Ashanti Branch has spent more than two decades helping boys and men look beneath the masks they wear. As keynote speaker of the inaugural Man In™: The Men’s Leadership Experience in September, he’ll bring that work into a room full of men association and nonprofit leaders.
When Ashanti Branch asks someone how they are doing, “good” is rarely enough.
“Tell me what good is so I can understand,” he said. "Some people in [bad] situations say things are good, but they're not."
It's a small question with a bigger purpose. Too often, “How are you?” is a greeting, not an inquiry. Someone says “fine,” and everyone keeps moving.
Branch has built his life’s work around what comes after “fine.” You're fine, AND.
Maybe you really are fine. Career moving. Family good. Team performing. Life working. The question isn’t whether something is wrong. It’s whether conversations, relationships, and parts of yourself rarely get room.
Growing up in Oakland, he learned early how much a person can carry without anyone seeing it. His father died three months before he was born, and his mother raised him alone while navigating her grief. By middle school, Branch was being bullied and dreading school, and instead of knowing what to do with those feelings, he turned inward.
“I was constantly self-loathing,” he said. “I was never good enough.”
Looking back, Branch sees that younger version of himself differently.
He was navigating a world that said he felt too much. Now he's working to make a world that makes space to those feelings for the next generation of men.
What We Don’t See
Branch eventually built a successful career as an engineer and project manager. Then he felt called to teach, despite his resistance to the field. His mom was a teacher, and they were on welfare.
“Nuh-uh. I’m not destined to be poor,” he remembers thinking.
Eventually, he told himself he would teach for two years and return to engineering. He never did.
In the classroom, Branch began noticing students who were brilliant but disengaged. Some would rather get kicked out of class than appear too smart among their peers.
“When you see someone who acts in a way that doesn’t make sense to you,” Branch said, “there’s a bigger story than what’s on the outside.”
That insight eventually helped shape the Ever Forward Club, a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the dropout rates of marginalized students through youth mentorship and teacher training, and the #MillionMaskMovement, which explores the distance between what people show the world and what they carry underneath.
The mask, Branch says, does not disappear in adulthood. It simply changes.
Student becomes professional. Provider. Parent. Boss. CEO. All the while, they're shouldering responsibilities without showing their vulnerabilities — which can eventually turn responsibility into burden and burden into a dungeon.
The mask doesn’t always mean someone is in crisis. Sometimes the person underneath it is successful, respected, and genuinely doing well. But leadership can leave little room to admit uncertainty, ask for support, or simply be with other men without performing a role. “Fine” can be real. And there can still be more. That tension is part of what Man In™ was created to explore.
As Branch describes the feeling:
“I don’t come in with a mask because I want to be mysterious,” he said. “I need to be who they need me to be so we can keep things moving.”
But when there is nowhere to put what sits underneath, pressure builds. He's heard from students that it's better not to say something because someone else can't fix it — so he knows how many young and adult men walk around holding so much inside.
“You’re going to be walking around like a landmine,” he said.
Sometimes that pressure explodes. More often, it simply becomes normal: carrying more, saying less, solving the problem, and keeping things moving.
What If Fine Could Be Better?
Created for men and allies across the association and nonprofit community, Man In™ is designed around connection, wellness, reflection, and candid conversation — not another traditional leadership conference. The day is intentionally designed for participation, with small-group conversations and shared experiences that create space to speak, listen, and connect beyond titles and business cards.
Branch is not coming to fix anyone.
“I’m coming as a friend,” he said. "I'm coming as a warm enforcer of men's stories that I've heard from all over the world. ... Maybe we can meet each other out on the field face-to-face, and we can make room for each other."
And for the leader who believes he is doing just fine, Branch offers one more question:
“What if it could be so much better?”
If that question gives you even a moment of pause, Man In™ may be the room you didn’t know you needed.