It's Where I Am with Zandra Polard

Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Zandra Polard 0:45
Good morning Las Vegas. It's Zandra Pollard. It's where I am. Thank you for tuning in this early morning. It's about 730 we are 91.5 jazz and more, and it's where I am discusses mental health and wellness issues. And we have different community leaders, mental health professionals and sometimes a celebrity here and there, but mostly the focus is mental health and wellness. So today we have an awesome, awesome community leader from the state of Texas. I want to welcome Christopher fields to the show, Christopher, how you doing? Yes, ma'am.

Unknown Speaker 1:39
Thank you so much for that warm welcome. You're welcome. Welcome.

Zandra Polard 1:43
Yes, but you know what? Let me tell the people more about you, because they only know your name. But we want to talk about some of the things that you are doing in your community. Now. Christopher at 27 years old. We don't know how old he is now, but he will tell us. But by the age of 27 he accomplished so much. He was the recipient of the United States presidential Lifetime Achievement Award and the United States presidential gold medal. But also is a renowned, published author, visionary recipient of the 2023 inspirational Man of the Year Award and the 2025 Forbes 30 under 30 in The social impact category. You've done a lot at 27

Unknown Speaker 2:46
I believe we all can do a lot if we really, just truly believe in what's inside of us.

Zandra Polard 2:51
Wow. But how do you know? Like I was reading your website and you were considered an at Youth Risk, like no one thought you would get to where you are now, achieve the things that you have, they were ready to throw you away. So how did you turn that around?

Unknown Speaker 3:13
I think everyone has a story of redemption in their own way. For me, I was challenged by bottling up my emotions, I experienced a lot from domestic violence all the way to struggles financially, to fear struggles and challenges getting along with friends and family, and we're so called friends and family, so I bottled up my emotions, and when I would have enough, I would lash out to other people and I would say hurtful things.

Zandra Polard 3:43
Yes, that is common, unfortunately, and

Unknown Speaker 3:47
throughout my life, I experienced other people who were supposed to be role models, lashing out at other people, whether it be waitresses or family members or even at my mom. And for me, I learned over time, I took responsibility for my actions, I realized how I was hurting people, especially when I became a manager at Chick fil A, I was higher on as a manager because the lady said she believed in me, and one of the training modules we had was empathy. So

Zandra Polard 4:14
wait when you started, when you started at Chick fil A? Were you still in high school, or had you graduated already?

Unknown Speaker 4:21
I graduated high school,

Zandra Polard 4:23
okay? And this was like your first job.

Unknown Speaker 4:26
This was like my first real job. And that was the end point for me. Okay, so I guess that's a good point back. I want to say sophomore year high school. I kind of calmed down a little bit. I started, you know what it was, I discovered motivational speeches. There was put on motivational speech. It was the very first time I ever learned the word motivation.

Zandra Polard 4:54
Okay, so you broke up a little bit. You broke up a little bit, and I didn't hear everything you said.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Place every minute, second an hour devoted to making the world a better place through movements, causes and campaigns and going out to make a difference in the world. That counts as volunteership, even if you haven't recorded your volunteer hours. If you know where you volunteered at, or even causes that you care about that you volunteer forward, then you can always reach out to the wise up to rise up Foundation, and we can certify those hours. We can verify them, and we lost. They can present awards for volunteer hours that you've done somewhere else. So

Zandra Polard 10:30
a student can go online and look up wise up to rise up and apply. Is that correct? Yes. Okay, so they're applying. Okay, continue.

Unknown Speaker 10:41
So the way the President's Volunteer Service Awards works is nobody can just submit a request for a presidential award. Just off the Presidential service awards.gov website, they have to go through a certifying organization, such as yours. No exactly, if you don't know about a certified organization where you're more than welcome to go to wise up, to rise up.com and look up the Presidential Awards, the plan forward to our foundation, and we can make that happen if you would like, somewhere more local to you, in Los Angeles or wherever you are. I recommend looking up organizations that are community involved, maybe giving them a call, and looking through the website and seeing that they're very as they're verified to to sponsor presidents Volunteer Service Awards. Okay,

Zandra Polard 11:25
well, that's wonderful. So how long has this been around? Because I just heard of it from our conversation. So the

Unknown Speaker 11:34
Presidential Volunteer Service Awards expand various administrations. It was created by the President's Council on volunteership, and it is managed by a miracle, a government organization that's responsible for making a difference to volunteer managing that so they've, they've been around for a pretty long time. I think I remember seeing some of the President Carter and some other presidents from a while back on their website. Oh, okay, exactly. So a lot of people don't know. Yeah,

Zandra Polard 12:03
on an honor. I could have qualified applied.

