Communications professional uses Standard of Love for transformation and improvement
Maya Ford is the founder of Ford Momentum, a communications agency that focuses
on culture and inclusion, with the intention to enhance the communication
capabilities of Black people. Photo provided by Maya Ford.
There is no greater joy for Maya Ford than to see Black men laughing. It lightens her whole Universe. She wants to help them get to a place of joy.
Ford, founder of Ford Momentum, believes that her STOLO (short for Standard of Love) gives people the language necessary to have important conversations. It starts with this inquiry: What do you want, need, love to be the best human you can be for yourself, your community and the world, as a whole.
Ford Momentum is a communications agency that focuses on culture and inclusion. It was started to enhance the communication capabilities of Black people. Ford believes that STOLO can be used to transform conversations around healing, self-reflection and community building. Ford describes STOLO as easy to practice and dynamic.
“It is a change in mindset that asks you to stop relying on that which is given to you, and to start trusting yourself, know thyself, trust you, to know that you can produce, consume and adhere to what you value,” she said.
The intention of STOLO is based off the work of bell hooks, which pioneered the conversation of how Black people in America are making headway in health, prosperity, collaboration and freedom, yet they are still unhappy. The work Ford Momentum does is to articulate what standards are important.
Ford believes that as long as Black people continue to live, work, absorb, produce and consume according to those standards set forth by white people, Black people will always be unhappy. Ford Momentum is a company that uses communications to guide to reciprocity, safety, completion, direction and wholeness to make sustainable and continuous improvements. Using STOLO results in work that maximizes efficiency, collaboration, fairness and shared values.
She also believes that a move away from being deficit driven to being asset driven can be converted to something practical in people’s lives.
“When we talk about what an asset is to the infrastructure and environment that we live in, it is still based on our bodies, not based on anything else, like our intellect, our capacity to be creative, our joy. It is consistently leveraged in spaces that push entertainment or forced or physical labor… we do very well in the arts, relative to the music industry or the entertainment industry, or into athletics, ways that physically harm us or we end up competing against each other,” she said.
Ford believes that Black people have assets that fuel America, whether they are aware of it or not. Ford believes that finding the language to express feelings can help everyone transform their relationships. When it comes to Black men, that language can begin a path toward healing.
“First, acknowledgement of the trials, the tribulations and the suffering of Black men is really important because no matter what we do, you can’t solve what you can’t articulate,” she said, adding that STOLO is the start of a process people can use to bring themselves to justice.
Ideally, Ford would like for Black people to get away from any thoughts that they might not be good enough or the nightmares of their lives and to do the work to go for something that is exponentially better. Ford does acknowledge there is horror and trauma of being a Black person in America.
Ford wants people to think about the one thing they are great at, what is the one thing they value, and how do they go into the community and play their part, based on the answers to those questions.
“When we keep subscribing to this idea that we are all about production and consumption, it completely eliminates all these other cool things about who we are. It’s unfair and it’s inappropriate to the whole concept that we are here for a reason,” she said.
Ford wants Black men to be able to have a safe space to articulate what brings them joy. She wants to see Black men take accountability for protecting what they truly value, whether it’s family, collectivism, empowering self, and to practice that.
“The work to be done needs to move toward the self esteem component, which is how then do you convert your effort to not sustain what ails you and to pivot into something that makes you feel better. Because it’s not an easy thing to do but it is possible,” she said. “I believe Black men are going through a metamorphosis.”
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