1st in the line-up and measuring in at 6.2” we present to you Johan Khalillian (31) This International Public Speaker, Model & Actor has appeared on The Tyra Banks Show , Fox News

& The Today Show to name just a few. This Puerto-Rican/Persian brother grew up in the predominately Latino neighbourhood of Humboldt Park, Chicago (a stones throw away from the notorious gangland vicinity ‘Cabrini Green’ were his uncle was a Latin King) Johan now resides in Silver Lake (LA) and oh yeah...he's a VIRGIN! But we’ll get to that later. (Watch him in action in this here vid)

It's Johan’s first visit to London, he’s in town as a keynote speaker for the ‘What’s Love ’ conference. As an international conversationalist he connects with audiences of all ages & racial backgrounds using his life story to encourage them to make healthy choices and pursue their passions.

We’re in a restaurant on Charlotte Street and Johan’s cracking me up, we start shooting questions at each other (to the point where I forget who’s interviewing who, but it’s all good) he seems relaxed and cool natured. He brings along a colleague/friend who starts teasing him about his natural rosy cheeks, he calls her aggressive, she retaliates…but they assure me it's ‘all love’ and with that said we order some grub and get down to business.

So how are you finding London?
I love London. I love the historic feel to the city. In LA, NYC & Chicago it’s a rarity to find 1st generation immigrants so it’s really cool to see that still happening over here in the UK, I like the whole multi-cultural aspect.

Johan seems to have clocked the trademark 'air of superiority' adopted by most Londoners.

I’ve noticed that there seems to be a lot of American Vs British tension. It’s like you [Londoners] feel the need to show us what true culture really is (laughs) like we need to observe you in order to learn how to speak right, walk right etc (laughs) I get that feeling sometimes, you know what I mean…

Yes.

He also recently experienced TFL’s delightful customer service practices.

Myself and a friend got on a London bus, and asked the driver whether she could take us to the Premier Inn hotel? And she just looked at us and shouted [Johan does a semi-convincing London accent] 'I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE SAYING!' she threw up her hands and went crazy. We were like 'Man. That was really drastic'

LOL it sounded as if you guys were asking her to deviate from the standard bus route and swing by your hotel. But don’t feel bad, TFL tend to treat everybody with contempt.

But cutting to the chase, you're a 31 year old virgin...how has the journey been thus far? Man. Big-time struggle…It’s very difficult. I think some people who live this lifestyle try to downplay the difficult nature of it. But for me, being open & honest about walking in the struggle and embracing the difficult times, helps me to communicate the fact that this has to be a conviction for you.

So what keeps you going?
The dream that I’m pursuing. I want to make a difference in the world and help people. My story has touched so many lives and if I mess up, then it’s going to affect those people in a negative way. So what helps me to move forward is just knowing that my life is powerful and the stronger I stay, the more compelling my story becomes.

What kind of reaction do you encounter when you tell people you’re a virgin? There was this one guy who said ' what the f*** I can’t believe this’ he then rang his sister on the phone…right in front of me and said ‘You won’t believe what type of person I have in my car right now, this guy is a virgin and I’m about to convince him to hook up with you, because I don’t trust any other guy' (laughs)

Mothers must be throwing their daughters at you.

You don’t know how many people have seriously brought their daughters to me…
…Seriously? I was joking
It happens all the time. I was speaking in New Mexico and met a woman who lived in China. After the event she messaged me on Facebook saying ‘I want to connect you to my daughter who’s based in NYC I hope you guys will get along’ and I was like man! So this the agenda? (laughs)

So what’s a typical day like for you?
Man in my life, there’s no such thing as ‘typical’ I think that’s the beauty of the life that I get to live.

Since the big move from Chi-town, how are you managing to sustain this new LA lifestyle?

Well I live right in the heart of LA a couple of minutes from Hollywood, it’s a really cool, hipster, transient area. It’s not rich but it’s not really that poor it’s good middle ground, plus I’m pretty good with money, I don’t live lavishly or do crazy things and I don’t drink or go to the clubs. I spend money on food & clothes…that’s where all my money goes.

One of your Re-Tweets read ‘they say there’s someone for everyone but I think mine got run over by a bus’
Oh you saw that? (Laughs)
Yeah but I would’ve thought that living in LA would mean you’d never be short of offers from the ladies...so what’s up…what does a woman have to do in order to get your attention?

