About Kevin Powell :

Kevin Powell is a political activist, poet, journalist, essayist, hiphop historian, public speaker, entrepreneur and, most recently,  a candidate for US Congress - NY

Kevin Powell is widely considered one of America’s most important voices in these early years of the 21st century. Legendary feminist Gloria Steinem asserts that "as a charismatic speaker, leader, and a very good writer, Kevin Powell has the courage...to be fully human, and this will bring the deepest revolution of all." And of Kevin Powell the writer asha bandele says “When you consider the intelligence and breadth of Kevin Powell’s writing and activism, you come to the conclusion that there may be no better spokesperson and representative for a generation that has too long been counted out.”


Kevin Powell is an activist, writer, public speaker, and businessman and, in 2010, was a Democratic candidate for Congress in Brooklyn, New York. A product of extreme poverty, welfare, fatherlessness, and a single mother-led household, he is a native of Jersey City, New Jersey and was educated at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. Kevin is a longtime resident of Brooklyn, New York, and it is from his base in New York City that Kevin has published ten books, including his new title, Open Letters to America (Soft Skull Press). This book is a collection of essays that examines American leadership, politics, and various social issues in the era of Barack Obama. Next up for Kevin is his long-awaited memoir of childhood and youth, the boy with a mother and no father. The highly anticipated Tupac Shakur: A Biography will follow this. Atria Books/Simon & Schuster will publish both.

Indeed, Kevin has written numerous essays, articles, and reviews through the years for publications such as Esquire, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Essence, Rolling Stone, The Amsterdam News, huffingtonpost.com, and Vibe, where he was a founding staff member and served as a senior writer, interviewing and profiling, among many others, General Colin Powell and the late Tupac Shakur. Additionally Kevin has been a Writing Fellow for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, as well as a Phelps Stokes Fund Senior Fellow.

A gifted and sought after public speaker, Kevin has lectured on multiculturalism, building corporate responsibility, American and Black American history, the life of Dr. King, civil rights, American politics and civic engagement, sexism from a male perspective, leadership, social activism, the state of hiphop, redefining American manhood, and being Black and male in America, among other topics, at hundreds of colleges and universities, community centers, prisons, religious institutions, conferences, and festivals, as well as in corporate settings. Furthermore, Kevin routinely offers his insights on a variety of matters, to TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, and internet outlets in America, and globally.

A fixture on the pop culture landscape the past several years, Kevin was a cast member on the first season of MTV’s “The Real World”; has hosted and produced programming for HBO and BET; written a screenplay; hosted and wrote an award-winning MTV documentary about post-riot Los Angeles; and was the Guest Curator of the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s “Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes, and Rage”—which originated at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and of which Kevin was the exhibition consultant—the first major exhibit in America on the history of hiphop.

Of paramount importance to Kevin Powell, however, is his activism. He has been a leader in some form or fashion for over twenty years, dating back to his days as a teenager at Rutgers University. He was a participant in the student-led anti-apartheid movement, the drive to end racism in South Africa. He has been at the forefront of police brutality and racial bias cases. He has worked for years around voting rights. Kevin is one of the most prominent voices in the hiphop generation, and he has organized a number of concerts, mc battles, rallies, and forums that stress the use of hiphop as a tool for social change. As a result of his own past personal struggles, contradictions, growth, and a commitment to therapy and healing, Kevin has become a very outspoken critic of violence against women and girls, of violence in general, and he has been at the forefront of the movement to redefine American manhood away from sexism and violence. Kevin also plays a key role in the Black male development arena, having produced, the past few years, among other things, a 10-city State of Black Men Tour, numerous Black male think tank sessions, and Black and Male in America, a 3-Day national conference. Kevin has taught, mentored, and counseled in schools, camps, prisons, and on the streets of urban America. He produces an annual holiday party and clothing drive every December in New York City that benefits the needy since 2001. Also, Kevin was a central figure in Gulf Coast disaster relief efforts, facilitating the delivery of goods and services to the affected regions, and being a cofounder of “Katrina on the Ground,” an initiative that sent over 700 college students to work in the devastated region. Most recently Kevin has been very active in Haiti relief efforts, helping to ship thousands of pounds of supplies to that Caribbean nation.

