THANK YOUUUU!!! 🥹❤️ Because of many of YOUR votes, I've officially advanced to the TOP 20 in Ryan Seacrests TOP HOST competition!!! And guess what?! 👀 I'm currently ranked in the TOP 20 and #3 IN MY GROUP!!! 🤯🔥 We've got SIX DAYS to make a run for that #1 spot, and I'm calling on my village ONE MORE TIME! If you've voted, THANK YOU! If you haven't, come on now, what you waiting on?! 😂 🗳️ VOTE FOR ME HERE: https://lnkd.in/e2cRbXYn You can vote FREE every 24 hours! Please SHARE this with your friends, family, coworkers, and anybody who believes in the power of educating, entertaining, and encouraging others! From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU for getting me this far. 🥹❤️ NOW LETS GO GET THAT #1 SPOT!!! 🏆🔥 #TopHost2026 #VondellRichmond #EducateEntertainEncourage

Words are too few to express my #gratitude and #euphoria in this moment. 📝 What started as a "dream" and a "I wonder IF I can______..." turned out to be a WOW that was awesome. SO, I ran into Wali (a mentor of mine locally) recently at the Maryland Innovation Center and he said: WALI: "bruh, if folks only knew, I remember you saying just last year, Yo, I wanna do a TED Talk event, and look at you just a year later, hosting one.." "thass HUGE Vondell, and you have NOOO IDEA, what this bout to do for everyone including yaself.."to go from a guy who used to be ON stages, to now, making stages available for others, thass huge!". #humbled, and what most don't see, is I started this from a place of isolation and being alone. ❤️ At 49, I had relocated to a new state, where I knew 2 people and was wondering how do I grow my MD real estate book of business and get involved and connect with my NEW MD community? I called my friend @Yolanda V, who lives in Nashville and said, 📱 "...we're gonna do a TED TALK event in Maryland..." And here we are. 🤪 40+ speaker invitations, 📁 22 applicants, and 🗣️ 10 speaker finalists later. These Core 🔟 as they call themselves, lol, will always be our inaugural family of TEDx Thunder Hill. 👏🏾 There will be more speakers, but never again a first cohort. 🤷🏾‍♂️ There were TONS of lessons learned, things I as the organizer GOT WRONG, boy oh boy, and a bunch of "woulda, shoulda, coulda's" -- but don't dwell on that Vondell. 🙌🏾 🕊️ THANK YOU Lord, that by your grace, mercy and steadfast love, the audience got value, the speakers were SHARP, and TALENTED and we came in just $230 shy of our budget - not bad for our first time out the gate with only 3 committee members!!! 👀 Read that again, we produced an entire TEDx event, with a committee of 3 volunteers + 1 community partner w/a FT admin and a 16 yr old intern. We were blessed to secure: 4 sponsors and 3-4 vendors and day of a team of 7-8 volunteers -- but this was a skeleton crew BY FAR.