LOCATION
Arkansas State University Mid-South
2000 West Broadway Avenue
Magruder Hall
West Memphis, AR 72301
108
Presenters
CONTACT INFORMATION
Building Bridges - Creating Change 2026
Description
Building Bridges - Creating Change 2026
This year's Building Bridges - Creating Change Conference is organized around allied health and asks what it means to care for the mind, body, and soul in Black communities. Rather than treating health only as a set of jobs or credentials, the conference approaches allied health as part of a broader ecosystem of care that includes clinical practice, technology, mental wellness, leadership, and community responsibility.
For Black men in particular, this framing matters. Health has often been discussed only after a crisis, and careers in healthcare have not always been made visible as pathways for purpose, stability, and service. This gathering aims to widen that picture. It will show students and attendees how health-related work can open doors to meaningful careers, strengthen families and neighborhoods, and create new forms of leadership rooted in care.
Across the day, participants will encounter speakers working at the intersection of health, innovation, business, organizing, nursing, and service. Together, these sessions ask a practical question: how do we build better outcomes for our people while also building fuller lives for ourselves?
Agenda:
9:00-9:15 – Welcome and Introductions
9:15 - 10:15 – Session 1: Allied Health, Technology, and Business
10:30-11:30 – Session 2: Dear Future Me: Black Men, Community, and Mental Wellness
11:45-12:45 - Session 3:Soul Panel: Healing as Calling, Service, and Practice
1:00-1:45 - Lunch and Reflection
1:45-2:45 - Keynote: Glen Donald on Nursing Pathways, Leadership, and Purpose
2:45-3:00 - Closing Charge and Next Steps
Upcoming Dates And Times
Questions & Answers
- Session 1
Allied Health, Technology, and Business — Kornelious Bankston
Kornelious Bankston will help open the conference by exploring allied health at the intersection of technology, business, and community outcomes. His session will consider how health challenges can be approached not only through direct service, but also through systems, tools, and ventures that improve the quality of care people are able to access. Drawing on work connected to communities in New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, and beyond, he will examine how an interest in health and health outcomes can evolve into broader leadership around innovation and impact.
- Session 2
Dear Future Me: Black Men, Community, and Mental Wellness — Brandon Williams
Brandon Williams, Founder of Urban Nobleman, will bring a community-centered lens to the conference through a hybrid session focused on Black men, connection, and intentional reflection. He will lead a Dear Future Me exercise that encourages participants to reflect on who they are becoming, what they owe to themselves, and how they want to show up for others. This session will emphasize wellness, self-knowledge, and the importance of collective support. He will also offer practical structure advice drawn from his experience helping Black men organize themselves into lasting social groups.
- Session 3 - Soul Panel
Healing as Calling, Service, and Practice — Dr. Ashley Harris
The Soul Panel is designed to explore the deeper moral, communal, and vocational dimensions of health-related work. Rather than focusing only on technique or credentials, this conversation asks what it means to treat healthcare as a form of service and a practice shaped by purpose. Dr. Ashley Harris will anchor the panel, drawing on her background in medical service and social entrepreneurship to lead a conversation about healing as a vocation and a lived responsibility.
- Keynote
Body, Discipline, and the Nursing Pathway — Glen Donald
Glen Donald will serve as keynote speaker, offering a story grounded in discipline, sacrifice, service, and the long arc of becoming. A nurse in the Tampa Bay area, originally from Mississippi, Glen embodies a pathway that students can study closely. His keynote will connect his life to professional development, and will speak to the dignity of carework and the opportunities available within the registered nurse pathway.
- Kornelious Bankston (Session 1)
Kornelious Bankston brings a distinctive perspective to the intersection of allied health, technology, and business. His work has taken him across communities in New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, and beyond, where he has explored how health challenges can be addressed not only through direct clinical service, but also through systems, tools, and entrepreneurial ventures that improve the quality of care people are able to access.
His session will invite students and attendees to think about healthcare as a field that needs builders, strategists, and entrepreneurs in addition to clinicians. He will examine how an interest in health and health outcomes can evolve into broader leadership around innovation and impact, and how that evolution can be grounded in real community needs.
A key sub-theme of his session reinforces a central argument of the conference: health can become a platform for business creation and problem solving when it remains anchored in the lived realities of the people it is meant to serve.
- Brandon Williams (Session 2)
Brandon Williams is the Founder of Urban Nobleman, an organization centered on brotherhood, growth, and creating meaningful spaces for Black men to gather with purpose. He has spent time living abroad in Mainz, Germany, and also played football as an outside linebacker for the CSU-Pueblo Thunderwolves, experiences that have shaped his understanding of discipline, community, and what it means to build something lasting.
At the conference, he will lead a Dear Future Me exercise that encourages participants to reflect on who they are becoming, what they owe to themselves, and how they want to show up for others. Positioned within the mind portion of the conference arc, this session will emphasize wellness, self-knowledge, and the importance of collective support.
Drawing on his hands-on experience helping Black men organize themselves into lasting social groups, Brandon will also offer practical structure advice — from how to build shared identity to how to sustain connection and accountability beyond a single gathering. His discussion will leave participants with tangible lessons they can carry back to the Men's Group at ASUMid-South.
- Glen Donald (Keynote)
Glen Donald will serve as keynote speaker, offering a story grounded in discipline, sacrifice, service, and the long arc of becoming. A nurse in the Tampa Bay area, originally from Mississippi, Glen embodies a pathway that students can study closely: one shaped by work ethic, commitment, and an ability to grow into specialized nursing leadership over time.
His keynote will connect his life to professional development. He will reflect on his background in Mississippi, the hustle and determination that carried him through school, and the experiences that ultimately led him into nursing and advanced practice. He will speak to the dignity of care work and the opportunities available within the registered nurse pathway.
Glen also brings the perspective of a coach, mentor, and father. By sharing how he has invested in young people on and off the court, he will help students see that healthcare leadership is not only about credentials, but also about consistency, responsibility, and the willingness to guide others.
- Dr. Ashley Harris (Soul Panel)
The Soul Panel is designed to explore the deeper moral, communal, and vocational dimensions of health-related work. Rather than focusing only on technique or credentials, this conversation asks what it means to treat healthcare as a form of service and a practice shaped by purpose.
Dr. Ashley Harris brings a rare combination of medical expertise and entrepreneurial vision. She has applied her clinical training in service to her country and has also built a social entrepreneurship venture focused on elder care, working to close gaps in how older adults in underserved communities receive support and dignity in their later years.
The panel represents the soul of the conference, calling participants to think not only about what they can become, but also about who they are becoming while they pursue that work. Dr. Harris will lead a conversation about how health practice can become a lived expression of responsibility to others.
