Today, on my birthday, it’s apropos I share big news I’ve been holding for some time...
I’m incredibly thrilled to bring together the sum total of my professional journey as a media executive, journalist, cultural critic and former TV personality for my debut book SUPERVILLAIN, a groundbreaking account on celebrity culture’s most surveilled yet reviled figures: Black women reality stars.
I’m humbled to be the first to tell the story of Black women’s experiences in the multimillion dollar unscripted TV business—from its earliest days with shows like “The Real World” to “The Real Housewives” franchise. This work is part oral history, part criticism and yes, personal testimony. My intent is to elevate these women and their unique experiences to match their outsized impact on culture—the memes, the madness, and the mess.
You better believe it’s going to be an outrageously funny read but it will challenge us all to think, and raise critical questions about representation, race and gender in American popular culture today.
My deepest gratitude to @legacylitbooks at @hachetteus , for immediately understanding the urgency of this project, and empowering me to take on this critically important work. I’m also enormously thankful to my agents at UTA @unitedtalent . You believed in me and this project. I’m enormously thankful to have your support on this journey to becoming an author.
To the Highest, my ancestors, including my Mother and Granny, who saw the writer and future author in me at eight years old. I thank you both for the kind of overflow that runneth cups, spills over tables and all over the floor. The timing and the anointing around this are so very real.
Stay tuned here for updates, and sign up on my website to join my list for news, first looks and updates on pre-order.
Here we go!
Culture, content and change are my core values as a global media leader. I promised myself my next role would capture these values with no compromise. And well, an exciting thing happened...
My team and I @entertainmentweekly just announced a transformative vision that will radicalize the next era of the one true pop culture bible.
In a sea of homogenized content, brand equity and identity are the ultimate differentiators. I’m incredibly humbled to be the GM of a business that gets it. And I get to do it everyday with the very best in the game.
Link in Stories/Highlights.
Master your value add and align it with the needs of the business. Being entrepreneurial is not just starting an LLC. It means taking total ownership of your advancement independently or within an organization. You control your narrative. 🔗in bio for more. #PowerForward
This is an ode to Regina, who was too G’d up for anybody to try her on that dais.
Who gave us this face.
Beyond unbothered and rested.
It was unsponsored.
This is for Regina, who understood the assignment and delivered the superior roast, second only to the comedic legend Sheryl Underwood, and then gave us all Katt Williams.
This is for Regina, who reminded us ain’t sh*t funny.
Because not a damn thing about it was funny.
My baby brother DJ went to his prom last evening and was cleaner than the board of health, in a custom suit, custom embroidery & with a custom anointing from God, on high.
@doug8__26 , I’m so profoundly proud of the man you’re becoming, and how hard you work to achieve excellence. King already.
I love you,
—Nina
“He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael.”
James Baldwin, “Here Be Dragons”, Playboy Magazine, January 1985
I wrote about the escalating rise of Black women being shot and killed by men for @ebonymagazine . Black femicide is one of the single most deadly crises menacing Black America right now.
Just as it will largely take white people to end racism, it’s going to take Black men, the prominent and the platformed among them, to end Black femicide.
If you’re experiencing domestic violence, you are not alone. Call 1-844-77-UJIMA now.
Link in bio.
I built my career advancing without permission. Now I’m building what’s next in global media and culture.
That’s exactly why I joined @chief.network ’s Member Advisory Council: to help build a more expansive model of leadership for women at the highest levels.
I’m honored to shape the future of Chief with unstoppable women builders.
Talk about a full-circle moment. Nearly 20 years ago, in my first year in grad school at NYU, while living in my very first Brooklyn apt., I placed a photo of Debra Lee on my vision board among women in media whose leadership I aspired to embody.
Today, I had the distinct honor of moderating a fireside chat with Debra for members of the national CHIEF (@chief.network ) community for Black Heritage Month.
We talked about powering through bias with endurance, translating culture into enterprise value, and board readiness (Debra serves on the boards of Warner Discovery, P&G, Marriott, and more). Though an estimated 700K+ Black women have been pushed out of corporate roles according to the New York Times, Debra says: “You can’t underestimate Black women.” And that’s facts on the ground.
Thank you, Debra, for your incredibly moving and timely words at a time such as this.
Next year, my debut book SUPERVILLAIN releases. I take readers inside American reality TV from the Real World to the Housewives, and surgically explore how Black women became its most surveilled and reviled figures. And here’s what I know for sure: The real shot callers are hardly ever people who look like Tyra Banks. Click the link in my bio to read.
My insights on the Netflix–Warner Bros. deal are live on @adweek .
I offer four predictions on what the world’s most powerful streamer combined with the most storied studio means for Black creatives and access inside Hollywood. Among my predictions is sadly, a potential shrinking seat at the table for Black senior leaders and creators.
At my digital media practice GST Advisory, I’m readying companies and creators during the single most consequential time in the history of entertainment on how to future proof their business, and get in front of what’s to come in our industry.
For more culture and industry deep dives, subscribe to Inside the Culture on Substack.
All links in bio.
Huge thanks to @zoemarianna for championing diverse voices and perspectives. 🙏🏾
My freshman year in undergrad, a professor gave me a copy of Assata Shakur’s 1987 autobiography that chronicles her journey as a member of the Black Liberation Army in New York, her imprisonment and how she escaped New Jersey’s Clinton Correctional Facility for Women to political asylum in Cuba.
I read every page in one night, and it changed everything for me.
I remember feeling so deeply moved and energized by this Black woman revolutionary—her fearlessness, her fragility, her fight.
I’ve never been the same.
Mother Assata, thank you. I wish you the safest journey to the other side, to the land of the ancestors. Though you’ve earned eternal rest, those of us who know your story know that in the Spirit, your fight has just begun.
And how urgently do Black people in the world need a warrior ancestor like you in this very moment, right now.
“And, if i know any thing at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.”
—Assata Shakur
7.16.1947 - ♾️
