We got into Senzwa’s real wealth story: growing up in a single-mom household in Philadelphia, changing schools nearly every year until seventh grade, when he landed at a prestigious private school and saw, for the first time, what audacity looks like once wealth has actually been accrued and maintained.

We talked about the moment everything shifted for him, hosting an event, getting handed a sponsorship check that was more than some people’s yearly salary, and realizing the difference between a worker’s mindset and an owner’s mindset comes down to one thing: value exchange versus trading your life force for time.

Catch us LIVE every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10am PT / 1pm ET — here on Substack as well as on Instagram, and LinkedIn.

If you want to get more intentional about remembering, reclaiming and regenerative wealth in a community of likeminded peers and advisors we invite you to learn more and apply to Sanctum’s membership.

Sanctum Membership

References

Book mentioned

The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America by Aaron Robertson

Today Charney and I, got into what it actually took for her to leave a nonprofit job with no safety net, no backup offer, and only an existing LLC to her name, and how that leap led right back to a lesson from her grandfather about having options and not letting one person control your destiny.

We did a short masterclass to help demystify venture capital where we broke down the difference between angel investing and investing as a limited partner, what a syndicate is, and why understanding these rooms matters even if you never plan to write a check yourself.

We closed out talking about multiple streams of income, the founder advisor relationship, a new AI platform built by a founder we love, and a reminder that if someone inspires you, tell them. Don’t sit on it.

Catch us LIVE every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10am PT / 1pm ET — here on Substack as well as on Instagram, and LinkedIn.

If you want to get more intentional about remembering, reclaiming and regenerative wealth in a community of likeminded peers and advisors we invite you to learn more and apply to Sanctum’s membership.

Sanctum Membership

In each of these conversations, we’re getting the opportunity to hear each of our guest’s money stories, and how little they had to do with actual money.

What surprised me wasn’t in how different each guest’s money story was (the stories themselves were as vastly different as each person is from another). It was how similar the learnings were for each person. No one actually started with money. They started with family, inherited identity, and centered ownership (or lack their of) , community, and the freedom to become more fully themselves.

This week was yet another reminder that wealth is rarely built by changing our bank account first. More often, it begins by changing our ideas, expectations, and perspective of what’s possible.

While many things that stuck with me, came to me in my dreams, and made me giggle througout the week, here are the top seven insights/learnings/reframings that have been true inspirations.

1. Wealth begins with identity—not income.

Every guest, in their own way, described wealth as having the freedom to become more fully themselves.

Charney Robinson-Williams and I talked about the real and nuanced definition of the “around-the-way girl”. Not just the one-dimensional character of Shanaynay from Martin, but someone who can walk into any room without leaving pieces of herself at the door (Also Shanaynay).

talked about rejecting the traditional path of security in pursuit of ownership, and how it is, in fact, the truly the most secure path.

reflected on navigating corporate spaces while staying grounded in who she was, which was not easy, and required what seemed to others like sacrifice.

This all reminded me of conversations I’ve been having with movers n shakers in the startup/tech/impact investing space that wealth isn’t just about having more, but enough agency to become who you already are.

2. We inherit stories about money long before we inherit money itself.

We all grew up a certain story about wealth. The power of stories we grew up with have impacted us all in ways we maybe haven’t yet explored

For some, success (so we were taught) meant getting and keeping a “stable” job with benefits.

For others, we were taught that success was about collecting credentials.

All of these stories were acts of love from previous generations who wanted us to have security and safety, which for those who came before us often implied certain levels of assimilation, or at the least, a willingness to put up with all of the side effects that came with being an onliest in our field.

Inherited stories, however, aren’t always complete stories, and it was clear to me that building wealth now requires questioning the very definitions of success we’ve spent our lives chasing.

3. Ownership changes everything.

Earning is different than true, documented, can’t-take-this-away-from-me ownership.

Not just our house, but businesses, intellectual property, investments, your time and your decisions.

