Conde went to a public school in Seattle and was part of the first busing integration program.

However, his first year of schooling was in Chicago's west side, where he was exposed to African-American, Latino and Polish communities.

He grew up pressured to assimilate in the American culture in order to survive.

He learned to draw in Florence, Italy and studied painting in Monflanquin, France.

Indeed, that is Conde's whole goal: to remind us of the hard truths under the surface of our biases and judgments, lest we forget what happened to Trayvon," Jake Bittle, November 20, 2013[3] His work is featured in the Chicago Contemporary.