Bonus Solo Episode: About Your Host with Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman

In the episode, get to know me, Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman. From actor to athlete to activist, human rights MA student to content creator, prison educator to abolition advocate, I wear so many different hats, but my mission is clear, to make the world a better place and to make each person feel like their life matters. Get to know me in this short solo episode.

Summary

In the first solo episode of "On the Outside", New York-based Taylor Rae introduces herself and shares about her Afro-Latina heritage from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. She talks about her transition from acting to boxing training, and her active participation in anti-racism and racial justice advocacy. Taylor also discusses her focus on mass incarceration in her ongoing master's studies at Columbia University, which includes teaching weekly classes at the largest detention center in the U.S. She considers activism and advocacy to be her true calling. Taylor launches her podcast to foster discussions on social issues. She closes the episode by expressing her pride in independently creating the podcast and thanking her audience for their support.

Transcription

Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman

Hello, friend. Welcome back. My name is Taylor Rae and this is my first solo episode of “On the Outside”. I'm so excited to get into it today to just share a little bit more about who I am. As we dive into our first season, I'm recording this episode from my living room in Brooklyn, New York. I've lived in New York since I was 18 and I'm turning 31 this year.

So I guess I can say I'm a New Yorker. I don't really know. I feel like it's controversial to say that you're a New Yorker. I don't know how long I need to be here to be able to claim the title, but I absolutely love New York. I'm originally from New Jersey, which you hear me talk about actually a lot this season growing up. I was one of the only people of color in my school.

I'm an Afro Latina. My mom was born in Puerto Rico. My dad was born in Dominican Republic. They grew up in the South Bronx and then moved to New Jersey when I was born for that suburban life that I feel like everyone kind of thinks is the best thing for their kid. Me and my mom actually talk about that in a later episode. But here I am in New York. I live with my husband Richard, who you'll also get to know a little bit on the show.

He's honestly my best friend, I feel really lucky to get to have these conversations that we're having. And I guess I should just share a little bit more about why I even want to have them as a child. I always wanted to be an actor and pursued theater throughout my entire young life. My parents would take me to L A to audition for pilots and drive me into the city for Broadway auditions as a kid and as a teenager and I went to NYU to TIS for theater.

I did experimental theater. I studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London for a Shakespeare program and I had an amazing time in college. I really did. I loved studying theater and that's the only thing I ever thought I would do with my life. But throughout all of this time, I was always posting on social media, sharing my thoughts and opinions and more information about current events about civil rights, about things that would come across my feed when I was, I'm talking, you know, 15-17 years old. And it always really was important to me to have a voice. But being a woman of color, I always felt like I had to be the most articulate the most well researched. The most knowledgeable anytime I was speaking about a cause that I felt was worthy or important. And eventually that translated to summer of 2020 we're in a pandemic.

We're in lockdown. The Black Lives Matter Movement of that summer is erupting all over social media and in the world around us after the murder of George Floyd. And in that moment, I had a platform as a boxing trainer, you know, going back to my life as an actor. When I graduated college, I did the Broadway National tour of Motown. And when I was on tour, I started working out all the time, not really something that I did that much in my life before that.

And when I returned to New York, I became a trainer. I tried a bunch of different modalities. I eventually started teaching boxing after doing a three month intensive kind of getting the basics. I started teaching boxing group fitness, which was way more about the performance of boxing, right? I was an actor so I could perform the role of boxer.

And that's really what a lot of that job was. But I fell in love with boxing and I started training as much as possible. I'm, I'm six years into my boxing training. Now I'm training for my first fight at the moment and boxing has just become a huge part of my life. And passion of mine. And I just, I train at Gleeson's and Dumbo, which is just such a historic gym and, and I just love everything about boxing and who it's made me become and how it's made me feel in my own body.