While ownership is indeed a financial strategy, it’s also a complete mindset shift and unlearning process of being ok with participating in someone else’s vision to building your own, and knowing that you can retain what you own.

(History shows that our people have property taken/stolen legally, and we’re very much still healing from this).

4. Community is one of the greatest forms of capital.

Every guest talked about the people who have impacted them:

Mentors who make introductions and don’t just “give advice”, friends, sponsors and especially communities that have expanded their imagination of what was possible.

As I’ve written so many times, we’re taught and/or conditioned to think of networking events as collecting contacts, when real community is something much deeper, and something we really have to practice.

The people who open doors, challenge our thinking, and remind us of who we are, especially when we’ve forgotten, are often the most impactful people when it comes to our ability to expand our wealth.

In other words, social capital itself is its own compounding form of wealth.

5. Authenticity is an advantage.

We’ve all been been taught or conditioned to believe that to be successful, we need to fit it, keep our heads down, and/or let our work speak for itself.

The coded messaging we get is to “be more professional” (read: white and male energy), or smooth out the parts of ourselves that feel different.

We’ve all learned to code-switch in some way, some of us switched codes and never came back.

Our conversations this week suggested that not only the opposite is now the way to our own success, but that the people who create the greatest impact aren’t performing someone else’s version of success.

They’re building from their lived experience, and fully owning all that comes with it.

We’ve all suffered what was initially maybe the loneliness that results from the decision to be ourselves, but inevitably learned that authenticity isn’t just personally fulfilling, it’s economically valuable.

6. There are many kinds of wealth.

Financial wealth matters of course, but it’s only one form.

In just our first three hours of show, we talked about :

• Educational wealth

• Social capital

• Cultural knowledge

• Confidence

• Health

• Relationships, and most of all,

• Time

Each of our guests reminded me that these forms of wealth not only precede financial wealth, but when we remain true to ourselves, these forms of wealth sometimes outlast everything financial

Perhaps (as my 10 yrs old loves to say) our challenge isn’t simply building financial abundance, it’s learning how to recognize the wealth that’s already around us.

7. Our version of building wealth must start by unlearning.

Something we talk about constantly within Sanctum’s community, and what I share with our audience seemed to be the drum that all our guests were beating.

As a people, we really don’t need more information, we do need to question the assumptions we’ve inherited.

Assumptions about success, about security, about what it means to “make it.”

About whose definition of wealth we’ve been chasing in the first place. Is it the Black Billionaires, celebrities? Or do we really need to take the time to understand what enough is for us, and what that really looks like.

The end of our conversation with takes the cake. We discussed the racial wealth gap and the tendency to measure our progress against institutions and fortunes built over generations, she stopped and said:

“That math does not math… Yes, you may become wealthy when you take large amount of investment money, but that institution and their beneficiaries will become wealthier. The goal post will continue to move.”

This was always something I felt in my bones, but SVP’s words gave it stank n stick. It was a WORD, if you will.

If the finish line is always moving, why would we just run faster to catch up if we know for certain that we’ll actually never cross the finish line that’s always moving further away. We needs to seriously get curious as to whether or not we’re running the right race.

That, to me, is what RE:WEALTH is about.

We are by no means rejecting financial wealth. In fact, quite the opposite. Financial freedom absolutely matters. Ownership matters. Building assets matters.

But, truly, this week reminder me that the first investment we need to make is in taking the time and space to curious about our belief systems.

For example:

What if wealth isn’t just measured by what we accumulate, but by the lives we create, the communities we strengthen, the opportunities we leave behind, and the freedom we have to become fully ourselves?

Before we can build new forms of wealth, we have to be willing to imagine them.

At Re:Wealth, that’s exactly what we’re working towards. In community, in practice, together.

We’ll continue those questions this week with another incredible lineup of founders, investors, athletes, and leaders who are each building wealth, and defining it, in their own way.

I’d love for you to join us live.

