Building Culture at Scale
What you’re watching is a moment. What it represents is a system.
At BET, the goal wasn’t just to produce events—it was to build a platform where culture, content, and community could meet at scale.
The BET Experience was designed as an ecosystem: arena-level concerts, immersive fan programming, conversations, and brand partnerships that felt additive—not disruptive. Each piece had to stand alone, but more importantly, work together.
Behind those two days was a year of design—how people move, where they engage, what holds their attention. Because the objective isn’t to fill space. It’s to create engagement that feels personal, even at scale.
That thinking has carried through my work with Red Bull and ESPN—building experiences that extend beyond the live moment into content, distribution, and monetization.
A great experience doesn’t end when it’s over. It expands.
That’s the work.
BET Experience Executive Overview:
Built and scaled a 125K+ attendee cultural platform driving audience growth and brand relevance
When Brand Becomes Part of the Culture
This is what effective brand integration looks like.
Not a logo. Not a placement. An experience.
At the BET Experience, the opportunity with Coca-Cola wasn’t just to show up—it was to belong. That meant building something rooted in culture, not layered on top of it.
We reimagined the spirit of 106 & Park—not as nostalgia, but as a living format. A space where performance, audience participation, and real-time energy come together.
The result: a moment where the crowd doesn’t just watch—they step into it.
An artist like Saweetie takes the stage.
A viral dance challenge becomes a live activation.
The audience becomes part of the content.
That’s the shift.
From brand presence → to brand participation.
From audience consumption → to audience involvement.
Because when it works, the brand disappears into the experience—and what people remember is how it felt.
That’s the standard I bring to partnerships:
Build from culture first.
Design for participation.
Let the brand earn its place in the moment.
Coca-Cola x BET (106 & Park Reimagined)
Transformed a global brand into a live cultural experience through audience participation and content capture
Embedding Brands Where Culture Already Lives
Some platforms don’t need to be built.
They need to be understood.
At Afropunk, the objective with Red Bull wasn’t to show up—it was to integrate into a space where identity, music, and community already exist at a high level.
Working with Danny Brown, the focus was on creating a moment that felt native to the audience—raw, expressive, and aligned with the energy of Afropunk.
That meant restraint as much as execution.
Let the artist lead.
Let the environment speak.
Let the brand support—not dominate.
Because in spaces like Afropunk, authenticity isn’t a strategy—it’s the baseline.
That’s the approach I bring to partnerships:
Understand the culture first.
Build within it—not around it.
And create moments where the brand earns its place.
AfroPunk X Danny Brown X Red Bull Sound Select
Activated a global brand inside Afropunk by building a culture-first music moment with breakout talent
Catching Culture Before It Breaks
This is what cultural timing looks like.
A live audience. A branded sports environment. A lineup that reflects where culture is right now—and where it’s going next.
At the BET Experience, the opportunity with Sprite was to build more than a celebrity game. It had to feel like a convergence point—music, sports, and entertainment all operating in the same moment.
The roster tells the story.
Snoop Dogg and Justin Bieber representing global visibility.
Rotimi and others bridging music and television.
And on the floor and mic, voices like Jemele Hill and Michael Smith bringing credibility and commentary that matched the moment.
But what matters most is this:
Before they became global stars, Chloe x Halle were on that stage—delivering a national anthem performance that signaled exactly where culture was heading.
That’s not luck. That’s curation.
Understanding who has it before the market confirms it.
Placing them in moments that accelerate that trajectory.
And surrounding it all with an experience that feels culturally complete.
Because the goal isn’t just to reflect culture.
It’s to recognize it early—and build the stage before everyone else catches up.
Sprite Celebrity Game & Dunk Contest - National Anthem by Chloe x Halle
Curated a cross-cultural sports and music platform featuring global talent—and identifying artists before breakout
Building Culture From Scratch
Sometimes the assignment isn’t to produce what exists.
It’s to replace it.
When Sneaker Con wasn’t part of the BET Experience, there was a clear gap. Sneaker culture is inseparable from hip hop—but without the right platform, it doesn’t show up the way it should.
So we built one.
Kicksperience wasn’t just an event—it was designed as a living ecosystem for sneaker culture inside BETX. A space where buying, selling, trading, music, and art could all exist together, authentically.
With support from Sprite and collaboration with DJ Hed, we rooted the experience in Los Angeles—its sound, its style, its emerging artists.
The structure mattered:
A vendor marketplace and trading pit that reflected real sneaker economy behavior.
