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Entrepreneur
6 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
She Built a Media Empire From Her Phone — Now It Has More Clout Than the New York Times
After overcoming a traumatic childhood and early career uncertainty, Angie Nwandu built The Shade Room into one of Instagram's most influential media platforms by listening to her audience, betting on herself and never backing down from the hustle. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Shaderoom founder Angie Nwandu transformed her hobby of posting celebrity gossip on Instagram into a social media empire boasting more followers than The New York Times. Today, her platform is a leading voice in the online Black community — a responsibility she embraces fully. Yet, her journey to success was anything but easy, teaching her important lessons about life and entrepreneurship along the way. Humble beginnings Nwandu had a difficult upbringing. After her father murdered her mother in 2002, she entered the Los Angeles foster care system, where she experienced multiple forms of abuse. Despite these hardships, she persevered and found solace in writing, particularly poetry. One of her most powerful pieces, Behind Bullet Proof Glass, reflects her personal experiences with domestic violence. The talented poet would receive a full scholarship to Loyola Marymount University; however, due to external pressures and a need for fast money, she majored in accounting, a field that did not come as naturally. "Last minute, I switched my major to HR just so I could graduate," Nwandu tells Entrepreneur. "I felt like a failure. I couldn't get into grad school. I was lost at this point in my life." She confided in her mentor that her true passion was writing, and he introduced her to a friend working on a script. Nwandu contributed to the project, which eventually made it to Sundance — a turning point in her outlook. "Instead of thinking writing would only lead to failure and poverty, I realized, wait, this went to Sundance," she says. "That made me start believing in myself." The pivotal moment came when artists presented their films, but Nwandu, without a film, shared a version of her poem Behind Bullet Proof Glass. She started crying, mostly because she was just fired from her bookkeeping job. Nevertheless, moved by her performance, director Michelle Satter awarded her a $5,000 grant for her writing career. Though Nwandu had more urgent financial needs, the grant gave her time to focus on another passion: gossiping. "I was unemployed, calling friends to discuss news," she says. "Then one suggested I start my own media company." Read More: Ambiguity Isn't Leadership — It's Avoidance. Why Modern Teams Are Starving for Decisiveness Posting to the Promiseland Not knowing the first thing about website development, Nwandu went straight to Instagram, where she created the now ubiquitous Shade Room account, and began blogging about celebrity news. Her quirky comedic tone quickly caught on with users, and the account grew to 300 followers within the first day. Noticing the early rise of Instagram influencers — people who weren't traditional celebrities but had large followings on social media — Nwandu began tailoring her content to cover news and drama within this emerging creator space. "Everybody was like, 'Oh, finally, we have a place to find like news on these people,' Nwandu says. "From the time I hit 3500 followers, I knew it would be a media empire." It was clear Nwandu had stumbled upon gold with her content strategy, but she was the only one there to mine it at the time. "I was working 24 hours a day, updating them every hour," she says. I would pull over on the side of the freeway to update them, because I felt this would be something big." Her hustle paid off. The account hit 10k followers, then 100k, then 500k. "At that point, it started to influence the mainstream news cycle," Nwandu says. "I realized I had an audience of Black people coming to me for news about our community," she says. "That's when I decided — this platform is going to be used to amplify Black voices." Related: 21-Day Plan to Grow Your Instagram Following When community becomes currency There are many celebrity news outlets, but what sets The Shade Room apart is its strong focus on community. "I've noticed that we can post something already featured on ten other sites, yet people still come to The Shade Room," Nwandu says. "That's because of the audience we've built — one cultivated meticulously and intentionally." To cultivate this fanbase, Nwandu drew inspiration from stan culture, where celebrities' followers adopt collective names — like Nicki Minaj's Barbz or Taylor Swift's Swifties. Shade Room fans dubbed themselves "The Roommates," and that's when Nwandu noticed the community beginning to take on a life of its own. "They would metaphorically knock down doors for celebrities on Instagram," Nwandu says. "They'd flood the comments saying, 'The Shade Room wants an interview,' or 'The Shade Room wants an exclusive.' It would force the celebrity to ask, 'What is The Shade Room?'' In the beginning, the audience literally moved like an army." Nwandu tries to keep that relationship active on both sides, responding to as many DMs and comments as possible, and putting serious value on the fans' feedback. "They feel like they own it," Nwandu says. "If they ask us to take something down, we will. If they want us to post something — and it's verified