Javoris Hollingsworth had a tenured position teaching organic chemistry.<\/p>\n
During the pandemic, he and his wife started “Gracie’s Corner” for their own kids.<\/p>\n
Two years after launching, he resigned from teaching to work on the show full-time.<\/p>\n
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Javoris Hollingsworth and Arlene Hollingsworth, founders of Gracie’s Corner<\/a>. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n My wife and I started Gracie’s Corner out of necessity. We were both working as professors <\/a>during the pandemic, and we were using every resource we had to keep our three kids occupied.<\/p>\n One of those resources was YouTube. But I noticed, there weren’t many characters who looked like our kids. In such a diverse world<\/a>, it’s important that everyone feels seen.<\/p>\n I started working with my daughter Graceyn, who is 13 now, to create a fun, educational show with Black characters<\/a>.<\/p>\n My wife’s private practice helped fund the show<\/p>\n At first, it was slow. That first year, we were just getting our grounding. I would write songs that Graceyn sang, recording them in a closet in our house. Our videos had like 100 views.<\/p>\n My wife was also a professor at the time and had a private practice as a psychologist. She took on more clients to help pay for Gracie’s Corner, and we also pulled from savings to make videos<\/a>. We were hoping that we would be able to pay the production costs at some point.<\/p>\n Money wasn’t my primary driver; this was really a passion project<\/a>. Still, I also wanted to feel like we weren’t investing our money into this black hole.<\/p>\n I left my professor position after going viral<\/p>\n The second year, in 2022, one of our videos went viral<\/a>. That’s when things really started taking off. In the spring of 2022, I resigned from my tenure position to work on Gracie’s Corner. My wife videoed the moment when I left my office for the last time. It was momentous. I thought I would retire from academia, working my way up, and that would be my life story.<\/p>\n