I teach machines how to think. I've spent my whole life learning how to feel.

What happens when a builder of machines becomes a student of his own heart?

Hey, I'm Jermaine.

I'm Jermaine Peguese. A problem-solving engineer from Detroit. I build with the most advanced technology of our time, and I point it at the oldest reason there is: taking care of my people and enjoying the city that made me. I came up selling candy out a driveway in Detroit and I never stopped building. I'm not the loudest man in the room. I'm the one who makes sure everybody in it leaves better than they came. I started Pathworth in 2016 from one question I couldn't shake: what's my path worth? The NAACP is where I serve. Under all of it, I'm a son, a brother, and a friend still learning how to live. Stick around. You'll see what I mean.

Detroit · 2023

NAACP Detroit

Meet the man before you meet the work.

Hey, I'm Jermaine. I grew up in Detroit gluing boxes for nine dollars and twenty-five cents an hour, sweeping floors one square at a time until they were done. I didn't come from money. I didn't have connections. I didn't have a tech degree or one person in my corner who'd already done what I was trying to do.

What I had was one thing I couldn't shake. I could walk into a room with no plan and see the whole thing finished before anyone else even started. I just didn't have a name for it yet.

So at the age when most people stop starting over, I went back to school and earned a construction management degree that took me fifteen years to finish, paying my own way. Then I spent twenty years walking into rooms with no floor under them and building the thing that made everyone in them rise. The largest sit-down dinner in the world, about 4,000 guests on a single night. A chapter I grew from nineteen people to more than a hundred and twenty-five, and I met every one of them at orientation. On Memorial Day weekend 2022, we took home Chapter of the Year and Model Chapter of the Year. And when AI showed up, I didn't run from it. I built my own AI workforce and put it in the hands of everyday people, until one student told me she cleared more than ten thousand dollars from one idea.

Here's the part nobody tells you. For twenty years I set everyone else up to win and let them put their name on it. I stayed in the back. And the wins kept coming anyway. The tools changed. The titles changed. The credit went to other people. The one thing that never moved was the man who can see the whole floor and put the people on it in position to score. That's what travels. Change the room, change the year, change the technology, the move stays the same.

That's the move I'm handing you. My mission now is simple. Take the people the world counts out and put them in position to win. And step out from the back to finally put my own name on the work.

You were built for this. You already have what it takes. You just haven't been shown the whole floor yet. That's what I'm here for.

Still Linda's son.

Where should we start?

The four characters, one through-line.

Every one of these is a character with a mask. Each mask covers a different part of how I move through the world. Put them together and you've got the whole man. You've got me.

Chairman of AI · Neo

The Matrix is the system everybody else takes for granted. Neo is the one who learns to see the code instead of the picture. Bullets stop for him because he reads the logic running underneath the whole thing.

For me, that's AI. Most people look at it and see magic, or they see a threat. I see structure. I see how it actually runs and where it breaks. Being the Chairman of AI was never about being the smartest man in the room. It's about being the calmest one in the room, the one who can read the system in real time and translate it for the people who don't have that vision yet.

Neo took the red pill on purpose. He went where it hurt so he could see clearly. That's how I carry AI to the people who usually get left out of the conversation.

Community Builder · Black Panther

T'Challa is the king of a place outsiders don't see clearly. Wakanda looks like one thing from the outside and is something else entirely on the inside. Black excellence, ancestral responsibility, protect the people, protect the mission, hold the throne for the ones who built it.

For me, that's Detroit. The NAACP, RPX Michigan, NLC, the back-to-school drives, the Freedom Fund. The work that never makes a headline but holds the city up. I don't lead in the community for clout. I lead because the kingdom belongs to the people who built it, and somebody has to protect that. T'Challa fights with claws when he has to and with diplomacy when he can. I move the same way.

Speaking & Workshops · Iron Man

Tony Stark builds the platform and then commands the room. He's the engineer who can also be the showman. He invented the suit, and he also walked out on a stage and said "I am Iron Man" out loud. He can stand in front of senators or villains and hold the room, because he actually knows what he's talking about.

For me, that's the keynotes, the workshops, the trainings. The suit is the platform I built. The room is the audience. I can engineer the content from scratch and deliver it live. I don't read off a script. I walk in knowing the work, and I let the room learn out loud with me.

Meet Jermaine · Batman

Bruce Wayne is the man underneath. Shaped by loss, a mother most of all. He works the dark hours. He built the cave out of his own pain and turned that pain into a tool. He never broadcasts the grief. The mask is the public face. Pulling the cowl back is the most intimate thing he does in the whole story.

For me, that's Linda. Tennessee State. The wilderness years. The car parked on Warren and 3rd, and the contract I made with myself in it. The MAiNe Behind The Mental. Meet Jermaine is the page where the cowl comes off. Not all the way. On my terms. With dignity. But it comes off.

All four are characters who chose the work for reasons bigger than themselves. Not one of them got handed the seat. Every one of them had a moment where he decided to carry something. Neo took the pill. T'Challa took the throne after his father. Stark walked out of that cave a different man. Bruce buried his parents and went into the cave on purpose.

That's the spine of this whole site. Four masks, one man underneath, and every mask was shaped by a moment where I picked up something heavy on purpose and never put it down.

Want to look around first? Head back to the front door and pick a doorway from the top.

The road that built the man.

Six chapters on the reel. Drag or tap an arrow to move through.

1988 · 2005

The Foundation

I grew up on Detroit's west side. A blue tarp over a hole in the roof, dishes washed in the basement, and the most kids on the block out front every night till the streetlights came on. My pops handed me a case of candy and a driveway. My mom protected the money in a bucket and I counted it after dark. That was my first business. I never stopped building.

2006 · 2012

Tennessee State

I left Detroit at eighteen to be free. Found a brother in Sean off a door he held open my first week. Got evicted, broke an ankle, buried a friend, dropped out three times, and grew all the way up doing it. Freedom taught me what freedom costs.

2012 · 2018

The Wilderness

Transferred to Wayne State and dropped out again. The family business shut down in 2014. Door-to-door sales. Cars dying on me. Twenty-nine years old, turning thirty, gluing boxes together for nine dollars and twenty-five cents an hour, saving every dime for a car. The lowest stretch I ever had, and the one that taught me who I am without a title.

2016

Pathworth Begins

I started Pathworth Consulting and Solutions out of one question I couldn't shake: what's my path worth? I've been answering it ever since.

2019 · 2022

The Rebuild

Went back to Wayne State through the Warrior Way Back program, and this time I refused to quit. Started at the NAACP Detroit Branch. Became founding chapter president of RPX Michigan. Crossed the stage with my construction management degree in December 2021, my mother in the crowd. She passed nine months later. I carry that one with me.

2023 · Present

The Chairman

Seen in good rooms.

Where the work has shown up. Press features, partner orgs, places that carry the name.

feature Shoutout Atlanta feature Canvas Rebel press The Detroit News education Wayne State University civic NAACP Detroit Branch partner Verizon civic Black Executive Directors of Detroit civic Grow Detroit's Young Talent

Stay close.

Four doors. Pick what fits.

Book a Working Session.

An hour. Just us. Tell me what's stuck.

The Rebalance Drop.

Once a month. What I'm building, reading, watching.

The Bio.

Everything I do, on one page.

Direct Contact.

runit@jermainepeguese.com

Still Linda's son.