and true — we'll do that too. They shape what they see by sending in tips and letting us know what they want us to cover." Once Nwandu had built a loyal and engaged fanbase, the next challenge was monetizing it. "I was copying influencer culture," Nwandu says. "I saw them posting ads for brands like Slim Fit Tea, and many had fewer followers than me. I thought, I'm a media company — I can do this too. So I started reaching out to the brands advertising with them and said, Come to The Shade Room." In the early days of The Shade Room, she charged just $75 per post for ad space — a bargain that likely made PR professionals' eyes light up, especially given her roughly half a million followers. Eventually, she hired a salesperson to negotiate more favorable rates, and the money started flowing in. "You just have to try things and keep trying until you hit something that makes sense and provides revenue," Nwandu says. Giving back Now that The Shade Room is an established cultural force, Angie Nwandu has turned her focus toward giving back to the community that built her. "Once you reach a certain size, people start to see you as big media," she says. "And the relationship shifts. Now it's, 'You're profiting off Black culture—you need to give back to it.' And I was like, you're right. So I listened." Nwandu's philanthropic efforts span both the U.S. and Africa. She's renovated four to five schools in Nigeria and built water wells in several Niger villages, providing clean water and enabling local farming. Her team also funds scholarships to help children access education. In the U.S., she has supported transitional housing programs for foster youth, including helping Peace4Kids purchase land in Santa Clarita, California. She's contributed to organizations like UFC, which supports foster youth through education and housing, and the National Bail Out initiative, assisting mothers and domestic violence survivors. Additionally, Nwandu has created six scholarship endowments across HBCUs and her alma mater to support students of all backgrounds. "Every year, we give back 10% of our profits to the community," she says. "Some people tithe to the church—I want to tithe to the community."
Washington Post
a day ago
- General
- Washington Post
Black Democrats fume over 2024 while ‘searching for a leader' in 2028
COLUMBIA, South Carolina — A mostly Black crowd of hundreds of Democrats erupted in cheers when former national party chairman Jaime Harrison urged them to 'go on offense' and energize their communities to propel a 'blue Democratic wave' in next year's midterms. But offstage Saturday, Harrison was still wrestling with the problems of the last election.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Jamie Foxx reveals exactly how he feels about Diddy amid rapper's sex trafficking trial
Jamie Foxx has spoken out again about Diddy, making it clear what he thought of the disgraced rap mogul. During his appearance at The Comedy Store for Netflix 's All-Star Comedy Night, Jamie called Diddy a 'nasty motherf****r,' according to Urban Hollywood. 'That Diddy s**t is crazy, huh? I don't know if he's going to jail, but he's a nasty motherf***er. S**t! Am I right? Especially for our community. [For] white people, it's cool, but Black people are like, that was our hero. All that godd**n baby oil, boy. Then, the urine,' Jamie said, referring to an alleged claim regarding Diddy's ex Cassie and an escort urinating in her mouth. Jamie, 57, spoke on stage behinds his daughter Corrine Foxx, who served as the moderator. After looking at Corrine's reaction, Jamie then said, 'Oh that's right. It's the Emmys. My bad, I'm sorry, so sorry.' He brought up Diddy again, this time comparing the case to the 1999 film Life starring Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy. 'When I watch the trial, all I think of is Life. Martin Lawrence telling to Eddie Murphy, "Why you so nasty, Ray? Cause I'm a nasty moutherf****r." Why you so nasty, Diddy? Cause I'm a nasty motherf****r. Take that, take that, take that.' Jamie said. 'That makes you listen to that differently. What are we taking, because I don't want any of that,' he added. 'For the Black people in here, you know how that hurts us, because Diddy was [known for] It's all about the Benjamins." That was our whole culture. Now it's all about the baby oil.' Last week, Jamie debunked the bizarre conspiracy theory that Sean ' Diddy ' Combs once tried to kill him. Amid the disgraced rap mogul's federal sex-trafficking trial, which began earlier this month, the actor poked fun at the rumors that swirled around his road to recovery after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke and a brain bleed in 2023. While reflecting on his hospitalization, which lasted several weeks, the comedian revealed he 'snuck in' his phone because he had no idea 'what the outside world was saying.' 'I couldn't get my mind around the fact that I had a stroke. I'm in f*****g perfect shape,' he said during The Hollywood Reporter's Stand-Up Comedy Roundtable. This is when he stumbled upon the crazy allegations that 'Puffy tried to kill' him. 