Last Wednesday, Tru Optik CEO and co-founder Andre Swanston distributed a letter to his team and shareholders about his intensely personal reaction to the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests. “The first time I was dragged out of a car at gunpoint and handcuffed, I was only seventeen years old,” he writes. “It happened twice more in my twenties, and most recently, just five years ago as the thirty-four-year-old CEO of Tru Optik.”

In this episode, Andre talks about how he processed those moments as they were happening, what he wishes he would have done differently, and why he believes that this time, finally, the ongoing protests will bring about systemic change.