- 2 days ago
Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina reshaped not only the physical landscape of New Orleans, but also the national conversation on race, equity, and disaster response. Today, we gather to honor the lives lost, celebrate the resilience of the communities that survived, and critically examine the long-term impact the storm has had on Black life, policy, and prosperity.This powerful panel brings together survivors, community leaders, policymakers, and cultural voices to reflect on the lessons learned and the work still to be done.
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00:00We're getting started. We're rolling it in. First panel of the day. And thank all of my members on the panel for joining us.
00:07And thank you Essence for having us. And this is a very important panel because it's about 20 years since Hurricane Katrina.
00:15And all of us have our different stories. This is going to be a pretty quick panel, so we're going to jump straight into it.
00:20But this is basically to help us gain more awareness on the economic impact of Katrina, how we can grow as a community and move forward.
00:27And also be of service to other people going through similar situations.
00:32So without further ado, I would like to introduce my panel. I'll let my panel introduce themselves, actually.
00:36And then we'll just jump right into it.
00:38My name is Shawna Young. I'm CEO of Camelback Ventures.
00:41We're a venture studio and capital social impact accelerator for entrepreneurs in education technology.
00:49We're based right here in New Orleans.
00:51My name is Dr. Maurice Schultz. I'm a physician, an entrepreneur, practicing doctor here in New Orleans.
00:56And I have a couple of startup businesses based here in New Orleans, bringing technology and advancement to the city.
01:03I'm Adrenda Kelly. I'm the executive director of BNOLA, Black Education for New Orleans.
01:08We're an organization obsessed with making sure that black people shape what black children learn.
01:15Emile Washington, the co-founder of Black Equity Strategies Trust.
01:19We're a social impact consulting firm focusing on really bringing together the brightest minds to help our communities.
01:27And I'm Brent Craig, founder of Neutral Grounds and co-founder of Jam Around AI.
01:32And to get started with Shawna, tell me a little bit about where were you in 2005 when Katrina hit?
01:38I was thinking about this.
01:39I was a teacher in North Carolina, and my first thought was, we need to get there.
01:46I need to be there.
01:47We have to help our community.
01:50And I felt like I felt helpless, actually, to see so many of my community not have what they need to really make out a really horrific situation.
02:02So I was there as a teacher, and I just remember being too far away, I will say.
02:07So I was actually practicing here at Children's Hospital, and I was working so hard I didn't see the news.
02:15And so my sister kept calling me.
02:18My friends kept calling me saying, what are you going to do?
02:20And I was like, what are you talking about?
02:22So I finally turned on the television and saw a hurricane filling up half the Gulf of Mexico.
02:26And I said, well, I guess I need to go somewhere.
02:27And I took a bag and went to Houston, thinking I was going to stay for the weekend and didn't come home for two months.
02:35This is the first time I have actually talked publicly about Katrina, and it's been taking me 20 years of good therapy.
02:42But it was something to see people you know and love devastated.
02:47My patients, I saw them on TV at the convention center.
02:51It was powerless to help them.
02:52But then on the other side of it, I was in Houston to receive them when they got shipped somewhere.
02:56And it was nice to say, I know your doctor personally, and I can text them.
03:01It was a lot.
03:04I was actually in New York.
03:06I was working in education publishing at the time.
03:10And like you, Maurice, I wasn't necessarily deeply tuned in.
03:14My mother had evacuated thanks to her Jamaican husband who was like, I'm getting the hell out of here.
03:19And I'm so grateful because our neighborhood ended up being pretty flooded.
03:23So I wasn't worried.
03:25But I saw those same images.
03:27And I saw, you know, the days pass, no rescue.
03:31I heard the narrative shift from, you know, victims of a major natural disaster to talking about American citizens as refugees.
03:39And, you know, showing people breaking into stores to get food and describing them as looters.
03:45I think what Katrina crystallized for me was how the power of narrative and who owns it and who frames it has real deadly material consequences on real people.
03:56Yeah.
03:57I was in college.
03:58It was my, we were going into our senior year.
04:01My dad is a pastor.
04:02So we were actually in Natchez, Mississippi at the time.
04:05And we had no idea.
04:08I was a senior at LSU.
04:12And there was no way to be prepared for something that you're not even informed about.
04:18As people forget, that storm was supposed to go up the coast of Florida.
04:23It went across the panhandle and got into the Gulf and got stronger.
04:27And so my parents, I believe, they didn't get back into their house until sometime in October or November.
04:34They were stuck in Mississippi.
04:37I drove, because you know those backwoods.
04:39So we drove 61 and went back to college.
04:41And the population of Baton Rouge doubled overnight, right?
