On Wednesday, Fast and Furious actor and rapper Ludacris and Mercedes-Benz USA gave new shoes to over 500 children in Atlanta.

The donation was part of a program that Mercedes-Benz is spearheading across the country as part of its Season to Shine holiday giving initiative in conjunction with the nonprofit organization Shoes That Fit.

Wednesday’s footwear giveaway in Atlanta was made in conjunction with Mercedes-Benz USA brand ambassador Ludacris and The Ludacris Foundation.

“I care deeply about supporting and serving kids in my hometown of Atlanta and it was an honor to help my friends at Mercedes give back with their Season to Shine event,” said Ludacris in a written statement.

“I know that the new shoes are a small stepping stone to helping these students live out their dreams and realize their greatness. I’m thrilled to be part of that.”

The Washington Post reported that the event took place at Miles Elementary School.

Season to Shine was started by Mercedes-Benz USA as part of its national corporate social responsibility program, Driving Your Future. This endeavor aims to empower the next generation by supporting educational programs, career readiness, and child safety.

With this year’s Season to Shine program, Mercedes-Benz USA  has given out 1,270 new shoes to every student who attends its partner schools in Atlanta – Michael R. Hollis Innovation Academy and Leonora P. Miles Intermediate Elementary.

• Career

by Jasmine Jackson

December 8, 2022

Virgil Miller, Incoming President Of Aflac, On How Grit While Doing Grunt Work Propelled Him To The Top Of His Game

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The time for which I’m most grateful may have been the most difficult of my life—days of 15-mile hikes with a 50-pound pack, lonely separation from family, and an unseen and unknowable enemy.

My time as a Marine made me more patient, more confident, and, oddly, more competent as a business executive working my way up the ladder of a $22 billion corporation. I have been guided by what my military service taught me, even if some lessons were inadvertent. Among them:

Don’t shun the grunt work

Whether it’s cleaning latrines or working an entry-level call center position, the lowliest chore may yield the greatest returns. When you eventually are in a position to manage others, it helps to have the credibility of their experience. So, it’s wise to keep your head down and just do the work. But it also provides an excellent opportunity to…

Keep your head up

Observe, analyze, and cathect the operation, the procedure, the mission. Gain a firm grasp of expectations your supervisor has of you as well as what expectations your supervisor’s supervisor has of him or her. Making your superior officer look like a winner serves your interests as well.

Be the tops

Don’t waste emotional energy on phantom concerns like “job security” and “promotion prospects.” Just become one of the best at what you do, be it a rifleman or an accountant. The top few performers in any unit are always in demand, and leaders are constantly vying for their participation.

Your record is your credential

Business folks care less about the school you attended than what you can do. I grew up in a small Southern town, finished high school and became a Marine, served in the Gulf War, and only later earned some degrees from not-so-famous colleges. And every day I direct the activities of prestigious university alumni who have yet to do the work at which I have become expert.

Don’t typecast

My Marine Corps drill instructor was right out of Full Metal Jacket—loud, intimidating, profane. Then one day a fellow in our basic training group tried to commit suicide by slitting his wrists. After binding the wounds, and while waiting for the medics, the D.I. knelt in the puddle of blood, cradled the young man in his arms, and said, “It’s alright, son. You’re fine. We’re getting you out of here. It’ll be OK.” It was the warmest, sweetest voice—a voice I would have insisted, prior to that night, could never come from that man. And it revealed compassion and tenderness of which I thought him incapable. After that, he was no longer a “type” in my eyes, but a three-dimensional, fuller human being.

Walk the perimeter

In the Corps, you don’t just march. You take 14 steps, each 40 inches in length, with toe planted on the turn, etc. Nothing is inexact or ambivalent. So rather than allow our company managers simply to invite our policy holders to “file a claim,” I have them go to the website themselves, click through the process, read each instruction, follow each prompt. What could be better explained? How can the customer experience be improved? That attention to detail, that emphasis on empathy, is essentially military.

Success is earned, not given

Does racism exist in America? Of course. Have I felt self-conscious as the only Black person in the room? Without fail. Have I been expected to work harder than some of my white counterparts? Occasionally. But two things can be true at once. I’ve noticed that every successful person I’ve known, regardless of race, has worked extremely hard and endured major setbacks. Expecting success without demonstrating commitment is presumptuous.