(laughs) My friends give me beef about this, some are like ‘dude you’re way too selective’ they tell me to dumb it down a little bit. Others are like ‘Nah you gotta hold on to your standards and fight for what you’re looking for’ So that makes me question myself like perhaps I am too picky, I’m always back & forth.

Johan makes no bones about the fact he’s on the lookout for his future wife. At present, there's a UK-wide search afoot; reminiscent of a certain saga involving a glass slipper ( okay slight exaggeratio n) But if you think you know who his wifey may be? Then "please contact him ASAP" (his words…not mine LOL)

So in terms of a potential partner, how important to you are her values & beliefs?

The main thing for me is my Faith [Christianity] it’s the core of who I am, so I have to be able to share that with my wife and that’s just not a compromise. There’s a girl who I was really digging she pretty much had everything I was looking for, outside of that one component. We vibed & clicked and everything. But she was trying to convert me and I was trying to convert her, so it just didn’t work.

Okay so what else is important?

Ambition. Something that she’s focused on. I’ve had women come into my life who want to latch-on to what I‘m doing, but I’d like to be able to change the landscape of what marriage has been known to be; whereby the woman just supports the man. I wanna be able to serve my wife in what she feels she is destined to do and help her make those things happen…

...That's some progressive thought

I guess my Mother sparked that thought. At her age she's still trying to figure out what she’s supposed to do with her life, and a big part of that was the traditional gender role my Father played in the house ya’know, I provide/you stay at home' I don’t wanna perpetuate that. I thoroughly believe that everybody has a destiny and I wanna make sure that I fight for my wife’s destiny, in as much as I believe she’s gonna fight for mine.

Johan share's a couple of funny dating anecdotes

Bad Date #1 - The Intellectually Challenged

I love talking that’s how I make a living, so I gotta have a conversational wife who is intellectual and has opinions of her own. When I was at North Eastern University there was an attractive Puerto Rican girl who I had a couple of classes with, I really dug her so I asked her out. Firstly she ordered a really small salad so that showed me she wasn’t being real with me, then during the conversation I started sharing all the stuff I’d learned about in Inter-Cultural Communications class i.e. Individualism, Collectivism etc and I was just breaking it all down. Then I looked at her and asked 'so what do you think?’ and she looked at me said ‘That’s tremendous’ and left it at that.

(we all burst into laughter)

So I was like…‘Is that all you’ve got for me?’ cos she basically took the biggest word in her vocabulary to say ‘that was good’ . I would’ve been okay if she had asked me to elaborate, because I think that’s what it was…she didn’t know what I was talking about.

Bad Date #2 - The One With Amnesia

There was another girl I went on a date with who had a lot of great qualities, and during the conversation I asked her a very open question to which I think you can take in any direction. I said ‘So what are you learning in life right now?’ and ya’know, you can say whatever you want…you can even make something up. However her response was ‘I don’t remember any details’ and I was like ‘You don’t remember any details of your own life?’ Even though we get to create the details of our lives. I wasn’t trying to put her on the spot but hopefully she was learning something. So yeah it’s important to have somebody who I can really share my mind with...someone who can challenge my mind.

"I see a lot of women…especially those from a faith perspective, just agree with what the husband says, and I don’t think that helps any of us become better men"
"I would love for my wife to be a leader…traditionally, the man is supposed to lead and I believe that to a certain extent, but I also believe that whomever is calling the marriage to the highest level of sacrifice, is the person who should lead. It shouldn’t be a situation where if the idea comes from me then we'll do it, and if it comes from her then I’ll think about it"

Lil' Jo...Growing Up

Johan's parents divorced when hew was 2 yrs old and re-married each other when he was 17. He says "that's the reason why I have a 12 year old brother (laughs) As soon as they got back together they didn’t waste anytime. My brother is an aspiring Physicist, who loves the Beatles and he’s basically the smartest kid on the planet"

So what was it like growing up in Chicago?

I lived in a dodgy area of Chicago…
…Dodgy?
Yeah I had to throw it in there (laughs) but yeah historically Cabrini Green is probably one of the worst areas in America and I lived just 7 mins away in Humboldt Park. I grew up around a lot of gangs, drive-by shootings, drugs, seeing friends die…I witnessed some crazy things growing up in my neighbourhood.
...and your uncle?
He was a Latin King…big time gang member.

