- Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato.

We're honored to be joined by Kareem McKenzie, former great player in the NFL, and has been working on his dissertation at Kean University in counseling, and has finished all of his coursework, and down the road, we're likely to be calling him Dr. Kareem McKenzie.

Good to see you, sir.

Great to have you with us.

- Oh, my pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

- Let me ask you this, seven seasons with the Giants, two Super Bowls, now working in the field of counseling, if I were to ask you, Kareem, the biggest difference between being a star player in the NFL and being a counselor is?

- I would say that being a counselor is a much more tedious and arduous process because there's no way to accurately prepare for the crises that walks through your actual office door on a given day, whereas the NFL was pretty simplistic.

You knew Monday through Friday what to expect practice-wise.

And there may have been a couple of, you know, surprises on game day, but other than that, it was a pretty easy process.

And I'll say easy in that I did it for 11 years, so it became a second nature almost aspect to it.

Whereas counseling, you don't know necessarily what to expect to endure, you know, how to deal with certain issues.

- Kareem, what moved you, after your NFL career, what moved you to pursue a master's in counseling, I believe, from William Paterson University, and then a doctorate in the field from Kean University, one of our longtime higher ed partners?

Where does your passion for counseling come from, sir?

- I think the passion in and of itself stems back to the feeling of, you know, almost being a ship without a sail, being listless when I first retired from the NFL.

And I say retired in that it's a misnomer because, in all actuality, I'm unemployed, so to speak, from the NFL, right?

Because to be retired, you actually garner and earn a pension that you can receive, which I have quite a while to go before I can do that.

But at the same time, looking at what was going on in my life to try to figure out how to translate those skills that I had learned, that skill set I learned in the NFL, to apply to a job outside of that context was very difficult.

And I thought, for other players who may have had some of those difficulties as well, 'cause I think, back at that time, in 2011, the statistics were pretty far-ranging in terms of being financially unstable, being divorced, and having difficulty in finding a job, so to speak.

So I thought it would be a great career for myself to go ahead and help others who were experiencing some of those same issues.

Because when you look at the NFL, you know, you have the draft, you know, the pre-draft, you know, meetings and things of that nature.

When you retired, or they let you go, there's no exit meeting of, okay, so now what do you have planned next in your life?

It's more so just, well, we thank you for your participation.

We thank you for your help.

And yeah, we'll talk to you later.

- You know, what I'm curious about, and I'd like you to talk about this, Kareem, if you could, you did some work in counseling at the Bridge Academy in Irvington, community right outside of Newark, New Jersey, working with young people in connection with their substance abuse.

What did you experience, what did you see, Kareem, and what impact has that had on you, please?

- Okay, well, there's two things there.

First thing is it was the Bridge Incorporated in Irvington, which is based in, their main office is based in Caldwell, New Jersey.

Number two, I don't like the term substance abuse, because idealistically, you know, I don't think there's a medical professional out there that could tell me an actual, definable level of substance use for an adolescent to use that would be okay at any one point.

So for me, in particular, it's substance use, right?

Because there's no level at which you can say it's therapeutic for a child under the age of 18.

There may be some instances where it is helpful, but typically, when we're talking about substance use for adolescents, they are using it to either cope with something, to fit in, and/or to deal with life's issues as a whole.

And some of the issues that I saw, in particular, was that I had young people who were dealing with life circumstances and other things that did not necessarily meet criteria on a, quote, unquote, assessment, right?

I was given an assessment tool to utilize to tell me specifically how to interview these young people to figure out what areas of their life they needed help in that I could go ahead and assist them in overcoming some of those obstacles.

And what I found is that the tool that I was using was wholly inadequate.

It wasn't sufficient to identify or even explore relevant areas of their life to where I could say, okay, let's go ahead and address this issue, and if we can possibly remove this, I can hopefully get you to recognize that substance use is no longer necessary, right?

And in those instances, I just, you know I wanted to do research, and I was trying to look for tools and see who else was having these issues.

And that's what led me to getting my doctorate, because I felt that this was an area of research that needed to be addressed, that to deal with young people in today's society where we now have marijuana legal in the state of New Jersey and the influences of substance use are all around us, the environment in which the young people grow up today is just flooded with social stimuli.

You look at Twitter, TikTok, Instagram.

there's so many different influences that are there.

- Right.

- And a lot of times, these young people just need help in finding their place in society, in their own environment.

And if they don't have the necessary coping skills to do so, they may end up using substances in some instances.

- Kareem, the young people you worked with in Irvington were disproportionately black and brown, correct?

- That is correct, yes.

- People watching right now, and this is an important question I think a lot about, and I'm not sure if my perspective is even remotely as valuable as yours, the challenges, the issues around counseling of teenagers who are black and brown versus those who are not, to what degree do you believe they are significantly different and/or more challenging, please?

- Well, I think research bears out that the ways in which it is handled is significantly different.

And that's something that has been supported by some of the research that I've read, some of the participants who've actually, you know, participate in my study.

And they've recognized that there's a significant difference between the two cohorts, so to speak.

We're talking about Caucasian versus African American and/or black, and Caribbean in some instances.

One of the main aspects in particular is the ability to have requisite medical care, you know, to have- - Sure.

- a primary care physician- - Access.

- to where you do access to it, right, the supports where... And it was, my tool was utilized, my program, I did also do some work outside of Irvington in other school districts to where their processes were different.

And I noticed that there was a difference between a parent who said, "Okay, well, I'm not gonna take my child to your program.

I'm gonna take 'em to their doctor, and I'm gonna have 'em evaluated by their doctor, and they will tell me specifically whether or not they have an issue."

Whereas, in some of these other impoverished communities, they don't have a primary care physician.

they don't have health insurance, on of the, you know, necessary medical supports or resources necessary to say, "Well, okay, let's go do this."

And at the same time, you're talking about individuals who are literally one paycheck away from being homeless in some instances.

So having the ability to attend to these issues in some regards was not there.

- Final question, from my perspective, what is the quote one down approach that you told our producers is important to understand because it has the potential to have great impact in counseling, please, the one down approach?

- The one down approach is to go ahead and to listen, to honestly listen to what is important to your client, the individual, what they talk about, what they're not saying.

Because I think, a lot of times, and this is just my personal experience, whenever I had a young person in my office, that may have been the first time that someone actually listened to them rather than telling 'em, "You need to do this.

You need to do that," and in instances, I found myself sometimes having to cut them off because they would be in my office sometimes for an hour and a half, two hours, just talking about the multitude of things that they were going through, and their experiences would further let me know that there's something here that we're missing, that we need to address.

- Kareem McKenzie, an important, powerful voice, and particularly in the area of counseling.

He is a former NFL player, a PhD candidate at the time of this conversation in the area of counseling at Kean University.

And we wish you all the best, Kareem.

And next time you join us for the conversation, it'll officially be Dr. Kareem McKenzie.

Thank you very much, sir.

We appreciate it.

- Yes, indeed.

Thank you so much, all.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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