Until we meet again, I’ll leave you with a question we’ve been asking every guest:

What does wealth mean to you today that it didn’t mean 5-10 years ago?

xo- Mandy

*Yes.. I did pick seven things because there are seven members in BTS.

Today we sat down with Stephanie Van Putten, founder of Visible Figures, for a conversation that challenged some of society’s deepest assumptions about value, success, and the systems that define both.

Together, we explored why wealth is about so much more than income or net worth, how the metrics we’ve inherited often fail to capture the wholeness of our communities, and what becomes possible when we begin measuring prosperity through different metrics.

We also unpacked the tension between participating in existing systems while working to transform them, the difference between accumulation and stewardship, and why redefining wealth requires both imagination and courage.

Join us LIVE every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10am PT / 1pm ET here on Substack, as well as Instagram and LinkedIn, as we continue having a different conversation about wealth.

Learn more at SanctumFoundation.org

Reference:

Black Power Scorecard - Andre M. Perry

We welcomed entrepreneur and tech founder Ryan Morgan, CEO of Acquisition Network, calling in all the way from Medellín, Colombia.

We got into Ryan’s real money story: growing up with parents who did their best but never taught him how wealth actually works, an internship at a bank that never sat right with him, and a broken arm and ankle in the same year that somehow became the pause he needed to start teaching himself the game from scratch.

Then things got real. Ryan opened up about being scammed out of $80,000 by someone he trusted to bring him into the business-buying world and instead of walking away, he built Acquisition Network out of that exact moment.

We also dug into the mindset shift Ryan says changes everything: that opportunity isn’t scarce, it’s unlimited. He also shares the best thing to do, that is one of the lowest-cost, lowest-risk ways to build credibility and capital before buying a business.

Ryan’s Book & Resource List

• The Science of Getting Rich — Wallace D. Wattles

• How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie

• Think and Grow Rich — Napoleon Hill

• Go for No! — Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz

• The Closer’s Survival Guide — Grant Cardone

• Copywriting Coach—Jon Benson

So many gems were dropped in this live and we’re still only getting started. Over the next few weeks, we’re sitting down with investors, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, athletes, creatives and everyday people who are rewriting what wealth looks like for our communities.

Catch us LIVE every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10am PT / 1pm ET — here on Substack as well as on Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Learn more at Sanctumfoundation.org.

We kicked off the series with my co-host Charney Robinson-Williams, founder of Noire Impact where we shared laughs, real talk, and our wealth stories.

We got into what it actually means to build wealth on your own terms, starting with the story of Charney’s grandfather, who after getting laid off, vowed he’d forge his own sovereign path, and what that vow ended up building for the generations after him.

We talked about the rooms we’ve had to fight our way into, why “getting a seat at the table” isn’t always what people think it is, and why one of the most powerful things you can do once you’re in the room is ask the questions nobody else will.

This is just the beginning. Over the next few weeks, we’re sitting down with investors, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, athletes, creatives and everyday people who are rewriting what wealth looks like for our communities.

Catch us LIVE every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10am PT / 1pm ET — here on Substack as well as on Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Learn more at Sanctumfoundation.org.

Share Sanctum Foundation

In venture capital programs and communities, at dinner tables, inside nonprofit boardrooms, during walks with friends, and in text threads that started with one question and somehow turn into a back-n-forth discussion.

They were about money, yes, but more about purpose, power, burnout, family, identity, and what we actually want our lives to look like.

And underneath, they were really about something much bigger.

They were about ownership.

About possibility.

About who gets to participate in shaping the future—and who has been told they are only allowed to consume it.

The “RE” in RE:WEALTH is intentional.

RE:WEALTH is an invitation to reimagine, redefine, reclaim, and reconnect with wealth on our own terms.

This series began in 2023 as my own way of gathering people across sectors to intentionally take up space in places like the Harvard Club, to open up within a safe space, and to share knowledge and information about ways we’re investing, but it quickly revealed something deeper: our communities and networks are hungry for a different conversation.

