Drew Sanders, founder of The Aware Brand and Tuskegee University graduate, has spent eight years building a movement that bridges mindfulness with cultural authenticity. As he prepares for the groundbreaking Aware Humans Summit on January 25, 2025, in Atlanta, Sanders shares his vision of making wellness accessible and relatable to diverse communities. Drawing from influences ranging from Deepak Chopra to the Black Panther Party, he has created a unique platform that promotes self-awareness and holistic well-being while staying true to cultural roots.
Could you share your background and what The Aware Brand represents?
I’m an HBCU graduate, graduate from Tuskegee University, shouts to all the HBCUs out there. Outside of that I worked in lifestyle marketing for my whole professional career. But I transitioned into starting this business called The Aware Brand, which is a Lifestyle Company, where we push self-awareness and self-love to the community in the world abroad.
We felt that there is a need for more self-awareness, more love around the world. And you know hopefully, this will empower people to recognize the God within them and the power within them. And so we can all live in a better, higher vibrational world, and have more love. So for me, you know, we use apparel right now to be that vehicle. But you know we have events like the aware human summit which we’ll be talking about soon to help spread that message and create community around these topics for more mindfulness and wellness.
What is your role in mental health and awareness?
I’m the bridge, I’m a dot connector, I see myself as bringing people from all different worlds into another new world, we have people from Yoga specialists, mental health coaches, therapists, Reiki healers, ministers, pastors, all these different people. I’m the person that’s going to bring all these people in to help build an audience, an audience where people can come in and learn from all these different facilitators.
And the second thing I would say, an experienced curator, somebody who can create experiences around mindfulness, around wellness, around mental health. That can put a little bit of authenticity from my point of view, give it a little bit of edge, a little bit of coolness, where it’s relatable, it’s digestible and it doesn’t really have any constraints around it, because some people, when they think about mental health and they think about wellness, it kind of brings a feeling of “is this for me”, or “should I even do it?” No, I want to make sure that I’m making it cool enough for you.
What are three tips you’ve learned in your eight years that could change people’s lives?
Be open, that’s the first thing, be willing, openness is the key. Be courageous, you know you have to have courage to go, start, and get the healing done, and I think that aligns with the openness and willingness, and, seek the right help, professional help.
I think we tend to look at these social media influencers and advocates on social media, but a lot of these people aren’t professional. So I really advocate for seeking professional help, and then, once you get that professional help, really apply what you’re learning, you could learn all day, but if you’re not putting things in application, you’re not actually taking the steps to do what you have learned, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.
So definitely be courageous, seek the right professional help and take the actionable steps to make change in your life.
How has the brand evolved over the years?
I think it’s always been an evolution, I think that when I started the brand, it was just “awareness”. It wasn’t even anything, even though I think awareness is rooted into mental health, I still don’t even align the brand around mental health. I like to say more like mindfulness, but I think for us, what kept us relevant, and it’s still relevant, is just the evolution process.
We started off with apparel, just using apparel to be that, building constant around the drops and stuff like that, garnering relationships with retailers and partnerships with, these blue chip retailers, and growing from there and doing pop-ups with colleges and taking the colleges to doing events in different cities like Chicago, LA, Detroit, New York, Miami, just growing, naturally, organically, and then from there doing experiences, doing events like to tune up what we do where we get different Yoga facilitators.
What cultural influences have shaped your vision?
It’s a continuation, I like to say, I pull from a lot of inspiration, one of my biggest inspirations is Deepak Chopra. I wouldn’t say he’s culturally relevant when it comes to us, but, he’s an extension of Oprah, who is huge in the black community. I would say I was hip to Deepak, Deepak changed my life in perspective.
I was reading his book called 7 Spiritual Laws of Success, that book opened up my mind to awareness. I started The Aware Brand off of reading that book. Also, cultural influences like the Black Panther party, creating the movement, The Nation of Islam. Looking at people in our communities who have led the way when it came to new thought, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, these individuals that kept bringing new ideas to the community to really push us forward in a special way.
We could even talk about guys like Nipsey Hussle, we could talk about Kendrick Lamar, the music, influence that way, Tupac, different people who actually paved the way and drop seeds and breadcrumbs along the way to help us culturally think differently in a positive way.
What do you want people to take away from the summit?
I want people to leave with, couple of things. One, I want them to have some practical tools they could use the day they leave the summit that they can implement, and they like to create change and cultivate change in their lives. Number two, I want them to be able to find a community, I want them to find a friend in that room, they might have come by themselves, or they might have come with a friend, but I want them to leave with another friend to add to their tribe and their bubble of where they’re going to, and they transformation journey.
And then I want them to feel like they have a safe place to always come back to, a community that we’re creating, The Aware Brand. We’re creating a safe community where you could just be you, and be able to pick up game and take it with. It’s not that deep, we ain’t trying to give you all this deep stuff, or I mean, we can get deep right? Transformation is deep, but, we wanna make sure that you feel safe in the room with us, to really ask any question you may have, and to also feel like you can just be yourself, and also know that there’s people just like you on that same journey.
Where can people learn more about the summit?
It’s going down on the 25th, 1/25/25 in Atlanta, Georgia, at the culture lab downtown in Castleberry hill. We’re starting up at 11 AM and we’re ending at 5 PM. We’re gonna have different facilitators, we’re starting off with some sound bath music therapy, we’re going to do some movement, we’re going to do some breath work, we’re going to have conversations around mindfulness and spirituality and just overall holistic health, man, mind, body and spirit. That’s what we’re talking about. You could definitely get the link on our event noir page. You can click the link into my Instagram bio you can just look it up, The Aware Humans Summit.