Unknown Speaker 12:08
Hey, you never know. We might be the one to award. You see, this is what we say at our foundation. You gotta know to grow, you gotta educate that yes,

Zandra Polard 12:15
and see, that's the thing. It's like, you know what? Chris, when I was in college, I really had to advocate for students to even apply for scholarships, like, you know, students, they just go to school, and that's it, you know. And I really pushed, you know, my peers well, they weren't my peers because I was a mom who went back to school, but I encouraged my fellow students, colleagues or classmates, there we go, to apply for scholarships, you know. And so this is yet another thing that some people, a lot of people, most people don't know, and that's why I asked you to come on the show, so that we can educate our community here in Las Vegas, and for those who listen wherever you are, because I am also available on all major, all major podcast platforms, So we are not limited to just Las Vegas, alright. But also it was the connection that we have with our friend, your mentor, shaton Nelson, so I want to give her a shout out as well. Uh, she's from the Houston area, and you guys had so much in common. And I said, Wait a minute, this sounds like a friend of mine. He's done a lot of the same things, and he's from the same area. They have to know each other

Unknown Speaker 13:47
for sure. Yeah.

Zandra Polard 13:48
So shout out to shatona Um. Also getting back on subject about educating oneself to do more, to do better. Why is up to rise up also offers what

Unknown Speaker 14:08
so wise up to rise up is all about inspiring. Inspire the next generation through various initiatives. We actually have sponsorships with companies like Top Golf, Google, Microsoft, you know, raising canes, Chick fil A, yeah, you got a name? Yes. BJ, brewhouse. I mean, various other Fortune, 500 companies and organizations just that span various industries. We have sponsors from them, sponsorships. And one of the things that we love to do is we love to go out to local schools, and we free. We come bearing gifts. If you feed them, they're happy, like you said, you know, become bearing gifts. We go out and give hundreds of gift cards to the kids, while inspiring them to get involved, to not only make a difference, but be the difference. I would like to highlight something I love about ms Nelson, really. Dr Nelson, but I love to highlight something that. That she's really, really relentless about in helping to make a difference. And that is, they have something she has coming up called TEDx River Oaks, the road to River Oaks. And when I talk to her about it, one thing that I love about it is that so many people aren't aware of what they can really aspire towards. So they set their achievements to what they feel like. It's possible, not realizing that there's so much more out there than you've ever even been led to believe when you really, uh, reach beyond what you've always known. Yeah. So wrote the road to River Oaks in the city of Houston. River Oaks is known as the nicest. I mean, it is the it is the it is the epitome. It is the pinnacle. It is the zent that is the summit of owes money, wealth in the city of Houston. Okay, so most people who know about that know that the pinnacle of Wow, you're a doctor, lawyer, judge, who's been around for a while if you live in River Oaks. So she secured the TEDx license so that people from all walks of life who are successful in their industries could part ways with their industry for just a moment to share a lifetime of knowledge in a short segment on a TEDx talk, so that other people can aspire towards believing that they belong in River Oaks as well. Okay, that's really what wise up to rise up is about, is that, in various ways, we want to inspire people from all walks of life to understand that it is not you as a person that's keeping you from achieving what beyond what you've ever been led to believe you could achieve. It is the awareness of what's out there and what's possible you may have done so much already and simply because you haven't been made aware of how truly valuable your contributions are. You haven't been recognized in ways that could blow your mind. These highest outclaves that we are able to give come to come they are created for everyday people from everyday walks of life who just want to do a little extra. And I love what former First Lady Michelle Obama says is that an extraordinary person is just an ordinary person who decided to do just a little extra every day. Alright,

Zandra Polard 17:12
Wow, I love it. So I'm looking at because I'm looking at your website as we're speaking, and I see that you have a book called from dreams to wings. That's right, extraordinary epiphanies through the lens of aviation. Now you are the author of this book. You helped to do the what did you did the picture or something like you were heavily involved in, like, getting the book the way you wanted it to look, things you wanted it to say, what is this book about? Who is the target audience for this book? And, okay, yeah, give us some information about