'No, Puffy didn't try to kill me,' Foxx insisted, before sharing his reaction to speculation that he was 'a clone.' He continued: 'When they [conspiracy theorists] said I was a clone, that made me flip. I'm sitting in the hospital bed, like, 'These b***-a** mother******s are trying to clone me.' And then I saw me walk into my room, but I'm white, so I see the white me. The next morning, I said, 'I know what's up, you're trying to clone me and make me white so I'll sell better overseas.'' His joke prompted a psychiatrist to ask: 'Are you all right?' Foxx, then, replied: 'Am I all right or am I all white? I saw you trying to get the white motherf*****g Jamie Foxx and it ain't going to happen.' The psychiatrist went on to 'calmly' decide to 'lower' his dosage of medication. Back in October 2024, a source close to Diddy insisted to that 'there is no truth to Sean Combs putting Jamie Foxx in the hospital.' In Foxx's Netflix special, titled What Had Happened Was..., which aired last year, he took a few swipes at Diddy. After explaining that he suffered a stroke, caused by a bleed on the brain, Jamie explained: 'I say this all the time, I saw the tunnel, I didn't see the light. 'It was hot in that tunnel. I thought, s**t, have I gone to the wrong place? I looked at the end of the tunnel and I thought I saw the devil saying come on… or was that Puffy?' 'I'm f*****g around, but if that was Puffy he had a flaming bottle of Johnson and… no, I'm just kidding.' In the special, Jamie also spoke about the rumors linking his 2023 health crisis to Diddy, by beginning his stand-up set with a dig at him. 'The internet was trying to kill me, saying Puffy was trying to kill me. Hell no, I left those parties early. Something didn't look right,' he quipped. 'The internet was trying to kill me,' Foxx said, referencing the online speculation that Combs had something to do with his hospitalization. 'The internet was saying that Puffy was trying to kill me. I know what you're thinking… Did he?!' 'Hell, no,' he added with a jibe about Combs' infamous 'Freak Off' parties. 'I left them parties early. I was out by 9, n*****, something don't look right, n*****. It looks slippery in here!'
BBC News
a day ago
- Business
- BBC News
Tulsa, Oklahoma, plans more than $105m in reparations for America's 'hidden' massacre
The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma is preparing to award its black community a $105m (£73.8m) reparations package to address the harms caused by the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one of the largest and most violent racial attacks in US plan, by Monroe Nichols, Tulsa's first black mayor, focuses on community redevelopment and does not involve direct payments to descendants or the two remaining survivors of the attack. Mr Nichols made the announcement on Sunday during Tulsa's first ever official Tulsa Race Massacre Observance funds, raised by a private trust, includes $24m for a housing fund and $60m for a cultural preservation fund focused on "reducing blight". "The Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history... hidden from history books," Mayor Nichols said. That tragedy, he said, was compounded by economic harms that followed, namely the building of a highway "to choke off economic vitality", "perpetual underinvestment" and "intentional acts of redlining", where black people were denied home and property loans."Now it's time to take the next big steps to restore," Mr Nichols said. Titled Road to Repair, the reparations plan was created by the Greenwood Trust. It seeks to have $105m in assets either secured or committed by 1 June, some of which would also go into a legacy fund for the trust to acquire and develop Nichols said the proposal would not require city council approval. The council would, however, have authorise the transfer of any city property to the trust, which he said was very Greenwood Trust borrows its name from Tulsa's Greenwood District, a once-prosperous black neighbourhood with an economy so thriving that it was dubbed Black Wall Street. That all changed in May 1921, when a white mob burned it to the ground, destroying more than 1,000 homes and structures in less than 24 hours. An estimated 300 black residents were killed, and many more were event "robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivalled anywhere else in the world", Mr Nichols said in a phone decades the story of the massacre was largely erased from history, but was thrust into the spotlight in 2020 when then-President Donald Trump announced he would hold an election rally in Tulsa on 19 June, or Juneteenth, the day commemorating the end of slavery. He rescheduled the rally and his successor, Joe Biden, declared Juneteenth a national Tulsa reparations will be made as Trump, now back in the White House, is ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices in the US government and many major companies are abandoning or reducing their diversity package is also the first large-scale plan that commits funds to addressing the impact of a specific racially motivated attack. Evanston, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, became the first city to make reparations available to its black residents, in 2021, by offering qualified households money for expenses such as home repairs and down have been long divided over directly addressing past acts of racism, such as slavery, through paying May, Maryland Governor Wes Moore - the state's first black governor - said he would veto a measure to create a commission for studying reparations in his California last year apologised for the past discrimination against black Americans and approved some reparations initiatives, but did not offer direct financial last two known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Ford Fletcher, lost a long court battle seeking reparations last summer.
