ABOUT ME

My name is Messan Bokor and I am ux/ui designer, software architect, musician, and founder of Crescere Nexum---a community resource development company building a digital platform that empowers the collaboration of community members and allows them to crowdfund community-building efforts. I was born in Lomé, Togo, West Africa and lived my first four years there before moving to the United States with my family. Coming to the United States from West Africa was a huge and frightening transition for my family and I, but it helped me gain three of the most important qualities I've ever acquired, open-mindedness, perseverance, and adaptability. It was primarily these three qualities that led to me being directly admitted to the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University Bloomington after my time at Pike High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. After my sophomore year, however, it started to become clear that the finance and consulting world was not truly where my passions lie. But I tried to make it work the following year before finally realizing that the best path forward was to actually take a step back and reevaluate where the path I had chosen was leading me and where I actually wanted to go. This meant taking some time away from classes to discover what my passions truly were and how I could integrate them into my studies and chosen career path. So I paused my studies and focused on personal growth and gaining a better understanding of the world around me in order to find where I could best fit into it. The main focus of this time was defining who I wanted to be, learning on my own, and exploring different paths. This is where I started diving into digital technology and community development; and also where I started the foundations for Crescere Nexum which was called Humane Resource at the time.

 

Growing up within a family that immigrated to the US from Africa, one of the things that has always been instilled in me throughout my upbringing was how lucky I am to have access to all the resources that are available to those within developed countries. When looking at life between the two places, the most striking thing to me is always the vast difference between communities there and communities here in terms of development and available resources. It is an extremely rare opportunity to be able to make it out of an under-resourced community like many within my home country and be placed within a place like the US which has an abundance of resources and tools, specifically in education. There are many who live their whole lives searching for that kind of opportunity and never see it. I am one of the lucky few that did. I want this to mean something. Rather than just finding a nice career and being able to live well off, I want to live a life that leaves countless threads of opportunity that others can seize to better their own lives---to turn something that was just simply luck for me into an open bridge/gateway for others to use to transition towards better situations. This is the basis behind every life/career decision that I make, informs my software design work, and is what pushed me to start working on the foundations for Humane Resource which started as a company centered around creating communal resources that can become supportive pillars within communities.

 

The spark for what is today Crescere Nexum though came after I read a book written by Buckminster Fuller and Jaime Snyder called “Operating Manuel for Spaceship Earth”. This book discusses in-depth Buckminster Fuller’s strategy of problem-solving which he termed “comprehensive anticipatory design science”. As described in the book, this is “…illuminating the very largest picture possible in a way that allows us to more easily discover the specific actions we can take right now that will make the biggest difference in addressing the crises before us...”. Essentially, this means building a large view of the world, and its needs, in order to see the broad impact of our decisions which will allow us to make the right ones for long-term prosperity. This philosophy changed the way I viewed the world and my actions concerning it. It is what pushed me to start expanding Humane Resource’s focus from ‘how can we aid development in the local community’ to ‘what tool can we build that will allow us to get a better picture of the health of communities, understand their needs, and aid them in building up their resources’. This focus is what became the bedrock for the Nexum platform, and this is where Humane Resource became Crescere Nexum.

 

Through this website you can learn more about me and Crescere Nexum as well as all the other things that influence who I am and the work that I do. It also contains a collection of important resources that were of tremendous help to me in defining my perspective and informing the work. You can also reach out to me via the contact forms if you wish to connect. I would love an opportunity to meet you and connect on any topic that may have interested you so please don't hesitate to reach out!