Of his life work Kevin Powell says, simply, "My life-calling is to be a servant for the people, period. Money, fame, status, personal achievements, and all that means very little to me when pain and suffering are still real on this planet. I am interested in the powerless becoming powerful.”
 

Quick Facts

• 2010 Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives (Congress) in New York City, the Borough of Brooklyn
• Says Gloria Steinem, legendary feminist: “As a charismatic speaker, leader, and a very good writer, Kevin Powell has the courage...to be fully human, and this will bring the deepest revolution of all"
• Says Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, internationally acclaimed scholar and social critic: “Kevin Powell is a mighty wind of fresh air"
• Kevin is a writer, activist, public speaker, and the author or editor of 10 books, including Open Letters to America, a collection of essays that examine American leadership, politics, and various social issues in the era of Barack Obama
• As a progressive activist and organizer, Kevin Powell has worked on a range of concerns, including voter registration, Hurricane Katrina relief, education, the environment, poverty, the development of Haiti, and ending violence against women and girls, both in America and globally
• As a public speaker, Kevin delivers approximately 200 lectures per year nationwide and overseas at colleges, corporations and in diverse communities. 2010 highlights include his keynoting Microsoft’s annual Dr. King celebration
• As a writer, Kevin’s work has appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, Newsweek, Essence, Ebony, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Vibe, where he was a senior writer for several years documenting, most famously, the life and times of the late Tupac Shaku
• A constant presence in the media, Kevin has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, the Fox News Channel, and Oprah, among many other networks and programs
• Kevin was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, and is the product of a single mother led household, extreme poverty, fatherlessness, and violence
• In spite of his humble and difficult beginnings, Kevin went on to study Political Science and English at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
• Major supporters include Chris Rock, Doug Herzog (president of MTV Networks), Steve Rifkind, Dame Dash, Marc Ecko, the Chicago Bears’ Julius Peppers, and Marlon Wayans

Speech Titles :

Kevin Powell's Lecture Titles

I. College, Conference, Community and Institution Topics

    *Someday We'll All Be Free: Developing New Leaders for a New Century

    *Living in a Multicultural America

    *History is a People's Memory: The Importance of Black History Month

    *Dr. King, Civil Rights, and the Hiphop Generation (or the alternative title, Looking for Martin: Are Dr. King and His "Dream" Still Relevant?)

    *Hiphop: The Music, The Culture, The History (or the alternative title, The State of Hiphop)

    *The State of Black America

    *Black and Male in America

    *Redefining American Manhood

    *Who's Gonna Take The Weight? Race, Gender, and Pop Culture in America

    *Sexism From A Male Perspective

    *Beyond Bill Cosby: Bridging the Class and Generation Gaps in Black America

    *Where Do We Go From Here? A Commencement Address

    *Let It Burn: Black Male/Black Female Relationships

    *If We Ruled The World: A Welcome Address for First-Year Students

    *Who We Be? Celebrating Kwanzaa, Celebrating Ourselves

    *Looking for America: Our Nation, Our Democracy, in the Bush Era

    *Step Into A World: A Discussion on the New Black Literature

    * Real Talk: Black Images in American Media and Popular Culture

    *Long Way To Go: Race and Racism in America

    *A Radical Revolution of Values: Morality and Spirituality in the Bush Era

    *This Writer's Life: A Reading and Conversation with Kevin Powell

    *Affirmative Action: Myths, Lies, and Stereotypes

    *Richard Pryor Begat Dave Chappelle; The History of Black Comedy in America

    *From Field Hollers to Hiphop: The History of Black Music in America

    *All Eyes On Them: The Black American Athlete, Then and Now

    *Hiphop Speaks: A Blueprint for Hiphop Activism

    *Souls On Ice: God, Spirituality, and the Hiphop Generations

    *From Rosa Parks to Hurricane Katrina: Civil Rights in America

    *The Latin Soul Session: Building A Black-Latino Coalition in America

    *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.