Rising Stars: Meet Marqiece Cunningham of Raleigh

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marqiece Cunningham

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Like many people, I began frequenting the outdoors during the pandemic as a way to safely get a change of scenery from being at home all the time. This started out as me going on walks around my neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas in 2020. When I was getting bored with that, a friend suggested that I try some of the many parks located around town. Doing that eventually led to me venturing to the many state parks near San Antonio and hiking became a regular hobby for me, but I was hiking solo because I couldn’t find any Black people to hike with.

I then moved back home to Georgia in the summer of 2021 and came across BLK Hiking Club thanks to the Black Hikers Week event that happens on Instagram to highlight Black hikers across the country each year. I still hiked solo, and occasionally hiked with some of the many other Black hiking groups in Atlanta, but I also went on nearly every BLK Hiking Club hike that I could. It was a great experience finally getting to enjoy the outdoors with other Black people. I was so engaged with the Club, that the Founder, Tracy Stephens, invited me to become one of the group’s Hiking Leaders.

Work and my partner then brought me to North Carolina in the summer of 2022. I was new to the state and I wanted to continue my hobby of hiking but could only find one hiking group in the Triangle that focused on getting Black people in nature. I had already spoken with Tracy before I moved about potentially starting a chapter of BLK Hiking Club in North Carolina and seeing this lack of representation in the Triangle motivated me to create the BLK Hiking Club Raleigh-Durham (RDU) chapter after only being in the state for about 4 months.

I held the Club’s first hike at Occoneechee Mountain in Hillsborough in October of 2022 expected to only have maybe two other people. To my surprise, there were 8 of us on a hike for my group that didn’t exist a month earlier. I held two more hikes that fall, then the Club’s growth shot up so much in 2023 that by February I led a hike of 40 people! From talking with the many people who were coming on the hikes, I realized the Club was serving a purpose beyond what I intended with just getting Black people in the outdoors. Despite being a place with many Black people, the Triangle was a place that has a limited number of Black options for various hobbies. My chapter of the Club was now one of only a handful of outdoor recreation organizations–and the only one specifically for hiking–run by Black people AND exclusively for Black people, not Black people and allies. I was providing an experience for Black people to try something new and build community without having to worry about if people who don’t look like us will create uncomfortable moments.

Today, the Club is an experience that allows Black people to unplug and engage in the many great outdoor spaces that North Carolina has to offer. My six Hiking Leaders and I are able to really enjoy the feeling of seeing the positive impact of connecting Black people to the outdoors.

In a little over a year and a half, the Club has hiked at over 30 different parks and worked with multiple groups and organizations throughout the Triangle and North Carolina.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
One of the priorities I have for the Club is to venture to various parks throughout the Triangle, and outside of it, to show the many options available for engaging in nature. That means lots of scouting hikes ahead of time to gauge how feasible it is to bring a group to them and set a season schedule ahead of time. For the first seven months of the Club’s existence, I was doing all of that myself. I was also managing all of the social media and event communication on my own. Tracy was helping me with visuals and website updates, but I was still having moments of struggling with enough time to do everything else since this is a passion project that I do outside of my full-time job.

I brought on my first Hiking Leaders in April of 2023, which helped a great deal. I then brought on another group of Hiking Leaders in August of 2023, bringing the size of the team to seven. As everyone on the team got adjusted to their roles, I was able to share more of the workload. We got to a place in October of 2023 where we held the first hike that I was not present at which were two hikes happening simultaneously at seperate locations. Getting the Club to a place where I don’t have to be at every event has been the best thing to happen for me. My Hiking Leaders Frenchie, Daphne, Keandra, Faith, Vince, and Sierra have been great to work with and I’ve been able to enjoy the friendship and banter we’re able to have with each other in addition the work of running the Club.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I work in university housing management as a director of housing. I like to explain my work as being part landlord, part college student development, part crisis management. My day-to-day work is engaging with traditional aged college students (17-23) and facilitating response to all of the support needs, and rule breaking, that comes with that.

I’m really proud of what I’ve been able to do in my work in the now two years I’ve worked for my university. I’ve had opportunities to re-stabilize my department, shift my department’s culture, and help others find fulfillment in the work they do–which of course helps my reputation of being a good manager.

I would say the thing that sets me apart is my ability to facilitate a relaxed and supportive work environment while ensuring that everyone understands we have a job to get done. I have worked at enough places to know that it is difficult to facilitate both of those things effectively and in a way that feels good to everyone involved.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
I have a variety of podcasts that help me with perspective. I actually used advice podcasts pretty heavily a few years back to improve how good I was at emotional intelligence. I used to be the person that was really great with the technical things, but would struggle with some of the softer, interpersonal aspects of engaging with people. Once I spent a lot of time listening to advice podcasts where people write in with their struggles for the host to give their perspective on how to help the listeners who were writing in, it allowed me to change how I thought about responding to people and how I considered their needs in the future. Of course this is something that’s really important when you work in a support based job like I do, but it’s also useful for how I want the Club to reflect the interests and needs of the people who participate in it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blkhikingclub.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blkhikingclubrdu/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087995844171&mibextid=ZbWKwL
• Other: https://heylo.group/blk-hiking-club-rdu