the Achievement School District in Memphis, Tennessee, before spending five years as assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction in The School District of University City, Missouri, then founding and serving as CEO at Nia Education Group, a coaching and consulting firm.
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“I have been doing the education thing since 1995. I started off as a high school mathematics teacher, taught everything between algebra and calculus, and so I had been doing this education thing for a long time, working within the system — graduate school, literacy coach, assistant superintendent — but I still felt like I was in a box and I really wasn’t able to live out my true purpose in the education game,” Buchanan said. “So I said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna be real strategic, but I’m gonna get out here and carve my own way and do what I need to do for the benefit of Black and brown kids, man. And so I started Nia Education Group, and the purpose of the education group is to help leaders, great leaders, become their greatest leadership selves.”
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Buchanan also authored “KING: Four-Part Leadership Framework for Black Men” and told Corie about his book’s significance in the context of his work in guiding and advising future leaders.
“One of the things that teachers, especially elementary teachers, like to do, they like to use these things called acronyms, where every letter means something. And so, ‘K,’ know the king within. That is, have a deep sense of self. No. 1 most important thing. ‘I’ inspire others to collective greatness. How can you coach, model, cheerlead, support others for the greater good? ‘N’ is navigate to the north. That means have a value system, a set of morals, a set of beliefs that drives what you do. And then ‘G’ is gravitate to the great, or as some might say, gravitate to the gangsters, and that means how do you surround yourself by the people who can push, challenge, support you and help you reach that next level?” Buchanan said. “The book really lays out strategies to do that. It talks about my experiences, it talks about quotes and reflective questions that allow you to actually personalize and operationalize the principles that I’m talking about.”
Hear the full interview in Season 3, Episode 12 of “Black Men Sundays.”
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