Politics and Prose: The Black Agenda with Anna Gifty x April Reign
Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman is an award-winning researcher, entrepreneur, and author hailing from Ghana and Maryland. Currently, she is a graduate student at Harvard Kennedy School studying public policy. She is the co-founder of The Sadie Collective, the only non-profit organization addressing the underrepresentation of Black women in economics, finance, and policy, as well as the co-founder of the viral and award-winning digital campaign #BlackBirdersWeek. Her advocacy, research, and commentary lie at the intersection of social justice and quantitative analysis and are featured widely by media outlets such as Bloomberg, NPR, Teen Vogue, Slate, and The New York Times. To date, she is the youngest recipient for a CEDAW Women's Rights Award by the UN Convention on the Elimination all forms of Discrimination Against Women.
April Reign is a lawyer, a sought-after advocate, consultant, writer, speaker and interviewer regarding issues of diversity and inclusion, and on the representation of all marginalized communities in the arts, tech and entertainment. Her work includes constant dialogue with media as well as collaborations with Procter & Gamble, Twitter, Google NextGen, AARP, HBO and more. She is the the creator of the viral hashtag-turned-movement, #OscarsSoWhite and has been challenging the lack of representation of marginalized communities in Hollywood and beyond since 2015. She has now partnered with Overture Global, a New York-based media company, to launch Ensemble, a digital content studio to accelerate opportunities around content and development in front of and behind the camera for people of color. Reign is also part of the founding cohort for She Will Rise, a grassroots campaign to support the nomination and confirmation of the first Black Woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.