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Netflix has been championing Black stories, creators, and experiences through a more in-depth lens since 2019 with “Strong Black Lead,” which recently celebrated its three-year anniversary. Now, the streaming giant’s co-CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, are dedicated to continuing their mission of advancing the Black and LatinX communities, specifically with educational opportunities for disadvantaged students. Variety reports that the wedded couple donated $10 million to Tougaloo College, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Mississippi. The new funding will be split between scholarships for the HBCU and will establish the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership Scholarship Fund at Brown University — founded by the two universities in 1964 “to prosper and thrive so that future generations of Tougaloo and Brown students can keep sharing new perspectives and generating new ideas.” Hastings and Quillin’s donation marks the largest that the school partnership has been...
Xavian Branch has options when it comes to his college decision. According to Blavity, the Mississippi student has been accepted to 20 different colleges and if that news isn’t good enough to jump for joy, the fact that he has also received $1.5 million in scholarship offers definitely is! Branch is a senior at The Jim Hill High School located in Jackson, Mississippi, and is an International Baccalaureate Diploma program participant graduating with a 4.8 GPA. He is also the class valedictorian. “When I look back at all the work that I did, I wouldn’t regret anything,” said Branch in an interview. After applying to colleges thanks to the help of his academic adviser Frank J. Branch, the opportunities are endless as that Branch has been accepted into 20 different schools and has been offered $1.5 million in scholarships. His mother, Zandra Branch is one proud mother and is excited to see all that he continues to accomplish. “I just can’t say enough about my baby,” she said. ” I want...
Techpreneur and Amazon worker Nashlie Sephus is accomplishing a groundbreaking goal to build a tech hub downtown in her Jackson, Mississippi hometown to help train the next generation of tech geniuses. According to Face2Face Africa, Sephus is turning downtown Jackson — which isn’t well-known for its technology prowess — into a $25 million tech district made up of 12 acres of vacant lots and seven buildings — roughly 500,000 square feet of workspace — to put her community on the map in the tech world. “My goal is to turn this space into a self-sustaining village where people can live, work, play, and eat,” Sephus told Inc. The idea to build up this tech community came to Sephus back in 2018 when she was looking for an office space for her own startup Bean Path — an incubator and technology consulting nonprofit — which has assisted over 400 local businesses and individuals with their technology needs. Her search landed her in the downtown Jackson area, which was once considered a...
Becoming a Harvard student is a high achievement on its own, but to become the student body president thanks to your peers is an even greater one. Just ask 20-year-old Noah Harris, the first Black man to be elected by the student body to become president of Harvard’s Undergraduate Council, reports Hattiesburg American. Harris is a junior government major from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He succeeds two other Black students who have headed Harvard’s Undergraduate Council. The first to serve in the role, Cary Gabay, was a Black man chosen in 1993 by members of the council, and the second was a Black woman, Fentrice Driskell, who was also elected. “I definitely don’t take that lightly,” Harris said of the confidence placed in him. “Especially with everything that went on this summer with the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, all the protests that went on in this moment of racial reckoning in this country. This is a major statement by the Harvard student body to...