So, back to the summer of 2020 I was teaching online boxing classes on Instagram. And you know, I had a weekly boxing class on the women's health magazine, Instagram. I was teaching for tons of different brands and I was sponsored by Reebok for that entire year and just had a lot of opportunities coming my way and, and having that platform, I really felt like it was my moment to own my voice on topics that I'd always been speaking about to my friends and in private, but not necessarily in public because being emotional about race and racism in public, it's pretty, it can be pretty scary. It's not something that was well received throughout my life. And in that moment, one, it became almost trendy or popular and there was a space that was made for my voice. And I thought, ok, this is my time to speak up. So I started using my platforms to speak about racial justice and anti-racism, education.

And again, going back to feeling I always had to be the most well researched and the most knowledgeable I started a weekly newsletter and I've written over 100 blog posts and emails on tons of different topics around inclusivity around marginalized groups and elevating those stories and voices around my own personal experiences and experiences of those around me.

And that is kind of what set me on the path that I'm on today. While I kept boxing a part of my life and my life as a trainer and my life as an actor continued to serve me to this day, I decided to pursue my master's in human rights at Columbia. And I'm in my second year right now, I'm focusing on mass incarceration and I'm really interested in access to movement in carceral facilities.

I work with a organization at Columbia where I teach weekly classes in the metropolitan detention center, which is the largest detention center in the United States. I teach literature and philosophy classes with a senior professor from Columbia. So I'm a teaching assistant for that course and being actually inside of a prison was just a profoundly impactful experience.

And I'm really excited to be teaching a full semester long course assistant teaching a full semester long course in Taconic women's correctional facility this upcoming spring and the connection between race and our prison system is inextricably intertwined. And that's kind of what brought me to the work of mass incarceration reform and really abolition.

I'm really excited to talk more about abolition on this podcast because it's something that is very close to my heart and a concept that a lot of people don't necessarily fully understand So that's something that I'm really excited to share more about all that being said, I have really gotten my voice in the last few years in terms of understanding that activism and advocacy work is where I feel most in my purpose, where I feel like I'm really being the truest to myself.

And that's kind of what made me think about having the show. Having my weekly newsletter was impactful for me because every single week I was learning about a new topic and just having that education was always really moving and just gave me a lot more insight into the communities that I care about. But I wanted to connect deeper and go further.

And that's kind of the next evolution is with this podcast. I'll share more about why the podcast specifically next week. But in terms of me, I think I'm pretty funny. I'm always the person at a dinner party that's telling a story to the entire group of people. And I think that gives you a good picture of, of who I am and what I'm like. I love Beyonce.

I really do. I sobbed hysterically on the Renaissance tour and I have a Corgi puppy named Roy. He's actually over a year. So I guess he's not a puppy, but he's my puppy forever. I'm always trying to make the most out of my life without feeling like I'm constantly a self help project because I am proud of who I am and I don't think I need to fix myself, but I'm also always trying to grow and I think a lot of us are in that kind of wavelength in this moment in time.

I think there's so, so so much noise around us about how to be better, how to wake up earlier, work out more, push ourselves harder, make more money. And I'm always trying to find the balance between those things and also truly just being happy that I get to be myself. I think there's so much more I could share with you about who I am. But really, I just wanted to share what brought me to this microphone today.

And really, it's just a heart to educate people with kindness and to allow their vulnerability to shine through and to be met with understanding, we are not going to have the hard conversations and ask the hard questions if we're just afraid to open our mouths. And so I hope that this podcast and this community can be a space for you to think about those hard questions for you to start those discussions in your own family and friend groups.

And with me and I'll leave you with the last fun fact, which is that I have created recorded, edited, produced, researched, built the website for and all of the content for this podcast by myself. My amazing friend Amy took my photos for my cover and I recorded a lot of these episodes, not this one, but all of my episodes in studio at WTF media.

But other than that, I've done this all on my own and I'm really proud of myself. I hope that you love this show as much as I do. I can't wait to see where it is even in season two. I'm so so happy that you're here. Thank you for being here. See you out there.