Customization labs, live art, and battles that made participation part of the experience.
A performance platform showcasing local artists before they broke.
Everything was intentional.
Because sneaker culture isn’t just about product.
It’s about identity. Community. Status. Expression.
And if you’re going to build something for that audience, it has to feel like it was always supposed to be there.
That’s the work I do:
Identify the cultural gap.
Build the platform.
Make it feel inevitable.
Kicksperience (Sneaker Culture Platform)
Built a sneaker and street culture ecosystem from scratch—integrating commerce, content, and live experience
Curating Culture in the Right Rooms
This is what it looks like when emerging culture meets the right environment.
An artist. A live band. A room designed for connection. And an audience willing to lean in.
This performance was part of a live series I built through Seneca’s Village—designed to give rising artists a platform not just to perform, but to be experienced.
At Soho House, the objective wasn’t just to host an event. It was to curate a moment where sound, space, and audience aligned.
The references are clear—Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Lenny Kravitz—but what matters is how those influences are translated into something current, something live, something felt in the room.
That’s the work.
Finding artists with a point of view.
Placing them in environments that elevate that point of view.
And building a series that audiences trust as a source of discovery.
Because the right room doesn’t just amplify talent.
It validates it.
And when that happens, you’re not just producing events.
You’re building a platform where culture can emerge in real time.
Soho House / Seneca’s Village Live Series
Positioned emerging artists in premium cultural spaces through curated live performance platforms
Elevating Conversation to Culture
Not every moment needs a stage.
Some need a platform.
With Genius Talks at the BET Experience, the goal was to reimagine something iconic—Inside the Actors Studio—through the lens of hip hop, sports, and cultural influence.
This wasn’t about interviews. It was about access.
Bringing together voices like Kobe Bryant, Janelle Monáe, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Erykah Badu—and creating space for them to step outside performance and into perspective.
What made it powerful was timing.
Kobe Bryant, in what would become his final season, speaking candidly about evolution, failure, and what comes next.
That’s not something you can manufacture.
That’s something you have to recognize—and build around.
With support from AT&T, the experience became more than a talk series. It became a premium cultural forum—where influence, insight, and audience engagement converged.
Because when done right, conversation isn’t filler.
It’s content. It’s access. It’s legacy in real time.
That’s the approach:
Take a proven format.
Reframe it through culture.
And deliver moments that matter beyond the stage.
Genius Talks (Kobe, Badu, Monáe, Mayweather)
Reframed a legacy interview format into a premium, sponsor-backed cultural conversation platform
Documenting the Moments That Define Culture
Before something is legendary, it’s uncertain.
That’s what makes documenting it powerful.
With Mobb Deep: The Infamous Documentary, the goal wasn’t just to revisit a classic—it was to capture the conditions that created it. The pressure. The environment. The shift from potential to permanence.
Mobb Deep weren’t guaranteed anything. Their first album underperformed. They were dropped from their label. And yet, what followed—The Infamous—would go on to define a sound, a perspective, and an era of hip hop.
Dark. Minimal. Uncompromising.
What the documentary reveals is how that sound was built—often in constrained environments, shaped by Queensbridge, refined through instinct, and elevated through collaboration with figures like Q-Tip.
It’s also a reminder of how close iconic moments come to not happening at all—like “Shook Ones Pt. II,” a track that almost didn’t make it.
That’s the value of this kind of work.
Not just celebrating what’s known—but uncovering what was uncertain.
Partnering with Red Bull Music Academy, the documentary became part of a broader cultural archive—connecting film, live conversation, and performance into a deeper exploration of influence.
Because culture doesn’t just need to be created.
It needs to be documented—so the next generation understands where it came from, and why it mattered.
That’s the lens I bring:
Identify what’s foundational.
Capture it with honesty.
And build narratives that preserve its impact over time.
Mobb Deep Documentary
Produced a cultural documentary preserving the legacy of one of hip hop’s most influential albums
Recognizing Talent Before the Market Does
Some of the most important signals in culture aren’t obvious at the time.
This project brought together a set of artists who would go on to define their fields—before the broader market caught up.
Working with Pharoahe Monch and Jill Scott, the objective was to create something that matched the depth and intent of W.A.R. (We Are Renegades)—a project rooted in message, identity, and resistance.
Behind the camera, Terence Nance—well before broader recognition through his later work—brought a visual language that pushed beyond traditional music video formats.
On screen, early appearances from Caleb McLaughlin added another layer—raw talent that would later reach global audiences.
