Behind The Inner Sanctum of Seneca Dunmore’s Lifelong Reading Obsession

“I have more books than I have clothes. And I have a pretty extensive wardrobe. But I can promise you, I have way more books than anything else I own.”

Coined the "Pint-Sized Powerhouse" for her exuberant energy, unrelenting tenacity and spellbinding storytelling abilities, Seneca Dunmore is a business funding advisor, international speaker, and tireless humanitarian. 

Before launching her entrepreneurial journey in 2014, Seneca worked in a business development and advisory capacity for a multi-billion dollar human capital consulting firm in the nation's capital, negotiating profitable technology contracts for the oil and gas industry.

In 2014 she left corporate America to begin her journey as a motivational speaker. By July of 2016 she was speaking on international stages. Today, she coaches new and aspiring speakers, high impact professionals, business owners, and entrepreneurially-minded individuals on how to utilize speaking opportunities to secure 4, 5 and 6-figure contracts for their business. 

Seneca also actively partners with industry leaders to teach undercapitalized business owners and entrepreneurs how to access the capital they need to grow, scale and sustain their business. Through her Access Granted Conferences she provides enterprising business owners and entrepreneurs with the secret sauce to securing more capital, contracts, customers, and connections for their business by leveraging pathways to funding. 

Outside of her business pursuits, Seneca is a tireless humanitarian. She has served on medical and teaching missions in underdeveloped countries like Kenya, Angola and South Africa that provide free healthcare services to different tribes in these areas. 

In 2019 and 2020 Ms. Dunmore worked on her doctoral research at the University of Ghana at their institute of African Studies. Her doctoral research focuses on school-to-prison pipeline, mass incarceration and how that equates to modern day slavery. She is currently completing a Doctorate of Education at Texas Southern University. 

Seneca credits the power of books as playing a critical role in her expansionary thinking and mindset. I had a chance to talk with her recently about her reading journey and the impact it has had on her career and life trajectory. 

Let’s talk a little bit about your reading journey. As I’ve gotten to know you, it has become quite evident to me that you’re very worldly in your thinking.  You have credited books with having had a major impact on your  thinking. I’d like you to take me through your early reading experiences from back to when you were a kid. 

SD: I’ve been reading since I started walking. I remember when I was a kid my dad would take us to the library every Saturday. That was like our thing. The place was small and quaint but had some of the most amazing books. I fondly remember the library staff greeting my father when he would bring me and my siblings in. 

The library in many ways was my way of escape. I grew up in a neighborhood, Sunnyside, on the SE side of Houston, TX that was predominantly Black and lower middle class. So drugs were running rampant in our community and crime was par for the course. So the library offered us a place to go and be secluded and just explore a new world outside of Sunnyside, even though we were still in the area. We would check out books and I was particularly interested in reading about travel and history. 

Your dad must have been a big reader as well. 

SD: Yes! He was a huge history buff. There wasn’t anything you couldn’t ask him that he didn’t know about —- the Civil War or the Holocaust — you name it. He knows a little bit about everything. So that’s where my passion for reading comes from. In our house my dad had tons of books. 

Sounds like there were books everywhere in your house [laughter]

SD: We had lots of bookshelves with tons of books. Do you remember encyclopedias? When encyclopedias were big? So you knew the kind of well off families because if you had Encyclopedia Britannicas at your home you were somebody. So when people would come over to our home they would see my dad’s collection of Encyclopedias and books virtually everywhere. 

What sorts of books are we talking about here? 

SD: Books about history, books about different authors and biographies, autobiographies, books about travel and the world, you name it. At any given moment I could pick up a book and read about history and what was going on in the world. So again my love of reading came from the fact that books were everywhere in our household while I was growing up.  We were surrounded by them on top of visits to the library every weekend to explore even more books. 

Can you share a bit more about those library visits? 

SD: My dad would give us a number of books we could check out each week and then we would be responsible for making sure we read those books during the week. Sometimes he’d even ask us to do a little report like, “write me a five page report on what you learned from this book.”

So as you look over the course of your life, are there two or three books and/or authors that have had a significant impact on your life in terms of your worldview and your quest to achieve success? In other words, are  there two or three authors and/or books that really stand out for you? 

SD: I’ve always been a huge Toni Morrison fan. I’ve read probably every book of hers. Of course, I’ve read all of the classics like “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. I’ve read several of Shonda Rhimes books like “ Year of Yes,” which was a really good book. 

Are there any others? 

SD: Gene Stone and Michael Greger co-authored a book called “How Not to Die” that was really good.  It basically talks about how our eating habits, how food and things like that have changed over the years.  So that one was very interesting to me. 

Honestly, my reading interests are all over the board. I love a good autobiography; I love anything that talks about wealth and money management and investing. And because the business world is my love language, anything that deals with business, how to grow and scale your business, how to put more automation and systems in place to run your business more effectively, I’m always a huge fan of.

