D. Roman Sudan Montagueo II

December 8th, 2023

Hi there! As you may guess, I love being a creator by day (Black Bruce Wayne) and a STEAMer of dreams on my off hours (my Batman alter ego). Well I don’t really have off hours you see. Mainly because I don’t think we have the time to waste with pandemics of our education and innovation being stifled but the current climate of our nation and world. Let’s get into the same choir and sing from the same music sheet. Harmony is how we work together and I implore you to continue to work to be a problem solver, critical thinker, and innovate. When I co-founded STEAM Your Dreams in 2018 with some friends, I had no clue of how to start and run a non profit. I stayed focused on the mission: Engage, Inspire, Empower youth to get into STEM careers. To me, there are just too many organizations not working together. I didn’t feel for the longest time the need to create another non profit focused on STEM or helping disadvantaged communities. But then I just didn’t see other organizations grasping the engagement problem in a creative way of e-gaming or esports. I didn’t see a lot of organizations design thinking and putting the kids first in the program design. My background in immersive media such as gaming allowed me to see that my industry was lacking job/career holders that meet diversity and didn’t reflect the help that could come from the culture that produced me. I am a child of Hip Hop. The olde Skcool kind ;). Hip Hop is jazz personified. You take a little of this and that… put it to nice beat and bam.. you got magic. Thats how I imagine we can change the world for the better. Just like Hip Hop came, saw, and now conquers the pop culture of the world, we can use it as a framework to enact the mission to engage, inspire, and empower the future.

While I am responsible for putting this S.T.E.A.M. (science, tech, engineering, art, and math) boat called STEAM Your Dreams on the open waters of disruption; it could not happen without the help of some past and now friends such as George Nunez, Reno Pratt, Landon White, Justin Graves, Alieu Kamara, Akilah Stevens, Cierra Sanders , Les Smith, Vinny Mwano, Antonio McGraw and other strategic partners, board members, and donors (if I didn’t mention you, trust your on the heart, but not my pen at the moment). I thank you all for believing in me, what we are called to do, and just be darn right awesome human beings that care about our children and communities.

Now that we are transitioning to a new board and team, I am staying onboard STEAM Your Dreams as of December 1st, 2023 as a Founder/Director/ and Commissioner of Leagues. I look forward to help steering the boat and continue the development of programs, games, partners, sponsors, and our community of families and their kids. I have started this wonderful organization with a penny. We needed websites, graphics, a van, programs, and more. So I rolled up my sleeves and worked into late nights and weekends to build this boat. I am no Noah, but to weather the future storm to come, I started it and now I need the help of our next Executive Director Ms. Akilah Stevens to effectively lead and manage our passengers and steer us further as I continue to build up my production company Creative Mindset Productions. Now we have a great foundation and I am confident in her abilities to carry the torch. So let’s voyage to the great beyond and drive towards greater impact and a better future.

I leave this oldie but goodie video. Boy was I messing up my video script lines up when reading this back. 🙂

Posted on by steamer1.