Legacy

The Chrysalis Experience is a curriculum created by my father, Clyde Eliot Gumbs, out of his own life’s reckoning with purpose. Raised in a striving Caribbean immigrant family and shaped by racism within elite educational and corporate institutions, my father achieved what many would call success—an Ivy League education, multiple advanced degrees, and a historic role as the first Black Vice President at one of the oldest investment banks in the United States. Yet beneath that achievement was a deep disconnection from his own values, voice, and sense of meaning.

During a period of profound personal questioning, my father undertook the difficult work of listening to himself for the first time. He left the corporate world, co-founded the Integral Group to transform public housing and empower communities at a collective scale, returned to writing through poetry, and ultimately created The Chrysalis Experience as a way to help others clarify their life purpose and live accordingly. I grew up witnessing his coaching work, became the first test subject of his systematized approach, and my life—as well as the lives of my siblings and many others he coached—stands as living testimony to its impact.

This course is an offering of that legacy. It is rooted in purpose, love, community, and the belief that our lives can become the most beautiful expressions of what we are here to do. Participating in this experience is part of how my father’s work continues in the world, even as an ancestor, and it is my deep honor to share it with you.