Kevin Powell

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Kevin Powell's Lecture Titles

I. College, Conference, Community and Institution Topics

1. Someday We'll All Be Free: Developing New Leaders for a New Century
2. Living in a Multicultural America
3. History is a People's Memory: The Importance of Black History Month
4. Dr. King, Civil Rights, and the Hiphop Generation (or the alternative title, Looking for Martin: Are Dr. King and His "Dream" Still Relevant?)
5. Hiphop: The Music, The Culture, The History (or the alternative title, The State of Hiphop)
6. The State of Black America
7. Black and Male in America
8. Redefining American Manhood
9. Who's Gonna Take The Weight? Race, Gender, and Pop Culture in America
10. Sexism From A Male Perspective
11. Beyond Bill Cosby: Bridging the Class and Generation Gaps in Black America
12. Where Do We Go From Here? A Commencement Address
13. Let It Burn: Black Male/Black Female Relationships
14. If We Ruled The World: A Welcome Address for First-Year Students
15. Who We Be? Celebrating Kwanzaa, Celebrating Ourselves
16. Looking for America: Our Nation, Our Democracy, in the Bush Era
17. Step Into A World: A Discussion on the New Black Literature
18. Real Talk: Black Images in American Media and Popular Culture
19. Long Way To Go: Race and Racism in America
20. A Radical Revolution of Values: Morality and Spirituality in the Bush Era
21. This Writer's Life: A Reading and Conversation with Kevin Powell
22. Affirmative Action: Myths, Lies, and Stereotypes
23. Richard Pryor Begat Dave Chappelle; The History of Black Comedy in America
24. From Field Hollers to Hiphop: The History of Black Music in America
25. All Eyes On Them: The Black American Athlete, Then and Now
26. Hiphop Speaks: A Blueprint for Hiphop Activism
27. Souls On Ice: God, Spirituality, and the Hiphop Generations
28. From Rosa Parks to Hurricane Katrina: Civil Rights in America
29. The Latin Soul Session: Building A Black-Latino Coalition in America
30. Young America, Voting, and the New Activism

II. Corporate Topics

1. Diversity 101: Creating A Healthy and Successful Workplace
   A product of post-Civil Rights and post-integration America, Kevin Powell brings to this presentation decades of personal and professional insight around diversity in America: he grew up in a segregated inner city environment and he spent the last of his adolescence in a predominantly White neighborhood; he attended Rutgers University, which had a small community of color and he was very active in Black student initiatives; Powell has worked for some of the biggest corporations on the planet-MTV/Viacom and Vibe when it was owned by Time Warner-and he has witnessed the embrace of hiphop, a culture created by working-class Blacks and Latinos, by White America and mainstream entities. These experiences and more have led Powell to create a talk/workshop that gets at why diversity and mutual respect are so important in the workplace. Powell maintains that if individual workers are not even comfortable with their own lives, their own particular social, political, and cultural heritages, then they cannot even begin to have proactive and healthy conversations with their employers or fellow employees. When talking about diversity, the obvious place to start is race and ethnicity. Powell does indeed begin there, but he broadens out the workshop to include probing observations about gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, as well as cultural and generational diversity. And through concrete examples Powell establishes why corporate diversity makes sense for the bottom line of a company in 21st century America.
2. The Leadership We Are Waiting For Is Us-How to Become An Effective Leader in Corporate America
   Kevin Powell feels he has been a leader his entire adult years, practically from the moment he set foot on the campus of Rutgers University in the mid 1980s as a teenager. Inspired by the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson and the anti-apartheid movement filtering through colleges nationwide, Powell threw himself into the role of student and youth leader on campus and off. Over time those early experiences have been translated into very visible and influential careers at MTV and Quincy Jones' Vibe magazine, as one of the most prominent voices of the hiphop generation, and in New York City as a very active and well-respected community leader, trendsetter, business owner, and mover and shaker. Most recently Powell ran for Congress in Brooklyn, New York, and plans to seek elected office again in the near future. Indeed, Powell's varied experiences in academia, media, corporate America, politics, and the arts and entertainment worlds have afforded him the unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive action plan for leadership and leadership development in corporate America. This simple and accessible approach to leadership development includes a step-by-step guide on how individuals can identify their inner leadership qualities and skills, and how best to highlight those qualities and skills for the good of themselves and their company.
3. How to Build Corporate Responsibility and Trust in the 21st Century
   Kevin Powell has consulted and worked with a number of major corporate brands through the years, including Coca-Cola, Best Buy, Nike, VirginMobile, Clear Channel Communications, Nissan, Microsoft, and Random House. In this presentation, Powell details moments in American history of corporate generosity; highlights some of the issues and crises affecting the American social fabric in these early days of the 21st century; and offers a concrete and multidimensional gameplan for corporate involvement in the community, including ways a corporate entity can boost brand awareness or repair their brand image in the aftermath of not so positive media attention while giving back.
4. Leveraging Hiphop Culture in Corporate America
   In this insightful and thoughtful presentation, noted hiphop authority Kevin Powell traces the history and evolution of hiphop culture; discusses why it is the dominant global culture of the new millennium; and offers practical and innovative ways for corporations to leverage hiphop culture into its business strategies. A particular emphasis is placed on generational diversity, or, rather, how to approach Generations X and Y, the two generations most affected by hiphop culture over the past two decades. Solution oriented ideas will include how to develop multiple marketing strategies; how to listen and hear the voices and concerns of young people influenced by hiphop, including employees within your company; and how to make your company and your product cool to this demographic; and readily accessible to this vibrant and consumer ready population.
5. Overcoming Depression and Anxiety in Corporate America
   In this deeply personal lecture and workshop, Kevin Powell talks about his past experiences as a highly successful professional journalist while working for Vibe magazine, then owned by Time Warner. In spite of numerous cover stories and critical accolades, Powell fell into a routine of work, heavy drinking, depression, and anxiety. It was a routine that nearly ruined his personal and professional lives by age 30. Looking back on it years later, Powell realizes there were some critical things he could have and should have done to create emotional and spiritual wellness for himself in the workplace, and he offers a 6-point for personal growth and development even as one plots a course of high career achievement in corporate America.