BLD PWR (think: build power) Day 2025 was a hectic one. Starting late in the afternoon, many African Americans flocked to the Ion District, a technology park in Midtown Houston affiliated with Rice University, to take part in this pre-Juneteenth gathering. Vendors of color were both inside and outside, selling everything from clothing to comic books to charcuterie spreads. A DJ was out on the patio spinning tunes. And Kendrick Sampson, the man who’d put the day together, was down below in the indoor forum, doing quick interviews with local media outlets and online influencers.
Rocking a baseball cap, T-shirt, shorts, and a few gold teeth, Sampson looked more like he was organizing a pool party than an uplifting event for Houston’s Black community. But not only is he the founder of BLD PWR, a nonprofit organization launched in 2018, he was also in charge of keeping the event as lit as possible. “It took about a year to set it up, a couple months booking things and figuring out venues and all of that,” Sampson said before getting whisked away to emcee the live festivities on the patio.
Sampson is an activist, but he’s also an entertainer—an actor, to be exact. Born and raised to biracial parents in Houston, currently dividing his time between Missouri City and Los Angeles, Sampson has built up quite an on-screen résumé. He’s done guest shots in many hour-long dramas, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Vampire Diaries, and How to Get Away with Murder. He’s appeared as the love interest in the drama feature Miss Juneteenth and the rom-com Something from Tiffany’s. He just finished playing the late, great music legend Quincy Jones in Michael, director Antoine Fuqua’s upcoming biopic on frequent Jones collaborator Michael Jackson. But fans of the HBO dramedy Insecure will know him as Nathan Campbell, the bipolar Southern transplant who has a relationship with lead character Issa (star and creator Issa Rae) in later seasons.
