May 25, 2026

DIASPORA: Identity, Blackness & Belonging

What does it mean to know who you are — and build something true from that knowing? In Hollywood and in Fashion?

This Thursday, May 28th at 8 PM ET, Soul Thursday is going live with a double feature that I’ve been looking forward to for weeks. Two guests. One night. One theme: Identity, Blackness, and Internationality.

SEGMENT A — Elsa Mehary
Identity & Ownership: Stop Waiting for Permission

Elsa Mehary was born in Ethiopia, raised in the States, went to Dartmouth, and spent years as an Art Director inside the most powerful media companies in the world — Time Inc., InStyle, Condé Nast, Hearst. She watched gatekeeping happen in real time. She watched Black men get propped into positions that led to Silicon Valley, then go silent under NDAs.

Then in 2020, during a cancer diagnosis in a locked-down New York City — with BLM protests literally outside her window — everything changed.

Now she works as a Strategic Creative Advisor and Identity Architect , helping people stop waiting for external permission and start building from the inside out.

She told me something in our pre-show conversation that I haven’t stopped thinking about:

“We find our tribe through our identity. You can’t get your other needs met without it.”

Identity isn’t a branding exercise. It’s a basic human need. And Elsa is going to show us why.

SEGMENT B — Mason Richards
Becoming: From Guyana to Hollywood

Mason Richards was born in Guyana, raised in Brooklyn, and discovered as a child actor at 12. He performed off-Broadway alongside Lauryn Hill and Donald Faison. He dropped out of high school, took his GED and SAT in the same month, and won a Posse Scholarship to Vanderbilt — where he directed the first-ever all-Black theater production in Vanderbilt history after the theater department offered him the role of a servant.

After CBS News, Paramount Pictures, and waiting tables in LA, he earned an MFA from CalArts. His short film The Seawall — made after returning to Guyana for the first time since he left as a seven-year-old boy — premiered at Cannes, played the Havana Film Festival, and is now headed to the Venice Biennale .

Now he’s making the feature Beyond the Seawall . A story about migration, Black boyhood, fatherhood, and a son searching for a father who left to become a gold miner. His own father — recently reconnected after years apart — now has dementia. Mason is racing to finish the film while his father can still remember.

He said this to me and I wrote it down immediately:

“I’m on this next chapter, where all the stuff that happened before is setting me up for this next thing.”

Two stories. One night. One question:

What does it cost to lose your identity — and what does it take to find it again?

Join us live this Thursday, May 28th at 8 PM Eastern.

👉 Register free: SoulThursdays.com

The conversation is real. Bring your questions — we do live Q&A at the end.

Soul Thursdays airs live every Thursday at 8 PM ET at SoulThursdays.com. Five years. Real community. Real conversations.