About Me:
I was born in Senegal but left when I was one. I spent my childhood in Maryland, my early teenage years in Cape Verde, and my early adulthood in France before coming back to the States almost 20 years ago. I’m a public servant and serve as the Chief Financial Officer of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

About My Family:
I’m the second youngest of five and the oldest boy. I grew up around dozens of cousins, uncles and aunts. My wife and I have been married for almost twelve years. We have a wonderful 6 year old son, and many amazing nieces and nephews. My family is a very multicultural one where you walk in anyone’s house and people are speaking 2 to 3 languages at the same time.

My Hobbies and Passions:
I have a lot of hobbies but probably being a private pilot is the most interesting one. I absolutely love to fly and often take my wife and son to cool places. It was always a dream of mine but when I was young, I thought I could never be a pilot because of my stuttering, yet here I am. I am passionate about a lot of things. First among them is family. I’m also passionate about helping others and leaving the world a better place than I found it. I am a passionate problem solver, sometimes to a fault.

My Successes:
I think I’ve been successful by being the critical thinker, the one who can take a step back, take in the environment and sift through the noise to find the heart of the problem before offering a path forward. This is something that I believe growing up stuttering was a direct contributor to. When you stutter you learn to listen, to observe so I was naturally able to bring that to my career.

Another aspect would be having the confidence to know that I don’t have to be the center of attention or the center of every solution or decision. Again this is one area where growing up stuttering helped a lot, since I was perfectly comfortable not being the center of attention because of my stutter. In my career it translates into an ability to seek out those that can best contribute and to elevate them and allow them to contribute. This is why I think I’ve become really good at building and motivating successful teams that solve deeply complex challenges.

Do you remember when you first began to stutter?
As far as I can remember I’ve been stuttering since I started talking.

Does it run in your family? Who else stutters?
Yes, my brother and an uncle stutter and my dad used to stutter when he was younger.

Did you seek treatment? Did it help?
My father made us do these speech exercises when we were younger from a speech therapy book (I can’t remember the name). I don’t think it helped and don’t look back fondly on those memories.

Tell us about your experience with stuttering as a child.
Growing up stuttering was rather difficult but at the same time taught me a lot about myself and people. I was made fun of, but it thickened my skin. I grew quiet, speaking only when absolutely necessary but it taught me to actually listen and to make my contributions count. I’m an introvert and I think stuttering was a big factor but it made me more self aware. The list goes on and on.

Has your stuttering gotten worse or better since you were younger? How?
It’s gotten markedly better. If you listen long enough you’ll hear me miss a word here and there but when I was a kid I couldn’t line up more than 3 words. When I get tired or stressed I stutter more. Also I barely stutter when speaking English, but stutter more in French or Wolof which I find fascinating.

How does stuttering affect you in your career?
My first real job was being a teacher, so you can imagine stuttering as a teacher. But I think it didn’t affect me much beyond the qualities that I mentioned earlier. At some point I stopped caring what people thought of my stutter and that was absolutely liberating. Arguably that’s when my stutter started to get significantly better.

How is your stuttering today? What do you do to control or manage it, if anything?
I would say if I try hard, I can go without stuttering. It would likely involve choosing my words more carefully or pacing my breathing. When I’m giving speeches in front of crowds I try to be mindful of it, but if I stumble on a word, I’m not stressing over it at all. This may sound strange but thinking of the words help me tremendously as opposed to just mindlessly speaking. When I think of the words I’m about to say, I almost never stutter.

What are the biggest challenges of stuttering?
I would say people at first think you’re not as intelligent or something is “wrong” with you. It made it so I’ve had to always overcome that additional barrier when meeting new people. Now I see it as a self filtering mechanism. Also people eventually figure out that you’re smarter than average.

What is your greatest accomplishment with regard to stuttering?
I would say pushing myself to hold jobs, like my current one, or teaching, that involves significant public speaking roles. Another may be becoming a pilot and being able to overcome my fear of stuttering while communicating over the radio.

Based upon your experiences, what would you like to tell children who stutter?
You may not think it now, but your stuttering is truly a superpower. It will give you skills that people spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars trying to learn. When someone tells me they stutter I automatically assume they have certain traits: toughness, resiliency, attentiveness, self awareness. I am yet to be wrong. Harness these superpowers even if you lose your stutter as you grow up. Your stuttering doesn’t define who you are, it's just any other feature (like your hair color, your gait, etc.)

Based upon your experiences, what would you tell parents of children who stutter?
When I was a kid, I was once really struggling to speak. I mean full speech block, tears rolling down my eyes, getting angry and hating everything about myself. A teacher walked up and said “it’s ok, don’t rush for the world, let the world wait for you, it may not even deserve what you have to say.” For some reason those words marked me profoundly. It gave me and my words worth. And it gave me permission to take the time I needed to speak. The lesson here for parents is:

1) When your child is stuttering they feel way worse about it than you ever will. Please be supportive. Please understand that if they could help it, they wouldn’t stutter.

2) Give your child the gift of your patience and allow them the confidence to demand that patience from others. Protect that demand and foster an environment where
your child knows that they can take all the time in the world to say what they have to say.

What else should we know?
While I would definitely forgo some of the childhood heartache associated with stuttering I am immensely grateful for the skills it has given me. Things that are natural and easy for me, seem hard and tedious for others. Being able to mostly overcome my stutter means that I now have the best of both worlds and that truly is a superpower.

From the 2024 Fall Magazine