Intention Meets Opportunity: How Black Talent Builds Community

I'm not supposed to be here. From my time growing up in Atlanta all the way into my freshman year at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, my perspective was always rooted in Blackness. Black faces, Black ideas, Black problems, Black solutions. I thrived in that incubator for years, giving and taking from “the culture” we all love, but there was one thing persistently missing: Black opportunity. Florida A&M—or FAMU, to those who know it well—is one of the many outstanding HBCUs without an advertising program. So for me, Madison Avenue was a distant concept, something I knew only from movies like Boomerang and What Women Want. Those movies were my “access,” and from the outside looking in, I saw an industry built on collaborative mind-melding: a utopian mix of business and creativity where the best idea could win. It looked awesome, and to be frank, I had some ideas of my own I wanted to throw in that mix. I knew where I was headed; I just didn’t know how to get there. So I did what I could, studying marketing and sociology in college, Frankensteining my way to my North Star, all the while keeping my head on the swivel for that ever-elusive Black opportunity. Over a decade later, I now spend my days collaborating and mind-melding at that very same corner of business and creativity I’d set out to join. It wasn’t always this cut and dried, though. There were plenty of supportive people and programs along the way that helped make this happen. And because of their dedication to intention, I was able to forge opportunities to grow. OK, back to FAMU, where, like everyone else in the School of Business and Industry, I was looking for a summer internship. Roles in finance, accounting and supply-chain management weren’t for me, but advertising was. I knew it, even if I didn’t know how I’d get there. So I did what anyone would do next: I literally Googled “advertising internship,” found MAIP, applied and was accepted in 2012. The 4A's Multicultural Advertising Intern Program has spent over 40 years showing people like me (there are almost 4,000 of us now) the far-reaching implications of professional exposure. MAIP gives young, diverse talent the chance to show up and work, even in spaces that haven’t always had our best interest at heart. That same summer, they named me Intern of the Year. And then the momentum started to build. As a reward for the distinction, MAIP sent me to the Adcolor Conference that fall as a member of its inaugural Adcolor Futures class, which had been built out by Haywood Watkins III. He had been MAIP’s Intern of the Year the summer before me and created the Futures program to offer additional support for up-and-coming talent. The Adcolor Conference, of course, is the annual flagship gathering of the creative industries in the name of championing diversity and inclusion. It was this early exposure to seeing us come together and celebrate ourselves that first afforded me a glimpse into how our futures could take shape collectively. “In advertising, there seem to be those more interested in controlling diverse talent than nourishing it,” Watkins told me recently when I asked him about building Futures. “I gained so much from Adcolor; I wanted to provide that opportunity to other young people.” And that’s the thing about that word “opportunity”: If you’re moving with intention, your next big thing can literally be right under your nose. Well, as fate would have it, it was during those few days as a Future that I met Larry Yarrell, co-founder of the Marcus Graham Project. He and Lincoln Stephens began the project—named after the Boomerang protagonist(!) —almost 15 years ago with the idea that no one was going to do anything about the dearth of Black talent in the industry if Black talent themselves didn’t. Now they’ve created a pipeline that rivals that of a major league farm system, full of hungry individuals ready to get in the game when their number is called. That’s what their iCR8 Boot Camp has done summer after summer, and what Locomotus, their new talent-sourcing tool, will build upon. During my time there, I learned how big of a role Black entrepreneurship and creative problem solving can play in the grander scheme of Black opportunity. “What we know is that the time of waiting for the industry to do what is necessary has expired,” Yarrell told me last month. “We’re no longer asking for our voices to be uplifted.” Again, when opportunity is met with intention, your chances of success will always and undoubtedly increase. The good news is that all three of these programs are hell bent on blazing trails where there are none. The better news? They aren’t alone. In 2017, I was named a finalist for the Bill Sharp Award. “It takes a special kind of resilience to endure and thrive in environments where you’re being overlooked and undersupported,” says Dianne Sharp-Parks, executive leader at the Bill Sharp Foundation. Her organization carries on the legacy of her father, an agency owner who founded the Basic Ad Course with the 4A's, a first-ever curriculum helping multicultural talent understand marketing. She and her team have dedicated the past several years to identifying Black talent and assisting them in their quest for “access.” What an honor it is to have been in that number! The folks behind these programs are now my colleagues. Their plan was and remains this: create opportunity with fierce intention, over and over again. However, as beautifully encompassing as these initiatives are, we’re often reminded that being Black is cool … until it isn’t. That thought alone is what drives these people, their programs and our future. Today, I find myself back in Atlanta, still as cloaked in my Blackness as before. I am a more-seasoned marketing professional, but my mindset remains the same: get your hands dirty and be a part of the solution. For the past year and a half, I’ve worked in Mailchimp’s marketing department doing exactly that. Whether on the clock, supporting price relief projects for our small businesses fighting racial injustice, or working passionately with our employee resource groups and intern programs in other moments, I have never forgotten just how far an opportunity can take someone at any stage of their career. This is why last September I was thrilled to represent Mailchimp at Adcolor as an Ambassador to the Futures program I saw birthed seven years prior. Seeing the fruits of their labor in the present day was a full-circle moment, and proof that no effort is wasted when fighting the good fight. I have a feeling it won’t be the last time. Now every time I roll my sleeves up to try and move the needle, that college freshman still somewhere in me smiles from ear to ear, and I smile right back. So, yeah: I am supposed to be here. Maybe you are, too. Here’s to the next decade and beyond of moving mountains in the name of opportunity and intention. Click here to read more of this special series: Black Is the Answer. Black Is the Future.