CNN
2 days ago
- Business
- CNN
1921 Oklahoma Race Massacre: Tulsa's mayor proposed a private trust
Crime Race & ethnicityFacebookTweetLink Follow Tulsa's new mayor on Sunday proposed a $100 million private trust as part of a reparations plan to give descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacrescholarships and housing help in a city-backed bid to make amends for one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history. The plan by Mayor Monroe Nichols, the first Black mayor of Oklahoma's second-largest city, would not provide direct cash payments to descendants or the last two centenarian survivors of the attack that killed as many as 300 Black people. He made the announcement at the Greenwood Cultural Center, located in the once-thriving district that was destroyed by a white mob. Nichols said he does not use the term reparations, which he calls politically charged, characterizing his sweeping plan instead as a 'road to repair.' 'This is, I think, a very significant first step,' Nichols said. 'And it's something we can all unite around. I think we can unite around housing specifically for affected populations. I think we can unite around investing in the Greenwood district and making sure that we're able to revitalize it to be an economic power again.' Nichols said the proposal would not require city council approval, although the council would need to authorize the transfer of any city property to the trust. The private charitable trust would be created with a goal to secure $105 million in assets, with most of the funding either secured or committed by June 1, 2026. Although details of the trust programs would be developed over the next year by an executive director and a board of managers, the plan calls for the bulk of the funding, $60 million, to go toward improving buildings and revitalizing the city's north side. 'The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce,' Nichols said. 'So what was lost was not just something from North Tulsa or the Black community. It actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivaled anywhere else in the world.' Nichols' proposal comes on the heels of an executive order he signed earlier this year recognizing June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, an official holiday for the city. Nichols also realizes the current national political climate, particularly President Trump's sweeping assault on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, provides challenging political crosswinds. 'The fact that this lines up with a broader national conversation is a tough environment,' Nichols admitted, 'but it doesn't change the work we have to do.' Jacqueline Weary, is a granddaughter of massacre survivor John R. Emerson, Sr., who owned a hotel and cab company in Greenwood that were destroyed. She acknowledged the political difficulty of giving cash payments to descendants. But at the same time, she wondered how much of her family's wealth was lost as a result of the massacre. 'If Greenwood was still there, my grandfather would still have his hotel,' said Weary, 65. 'It rightfully was our inheritance, and it was literally taken away.' Tulsa is not the first U.S. city to explore the idea of reparations. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, was the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination, offering qualifying households $25,000 for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city. The funding for the program came from taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana. Other communities and organizations that have considered providing reparations range from the state of California to cities like Amherst, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Asheville, North Carolina; and Iowa City, Iowa; religious denominations like the Episcopal Church; and prominent colleges like Georgetown University in Washington. In Tulsa, there are only two living survivors of the Race Massacre, both of whom are 110 years old: Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher. Both received direct financial compensation from both a Tulsa-based nonprofitand a New York-based philanthropic organization, but have not received any recompense from the city or state. Damario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for the survivors and the founder of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation, could not be reached for comment on the mayor's plan, but said earlier this year that any reparations plan should include direct payments to Randle and Fletcher and a victims' compensation fund for outstanding claims. A lawsuit filed by Solomon-Simmons on behalf of the survivors was rejected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial justice advocates' hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.