But then I’ve always been a fan of folks like CS Lewis and his book “The Screwtape Letters” and “Rewire” by Richard O’Connor. Then there’s Mark Patterson. I’ve probably read every book that he’s written. That’s more on the spiritual side of things but I love Mark Patterson. 

What is your reading preference? In other words, do you prefer hardback, paperback, or audiobook books? What’s your jam?

SD: I still love physical books. There's nothing like turning the page, there’s nothing like holding a book in your hand. Because I feel like just having that moment to sit and focus really helps me get into a quiet place. When you put on audiobooks, most of the time you're multitasking. So you put in your headphones and you’re washing dishes or you might be doing something else. But physical books force me to be in the moment and be present. That’s what I love about books. 

So physical books are your preference? 

SD: Yes. I always opt to getting a hard copy before anything else. That being said, I also have a lot of audiobooks and Kindle books. Because when I started traveling extensively, carrying all of those physical books just wasn’t realistic. I would literally have to check an extra bag because I would have all these extra books with me. So I was like I can’t keep on lugging around all of these books, particularly now with a lot of the airlines charging multiple fees for carrying extra bags. In fact, I often have duplicates of books. In other words, I might have a hardcover book at home but then I’ll have a Kindle book on my iPad when I travel. 

February is Black History Month. Talk to us about what you see as the significance and the importance of having good habits around reading and investigating and learning and exploring the deeper context of our Black history.

SD: The first thing I think about is the African proverb that I absolutely love that says that “until the lion learns how to write the story will always glorify the hunter.” To me that means that you basically need to take ownership of your story; you need to create your narrative and put it out there versus abdicating that responsibility to somebody else and letting them tell your story. 

As we see now with the whole debacle of the Critical Race Theory and things like that, there are individuals making a huge fuss about us Black folks learning about us. There is a huge battle between the government and us as a People learning about our own history. It’s funny how there is this whole initiative to fabricate, to cover up, to not let our story be known. So I think it’s really important, especially for us as African Americans to start reading right at home right. We can’t rely on just the school system to teach our children what it is that they need to know about their history and about themselves. I think it should start at home. 

It seems like your early reading experiences are symbolic of this very point. 

SD: For sure. When I was a kid, I knew about W.E.B. Du Bois and the Tuskegee Airmen and Booker T. Washington. And the very first report that I ever did in school was on Marcus Garvey. So at a very young age I was learning about history. I was learning about Mansa Musa, the richest man to ever live. So when I ask students now who’s the richest man to ever live, they might throw out a name like Elon Musk or Bill Gates.   I'm like, no. You need to learn about Mansa Musa who was an African king who ruled the Mali Empire which is now modern day Ghana. He made all of his wealth through salt and gold. That’s why the West Coast of Africa is called the Gold Coast. 

So what’s your larger message here?

SD: I believe all of us have a vested responsibility to be proactive about learning these things on our own, whether it be for ourselves or our kids. Because they are certainly not teaching this stuff in schools. It was through my own knowledge, my own research, my own investigation that I learned these things. 

I’m curious as to how your extensive travel experiences have intersected with the books you’ve read. 

SD: I’ve had the privilege of visiting many countries over the course of my life. For example,  I’ve been to Robben Island on three separate occasions to do the whole tour around that prison where NelsonMandela was in prison for 27 years. So in addition to reading it in a book, I actually took a trip to the island of Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town in South Africa to do my own investigation. So again I think it becomes our responsibility to proactively seek these experiences out.  But I think it first starts at home with us making it a priority to learn about our own history.

Are there any bookstores that you’ve visited that have particularly lit you up over the years?  

SD: I think it was maybe 2021 before I moved from Houston. There was a young Black lady, I want to say her name was like Raven or something like that. She opened up a Black bookstore right on the outskirts of Houston in a suburban area. It is an amazing two story bookstore with a coffee shop. Every author in there was a Black author. We did a whole crowdfunding campaign to get her up and running and then I was there for the grand opening. I was volunteering for her. 

Can you elaborate a bit more about what that experience was like? 

SD: When you walk into a bookstore and every book has a Black face on it, something that reminds us of Black culture, for me as a woman of color it is so liberating. It was amazing. I mean I sat there for hours just going through all of the different books because I had never been in a place like that where all of the books were written by Black people. They even had a section for children and all of the children's books were written by Black authors. I had no idea there were so many Black authors. 

Any final thoughts as we close on this in terms of just the immense power that books can have on our lives? 

SD: I just think it’s important that we read more.  People who don’t read, I always tell them that if it’s in a book, I’ll always find it. Because I’m always reading and exploring new books. I’ve always believed that every reader is a leader. I even ask people I'm hiring about what was the last book they’ve read or are currently reading. That tells me a lot about a person and their daily habits, that one question. I’ve even had situations where there might be somebody I’m interested in dating and they say that they don’t like to read. Well, that’s kinda a deal breaker. 

People are always saying to me, “how do you find all this time to read?” I tell them that I make the time. I read in the mornings; I read in the evenings; I literally schedule time throughout my day to pick up a book and read. That’s the importance I place upon it. 

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