Unknown Speaker 17:58
it. And that kind of goes hand in hand with the foundation is that we're all about visionary thinking, imaginative thinking and creativity. Jack come from a background where I did a lot of research and I've always wanted to publish a book, but I simply could not afford to go through a publisher. Okay? And so I, instead of trying to figure out how to come up with $9,000 to go with the publisher, I felt like I could work with me. I had to figure out how to get out there and design my own book covers. I had to research how to design synopsis. I had to research how to design how to create log lines. I had to research how the different elements of books. I had to read a lot of books, and I had to figure out how to get out there and publish it myself. God blessed me with a job where I was able to put $700 towards the publishing, and I had to do everything myself, formatting, designing everything. Well,

Zandra Polard 18:44
what I like about it is, I like the picture of you. This is a picture of you, correct. Actually, that's

Unknown Speaker 18:50
a picture of my little brother. Okay. Well,

Zandra Polard 18:53
you guys look very much alike, but it's a picture. It's a book that says, Hey, what is this person doing? This person looks like me. What's going exactly? Yeah, so I pick it up for my son, or I may pick it up for myself. So I'm just saying you did a very good job with this. I How old were you when you when you wrote this book?

Unknown Speaker 19:19
So I actually wrote that book last year, and the reason why you look at it and say, Wow, that looks like me is because my brother is a licensed pilot, and we did research and found out that less than 2% of all licensed private pilots in the world are people of color, especially his age. We did even more research and found out that all commercial airline pilots, less than 5% of them are commercial airline pilots. And is he? Is he younger than you? He is younger than me by five years. Okay, so he is inspired by aviation and he was a quarantine baby. And rather than being able to visit his favorite universities, rather than being able to go to the colleges and figure out what he wants to do, the pandemic robbed that from him, because he graduated in 2020 they knew he was inspired by aviation and the airplanes that flew over our home constantly because we live near an airport. Okay, so he decided to do what most people wouldn't have done. He decided to take an unconventional route and decided to go to flight school instead of college. And from there, he relentlessly gave his passion to achieving as he gains his license in this pilot school in Austin, Texas, he went on to receive a day named after him from the mayor of Austin, Texas,

Zandra Polard 20:38
your brother has a day too. Yes, he got

Unknown Speaker 20:41
involved with the community because he wants, he inspires kids to be aviators. Okay? He went on to try to create an aviators, an aviators explorer program, but that didn't work out exactly how he wanted. So he just focused on from dreams to wings. So what we did is we took lessons that he learned through aviation and applied it to lessons that we learn in life. So the book is called from dreams to wings, extraordinary epiphanies through the lens of aviation, if I can give you an example of that, please do there. Yes, I'd love to give you an example. So every pilot knows that if you want to reach a destination, then you have to fly north of your destination, because if you don't, a crosswind could come and you'll end up lower than your destination. Now you may actually know where I'm going with this in that if we want to reach a goal in life, we have to go above that. It's almost like the old saying, reach for shoot for the moon, because even if you miss your Lance amongst the stars, it's a way of explaining that, in a way, to people who are enthusiastic about aviation or so worn out by that that phrase that they missed, the lesson behind it. Another example is that there's one of my favorite chapters called where there's a mayday, there's a miracle, and it tells a story about how two lawyers found themselves in a plane with a passed out pilot, and they had to listen to the voice of the emergency responder to guide them on landing the plane safely when they had no flight experience whatsoever. You can imagine how that turned out. But the emergency responder said, no matter what you see on the outside, no matter if you see any harsh weather, whether you experience turbulence or what you have to listen to my voice, because I can see the radar and you can't. And even though it looks like it's one way, right outside of the airplane, I can see it all the terrain, everything. That's kind of like how God is with us. We have to have faith in Him and listen to his voice even when everything around us doesn't seem to make sense and we're afraid, because that emergency responder told him, if you don't listen to me and trust me, even if it doesn't make sense, you can crash and burn. I've seen so many airplanes crash and burn because they got afraid, took their focus off of my voice and paid attention to what was around them in the same way we have to listen to God's voice and pay attention and focus on him regardless of what's going on around us.

Zandra Polard 23:11
Wow. Thank you for all of that. That was heavy. That was heavy. What are you working on now?