That combination matters.
Because the work isn’t just about execution—it’s about instinct.
Seeing who and what has cultural weight before it’s validated.
Creating platforms that reflect that early.
And building content that holds up as those artists evolve.
That’s a consistent throughline in how I operate:
Identify early.
Build with intention.
Let the work age into relevance.
Still Standing Music Video (Executive, With Edge)
Produced a culturally significant music video featuring breakout talent before global recognition
Telling Stories From the Inside
Some stories you produce.
Some stories you’ve lived.
This film was rooted in Bedford-Stuyvesant—my neighborhood. Not as a backdrop, but as a living, evolving environment shaped by community, tension, and change.
At its center is something simple: a young girl’s stolen bike.
But what unfolds is more complex.
A mother forced to make a decision that divides her neighbors.
A community navigating trust, identity, and economic change.
And a question underneath it all—what does it mean to protect innocence in a place that’s changing around you?
The story becomes a lens into gentrification—not as an abstract concept, but as something personal. Something that shows up in conversations, in conflict, in how people see each other.
My role extended beyond production.
Casting faces that felt real to the neighborhood.
Securing locations that carried history.
Shaping the physical world—props, design, tone—so it reflected truth, not interpretation.
Because authenticity here wasn’t optional.
It was the point.
Being selected as a finalist for the American Black Film Festival wasn’t just recognition of the film—it was validation that the story resonated beyond the block it came from.
That’s the work I care about most:
Stories that feel specific—but speak universally.
Experiences that reflect community—not just represent it.
Because when you tell a story from the inside, people don’t just watch it.
They recognize it.
Bed-Stuy Short Film (ABFF Finalist): The Cycle
Produced an award-recognized film capturing community, conflict, and change in Brooklyn that aired on HBO
Turning Legacy Into Living Experience
Some stories aren’t just told.
They’re carried.
This four-part series was built to capture the Black student experience at Columbia Business School—not as a single narrative, but as a continuum spanning more than 100 years.
It begins with Theodora Rutherford, the first Black student in 1923, navigating an environment where access didn’t guarantee inclusion.
And it moves through generations of students who learned to operate, lead, and succeed—often as the only ones in the room.
What emerges is a dual reality:
Isolation and opportunity.
Pressure and access.
Difference as both challenge and advantage.
This wasn’t just a content series—it was the foundation for a broader platform.
A fireside chat.
A DEI roundtable.
A homecoming gathering.
A conference.
A gala.
Each event extended the story—turning history into conversation, and conversation into community.
Because the goal wasn’t just to document the past.
It was to activate it.
To show how a small but powerful group—sometimes just a few percentage points of a class—helped shape networks, influence institutions, and ultimately impact the broader business world.
That’s the work:
Take institutional history.
Center the human experience within it.
And build programming that makes that legacy visible, relevant, and alive.
Because when done right, legacy isn’t static.
It moves forward.
Columbia Business School 100/50 Embracing Our Legacy Series
Built a multi-platform storytelling series translating 100 years of Black student legacy into live programming
One of Few: The Fight for Visability
A Unique Family: The BBSA Community
The First Spark: Planting A Seed for the Future
Redefining What a Gala Can Be
This wasn’t just a gala.
It was a first.
The 100/50 Celebration Gala at Columbia Business School marked the first time the institution produced a signature event centered specifically on its Black community—students, alumni, faculty, and staff.
That meant the standard approach wouldn’t work.
It had to feel intentional. Specific. Culturally fluent.
The objective was clear: create an experience that honored legacy, reflected the audience in the room, and translated that energy into meaningful support.
The result: over $500,000 raised for scholarships for underrepresented students.
Everything was designed with that audience in mind.
The venue—Ziegfeld Theatre—set the tone for scale and significance.
The program balanced recognition and momentum—awards, storytelling, and a live auction that drove participation.
The environment reflected culture through cuisine, music, and atmosphere that felt authentic—not institutional.
And then, the transition.
From formal program → to celebration.
With D-Nice, the room shifted into something more communal—less like a fundraiser, more like a shared cultural moment.
That distinction is the difference.
Because when an audience sees itself in the experience, engagement changes.
Giving becomes personal.
Participation becomes inevitable.
That’s the work:
Understand the audience.
Design beyond the template.
And build experiences that don’t just meet expectations—but redefine them.
100/50 Celebration Gala
Designed and led a first-of-its-kind gala generating $500K+ in scholarship funding