00:00Black women are probably your answer to your biggest PR issue.
00:04My name is Angelica Wandu.
00:06Tervinia T. Jones.
00:08Tanya Payne.
00:09Hey guys, my name is Judith Wandu.
00:10My name is Tembiso, or Tembi for short, but if you don't know how to say that, you could
00:14call me Beyonce.
00:15Black women, if I had to describe them in five words, or if I had to describe us in
00:20five words, it would be tenacious, genius, magical, resourceful, impressive, impressive
00:27human beings.
00:28It's important to hire black women and to take chances on black women because historically,
00:33black women have been tastemakers.
00:35We have that creativity because of what we've been through and having to laugh our way through
00:40a lot of situations, having to use laughter as medicine in our households and in our families.
00:46There's a culture thing there that is unique to black women.
00:51Black women are just natural leaders.
00:53Every position I've ever had in my business, every time I've moved up the ladder, I would
00:57be the first one there and the last one to leave because I feel like I've had to work
01:01so hard for literally everything.
01:03Oh my God.
01:04So I do have to tell this one story about, it was another media company and it's a man
01:10that runs it.
01:11I remember he invited me to Calabasas.
01:13I go to his house.
01:14It's beautiful.
01:16I'm thinking, you know, maybe he wants to invest in the shade room, but he spends the
01:22next hour and a half telling me why the shade room was a nonsense business, basically.
01:28Why it wasn't going to work.
01:29To hear that from somebody that was already successful in the industry that I wanted to
01:33be in was very heartbreaking.
01:37And I remember calling on the phone, calling a friend of mine on the phone, and my friend
01:44said something to me that made me change my whole perspective on that meeting.
01:48Do you think that if you were not going to be anything, that if your business was nonsense,
01:52that this person would go out of their way, invite you all the way to Calabasas to meet
01:57with them?
01:58And that same person is buying ads on the shade room to promote their media company.
02:02And so I would say that's a big told you so.
02:05This is what black women do.
02:06I admire someone who can take nothing and build it into something.
02:11And it's not just something, it's becoming an empire.
02:13So, no one has actually ever said anything negative to me about working for the shade
02:18room.
02:18From the moment I worked there, people were like, what, what, you work in the shade room?
02:22Can you post me?
02:23Can I get on?
02:24You're lit.
02:25Like, it's lit.
02:25I am, I'm very proud to work at the shade room.
02:29And to have a direct line to the CEO, I would say is pretty cool.
02:33You know, my relationship with Angie is simple.
02:36I work hard for her during the day, and I go through her closet and wear her clothes by night.
02:40The shade room strategy is different from traditional media brands because we actually
02:45have a for us, by us system.
02:47The advantages or the differences from working at the shade room, there's a lot.
02:52I think the biggest one for me is being able to kind of communicate in a way that's familiar
02:59to me.
03:00I don't have to kind of change the way that I speak to people.
03:04I don't have to feel like I have to present myself as something that I'm not.
03:07Being able to connect with your co-workers and your colleagues on a different kind of
03:15level, where you can just look at each other and just know what the other is thinking.
03:19This is a very exciting time at the shade room.
03:22We are launching shows like Struggle Chef, Urban, Goofy, Hell's Kitchen.
03:28Get down in the kitchen using peanut butter and jelly or hot dogs, top ramen noodles.
03:33F Boy Chronicles has to be one of my favorite things to work on.
03:36I think for a lot of young women out there, it's going to be a wake-up call.
03:39We're trying to change the narrative of black people and brown people being these angry,
03:46mean-mugging, gang-violence people.
03:49It's not the truth.
