Lights blind Jabari Lateef as he grasps his saxophone and dances on cue behind one of the biggest names in the music industry, 20,000 pairs of eyes looking his way.
Earlier in the year, Lateef was scanning LinkedIn for possible internship opportunities with tech companies in Silicon Valley. Little did he know, after messaging someone at SurveyMonkey, he would experience so much more than he expected as a quality assurance engineering intern.
Lateef, senior in computer science at Auburn, was enjoying one of the best summers of his life when he received a message on a coworker communication app called “Slack.”
In a channel specifically for SurveyMonkey employees entitled “Diversity,” someone posted an inquiry, looking for a young, black horn player in the Los Angeles area.
Solange needed someone to add to her band for the FYF Fest.
Lateef, a self-proclaimed jokester, replied to the company-wide channel with a video of himself playing the saxophone and captioned it, “Look no further,” hoping to give his coworkers a good laugh.
“It just caught on fire,” Lateef said, describing reception to the video. “We were in the Bay Area, so that’s like five hours away from the LA area.”
In the wave of kudos he received from the 300 coworkers on the channel, one person told Lateef to send them his Venmo account, saying they wanted to raise money to send him to Los Angeles.
“I was at my desk, looking around me, wondering if anyone was seeing what was happening in the diversity channel,” Lateef said. “Altogether, they raised about $500 to get me to LA. My trip was basically paid for.”
SurveyMonkey employees from all offices, from Seattle to Dublin, Ireland, were donating money to get Lateef to Solange.
“I kept telling them that they were making a dream come true,” Lateef said.
Still shocked by what happened earlier in the day, Lateef did not realize until he got home to his apartment in San Francisco that he was getting on a plane the next day.
“I was so in the moment that I wasn’t able to step back and actually realize what was going on,” Lateef said describing his time packing and getting to Los Angeles.
As for working in the studio prior to the festival with Solange he said, “She was the sweetest person in the world.”
On the day of the festival, Lateef said he felt like a true celebrity.
He was in downtown Los Angeles, rehearsing in the Ace Hotel and getting ready to leave for the stadium. As they walked to their rides, everyone stared at Lateef and the rest of the band, trying to figure out who they were.
“I met Denzel Curry. I met Raphael Saadiq, an R&B artist. I met Kelly Rowland. And the craziest thing of all was that Beyoncé and Jay-Z were 20 feet away from me,” Lateef said.
Everything from his experience on stage and working with Solange made his time in California special, but Lateef wanted people to be inspired by his story.
Being from Birmingham, Alabama, Lateef knows that some do not believe that there is more to life outside of Alabama.
His message to the Auburn Family is to dream big and go for it. It can happen, he said.
“Realize that you deserve just as much as the other people applying,” he said.
“The entire time, I realized how blessed I am,” Lateef said. “I’m a very spiritual person and staying humble is important, and being a positive being is my thing.”
Lateef wanted others to realize how important networking is and how much your life can change from having a good attitude and reaching out to people in fields that interest you.
Make connections, he said.
“Those people in Seattle and Ireland didn’t know me, but if you give off a positive vibe, people are attracted to that.”
Lateef hopes to start playing music locally in Auburn before he graduates, his love for music catching flame again since his performance with Solange.
“I would even play on the concourse sometimes for people,” he said in hopes of getting his music out there for people to enjoy.
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After graduation, Lateef plans to apply to different tech companies, from SurveyMonkey to Facebook. His end goal is to become a data scientist, but he realizes it takes a lot of experience and is ready for the journey.
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Mikayla Burns, senior in journalism and Spanish, is managing editor of The Auburn Plainsman.
