Event
Topeka Outdoors
I hope you find as much inspiration exploring these events as I did being part of them, each one a step toward creating lasting impact. Hope to see you at the next one.
August 19, 2026 | Meet Me at the Highland™, Season 2, Episode 4
Dr. Topeka K. Sam joins host Gabrielle Wyatt on Meet Me at the Highland™, a podcast and sacred space centering Black women's leadership, imagination, and legacy. Season 2, the Seeding season, asks what it means to plant something for people you may never meet. Dr. Sam answers with a distinction she has carried since coming home: there is a difference between being free from something and being free to build a life.
Where to listen
Not just free from, but free to
"I was moving in the space of the freedom from and not yet to the freedom to. And so life is about going to the freedom to and not the freedom from."
Release was the beginning, not the destination. That understanding shapes the work Dr. Sam has built since, including The Ladies of Hope Ministries, which helps women and girls impacted by incarceration re-enter society with housing, education, and economic opportunity. Freedom to means somewhere to live, work that pays, and a community that expects you to thrive.
Permission to move at your own pace
"Move at your pace. Move in the way that you feel that you're being led by your spirit, and be still and take your moments of rest."
Much of the conversation sits with rest, grief, and what leaders carry on behalf of everyone else. Dr. Sam offers a practice for sorting the two apart.
"You have to afford yourself the grace to understand and take a moment to feel it, whatever that may feel like for you, and also the permission to drop it if it's not yours to carry."
Her story, told whole
"My entire story is worthy of hearing and of people knowing."
Not the redemption arc alone, and not the sentence alone. The whole of it, told by the person who lived it.
Book Dr. Topeka K. Sam to speak
Dr. Sam brings this same clarity to keynotes, panels, and moderated conversations on justice reform, women's leadership, healing, and economic empowerment. Request a speaking engagement or explore her speaking topics and experience.
