From the Beginning

Since his first day—when he arrived at Truman Medical Center on June 13, 1984, three months premature, and struggling to survive—Reed has been a fighter. A “poor kid from the ‘hood,” he made his way up through the Kansas City public school system at the height of bussing and desegregation. From those early days, he remembers aspiring to something greater—and he credits his late grandfather, his first mentor, for ensuring he had a plan.

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On weekends when Reed and his siblings would spend the night at their grandparents’ home, he remembers his grandfather—a night-shift custodian who never graduated high school—gathering them around the table and asking them what they wanted to be when they grew up. And he wasn’t satisfied with simple answers. “If I said, ‘I want to be a lawyer’ or ‘I want to be a judge,’ my grandfather would ask, ‘well, what does a judge do, what does a lawyer do—how are you going to get there?’ He wanted us to understand what it meant. If I wanted a career in service, I had to know I was on a path.”

At J.A. Rogers Middle School, Reed found what he considers his calling when he became active in a youth program of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime. There, he met then-Councilman Alvin Brooks, who would become a role model and friend. Brooks—after much pestering—started to allow Reed and other young people to join him on his weekly talk show on KPRT 1590, “Voices From Midtown,” to comment on issues like drugs, violence, education, and politics. In this way, Reed learned that his voice mattered—and that people would listen. During one of his long bus rides to school, Reed wondered why no one had cleaned up all the garbage strewn along the side of the street. So with Ad Hoc, he started a community program that became known as Operation Prospect, galvanizing residents and businesses, organizing church groups, and raising funds to clean up 35 blocks of Prospect Avenue. He was 14 years old. He learned that good ideas plus resources could solve problems, and even “a poor kid from the "hood” could make things happen.

When it came time to move on to high school, Reed could have followed his friends, but instead, he followed his passion to Northeast Senior High, which at the time was a magnet school with a public affairs focus. By the time he graduated, Reed had amassed a list of honors and titles of which the senior class president was perhaps the least remarkable: board member for the National Youth Information Network, member of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Youth Advisory Board, the youngest board member at MOVE UP, a director of Project AIM, a life skills-training nonprofit, and more.

He traveled the country speaking to student groups as part of the inaugural TRUTH Anti-Tobacco Campaign, and wound up on the Rosie O’Donnell Show, as the national spokesperson for National Youth Service Day (he had helped organize the Kansas City service site—the largest in the country, with more than 5,000 participants). The Pitch named him “Best Student Activist” of 2001 (“Ladies and gentleman, allow us to introduce the next governor of Missouri: Jermaine Reed.”), and he was profiled in a special feature in the Kansas City Star. That article quoted Brooks as saying that he could see Reed “on the city council in nine or ten years.”

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Meanwhile, Reed’s media career blossomed—he was now heard every night on KPRS 103.3 firing out positive messages to the community and appeals to those in crisis to call in for help (“The number is 816-531-COOL, 816-531-2665—I’m waiting on your call. If you need to call collect, call me!”). For four years, he co-hosted KPRS’s“Generation Rap” every Saturday.

However, he says that the opportunity to have his voice heard would have meant nothing if he weren’t also active in the community. He would later serve as an adult mentor to future Generation Rap staffers—to this day, he maintains relationships with several who have gone on to be successful broadcasters and producers—and insists that “what you say on the air has to match what you do in the community. Your rhetoric has to match your commitment.”

Reed knew what he was talking about much more than others might—it was during his time as a teenager that his single mother temporarily became unable to sustain a home for him and his four brothers. They went to live with extended family members while their mother worked her way back to independence. She was then able to find shelter for the family through Community LINC, a nonprofit agency that provides housing programs and support services. (In large part because the organization was there for him at that critical time, Reed now financially supports Community LINC every year as his “charity of choice.”)

Reed credits his family and Community LINC for not allowing the situation to stop him—they instilled in him that homelessness isn’t a label, but merely an experience to work through. And he did—Reed may have technically been homeless, but he was still hosting his own radio show, interviewing politicians, business leaders, and local celebrities. The ordeal only solidified the ideal he had been raised with: That you can always help people less fortunate—even though you might be less fortunate yourself.
 

After graduating from Northeast—where he delivered the commencement address—Reed attended the University of Missouri in Columbia, though he says he might not have been able to get there without the support of David Ross, then a vice president at Bank of America, another mentor who “saw something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself.” In college, he stayed active in the community through Ad Hoc and frequent trips back to Kansas City. For three years, Reed served on Missouri Governor Bob Holden’s Youth Cabinet.

As a first-generation college student, Reed says he made the most of it, enjoying his independence and new social opportunities, while never forgetting that “I was there for a purpose,” which included graduating on time and moving onto the next stage of his life plan. His years in Columbia included long stretches at the library, as well as time devoted to work/study and extra hours building study skills at the Student Success Center. He was motivated to reward the faith that others had shown in him—and that he had in himself. (He also proved dead wrong the high-school counselor who thought he wouldn’t succeed at a four-year institution.) With his degree in political science, he headed to Washington, D.C., where the only person he knew was Congressman Emanuel Cleaver—another mentor—for whom Reed had interned the summer before. He quickly found work with the Resource Development Office at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (he had completed a Political Education and Leadership “Boot Camp” through the CBC Institute during college) and then with the D.C. government, as a financial program manager. Always connected to home, he assisted on Brooks’ 2007 mayoral bid and also campaigned for Congressman Cleaver and Barack Obama, an adventure that took him to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, to Chicago’s Grant Park on Election Night, and back to D.C. for the Presidential Inauguration—from which he contributed more live broadcasts on 103.3 KPRS.
 

Life in D.C. was comfortable, but his convictions demanded more, and he was called home by the needs of his family—particularly his younger brothers who were graduating high school—and the needs of his community, which he has tried to help meet through his role as Community Ombudsman for Cleaver’s Green Impact Zone, focusing Federal stimulus funds toward the revitalization of Kansas City’s urban core.

Upon his return to Kansas City, Reed served with Ad Hoc on its Governing Board of Directors and a mentor in the same youth program that first set him on his path. He also served as a member of the National Forum for Black Public Administrators and the Missouri Association for Blacks in Higher Education, and an advisor to the American Legion Boys State of Missouri.

However, even at the age of 25, he saw serving on the city council as the next step. He believed that the citizens of the 3rd District were not being well represented in City Hall—their voices were not being heard, and resources were not finding a way back east of Troost to the urban core that so desperately needed rebuilding. “We’ve been overlooked for far too long,” Reed said, in announcing his candidacy for City Council, a campaign to “Renew, Engage, and Empower our District.”