The RE:WEALTH conversation series was born from both the learnings along my own journey

with wealth, power, and ownership from being a corporate, high-income employee with benefits and 401k, feeling like I had no power or influence to building my own company, investing my own money, having to significantly adjust my lifestyle and spending, and feeling more impact, freedom, and influence than I ever had within a corporate organization, as well as the frustration of listening to the stories of wealthy, high-earning (mostly women) senior leaders who were struggling to activate their own power.

We were all taught how to earn money, save money, or protect money.

Far fewer of us are taught how (and more importantly, at whose exploited labor and expense) wealth is actually created, circulated, invested, inherited, shared, or used as a tool to support the lives and communities we want to build.

When I was able to curate my own rooms where safety was built in, programming was light, and the conversations flowed, we were not talking just about personal finance tips or investment jargon, but more fundamental questions.

What is wealth?

Who taught us what wealth means?

What beliefs are we carrying that no longer serve us?

What becomes possible when we begin imagining wealth not as an individual pursuit, but as a collective practice?

Made official in 2026 at Philly Tech week, RE:WEALTH is Sanctum Foundation’s way of create spaces for those questions—and to explore them together in community.

Our first official Re:Wealth™️ event took place May 7th during Philly Tech week.

After receiving a call from the team at 1Philadelphia (by team, I really mean Charney Robinson-Williams, 1PHL’s Chief Program Officer and one of Sanctum’s biggest champions) to host “one of those cool Sanctum-vibe events where you open people up to talk about wealth and investing differently” during Philadelphia’s 2026 Tech Week.

What was important to me was hearing from (as is normal for anything involving Sanctum), speakers from different industries who are building wealth and careers in a myriad of ways.

The afternoon was like this:

A fireside with ,

A panel with James Johnson-Piett, Dujon Smith, and Jamila Medley.

It was an honor to be able to interview my dear friend and colleague, . To the world, she’s known as an investor and Partner at Black Ops VC, and is on panels across the venture landscape talking about AI.

However, I (selfishly) wanted to hear about her multiple career pivots, and how its all shifted her own perspective on wealth, investing, taking risk, and how she navigated all of that with family, partnerships, etc because it is the underpinning of how she thinks about and generates her own wealth and value.

She has such amazing knowledge and wisdom to share based on these life experiences that go so much deeper than ai - please check out and subscribe to her stack here 👉🏽 The Antonia Method.

Our second conversation with James Johnson-Piett, founder of Urbane, Dujon Smith, founder of My Block Skin and Investor at Accenture Ventures, and Jamila Medley, Founder of Black Women at Home and consultant with The Partnership Fund, went into the nuance around tough conversations with everything from how we talk to other Black people about building wealth while also working to undo the conditioned narrative within our community about trust.

The conversations were rich. They were deep, and thanks to my esteemed panelists, they were real, raw, and unapologetically Black while in space with a diverse audience who clearly wanted something outside of the normal Tech Week flavor of events.

Philly is Less:

“How do I optimize myself?”

More:

“How do we build something that lasts?”

That shift deeply matters.

Especially as we move into a new economic and cultural era where more people are questioning not just how to make money… but what and who wealth is actually FOR.

We’re excited to continue building toward the launch of Investing with Values this fall, expanding RE:WEALTH, and partnering with more ERGs, foundations, and organizations that want to bring these conversations into their communities and workplaces.

Something is shifting.

I know many of us can feel it.

We are not out here to fundraise for ourselves/ just to “get rich”.  
But/and when we ARE successful, the rich part is simply a given, 
but/and Sanctum is NOT a nonprofit because we ‘bout that martyr life.

Those who are really in this type of work alrea…

Read more

…99.9% irrelevant…

Sinéad Bovell, who was recently a guest on Oprah, and at SXSW EDU, is helping us understand that in order for us to be equipped to support the next generation to enter the workplace, we have to make some changes:

• We have to prepare kids for life, not just jobs.