04:46LSU became an actual trauma center.
04:49So while we were still in school going to classes, the indoor track facility was housing patients that was being flown in.
04:58So we're seeing the dichotomy of both things happening at the same time.
05:02So it's still surreal when people talk about it and thinking about the generations that really don't even have an understanding of what took place.
05:12And so this conversation, I think, is deeply needed at this moment.
05:15Yeah.
05:15And it's really important.
05:16And when you think about the people who are affected by Hurricane Katrina, I was in seventh grade.
05:22So I was pretty much oblivious to what was going on.
05:26I thought we were going on, like, a little vacation.
05:27My mom said we wanted to pack up for three days.
05:30We wound up coming back three years later.
05:31So not two months, but moved to Houston.
05:34And it was a really, really impactful time for me, even though I was so young.
05:38And I feel like a lot of people have different stories based on where they were at the point in their life.
05:42So it's crazy to understand that you were not even there.
05:45You weren't there.
05:45Y'all were just witnessing from the outside looking in.
05:48And it's a great segue into our next point, which is how do you think Katrina affected the black communities?
05:53And I guess I'll leave that open to whoever wants to tackle that.
05:56Sure.
05:57You know, I have never seen something so intentionally and surgically displace black people and people of lower socioeconomic status like that disaster.
06:07Because if you had the time, space, bandwidth, money to hold out, you could do something, still pay your bills, and come back when it was time.
06:18I was able, I had the privilege of being able to stay with my uncle in Baton Rouge, fight with that terrible traffic and there being no food in the stores because everybody was up there eating it up.
06:27But I could do that and wait for potable water to come back and return to my house in the city and have a way to pay my bills.
06:36If you didn't have connections, disposable income, the ability to wait, the ability to be patient, how were you supposed to just do that?
06:46And so people went from living in a neighborhood that their family had lived in for generations to being in Montana or being in Idaho or someplace that you'd seen on a map that you'd never heard of.
06:57And I think when you go on vacation, you choose to go there.
07:01Your hurricane was forced on you.
07:03Nobody chose that.
07:04Hurricane, I never heard that.
07:05And if I could jump, because I think your point is very much needed to be double tapped but also expounded because that worked if you had national banks.
07:16For those who had local banks, they didn't have access to their money.
07:19So it's a different type of economic status, right?
07:22Like you were maybe affluent, but if your bank was Hibernia or Liberty, you didn't have access.
07:28And so it forced an online banking component that did not exist, right?
07:33And so it really reshaped the black economic social class here in Louisiana, specifically in South Louisiana.
07:41And it changed just how we viewed everyone.
07:45And I think the biggest part is realizing that policy is not always connected to poverty, and it needs to be.
07:55And so people were not making that connection as to what was happening at the state, federal, and local level and how that would impact them locally in order for preparation.
08:04And so that's, I think, the biggest thing or one of the biggest things.
08:06And I would add that you have this other layer of people who are trying to take advantage of the situation when you're already desperate.
08:15You said sort of patience, just having the cash.
08:17But also, you know, really we see it happening in the fires in Al-Sedena where people are coming in and getting offers for just their land.
08:25And so when I come back to Katrina, come back to New Orleans, the CEO of Chemical Adventures, literally 19 years later, I was so excited to be here.
08:34And then I learned, like, there's no public school system.
08:37There are no public schools.
08:38I mean, Adrinda, I know you want to talk about it.
08:40Oh, my gosh.
08:41I mean, there's so many threads to connect here.
08:43I think Katrina, if anything, is the poster child for how natural disaster is used to disrupt concentrations of black political, economic, and in education, pedagogical power.
08:57And medical.
08:57Amen.
08:58And health.
08:58Absolutely.
08:58You know, we have to talk about Katrina 20 years later.
09:02You have to talk about education, which is probably one of the biggest stories of transformation post-storm.
09:08And the 20 years of post-Katrina reform started with and was significantly accelerated by the mass termination of 7,500 public school staff, 4,000 teachers, the majority of them black women.
09:26We talk about the economic impact of that.
09:29Essentially, with that move, we unemployed 5% of employed black New Orleanians.
09:34And that particular population of educators was also very politically involved, you know, represented by a very politically active teachers union.
09:44That move, you know, really changed the face of our city politically, economically, and educationally.
09:50And to double-click on that, Shauna, let's go into the transition of economic development.
09:56Because education, it breeds talent.
09:58The talent is what actually funnels the economy.
10:01So, we talk a little bit about what was lost.
10:05But what is actually being built as a result of it 20 years later?
10:08Yeah, I really love the idea of talking about the opportunity.