Break it down for me
Okay so there’re ‘People’ and there’re ‘Folks’ and my uncle was a part of People but we lived in Folks hood, so he was constantly beaten up and under fire from those who were after him. The area where we lived at the time was divided; whereby if you walked a couple of blocks you were in a new gang territory.

I was approached by a gang and I said to them ‘you know what...I just wanna play Basketball’ so they said ‘okay do your thing, make sure you’re doing good in school’ and they became my friends.

So how did you avoid becoming a victim of your environment?

One of the things was just seeing my uncle, I witnessed the destruction that his life caused and made a decision never to be like him. I was also a rebellious kid, and when you live in a dysfunctional world you wanna rebel against the dysfunction. So I wasn’t really that different from any other rebellious kid, I just rebelled in a different way.

So with your mother being Puerto Rican (catholic), and your father being Iranian (muslim) …what was the cultural/religious dynamic of your household?

Culturally, I’m more Latino because my Mothers side raised me, and by default when you're raised Puerto Rican...you’re Catholic, but for me that was nothing more than going to church 3 times a year. I also went to Catholic school my whole life, but that was like being in the midst of a religious experience without truly being connected to God. My father grew up in a muslim country but he was never really a practicing muslim, his journey to America was partly to break free from the oppression of that region.

When Johan Met Jesus

I remember being 19 years old and sitting on the train. My headphones were broken so I picked up the bible for the first time. I couldn’t understand anything it said, but then I went to the book of Galatians which said ‘life in the flesh is: hate, murder, envy, jealousy etc’ Automatically I felt an extremely overwhelming sense of conviction just fall upon me in the middle of the train. I’ve never taken a sip of alcohol in my life, never done drugs, I was a virgin and I’d never done any of the ‘bad things’ my friends were doing - but there I was on the train feeling like 'it was me’ so I stopped, paused and said my 1st authentic prayer. I said ‘I don’t know what this is God, but I don’t wanna be this type of person…what do I need to do?’ I continued reading and it went onto say ‘Life in the spirit is love, Joy, peace, kindness, self-control’ etc and automatically I felt a surge run through me and I felt like that was the life I wanted to live, and the person I wanted to become.

Then I said ‘I don’t know what to do next, all I know is that I wanna know you, follow you & be with you’ then I got hold of a free book entitled 'The Power For Living' where all these national sports stars were shared their testimonies, at the end it said if you wanna begin your journey with Jesus then just read this prayer, known as the ‘salvation prayer’ and my life changed.

A lot of people would define the moment when I read the prayer, as the time the conversion took place, but I know that I entered into my relationship with God whilst on that train and he changed me forever. People think that God wants us to go from immoral people to moral people, but I think what he did with me was take me from this guy who was very selfish, self-centred and without purpose - to someone who is now more focused on other people, someone with a destiny and a calling. I‘m continually changing & growing and the closer I get to him, the more I feel that my life is complete. So that’s been my faith experience so far.
Tell me about your work for the non-profit community CANDO in Chicago?
I’ve been working with CANDO for 3 years, they’re an organisation which deals with abstinence, nutrition, diabetes & obesity. Around 30 kids from under privileged areas of Chicago attend the camp each year. We teach them about all of the categories I mentioned and it’s been an amazing journey. The only thing is, the funding now in jeopardy so we’re trying resolve that.

So after all is said & done, how do you want to be remembered?

Taken from the film ‘Gattaca ’ [where a genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel] there’s a quote which says ‘I never saved anything for the swim back’ and that’s how I want to be remembered in everything that I do. I live passionately and give everything I have, because in the film that’s what set the brothers apart. One had the potential & physical talent, but the other had the passion which gave him an advantage. So that’s how I’d like to be known…having never saved anything for the swim back.

So what’s next for you?
I’m going to the Mahal Orphanage in the Philippines

and I’ll be speaking at the Idea Camp a conference in Las Vegas about sex & sexuality.

(A little birdy tells me Johan's lined up for the 2011 ‘What’s Love ’ conference in London, so keep an eye out)

That’s all Folks

From the City of Angels to the LDN Johan’s story causes quite a stir both on and off stage. His delivery is captivating, comedic & powerful and by the time this interview goes live it would’ve been just over a month since his first visit to the UK, however people are still buzzing off the positive impact...suffice to say he’s made his mark. Talking with him has definitely been an eye opener and as the dictaphone called time on my interview with the not-so-shy brother from The Chi, I got to thinking…I gained way more from this exchange then I’d bargained for.

Get in contact with Johan by doing any of the following:
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