When businesspeople hear the word “military,” they sometimes hear “militant,” and assume such rigor, inflexibility, and uniformity would never work in a corporate environment. But if my career is any indication, most businesses would be greatly enhanced by the patience, perseverance, discipline, fortitude, and prudence (what we used to call “virtues”) of those who have seen the world through a soldier’s eyes. Such men and women know what it’s like, and what it takes, to stretch themselves beyond typical limits to achieve success in a way that is always productive, always collegial, and always faithful. Semper Fi.

Aflac U.S. Deputy President Virgil R. Miller has been named to succeed Teresa L. White as president, Aflac U.S., effective Jan. 1, 2023. 

• Career

by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors

December 8, 2022

A ‘No Coding’ App Course Helped A Doctor Get Diverse Students Into Medical School

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In 2006, while still a medical student, Dr. Renée Volny Darko often observed that smart, capable students who are underrepresented in medicine (URM) and non-traditional candidates were not getting into medical school at a rate on par with other students.

“Medical schools say they have a rough time finding qualified URM candidates,” said Darko.

“But I encountered great students all the time.”

Once a non-traditional medical student herself — one who did not apply right out of college, but instead had a whole career as a teacher before deciding to switch to medicine — Darko knows how difficult it is applying to medical school without strong support from your college or applying years after leaving that college.

“I thought to myself back then, maybe the schools don’t know these students are out there, and the students don’t know that these schools want them,” said Darko.

“What if there were a way to bring students together with medical schools who they ordinarily would not encounter online?”

But, her idea was quickly put on hold, as Darko did not know how to code and in 2006, cell phone apps did not exist. After she finished her own training and began to practice, about a decade later, she formed her own pre-med advising company, Pre-med Strategies, Inc. and coached more than 100 pre-meds, many who did not fit the stereotypical applicant mold or have high-level connections, in one-on-one and in group workshops.

That is, until she met Tara Reed and her “Apps Without Code” course in 2019. Reed’s course promised that Darko would come up with a strong app idea, build it without writing any code and make real money with her app idea. She was sold. To date, Reed has built a community of 150,000 entrepreneurs in 14 different countries.

The idea of connecting students to medical schools still burned inside, as she watched students take on the financial burden to get recruited, traveling around the country to conferences and exhibitor fairs just to get noticed.

“That cost is a burden that many pre-meds cannot afford for the amount of networking that really needs to be done for getting into medical school, especially many of those from underrepresented communities,” said Darko. “But if they don’t do it, they may not get in.”

After finishing the course, Darko launched her app ”without code,” called MEdEq (pronounced MED-eck) in 2020 — aiming to tear down the financial barriers for pre-meds who have the dream of serving others as doctors.

“MEdEq is an opportunity for medical schools to put their budgets where their mouth is,” said Darko. “MEdEq makes it super easy for medical schools to recruit diverse students on a consistent basis, building relationships with the very applicants that they are looking for, but maybe cannot get to them.”

Schools can subscribe to the app. Students can sign up and use the app at no cost.

• News

by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton

December 8, 2022

Reporter Retracts Claims Van Jones Apologized For Black Community’s ‘Silence’ To Ye’s Hitler Comments

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A Jewish reporter took to Twitter to retract claims he made several days ago that CNN commentator Van Jones apologized to the Jewish community for the Black community being silent in response to Ye’s troubling Hitler comments.

Jones was the keynote speaker earlier this week for a dinner in New York City presented by the United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York. A controversy ensued when Jacob Kornbluh, a senior political reporter for the Jewish publication The Forward, posted that Jones had apologized for the “silence of” the Black community for not admonishing the rhetoric that Ye had displayed in a recent interview.

On the right-wing program Infowars, Ye said he loved Hitler and that the Jewish community should forgive the racist German leader for his atrocities against Jewish people in Germany.

He posted a photo of Jones’ speech on Twitter.

A couple advocating for change will always be worthy of honor.

Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, were presented with the “Ripple of Hope” award from the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation at a gala in New York on Tuesday night.

According to CBS News, the couple was honored for their human rights work alongside other honorees,  including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

 

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“They’ve stood up, they’ve talked about racial justice, and they’ve talked about mental illness in a way that was incredibly brave,” Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation, said.

During the event, an announcement was made revealing the launch of a student film award for projects about women human rights defenders. The award is a collaboration between the couple’s Archewell Foundation and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation.

“For Meghan to get out there on national television and normalize discussion of mental health, at this point, is incredibly important and very brave,” Kennedy said at the gala, according to the outlet.

