Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting profitable girls who’ve made main profession modifications—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content material officer at Who What Put on, every episode provides you a direct line to girls who’re recreation changers of their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anyplace you get your podcasts to remain tuned.
Lots of our Second Life tales begin with a spot in a selected market during which extremely proficient entrepreneurs discover a answer to fill the necessity, and Imani Ellis is the epitome of this case. In 2016, after a profitable stint within the NBC Web page Program and dealing in communications at Bravo, Ellis acknowledged a spot—there wasn’t an area the place Black and Brown creatives might join, share assets, and develop collectively. As an alternative of ready for the neighborhood to emerge, she created it herself. From her lounge in Harlem, she based The Inventive Collective, an area designed to uplift younger creatives of colour by providing them networking alternatives and important assets. And, importantly, she did all of it whereas working her method as much as the VP degree at her day job.
In 2017, Ellis launched CultureCon, an annual convention that rapidly turned the centerpiece of The Inventive Collective’s mission. Over the previous seven years, she has scaled the Collective and CultureCon into platforms of immense affect, evolving right into a hub of inspiration, providing panels, workshops, job festivals, and distinctive activations to empower its attendees. The occasion has attracted distinguished figures like Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, and Regina King, solidifying its position as a beacon for creatives of colour.
Ellis’s dedication and entrepreneurial spirit led her to new beginnings and endings. In 2022, she made the daring choice to depart NBC Common, the place she had climbed the ranks from web page to vice chairman of communications, unscripted leisure publicity, in simply 10 years. Her leap into full-time entrepreneurship allowed her to additional increase and diversify her enterprise ventures, with a transparent deal with community-building and empowering underrepresented voices.
Take heed to the most recent episode of Second Life to find how, by creating areas for others to thrive in, Ellis has constructed not solely a thriving enterprise but additionally a motion that continues to encourage and assist the subsequent technology of creatives.
Subsequent: Meet Chelsea Hirschhorn, the Founder and CEO of Frida, Who Is Remodeling Parenthood
