What comes to mind when I say the words Black Joy to you?
With so much negativity and pain in the world black joy for me is sharing positive and joyful moments that are happening with my friends, family and the wider Black community.
I have actually been blessed to hold some amazing roles in fantastic companies. I have experienced barriers but I haven’t dwelled on it.
One of the things that has frustrated me over the years is people think that mine or other Black talent’s success is down to luck or charity, rather than us actually being great at the job and the right person for the role. It should not be seen as a risk to take on and invest in Black talent. Part of working towards equity is recognising the archetypes we’ve developed for what a ‘leader’, ‘CEO’, ‘Executive Producer’ looks like. Checking our biases around this will make sure that we don’t miss out on talent that has the right experience and skills but doesn’t look or act like what you pictured. We need to embed conscious inclusion into our talent attraction and recruitment activities.
TV show wise, on an old school vibe I love The Real McCoy, Desmonds, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Moesha. More recently Scandal is one of my favourites, Kerry Washington was fantastic in that and I absolutely adored Issa Rae and Insecure.
Talent wise, its great to see so many amazing people coming out of the UK from Ria Hebden, Mo Gilligan, Thanyia Moore, Kojo Anim, Michaela Coel etc and I really look up to June Sarpong who blazed a trail in all aspects of her career. Laura Henry Allain is incredibly talented as is the first person in Britain to launch an animated series – Jojo and Gran gran – centred around Black characters.