Field Notes on Black Flourishing [LIVE]: Reclaiming Internal Authority in a Measured World

​Internal authority is easy to romanticise. It’s often framed as confidence, conviction, or the courage to “trust yourself.”

​But what does it really mean to author your life, work and futures from within, especially in a world that is constantly measuring you?

​Measured by productivity.
By credentials.
By metrics of development that quietly decide what counts and who counts.

​Many of us have learned to succeed inside these systems. And yet, somewhere along the way, a question emerges:

​Is this truly my voice — or a more sophisticated version of external authority speaking through me?

​In this Field Notes Live conversation, I’ll be joined by Dr. Aisha Udochi Amolo — a third-generation Nigerian-American developmental economist educated at Harvard and Howard, whose work challenges dominant, metrics-driven models of development and reorients the conversation toward human expansion.

​Together, we’ll explore:

​• What Aisha had to learn and unlearn in order to develop her own internal authority
• How development frameworks shape not only policy, but identity
• Where self-authorship ends and internalised orthodoxy begins
• What authority looks like within Afro-diasporic traditions beyond Western individualism
• What kind of inner capacity is required to lead when old paradigms are visibly failing

​What to expect

​This will be an honest conversation about growth arcs, complex tensions, and the unfinished work of becoming and black flourishing.

​Field Notes Live is a space for collective reflection, rooted in Black intellectual and cultural traditions, and concerned with the inner work of flourishing: how we make meaning, hold paradox, and lead without borrowed legitimacy.

​Deeper Engagement

​Members of the Ijeruka Village will be able to contribute questions during the session and continue the reflection afterward within our digital campus.

​If you’ve ever felt both accomplished and quietly unconvinced — clear in your direction yet still disentangling inherited measures of worth — this conversation may resonate.

​You’re welcome in the room.