Life is what You Make it.. I choose to Spreadlove

This ran in the Dominican University of California, paper May of 2013 thank you
David A.

When 54-year-old graduate student Curtis Aikens walks at Dominican Commencement on May 18 and receives his Masters degree in Educational Leadership, he will admire it. He will even read it.
He wasn’t able to do that when he started college. He was illiterate.
Aikens is a nationally-known celebrity chef, a celebrated motivational speaker and a father of three who is striving to earn his doctorate. What many people – including his fellow Dominican graduates – may not know is that Aikens didn’t learn to read or write until he was 26 years old. He was a two-time college drop-out who came to California to escape the embarrassment and humiliation that been chasing him the first half of his life.
He stopped running by the time he discovered Dominican.
“This is an incredible place,” Aikens says. “You feel like you’re coming home here.”
Enrolled in the graduate program at Dominican the past two years, Aikens’ Masters’ thesis was “Leading By Example: Creating Positive Change In Young People.” It’s basically his autobiography, a tale told 11 years ago in “The American Dream: Stories from The Heart of Our Nation,” written by Dan Rather, former CBS Network Evening News anchor.
Aikens’ thesis includes his time spent in Dominican’s “Courage to Teach” program. It features a series of seasonal retreats that resonated with Aikens.
“The program itself was instrumental in Curtis being able to find the courage to accept he could do and acknowledge he had some weaknesses but he had a lot of strengths to draw on, his level of writing and analysis,” said Margaret Golden, Associate Professor and director of the program. “He is a wonderful spokesman. He has such leadership potential because he speaks authentically and from his heart.
“The `Courage to Teach’ program is all about that. It’s about teachers finding their own identity and being able to operate from that place. You don’t always have to be what someone else wants them to be. Curtis having that life’s experience really shaped him and he wants to go and help other kids who struggle.”
Aiken’s thesis is a testament that he believes can inspire and motivate people – young and old – to follow his literacy lead and learn they can succeed if they only ask for help. Aikens is a living example. Once he learned to read and write after seeking assistance from a free literacy program through the Marin County Library, he started his own produce business, a company called Peaches, which put him on the path to become a television star on The Food Network, which led him to create his own Internet website and become a much-sought keynote speaker.
In fact, hours after graduating from Dominican, Aikens will board a red-eye flight to Florida to speak the next day at DisneyWorld to a group of young culinary students. He goes with the extra confidence that Dominican has given him.
“I just feel like this true Dominican education has not only opened my eyes but my heart and mind,” Aikens says. “It’s freed me up to me.”
Aikens came to Dominican upon a recommendation from a friend, Novato High School freshman football coach Jason Searle, who earned his teaching certificate from Dominican. Aikens immediately was taken by Dominican’s core ideals of study, reflection, community and service and by the wisdom, passion and generosity of the University’s instructors and staff.
“The four ideals really hit home with me,” he says. “The human resources we have on this campus are magnificent. You have to go out and meet these people at this school, not to get a good grade but to just open up your world. That’s what this school has done for me.”
It has inspired him to help others, particularly young people. He is giving back, helping fundraise for literacy programs across the country.
“The only true way to lead is by setting a good example and Dominican helped me verbalize these things,” Aikens says. “It’s modeling good behavior. You don’t model it just to show off. You model it so you know how to do it right.”

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Aikens even volunteered to be an unpaid assistant coach for Dominican’s women’s basketball team this past season. In high school in Conyers, Ga., he was a star football player who earned a scholarship to Southern University. He had been able to use his charm and charisma to maneuver around the fact he couldn’t read or write. He purposely wrote illegibly, figuring his personality and verbal skills would allow him to wiggle his way out any jam.
But, at Southern and later at the University of Georgia, Aikens’ deficiency was exposed. There was more to being smart than just sounding smart.
He decided to come to California. On the way, he literally flipped a coin in a Holiday Inn parking lot in Oklahoma City to see if he would settle in San Diego or Marin County. The quarter turned up heads. Marin won.
Aikens took a job in a local supermarket, as he did in high school in Georgia. However, he butted heads with a store manager in Marin and that argument served as the catalyst to motivate Aikens to finally commit to learning to read and write. The rest is Food Network history.
“How can I make a name for myself?” Aikens thought. “The thing I feel most passionate about is sports but I can’t make a living at sports. But I could make a living with food because I had this natural gift with food. I cultivated that.”
With his charm and charisma and creative ideas he acquired from his grandfather on how to choose, store and prepare food, Aikens started his own produce company in California then in Georgia and opened new roads for chefs. He became a well-respected food consultant for national corporations such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Pillsbury and, in 1988, launched a radio and TV career culminating with him becoming the first African-American to sign a food contract with ABC’s “Home Show.” That career move took him to the Food Network, Oprah Winfrey and Entertainment Tonight
By then, Aikens was ready to give back.
“When I was struggling as an undergrad, as a kid, I always felt like there was something good inside me,” Aikens says. “I wanted to teach young people if they can tap into that – our true self as Gandhi calls it – I can figure out a way to teach people how to self motivate.”
As one of the founding chefs on the Food Network in 1993, Aikens utilized that platform to catapult himself into his next role. Role model. His inspiration came from his own children and setting an example for them. Being invited to the White House by the Hillary Clinton, then First Lady of the United States, was just the start.
Aikens, a Liberal Studies major, graduated from Limestone College in South Carolina, determinedly sought his Masters degree at Dominican and is planning to seek a doctorate in social welfare from UCLA.
“He is a joy,” Golden says. “He has such a faith in people and doesn’t look back. He is really good about being a glass half full person and moving from that place.”
Hence, his quest for the American dream continues. Dominican did its part along the way.
“I got into Food Network to promote reading,” Aikens says. “My whole thing was to be about education. It served its purpose and now I’m about to get my Masters and on my way to my PhD. Wow!”