“Together we know that a ripple of hope can turn into a wave of change,” the Sussexes said in a statement announcing the film project.

• Politics

by Derek Major

December 8, 2022

New Bill Seeks To Limit How Many Houses Investors and Hedge Funds Can Purchase

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Wall Street investors have been buying up homes in the Atlanta area at an increasing rate over the last few years, but a new bill in Washington seeks to block those sales.

According to WSB-TV, 30% of recent home sales in Atlanta have been to an investor. Other states including Pennsylvania and New Jersey have been dealing with the same situation. In response, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced the End Hedge Fund Control of America Homes Act that would limit investors to 100 single-family homes.

“We can’t tackle giant financial companies buying up all our housing stock,” Westmoreland said. “That has to be done at the state, really at the federal level.”

Merkley added that the bill won’t pass Congress this year, but he’s planning to re-introduce the legislation next month. Atlanta city councilmember Matt Westmoreland said Atlanta has been crushed by the influx of investors buying homes.

“As you look over the last several years, literally no other city has been the victim of this type of activity more than Atlanta,” Westmoreland told WSB-TV.

Investors, seeing a chance to make money in the real estate market, have been purchasing homes and trailer parks, then jacking up rents and pushing longtime residents out.

According to Redfin, investors made 17% of home purchases in Atlanta during the third quarter of this year, totaling more than $2 billion. However, that’s a 42% decline in home purchases made by investors in 2021, largely due to a cooling housing market.

“That’s a huge decline, but as a share, they are still buying one in four homes,” Redfin’s Taylor Marr said. “It’s down from their peak where they were purchasing one in three.”

However, supporters of investors say they’re simply following market trends.

“Private equity firms or other large investors driven by a profit margin are not responsible for the price increase in the U.S. housing market,” a member of Congress said in a hearing according to WSB.

Powerhouse real estate broker and designer Egypt Sherrod, star of the HGTV breakout hit series Married to Real Estate, brought attention to this matter on her Instagram, saying in part:

“Let’s burn this one up on the timeline! A new bill proposes to limit the number of homes Wall Street investors can buy. This is in the wake of Chase bank announcing plans to spend 1 Billion on Atlanta Residential Real Estate. ”

 

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• Beauty

by Atiya Jordan

December 8, 2022

Inspired By a Superstar! MAC Cosmetics Releases Whitney Houston Limited Edition Makeup Line

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In celebration of Whitney Houston‘s trendsetting style and beauty, MAC has announced its latest offering of all-new, limited edition products to create your own superstar look.

The cosmetics giant collaborated with the Estate of Whitney E. Houston to amplify the late icon’s glamorous and signature glow in the MAC x Whitney Houston collection.

“She grew up around glamour,” said Pat Houston, Executor of the Estate, in a prrss briefing. “She had a love for beauty in so many ways.”

“Whitney was always a champion of women feeling beautiful, whether it was a major event or just for
everyday wear,” Houston added. “Our work with MAC is about creating a line that can meet all of those needs. The line will be true to the eye and lip colors that she loved to work with.”

In order to stay true to Houston’s fabulousness, her estate and MAC Cosmetics scoured through personal and professional photographs as well as stage performances and interviews to ensure her personal style would be personified in the products featuring her childhood nickname.

The special collection includes four lipsticks (Nippy’s Moody Nude, Nippy’s Rose, Nippy’s Feisty Red, and Nippy’s Sensual Red). They feature alongside two starlit Lipglass shades (Nippy’s Shimmery Gold and Nippy’s Shimmery Cinnamon).

In honor of Houston’s iconic glow, MAC brings on a pair of shimmer blush shades and a golden bronze extra dimension skin finish hue. The full-on collection also includes a set of wispy, flared lashes and a travel-friendly clutch.

Janina Lee, one of Houston’s makeup artists, recalled what it was like preparing the day with the “glamour girl when she wanted to be a glamour girl.” From gospel music playing to candles burning, the vibe was a moment.

“She loved her red lipstick,” Lee said in a press briefing. “I would always give her a bag of reds to her lap. She would dig through and before I started the look, she’d put her red on. For her, that was her moment. She was made up.”

This honor accompanies the highly-anticipated Dec. 23 release of I Wanna Dance With Somebody, the biopic that tells the triumphant story of the incomparable songstress who arose to international fame in the 1980s to become one of the greatest of her generation. BAFTA Award winner Naomi Ackie is in the lead, commanding the stage with looks inspired by Houston herself.