• Most of the jobs that exist …

Read more

In James Baldwin’s 1953 essay, “Stranger in the Village,” initially published in Harper’s Magazine, later collected in Notes of a Native Son, he reflects his experience as a Black man living in a Swiss village, and how ingrained racial perceptions rooted in history limit both the oppressed and the oppressor.

When it comes to money and wealth — how we earn it, how we fear it, how we hold it — nothing could be truer.

In “wealth building,” there’s a lot of talk about strategy: investing, real estate, retirement accounts, “making your money work.”

But rarely do we talk about the stories underneath those strategies; the ones passed down through our families, shaped by generational trauma, survival, and the systems we never asked to inherit.

If we’re serious about building generational wealth today, we have to begin with an honest look at where we came from.

Quick pause + reminder about what we’re about here at TSD: Everything we practice, preach, and examine in regards to our personal development must be grounded in curiosity.

Shame, defensiveness, self-judgement, please miss this village with that raggity mess.

Why Curiosity > Shame

In this work with founders, executives, and first-generation ‘bout-to-be-rich professionals, we see the same pattern.

We are trying to build a future WE REFUSE to remember.

For Black and brown communities who have been legislatively excluded from the white financial institutions that built their wealth on our labor, it’s only natural that our relationships with money are shaped by extraction and exclusion.

Many of our families did not have stock portfolios; they had:

• envelopes of cash

• warnings about credit

• distrust of banks

• “make it stretch” budgets

• and a responsibility to support extended family, because no one else could

For many white families — particularly those now in philanthropy or impact investing — the stories look different— in fact, quite the opposite. There’s pressure to forget where the wealth came from and to focus only on how it’s being used now, not how it was accumulated across generations.

And we wonder why the colonizer culture is known for amnesia and embarrassingly (for them) tight hips.

What the Data Actually Says

• Black median wealth grew 61% between 2019–2022, the most significant increase among any racial group.

• White wealth is still six times higher.

• Nearly half of Black wealth is tied to home equity, amid declining homeownership.

• High-income Black families are far more likely to support extended family financially, meaning wealth doesn’t circulate or compound in the same way it does with white ethnic groups.

Our progress is not tied to the same protection/self-preservation strategies, and our wealth doesn’t just come from a few generations of life according to the following equation:

Massive head start + generations of mediocre-yet-doin’-great = The Dad’s Last Name Global Carbon Green Impact Fellowship Foundation Institution Initiative (n’ Sons)

In other words, wealth stories — across every racial group — are shaped by the systems we were born into, not just the decisions we make today.

Why First-Generation Wealth Feels So Heavy

And have the same pattern of stories around money:

• No one taught me this

• I don’t want to be poor ever again

• I refuse to recreate what hurt me

Those stories sit silent, and therefore create and maintain internalized barriers for YEARS.

Compound all that with:

• supporting family

• being the first and/or onliest

• navigating racialized corporate systems

• the pressure to excel (from all directions)

• the fear (and/or reality) of loss

• The task itself of having to unlearn survival-based financial habits

And suddenly, some butthole saying “just invest in ____, it’s so hot right now” is a laughable at best.

This work in front of us is NOT just casual financial literacy.

This is deep ancestral work.

Creating Wealth Without Replicating Harm

At Sanctum, we talk a lot about practice — the idea that transformation comes from returning to our own rhythm, not from a new revelation.

Practice looks like:

📕 Understanding and exploring history instead of avoiding it

So we can make intentional choices instead of reactive ones.

🪞Building wealth in community, not isolation

White supremacy teaches hoarding; our ancestors teach sharing.

🫱🏾‍🫲🏿 Designing strategies that honor who we are

Not who capitalism told us to be.

🗣️ Naming the patterns we inherited — and choosing new ones

Our families did their very best. Now we decide what comes next.

We can’t just manage our money — we have to untangle our history.

When we permit ourselves to do so with honesty and curiosity instead of shame, we make room for something our ancestors were never given the space to imagine: a future with true freedom.