10:12So, for Camelback, we started 10 years ago, anchored here in New Orleans, investing by giving early capital, $40,000 to entrepreneurs in education and in technology.
10:22We're national.
10:23We're intentional around still investing in the South and investing in New Orleans.
10:27And so, from that, we have seen new school models come up that were started by black founders.
10:34We also look at ways in which we can support the ecosystem.
10:37So, how are we showing up even if you're not a fellow or part of our program?
10:41I believe that 20 years ago, 10 years ago, right now, entrepreneurship and building new systems, new businesses is really our way to wealth development for black people.
10:53For sure.
10:54And I want to talk about the reality that I did not text message before Katrina.
11:01Now, this was 2005 and everybody texts now, but I was forced to text message.
11:06That wasn't something I chose to do.
11:09And as a result, I am an older person, more comfortable with technology because I was forced to use it.
11:15Similarly, electronic medical records.
11:17When I was displaced, all of my patient records were in my office at Jocelyn's Hospital.
11:22So, the hundreds of patients and families I took care of didn't have access to refills for their prescriptions, instructions for their wheelchairs, instructions for their PT, OT, or speech because I deal with kids with disabilities.
11:35So, I am now a diehard, staunch advocate for technology and medicine.
11:40And people talk about banks and people being conservative.
11:43Medicine is conservative in that we don't adopt new things well.
11:47So, out of this disaster, medicine really got a classic example of why we needed portable medical records.
11:54Why you now can access your medical record on your phone.
11:59Okay.
12:00And that's something we take for granted 20 years later that was illustrated and forced by this disaster, Katrina.
12:06The opportunity.
12:07What's the opportunity in the challenge?
12:10You know, you use the, you're talking about technology and it made me think about Dr. Ruha Benjamin.
12:18You know, we talk a lot about right now the need to, in education, the need to make sure our children are learning about AI, are becoming literate, right, in these new technologies.
12:28And that's right.
12:29Artificial intelligence is important.
12:31But what Dr. Benjamin offers us is that ancestral intelligence is just as important.
12:37And when I think about one of the biggest misses in our education story post-Katrina, it's the fact that we built a new education paradigm that thought nothing good was happening educationally in New Orleans.
12:52I'm definitely an example of the bright spots that we had in pre-Katrina public education.
13:00My very black, very pre-Katrina public school sent me to Harvard in 1998 where I was just, you know, the only African American to matriculate that year.
13:10My point is my story is not supposed to be possible in our rendering of what education was pre-Katrina.
13:17And what it means is that we're not pulling into the present the lessons and the strategies of how these folks did what they did, often in the face of massive state disinvestment, but somehow was able to ignite the brilliance of generations of black children in our city.
13:34So ancestral intelligence is something that I think about as a technology we need to embrace.
13:39I love that we have our naturally occurring social networks here.
13:42So I'm a member of Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
13:45Hail Zulu.
13:46I am King Athena, 2026.
13:49And for people that don't know Mardi Gras royalty, it sounds like something extra, but those naturally occurring social networks and connectivity are what brought us back together after this disaster and things tried to rip us apart.
14:03We knew who we are and whose we are.
14:07And knowing whose you are really reaches into your point about ancestral intelligence.
14:12Because I didn't have to wonder how I would show my joy and my sadness.
14:16I know how to second line and move my feet.
14:18I didn't have to wonder who was going to sow for me because my Indian brothers were going to sow hard for me when we came back to the city.
14:25And there's something reassuring about knowing what's waiting for you because you know whose you are and who you are.
14:31Well, I know where my Zulu tickets will come from next year.
14:36So first and foremost.
14:39And I think the biggest thing in the sense of opportunity is the cross-collaboration and being able to work together once again, right?
14:46Like we sometimes forget how the Tulsa's were successful and that was being intentional about keeping things local and in your neighborhood and going to the same doctors, having your teachers, having the free, like being in a space to be able to circulate your dollars and that it didn't leave the actual neighborhood.
15:05And we're actually, what they're giving us without giving it to us is that opportunity to come back together again and realize that my brother is my brother, my sister is my sister, and they're not my enemy.
15:16And if we take that moment, we can do so much.
15:20And so I think that's one of the things I would love for us to really look at just collectively as we leave this for the 20th anniversary.
15:26How do we get back to some of our communities and rebuilding them and taking back what was taken from us?
15:33I think what you bring up, too, is like shifting from being consumer-based, which was intentional, to really being, as we are, creators and owners of our own businesses and opportunities.
15:45And so it's a mindset shift that I see happening, especially in New Orleans, but we have to actually come together.
15:54And we're intentional friends at Camelback Ventures.
