Kalimah Priforce

About

Legend has it, a primordial creature emerged from celestial rock to educate himself, learned meditation from wise masters, and lead his people as the Monkey King awakened to emptiness by defying the class hierarchy of heaven and its ancient gods. But the real journey for Kalimah Priforce (kuh-LEE-muh PRY-force) began as a Haitian American in foster care. At eight, with hyperlexic autism, he held a hunger strike against his Bedford-Stuyvesant group home to get more books into its library, drawing the attention of a sangha of Buddhist monastics who tutored him until fourteen. He hacked his own attendance records into his dream school in Harlem, got caught, and was reinvited back as protégé to his principal, Dr. Lorraine Monroe, inheriting her lifelong mission to transform children's lives. By sixteen, he had launched his first computer company, and sold it before turning twenty. After his eighteen-year-old brother was killed by gun violence, Kalimah routed around the traditional four-year track and enrolled in CUNY's Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies, a program that let him design his own major instead of choosing one off an existing list. He carried that same in

Experience

Education