Name: Nassir Criss
Hometown: From Richmond, born in New Jersey
Year: Junior
Major: Business Marketing and Communications
Relationship Status: Single
It’s no secret that you’re a busy guy. What are you involved with on campus and other wise?
“So my fraternity, my pride and joy is Alpha Phi Alpha, and I’m the president and I love it. It’s a lot of hard work but very rewarding and it gives me a chance to be able to expand my network. I’m also in the student Marketing Club, and I do a couple of philanthropies. I mentor kids, and we actually have our own mentee named Soloman, who’s 10 years old so I hang out with him. I work with the Beautiful Kids Organization which is a nonprofit that helps with alopecia awareness and the Brilliance Deputante Catillion which is also a nonprofit that helps young kids in the area go to high school and then college. Other than that, I play intermurals and try to get some rest in between.”
I have to ask about fashion because you’re always impeccably dressed. Where does that come from?
“I love men’s fashion. I actually look on GQ all the time to see what’s on there and get a lot of my inspiration.”
I must note here that sitting in front of Nassir in my t-shirt dress, I felt extremely underdressed, like a kid with an adult.
So I hear you and Mujtaba started a company. That is quite impressive for a full time college student. Care to tell us about it?
“Transcend Agencies is a Marketing and Brand Development Company. We focus on digital media marketing, encompassing social media advertisement, web development, app integration, strategic marketing planning, and “How To” sessions on understanding a brand and fully exploring and generating yours. We offer network expansion strategies, and different resources like business plan modeling or product endorsement. Our motto is “Building Visions into Reality,” and we pride ourselves on placing direct focus on innovation, progress, and detail. Innovation in continually bringing you new ideas to better your venture and make it into the highest sellable asset, progress in always moving forward and looking to the future, and detail in never overlooking the “small things” because the small things add up to make the larger picture. This is Transcend; let us help you build your vision into reality.”
Mujtaba also stopped by during this time to talk about the company. These two friends have such a strong drive for what they do, relaying all the words they spoke and capturing the enthusiasm and passion in them is not possible. Ask them for yourself if you get a chance and you will be blown away as I was!
If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
“I would eliminate preconceived notions. And the reason why I say that is because I feel like a lot of the problems that we have as a society is that we think things that we don’t know, we judge a book by its cover, all the time. And I think that if people were to take that extra five minutes to actually have that conversation with that person that they’ve already formulated this idea about without getting to know, that it would make our world a much better place. It would make communications, partnerships, relationships a lot easier. There’ a lot that needs to be changed, but I’d love to give people the opportunity to actually know each other.”
What is your favorite and least favorite thing about yourself?
“It’s the same thing actually. My favorite quality is that I talk a lot, my least favorite quality is that I talk a lot. Sometimes, you know, it can be great in that I want to tell people so many things. I have the gift of gab as my mom tells me, but a lot of times it get me in trouble or gets me in situations, but then I talk my way out of it, so it comes back around to being a gift.
What’s one thing you want the world to know about you and who you are?
“One thing that I would want to tell people is that I’ve always been me, I’ve always had the vision, been the same person and my goals never deterred. They’ve always kind of followed this track of the person I want to be. I live my life every day aspiring to reach that peak of where I feel is true greatness so every single day, I wake up, and I think of ways to get better and be better and do better. And it’s so prominent in my life that I think about it when go to bed at night and then I think about it when I wake up in the morning and I think about it when I’m eating lunch and when I’m in class. I’m always looking to be better and I think in doing that and in holding myself to such a high standard of excellence I’m able to not only do those things, but also build up those around me and that is something that is super important. I don’t know if I’m supposed to give people advice, but I think it’s important to love yourself and you have to invest in yourself to be able to actually love other people and invest in them.