15:56When we do our dinners, we go to black-owned restaurants.
15:59We're going to take our business there, you know, that type of thing.
16:02I love this.
16:03This is one of my easiest panels I've ever done.
16:05Because when you hear 20th anniversary of Katrina, you think, okay, this may be like a trauma panel, right?
16:14But this is more of a triumph panel where we're talking about things that we've used to navigate these disasters.
16:20And with so much going on in the world, you have the fires in California.
16:23You were telling me this morning about the flood in Texas.
16:26Like, there was a flood in Texas, I don't know if y'all heard of, that is devastating Texas right now.
16:30We provide the framework for how these issues get dealt with.
16:35So to transition, and y'all just gave me a lot of good examples, I want y'all to hone in on what are some tips that you have for someone that may have just got displaced yesterday?
16:44And they don't know what to do.
16:46I know it's 20, 25, 20 years later.
16:47But what is some advice that y'all have for people who are going to be future, I would say, future leaders in the space of disaster recovery?
16:58I'll jump in that.
16:59In one of our roles in another capacity, we do a lot of rapid response.
17:04And I think it really goes into understanding who's already on the ground.
17:10There are people who are doing work to benefit the community and who are equipped to position themselves to receive resources to help others.
17:18So figuring out who are those organizations and be able to turn to them because they're going to know where the direct needs is.
17:25We are so eager to always give to the big four or five organizations where the money doesn't always trickle down.
17:33And so it still goes back to the economic impact.
17:36And what are the local organizations that are able to say, that person actually needs some water.
17:41That person needs some bread.
17:43We don't need clothes right now.
17:44We need to figure out how do we resettle that land or figure out what is the space for that home or let's get this church back up because that was a food pantry.
17:54And these people know to go here to receive that, like, as opposed to just trying to parachute in and save the day.
18:00It's really figuring out who was already there doing the work, who's still doing the work, who was not impacted.
18:06Because not everybody's going to be impacted.
18:08And being able to lift those up who are not impacted so that they can be best positioned to be the strong warriors in that space.
18:16You know, I just want to, you know, say that and acknowledge how tender this year is, as you just said, for this whole city.
18:24There are a million Katrina stories, and many of them continue to be deeply painful.
18:31It lives in your body, you know, the trauma.
18:34And educationally, certainly, this year there is an attempt, I think, to paint an overly rosy narrative, right, about where we are.
18:44Progress does need to be celebrated.
18:46There has been some made.
18:47But we are still a city where the vast majority of black children are not reading, don't have basic literacy skills by the third grade.
18:56And there is still a 50% achievement gap between black and white children.
19:00And so we do have a lot of work to do.
19:02One of the biggest lessons I think we've learned educationally is that it matters who's in the room, as you're thinking about rebuilding these systems.
19:11It matters that you have some sort of context about the history and culture of the community that you're about to work in.
19:19For example, in education, we completely ignored the role of 141 years of racism in addressing our education challenges.
19:29And so we fired the teachers, which was not the right solution.
19:32So, in short, it's echoing your point about being curious about what's there, being curious about why what's there, right, looks the way it does or doesn't.
19:42And then being willing to invest in indigenous models and indigenous solutions.
19:46You know, I really, really love the points that you all are making.
19:50And as a scientist, I'm an MD, PhD, arts matter.
19:55Arts matter, and I'm going to say it again, arts matter.
19:57The reason arts matter in trauma is it gives you a way to express what you're feeling when you don't have the words.
20:05You can't prepare for something you've never experienced in some ways.
20:09Like, I can have a go bag, and I encourage everybody here to have, know where your marriage certificate is, your birth certificate is, your insurance policy, and have that in a go bag.
20:18Like, you were getting ready to go to the hospital to have a baby.
20:20You want to have that ready for you.
20:22So, part of this starts with preparation.
20:23But when things happen to you, what I find was most critical, not just for those that are resilient enough to be able to wait like I did to come back in two months when they could, or the people that were waiting through the water.
20:36There needs to be a process for you to tell your story, have your story validated, and process your story.
20:44So, shout out to the mental health professionals out there that were available to help pick us up and put us back together.
20:50Shout out to the systems of people that said, I might be all over the country, but I'm still here for you.
20:58And I ask people to lean into their community.
21:03My mama worried me to death after Katrina, so I gave her a job.
21:07She got to worry FEMA to get me my FEMA response money.
21:11And it gave her something to do, and it gave me material help.
21:15You know, and I think that's an example of how you let people love on you in a way that's helpful.
21:21Yeah.
21:22In addition to being CEO of Camelback Ventures, I'm also co-founder of Onyx Black Wealth Collective.