Unknown Speaker 23:25
Chris, so right now, you know, again, I'm a person who believes in my core values, and that's community involvement, lifetime of achievement and inspiration. And so everything I'm doing is revolving around those three things, you know, getting involved with the community, continuously inspiring others to get to aspire towards a lifetime of achievement, and most of all, just inspiring the next generation. But

Zandra Polard 23:49
when you do those things, Chris, I'm wondering, do you write this down and you like, look over your categories of your core values and check things off, like, how does that work for someone who does not innately have that?

Unknown Speaker 24:06
So everybody has core values. Core values are not something we necessarily right but true, realizing

Zandra Polard 24:11
what they are, and making sure that you are on track with those core values.

Unknown Speaker 24:18
So I realized my core values came from being frustrated about some negative influences that are in the world. There are a lot of negative influences out there. And I said, I just don't like how entire generations that came before us did not diligently choose a righteous path, so now we're suffering. So I said, no matter what, as long as I'm breathing. I want to make sure the next generation after me has a chance to rise up and be counted. So for me, I decided that everything I do, from entrepreneurship to business to the music I listen to, even when I post a reel on Instagram or even if I post a video, that everything around that is inspirational. So. So that actually birthed other ideas, new visionary ideas, and ideas to get involved and make a difference.

Zandra Polard 25:06
Yes, and I understand that, because you you mentioned that earlier when you first came on, but as you're traveling in those journeys with those core values, are you journaling? Are you writing down things in each category? Because I would get lost. I'd be like, Well, did I take care of this one today? Did I take care of this one last week? Do I need to do this next one? You know, in a couple of days? My point is, I understand where you're coming from is writing things down, yes, yes.

Unknown Speaker 25:46
So organizing is really important, but also getting that vision on paper, because if you don't get that vision on paper, you can lose it. But for me, yes, what's very important to me is that my stakeholders and my constituents and all of my various endeavors that I have, everything you know, everything written down for them to follow. I want to make sure that everything is transparent and accountable, which is why I, actually, my organization, received a gold level seal award from multiple organizations, giving us a literal gold seal for our transparency, because we make sure we keep everything, all our ducks in a row,

Zandra Polard 26:22
yes, but this is coming from someone who has a team, though. I'm speaking for those who are just, let's say, in middle school or high school, that don't have a team, or, you know, someone who doesn't have a support or and looking for that support.

Unknown Speaker 26:41
Oh, yeah, I

Zandra Polard 26:41
want to speak to those people.

Unknown Speaker 26:44
Okay, got you Well, I'll tell you this. We all have a visionary idea. We all have a dream. We have something inside of us that emerges when we have those moments of dissatisfaction with our everyday reality. And when you have that, it's not something you have to be reminded of, because it reminds you that it's there, okay, it's an unquenchable fire. It's something it's a zest that says, I have to get up and do something about this. It's that one little mosquito that follows you everywhere and bites you when you feel like I should be doing something more with my life, and if that is not reminding you every day that I know I'm capable of so much more, then you're focused on the one wrong dream and the wrong difference to be made, because that one thing is the difference that's going to not only change your life or make a difference in your life, but so many lives attached to you. I want to say something that I've heard before that I love, and that is, I want to apologize to the black community ahead of time, because the truth is, Martin Luther King, that man didn't have a dream. That dream had him. So you have to ask yourself, What dream besets you? What dream grips you, or will you let it get away and slip through. There's something that only you can do, that the living, the dead and the unborn couldn't do any better. I love what Dr Marlin Rose said, and that is, when you drive past the graveyard, there are dreams that are undreamt books, unwritten, songs that were never sung, movies that were never filmed, ideas that were never manifested or brought to life. Businesses never erected, projects never initiated, because people died without bringing their full potential into the world. They didn't tap into that gold mine that was inside of themselves, which is the reason why the graveyard is the richest place on earth. And I encourage anybody listening to this to don't let the grave yard Rob what's inside of you from an entire generation, because what's inside of you cannot only make a difference for your life, but for entire generations that came after you, just like we stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before us, and if you continue to drift on with A sense of apathy, believing that you cannot make a difference, and unfortunately, the crazy art is going to get a little richer, when in actuality, the next generation needs what's inside of you.

Zandra Polard 29:13
Christopher fields, y'all wise up to rise up.com. Is where you can find information on him and all of the wonderful things he's doing in the community, in the nation, for you and for him. This is Zandra Pollard. It's where I am. I'm here every Saturday at 7:30am I look forward to you tuning in. Next week, I'll be here 91.5 jazz.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai