Khari Williams ’14: Coming Home to Durham — and DA — to Give Back
Story by Dylan Howlett
Khari Williams ’14 thought he would return to Durham. Eventually. After he graduated from Durham Academy, he majored in Marketing, Management and Advertising & Digital Media at the University of Virginia, and he subsequently spent time working in both Washington, D.C., and Nashville. But when his fiancee, Hannah Maclellan, was admitted to the Duke University School of Medicine, Williams decided to come home — to Durham, and to DA.
It didn’t take Williams long to ensconce himself. When he’s not working at Pendo.io, a Raleigh-based software company, Williams serves on two boards: the Durham Academy Alumni Board and the board of directors at Students to Scholars, which facilitates the transition of promising students to independent schools and college preparatory programs. He’s also twice a coach: an assistant coach with the DA varsity boys basketball team and a success coach with the Durham Success Summit, the Durham nonprofit dedicated to uplifting young Black men and founded by Derek Rhodes ’11, one of Williams’ former Upper School classmates and recipient of the 2024 Durham Academy Alumni Service Award (see page 78).
In his scant free time, Williams spoke with DA’s Marketing & Communications team for a wide-ranging conversation about his abiding belief in the potential of Durham, his fulfilling time with Durham Success Summit and his renewed — and multiple — commitments to DA.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
DA: You and Derek Rhodes ’11 were three years apart at DA. How did you get involved with the Durham Success Summit?
Williams: I feel like I just kind of followed along with Derek’s career throughout the years. Two of the DA alums whom I’ve always tried to model myself after were Derek Rhodes and Tre Hunt ’11, both Black men at DA. Derek went off to Duke and then did some work with Google, the Miami Heat, President Obama. He started the summits as just summits themselves, and I kept following along with them. When Derek left Microsoft to fully dedicate himself to the Durham Success Summit, I think that was kind of my calling toward, ‘OK, I want to try to help out however I can.’ I reached out to Derek to figure out what I could do from a volunteer perspective, and that started out with helping with the last summit we held — helping him with data entry and then showing up to the event. He was able to find a role for me as a success coach. I really love getting the chance to really help these young guys just figure out their paths to success and how we can be a really good beacon, crutch, whatever they need us to be to help them on their own paths.
DA: To top it off, Derek is universally revered as an engaging, brilliant leader of a mission-oriented organization.
Williams: We’re lucky to have him, and I think that’s kind of what got a lot of people mobilized. A lot of us just believed in Derek and Derek’s mission. All of us care about Durham and want Durham to succeed. I think this would be possible with others, but I don’t know how far it would go if it weren’t for Derek. That’s our leader. We follow him wherever he goes.
DA: As meaningful as it has been for the young men for whom you work and for Derek to have another DA alum in his corner, what has your work with Durham Success Summit meant to you?
Williams: It’s been really cool. I personally love Durham. I’m glad to be back. I didn’t expect to be back this early on in life — I was thinking maybe by 30 or 35. But I love trying to help young Black men in Durham have other options. I have some friends who didn’t necessarily see Durham as a great place or who thought it was a struggle to get out of Durham. And then for others, I’ve seen Durham help them flourish and thrive. I want people to be able to see that there are a lot of great opportunities you can have coming out of Durham. I just want to be a good mentor, assistant, role model, whatever you want to call it. I really want to make sure that a lot of these young guys had some people that were there for them, were willing to speak up for them and were willing to guide them however they needed to be guided. I just really wanted to give back to Durham, and I thought the best thing for me to do was to just pour into people I could see myself in.
DA: The thing that we can’t fathom is that between your job at Pendo.io and your work at Durham Success Summit, you still woke up one day and said, ‘I’d also like to help coach boys’ varsity basketball at DA.’ How did that come together?
Williams: Honestly, playing for Coach [Tim] McKenna was always a blast for me. He was definitely a tough coach who loved hard. I always wanted to come back and coach. When he chose to step away from coaching at DA, I was able to get in touch with [DA Director of Athletics Andy] Pogach, who was one of the basketball assistants while I was there. They needed an assistant, and I thought it would be fun. I always knew when I came back to Durham that I wanted to try and get involved with Durham Academy basketball. Throughout the years, I’d kept up with the different teams, how they were performing. With my brother (Kobie Williams ’18) having also been a DA graduate, I feel like I know a lot of the kids and players who have come throughout the years, even though some of them weren’t at the Upper School at the same time I was. For those who can’t do, sometimes they teach, and I think that was me. My basketball career kind of stopped after I graduated from Durham Academy, but I wanted to help out.
DA: How did your opportunity with the DA Alumni Board come to be?
Williams: Coach McKenna [Director of Alumni Philanthropy & Engagement] just reached out. He mentioned that I had been nominated for it, and then I saw some of the names that were also on the Alumni Board at the time. Whether it was former teammates from basketball, like David Peters ’13 or Jason Lapidus ’15 — whether it was classmates who graduated the same year as I did, such as Joia Freeman ’14 — it just seemed like it would be a cool opportunity to help connect alums. Coach McKenna would definitely talk to his former players a lot about, ‘Make sure you text your buddies.’ It felt like an extension of what I had already been helping Coach do on the side anyway. It just felt like an easy step. And it’s been really cool to see from a different lens how the school operates, getting to hear from [Head of School Michael] Ulku-Steiner about how things are going, hearing more about the projects that we’re doing, the different impacts that can be made. It’s definitely been an eye-opening experience being a part of the Alumni Board.
DA: For the sake of your free time, we sincerely hope that’s the extent of your professional obligations.
Williams: I recently joined another board to add on to my busy schedule: Students to Scholars. Mr. Ulku-Steiner was actually able to help refer me to the program. It’s been great to help a program with a mission that assists minority children with their transition to independent schools or helps identify minority students who would benefit from an independent school education. I was in Durham Public Schools through middle school, and then my mother presented me with the opportunity to go to Durham Academy. It wasn’t the easiest transition, but looking back at it nine years later, I’m still really thankful for that opportunity.
I’m excited to help more students find independent schools that work for them. I know that transition can sometimes be awkward, uncomfortable or strange. Whatever we can do to help them support them with that transition is great, and help them build affinity for these schools while they’re at the program. I enjoyed my time at Durham Academy — I had a blast. But I do think that the way I look back on my time at Durham Academy now is a lot more fond than I did at the time. I didn’t have negative thoughts, but just now I’m like, ‘Wow, this was actually, a really, really awesome opportunity for me.’ I’m hoping that instead of needing nine years to have all of this gratitude finally get paid forward, students can have this type of affinity while they’re at campus or right away when they go off to college.
I’m thankful to have Durham Academy give me so many opportunities to continue making an impact. It’s a give and take: DA gives me a plate of opportunities, and I love trying to step up and make the most out of them.