21:27And the reason we started is because we recognized that we just weren't sharing information with each other.
21:33Like, being aware.
21:34Just knowing what you don't know.
21:36And for me, it's like, I did not know how to actually build wealth.
21:40And when I'm coming back to Katrina, coming back to New Orleans, you know, 20 years later, I am in awe of what has been done here.
21:46I am in awe of how much success we have had.
21:49And I think about what we can do next.
21:51And so, as disturbing as it is to go through many things as black people, especially right now, these systems around us were not built for us.
22:02They were not built for us.
22:03And so, we're thinking about how do we use the next 10 years to set up the next 100 years of legacy.
22:09So, I say for right now, being aware, taking the time, ensuring all your stuff is in order.
22:15And then the joy that black people have every single day.
22:18What I love about New Orleans is it doesn't matter what's going on, we're going to laugh.
22:22We're going to have a good time.
22:24And we're going to still make shit happen.
22:26Yep.
22:26Yeah.
22:27And I would say what I would give advice to is understanding the narrative, controlling your own narrative.
22:34When Hurricane Katrina hit, this was not the information age that we're in today.
22:38We did not have, I think MySpace wasn't even around during that time.
22:42Email, like you said, text messages just started rolling in.
22:45And there was a lot of news, a lot of information that was misinformation.
22:49And it caused a lot of turmoil within a lot of different communities.
22:53So, when it comes to us controlling our own narrative, one of the big reasons why the Global Black Economic Forum is so important is because it's about controlling the black narrative.
23:01And if we control that narrative, we will be more prepared when things happen so that we can keep the information in a silo to where we can actually benefit from it.
23:09So, we have around two minutes left.
23:10I want everyone to kind of just give me your tip on how do you think we could control our narrative better, not just for disaster preparedness, but just for education, economic development, communications.
23:22How do you all think we do that?
23:23Well, as the elder on the panel here, I think the way you do it is you make room for everybody to learn the new skills.
23:32I am able to tell my stories because I can work the Twitter.
23:37I can tell, I'm learning my stories.
23:38I'm terrible at TikTok, but I'm trying.
23:41And I say this because there are stories that only I can tell, but if I don't tell it in the medium that people are receiving the information, they'll never learn it.
23:50So, I really believe in cross-generational togetherness and making sure nobody's left behind.
23:56People are not expendable.
23:59I don't know.
24:00We might be going in the order of age, but I'm not going to say anything.
24:03But anyway, I think you have to tell your story.
24:07I agree with you.
24:09I spent a lot of time head down working, thinking that someone was going to find my story, and it wasn't happening.
24:15So, we have to take the time to tell the stories that we know we want everyone to know about what we're doing here in New Orleans and black people.
24:25I think how we frame the story and who frames the story is deeply important.
24:30When it comes to education, for example, we all want our schools to be great.
24:35We all want them to be high-quality spaces for every child.
24:38But we often look at schools and we say we knock them for the struggles that they're having about academic achievement.
24:45They should be accountable, no doubt about it.
24:48But we are less curious about did they have the resources to invest in professional development?
24:54Did they have the resources to invest in high-quality educational materials, after-school tutoring programs, et cetera, et cetera?
25:01And the fact remains, there's a lot of resource inequity that continues in our system that makes it tougher for some schools to do what they need to do and easier for others.
25:11And so, I think how we frame the narrative, how we ask and what we use and sort of contextualize around the questions that we are struggling with really matters.
25:22And I think that's something that Katrina taught us for sure.
25:26Real quickly, we're out of time, but give me an answer.
25:28Yes, I would say that being mindful of this city, what's happening this year outside of the 20th anniversary as we enter an election that will shape the next city, power is not a dirty word.
25:44We all have it, and we have the opportunity to utilize it and embrace it.
25:49And so, it is also our duty to recognize the power we have.
25:53And that power allows us to hire people and to fire people and be mindful of those who represent us or who claim to represent us and what that looks like, right?
26:03And so, as we're thinking about these next couple years and how that impacts and where the dollars are flowing and the cultural barriers and how we want to tell stories and all of that, it's all connected in every shape and fashion.
26:17There is a local election here that matters.
26:22Be mindful of the candidates, what they say, how they show up, when they're showing up, in what capacity they're showing up.
26:29And this is from the mayor all the way down to the city council.
26:35And be earnest in how you invoke and use your power.
26:41And that is our panel.
26:42Thank you all so much for joining us.
26:45And yeah, this is good.
26:46So, I appreciate y'all.
26:47Thank you, Global Economic Forum.
26:48Thank you, Essence Fest.
26:50And we'll carry on for the rest of the show.
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