Today we’d like to introduce you to Talib Abdullahi.
Talib, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My path to Black History Bike Ride wasn’t really a straight line. It started with cycling being something personal to me, and it grew out of a moment in 2020 that a lot of us shared.
Professionally, I’d spent years in experiential marketing, working for brands like Tito’s Handmade Vodka and then YETI, building the kind of on the ground experiences that actually put people in a room, or in a new different city, together. That background taught me how to build an event people feel, not just attend.
Then in 2020, with everything going on around racial justice and reckoning, I put together a single bike ride, really just a way to connect my friends in Austin’s cycling community to the city’s Black history, the sites and stories that don’t always make it into the main narrative. It wasn’t meant to be an organization. It was meant to be one ride.
But it hit something. People showed up, and they wanted more: more rides, more history, more of that feeling of moving through your own city and seeing it differently. So I, alongside my friends and community members, kept building. I went and got my MBA at UT McCombs to give myself the tools to actually run this as a real organization, not just a passion project on the side.
Six years later, Black History Bike Ride is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We’ve collectively had thousands of people ride with us, we’ve produced two documentaries, and we’ve gotten recognition on the national film festival circuit. We’re now deep into production on a docu-series that takes the same idea, history you can feel, not just read about, and puts it on screen. I still work full-time in events, now at Realtor.com, but BHBR is the thing I built from nothing that’s turned into something Austin actually needs.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In some senses very smooth, but in other senses, it has been quite challenging. Balancing a full time career with running a community focused education initiative is its own kind of tightrope walk, and that’s before you factor in producing in person events, working on our independent films, and just trying to hold onto the normal parts of life that also take up brain space. There’s constantly a lot to think about, and honestly, the work never feels done. What keeps me going through all of it is the overwhelming support of this community, and the city of Austin itself showing up for what we’re building. It also comes back to something deeper, the spirit of honoring our ancestors, because at the end of the day we’re all cousins, all connected, and that reminder is enough to keep me moving even on the hardest days.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Professionally, I specialize in experiential events, the art of building moments that bring people together in ways that actually stick with them. Over the years that’s taken shape across a lot of different rooms, from booking DIY music venues in my early twenties, to producing large scale festivals, to running national activations for brands like Tito’s Handmade Vodka and YETI, and now managing corporate events at Realtor.com. What I’m known for, and what I’m most proud of, is being able to move between those worlds fluidly, taking the same instincts that make a grassroots community event feel authentic and applying them to polished corporate activations, and vice versa. I think what sets me apart is that I don’t just execute events, I think about the story and the connection underneath them, why people are in the room together and what they’ll walk away feeling. That same instinct is what led me to build Black History Bike Ride outside of my day job, so in a lot of ways my career and my community work feed each other. I’m proud that I’ve been able to build a reputation as someone who can be trusted with big, complex productions while never losing sight of the human experience at the center of them.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
People can support Black History Bike Ride in a few real ways, and honestly, funding is one of the most direct. Beyond that, showing up matters just as much, coming out to our rides and events, bringing friends along, and helping grow the community in person. Sharing what we’re doing on your own platforms goes a long way too, since word of mouth and visibility are how a lot of people first find us. And if you’re someone with connections, whether that’s to funding, media, venues, or other organizations doing aligned work, making those introductions is genuinely one of the most valuable ways to collaborate. At the end of the day, this work grows through community, so any way people want to plug in, whether that’s financially, physically showing up, or helping us build relationships, all of it moves us forward.
Pricing:
- All of our bike rides are free and open to the public
Contact Info:
- Website: https://blackhistorybikeride.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackhistorybikeride/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BlackHistoryBikeRide
