[Applause] I’m Jonathan RAB and I’m the founder of watch the yardan online platform for black College culture with news focused on black college students in alumni from historically black colleges and universities and predominantly white institutions as well as black fraternities and sororities the yard is dynamic it isn’t just line jackets and strolling it’s
More it’s where our culture runs deep watch the yard has 1.78 million followers across social media and we reach almost 15 million people a month my HBCU is my wakanda because it’s a place that supports boldness and Community our audience are the uh decision makers in the black community
They are very very influential and brands have really picked up on that and so we’ve worked with you know like Marvel Facebook Google they’ve all come to watch the yard to reach the black community watch the yard what’s going on this is your boy Kevin Hart and I want
You to go check out my new movie The Upside my passion is connecting people and uh building Community my dad always says Community heals isolation kills and and that’s something that I bring to my work I’m from South Minneapolis I grew up in a very diverse neighborhood I actually landed at the University of Minnesota one of the things that really caught my eye when I got to the University of Minnesota was the black fraternities and sororities the second I stepped on campus and I saw them in the community you know and strolling I remember the first time I saw someone stroll it was amazing we got and you know my freshman year I started seeing probates and I was drawn
Toward them the coming of age ceremony and in the black community we yearn for those things so my sophomore year of college I pledged cap Alpha saai Fraternity Incorporated the S chapter at the University in Minnesota and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in
My life hey you’re watching the CW twin City when I was a sophomore in college I actually happened to become a television host for the CW in Minnesota don’t make too many plans for this week because we’ve got more new episodes of your favorite shows it was a really really
Big deal I was able to leverage that after college to land a Fullbright in journalism and go to Germany where I studied digital audience development at UFA lab which was a creative lab app for New Media so they were building these platforms on YouTube news networks comedy networks and a whole bunch of
Really really cool stuff so I came back to the United States knowing how to do that a little bit better and I moved to Hollywood where I became a red carpet host while doing that I realized hey there are some things that I want to cover that we’re not covering and so I
Thought about it and I was like let me apply this to my own Community the community of black fraternities and sorties I chose Sigma gamaro because I wanted to be a greater woman period I joined Sigma gamaro because I wanted to form meaningful connections with powerful women I saw so much power in
Digitalizing this community that had existed right for a 100 years at that point I crossed at Howard University in the spring of 1968 I crossed at Chicago State University 1964 a very very important group of of black people in the United States I’m active in alumni chapter because I’m in
Legacy and service is what we do and by doing that we’re able to create this really really great network of people at predominantly white institutions and HBCU bring them together uh you know as black College culture and really help each other happy Founders Day to the women of
Delta Sigma Theta for over a century you’ve been leading us to a more just America we work with the White House a lot they see us as a great way to reach the black community and decision makers in the black community hello watch the yard I am here at South Carolina state
And it is National voter registration day so I want to remind everybody to get out and register to vote we recently did a partnership with the Red Cross to help alumni chapters and undergraduate chapter set up blood drives to help black people with sickle cell disease
We’ve done a lot of coverage of protests on campus and in The Wider community so whether that be protests for student housing on campus or people protesting what’s going on in Flint Michigan with the water we’ve covered the black lives matter protests very closely during Co 19 we threw together a
Conference called yardon in two weeks and we were able to create this digital conference where we landed students jobs and opportunities for that summer the next year we were able to make it even bigger we had black students from 625 different colleges and universities attend this so over 5,000 students um
Were able to come together digitally online and participate in these events uh for our yardon conference we set up you know a call out for students who wanted to interview Chris Paul about his new book Chris how you doing today I’m all right John how about
You I’m I’m doing great we only needed four students but we had 5,000 students sign up for this thing we picked four students who were from HBCU we got them all together and we got them to interview Chris Paul each for 10 minutes which is an amazing thing to be able to
Put on your resume how you feel like college students can develop resilience and persever through challenges and setbacks yeah man uh shoot I had mine I had mine I had mine in high school and then even in college but regardless whatever it is man just always understand that you can you can bounce
Back what’s up watch theard we were able to connect these students with jobs at places like Spotify and a ton of advertising agencies around the world I’m active in my alumni chapter because I recognize the significance of giving back to the community now we’re able to do it again because schools have opened
Up and we’re actually hosting this for the first time on the ground in real life at Clark Atlanta University on November 17th and 18th this year and we’re going to create this huge conference where we help students land jobs why did you decide to go to Howard
This is something that with these black fraternities and sororities and HBCU they’ve been working on the racial wealth Gap since you know slavery ended and so we’re highlighting that it’s just a continuation of of that work and that [Applause] mission
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