A few years ago, Teodrose Fikre was an Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton making a six figure salary consulting agencies at the Pentagon, Fort Belvoir and Department of Treasury and a wide array of defense and civil agencies throughout the Washington, DC metro area.  I provided IT and business process improvement consultation for an alphabet soup of federal agencies and led a very comfortable life. I built up an "impressive array" of credentials and degrees; an MBA from Johns Hopkins, a PMP certification as well as a six sigma certified project manager. From the outside, I was the quintessential American success story. But these things, titles and accomplishments, could not fill the void I felt as accomplishments for the sake of accomplishment always felt like I was chasing unfulfilling pavements.

Then the swerve of life happened and in a fell swoop, I fell into a crevice of turbulence. Equal parts malicious imposition and my own imprudence took me from upper-middle class comforts to day to day distress that comes with indigence. But where burdens exist, blessings are evident if we only look for them. It was precisely my two-year exodus that gave me a revelation of true injustice and gave me the wisdom to pursue truth and justice without regard to the labels and constructs that separate us.

I am a published author and a writer whose speech idea was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina victory speech in 2008. Once thoroughly entangled in politics and a partisan loyalist, a mugging by way of reality shed political blinders from my eyes and led me on a journey to fight for universal justice.

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