For Tisa Howard, the film’s head of makeup, Ackie was a “perfect canvas” and the limited-edition line was especially effective in capturing Houston through the actress’s eyes.

Additionally, it was very important to MAC and Houston’s estate to create a collection that would connect to her community and her impact. Most recently, her team relaunched the Whitney E. Houston Legacy Foundation to continue her philanthropic endeavors.

MAC is donating $25,000 to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Houston’s hometown of Newark to ensure future generations of music icons gain access and exposure to music education programs.

The rapper and actor appeared on Mike Tyson’s Hotboxin’ podcast where he sounded off on his loss of distribution rights to the films he wrote and starred in.

Actor and rapper Ice Cube is slamming Warner Bros. for not giving him ownership over what he claims is rightfully his — distribution control to the lucrative Friday movie franchise.

Cube appeared on boxing legend Mike Tyson’s podcast Hotboxin’ where he called the studio’s behavior “weird” after disclosing that despite writing and starring in the films, the company would not release the rights.

“They don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

“We’d love to have it back. I think it’s going be close to a time when we get it back. So, we’ll either wait for that time, or we’ll keep trying to convince them that they need to let us control the movie. It’s my movie, but they have distribution control.”

Cube no longer has distributional control over the trilogy after Warner Bros. purchased New Line Cinema (the original production company) in 2008.

The actor has his sights on a fourth movie but cannot do so without the go-ahead from Warner Bros. or by potentially purchasing back the rights to the film which he very colorfully expressed that he would not have any interest in.

“I ain’t putting sh*t up for it. F**k no,” he told Tyson.

“They need to give it to me, and they’re going to make money. I’m not about to pay for my own stuff, that’s stupid. That ain’t in my wheelhouse, I’m not doing that.”

On the podcast, Ice Cube said he wrote two new scripts for a fourth installation of the movie series only to have both rejected by Warner Bros., even though the series makes the company “a lot of money,” and struggled to conceptualize why the studio wouldn’t approve the new scripts.

“I’ve written two scripts — one of them they said the timing wasn’t right when it was totally right,” he explained. “The next one they just kind of put it in ‘development hell.'”

Cube went on to explain that his other hit movie, All About the Benjamins, would probably not see a sequel because it is owned by, in his words, “the same dumb*ss company.”

It’s estimated that all three of the Friday movies — Friday, Next Friday, and Friday After Next — have grossed a combined $118,049,776 in their lifetime, the highest grossing of the trilogy being Next Friday which has brought in an estimated $57,328,603 since its January 2000 release.

Ice Cube’s estimated net worth is $160 million.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onJNa5wpJG8

• News

by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton

December 8, 2022

ABC Launches Investigation to See if T.J. Holmes Violated Company Rules with Previous Affairs

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Previously, executives at ABC stated that the romance between T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach, the hosts of Good Morning America‘s third hour, GMA3: What You Need To Know, did not violate any company policies. Now, executives at the network are investigating whether a previous alleged affair Holmes had with another staffer broke any rules.

According to The New York Post, this romance with Robach may be his third, at minimum, at the show. Now, Holmes’ previously alleged flings are being looked at to see if the host did wrong by having the relationships.

Earlier this week, Page Six reported that Holmes engaged in an extramarital affair with producer Natasha Singh. The news outlet stated that Holmes and Singh had been an item for three years, starting back in 2016.

Now that his previous relationships have been discovered, sources say that the human resources department at ABC is trying to determine if Holmes was seeing anyone who wasn’t on the same corporate level as him.

“It’s one thing for him to have a relationship with another anchor,” an insider stated. “The question is whether he violated company rules by dating less senior employees.”

According to TMZ, executives at ABC News decided earlier this week to remove Holmes and Robach from the show after finding out that the two were romantically involved. The executives at first dismissed it as being a relationship between two consenting adults, stating that the relationship did not violate company policy.

But on Monday, ABC News President Kim Godwin described their relationship as an “internal and external distraction.” She told staff members, “If you think there is something that management needs to know, you can always call HR or, as we’ve said, talk to a manager that you trust. If you think there is something that we need to know.”

Last week, BLACK ENTERPRISE reported that, according The Daily Mail, the two hosts were in a romantic relationship,. Although both hosts had separated earlier this summer, Holmes is still legally married to attorney Marilee Fiebig, while Robach is still married to Melrose Place actor Andrew Shue.